Slips of the tongue

So Grandparents Day has officially come and gone for another year. Fifteen minutes before it's always hectic, re-gluing crafts that have fallen apart, pouring 75 cups of lemonade, and reminding students to speak up so the grandparents on the other side of the room can actually hear the cheesy poem I'm forcing them to recite. The amazing thing, however, is that it always magically comes together.

I stood at the door as the grandparents arrived, shaking hands and directing them to their grandchild's table. They were a lovely group of people, except for the man with the Schwarzenegger handshake and the vodka breath. He said "I've heard a lot about you Mr. Richards" as he rammed his index finger repeatedly into my sternum. For one of the first parts of our program a group of students recites a reader's theater about grandmothers. One of the sections describes sitting on grandma's lap and explains that "there are no bony places." After hearing this line Mr. Smirnoff arched his eyebrows, leaned over to his wife, and informed her "I know where there's a bony place." His wife smacked his arm and this led him into a smoky, wheezy laugh. I braced for more to come throughout the afternoon, but thankfully the smack seemed to sober him up.

At another point in the program a few of the boys read a humorous story about a grandfather snake. One line in the story reads "The asp let out a deafening sound." Well one of the boys replaced "asp" with "ass". Luckily none of the students caught it but I saw a couple of grandparents turn to look at one another rather quizzically. No real harm done. Unfortunately less than a minute later another one of the boys accidentally read "His booby slithered out from behind the bush." Um, actually Anthony the word was "buddy." I wasn't so lucky the second time around and as you can imagine all of the students lost it. But, not surprising, the one who was laughing the loudest of all was the grandpa who smelled of cheap Lithuanian liquor.