Good luck

This morning a boy in my class walked up to my desk and said "Hey Mr. Ritchason, smell this" as he pushed a dirty key chain 2 inches from my nose. Refusing to take him up on his offer I pulled my head away instinctively. He said "My grandma gave this to me. It used to be her good luck charm." Realizing what a sweet momento it was I reached for it and saw that it was a promotional item for a casino in Mississippi. "She used to have her car keys on it until one day she crashed her car into a barn and totalled her car." Guess it didn't bring as much good luck as she would have hoped.

Letter from a rocket scientist

So this morning a girl in my class hands me a note from her mom. It read.....

"Mr. R - I have concerns about Vicki learning that Pluto is classified as a planet. In the last few years scientists have actually kicked it out of the planet club because its pattern of rotation is not the same as the rest of the planets in the solar system. Plus the scientists believe it is actually a broken piece of a larger planet like the moon is possibly a broken piece of the earth. It is hard to help her when what she is being taught is not what I learn in my GED class."

I mean c'mon already. I was kicked out of the Latin Club in high school and I never fully got over it. I can't imagine the insecurity issues that Pluto is nursing after being kicked out of the ultra exclusive Planet Club. Screw my Masters degree. Maybe I need to go back and get schooled for my GED.

The greatest invention of all time

Two weeks ago a man dropped by our house and changed my world forever. Now before your mind conjures up some bizarre Brokeback sequel I'll let you know that my excitement was over the cable guy. I finally jumped on the Tivo bandwagon and haven't left the house since. FX ran a Prison Break marathon and now I'm hooked. (I dare you to find a better two hour block of television than Fox's Monday night lineup of Prison Break and 24.) I love the ability to instantly rewind a live program and relive Katharine McPhee's frightened expression as she makes her way down to the bottom three. I haven't missed a single one of Rachael Ray's fifty-two different Food Network programs. I've been able to catch up on movies that I've put off for years (Wall Street, Backbeat, A Knight's Tale). I mean I'm even Tivo'ing things that I normally would channel surf right past (Brendan Fraser hosting a 2001 episode of SNL). There's no better feeling than falling asleep on the couch and not having to worry that you missed yet another side-splitting episode of The George Lopez Show.