Song selection

On tonight's American Idol the contestants performed songs from the year of their birth. While watching Michael John's comeback (which honestly was just okay), Rachel asked me what song I would have picked. After Googling "1977 songs" I started sorting through the lists. If I knew that I would forever be attached to the year of "Dancing Queen" and "You Light Up My Life" I would have wedged myself in the birth canal for an extra eight weeks. After considering the choices for three minutes (two and a half minutes longer than it seems Ramiele Malubay takes to pick a song) here would have been my top five choices:

* Hotel California (The Eagles)
* Maybe I'm Amazed (Wings)
* Handy Man (James Taylor)
* Somebody To Love (Queen)
* Just The Way You Are (Billy Joel)

The name game

This morning Ella, Liam, and I headed to Wal-Mart while Rach was at work. We had to get just a handful of last-minute items for Liam's party this afternoon. After getting what we needed we headed to the one of the 20 items or less lanes. Waiting for us was an elderly cashier to whom Ella said hi. After a few pleasantries the woman asked her what her brother's name was. Ella told her but the lady couldn't really hear her. So I repeated it and the woman repeated it back to me. It's like in kindergarten when children are learning to read you're supposed to point to each word and say it three times in order for them to start to understand. She thought about it for a minute and then the cashier said, "Hmm, Liam. That's a strange name." Okay, I can understand that. It's not your typical Brenda, Jane, Susan, or whatever this woman's name was. But when I looked down at her name tag it read Caminda. When you have a whacked out name like Caminda you can't really say anything about the name Liam. That's like Tom Cruise calling Helen Mirren crazy. Consider the source.

Public service announcement

Since St. Patrick's Day is coming up on Monday we've spent some time in class learning about the holiday, researching the country of Ireland, and writing limericks. For the uninformed, limericks are simple five line poems in which the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme, while the third and fourth lines follow a different rhyming pattern. For example,

There once was a girl named Mary
Who wanted to be a fairy.
So she tried a spell
That didn't go well
And now her hands are hairy.

It was actually harder for them than we thought. Most students put their name somewhere in the poem but then soon discovered that it was difficult to rhyme with their names. They all seemed to start out the same way.

There once was a boy named Noah
who had a friend named Foah.

Some of the boys tried to take it to a crude level with disastrous results. One started out his limerick like this.

Austin left a mess in the toilet.
He cleaned it out with a quoilet.

A good deal of time was spent telling them that they couldn't make up crazy words just to make it rhyme. After numerous rough drafts they all hammered out their completed limericks. As I was reading through them later in the day, one of them definitely stood out. It read somewhat like one of those public service announcements where the cast of, say, Lipstick Jungle informs you of the risks of eating partially cooked chicken. When they're done the NBC peacock flies away on a rainbow, confident that Brooke Shields has hit the message home. Read the poem below and see if you can decipher Rick's ailment. Somewhere the producers of Rent are all atwitter with ideas for a sequel.

Random comments from 8-year olds

Yesterday was the day for strange comments in our class. I'm not sure if it's because we've been testing all week or what.

* The smartest girl in my class came up to me and asked "Does this shirt make me look pregnant?" I simply responded with the clever "Uh, no." She continued "I look like I'm about five months along." She pondered this for a while before asking the million dollar question "Mr. Ritchason, how do you get pregnant?" Tempted to say that that's what happens after too many margaritas with Kevin Federline, I said that she'd have to ask her parents about that one. Needless to say, on Monday I won't be asking what everyone did this weekend. I can hear it now. "Well Mr. Ritchason I learned about human fertilization."

* After our reading test the students were drawing some pictures so I hooked up my iPod, set it to shuffle, and streamed music in the classroom. At various times there was some serious air guitar going on with Lenny Kravitz, some movement which I'm not sure I'd classify as dancing to Rihanna, and some quizzicle looks when the Beatles popped up. Shortly before lunch Sugarland came on with their song "Settlin." A girl that sits right next to my desk beamed "This used to be my grandma's favorite song!" Thinking that granny must have since moved on to a Kenny Chesney song or a Taylor Swift track I just nodded and said "Oh cool." She followed this up by saying something that caught both me and my intern Heather off guard. "Ya she used to love this song...until she died." I said a stunned "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that" and pushed next on the iPod. All problems can be healed with a listen to "I Want It That Way." (Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that I do have the Backstreet Boys on my iPod.) The worst part about this whole thing is that "Settlin" is Heather's ringtone. Now every time someone calls her she'll always picture this girl's deceased grandmother.

The portrait of a president

At school we recently spent some time learning about U.S. Presidents. To cap off the study each student made a torn art picture of a selected Commander in Chief. So basically they had different colored construction paper, a bottle of glue, and their hands to rip the pieces of paper. My favorite turned out to be George W. Bush. The eyebrows are awesome.

One of the most exciting things about this activity is that I learned a lot of new things about the presidents which I'd like to share with you. First of all, many people don't realize that Thomas Jefferson was nothing more than a golden-haired girl with a nose shaped like buttocks.

Abraham Lincoln came from such humble beginnings that he couldn't afford decent dental care and lost all but ten teeth by the age of 23.

We all know that Ronald Reagan was a popular movie actor at one time. Yet what you may not know is that his profile was actually the inspiration for the mask in the horror movie Scream. Another shocking fact about Reagan is that throughout his presidency he often wore a toupee crafted from a thin slice of meatloaf.

William Howard Taft was so obese at 335 pounds that it prevented him from doing normal activities. He couldn't even get off the couch to get a tissue, thereby letting his yellow snot continually stream down his face.

A little known fact about Dwight D. Eisenhower is that he lost a huge chunk of his face after being mauled by a bengal tiger.