During one of my first conferences I was talking about a student’s graphs and showing the progress he had made when his dad’s cell phone started ringing. Now this wasn’t some standard ringtone that played silly polka music or a Kenny Chesney song. Instead it was a guy singing/screaming lyrics that went something like “I want to devour your soul!” I have a suspicion that I heard the voice of Lucifer himself. Instead of silencing the phone, he chose to answer it and carry on a conversation that included the words “slutty,” “douchebag,” and most offensive of all “It’s all good.” When he concluded his conversation, I began talking to him about how his son needs to add more descriptive words in his writing. On second thought, maybe the douchebag dad is the last one I need to be talking to about that.
One of the girls in our class transferred to our school about a month into the school year from Arkansas. She’s a really sweet girl, but she’s so far behind where she should be at this point. When her dad came in today I went over all of the objectives and showed him the areas that his daughter desperately needed to work on. His response was an instant classic. He said “I really try to help her with everything, but I wasn’t too good in school either. I was in fifth grade for three years in a row.”
A girl in my class has an older brother with special needs who I met at the beginning of the year. He always comes with them to every school function, including conferences today. Every time I see him he’s carrying a purple Easter basket full of Matchbox cars and today was no exception. I said hello to everyone and made a point to check out his collection of cars. I asked him where he had gotten all of the cars. No response. I asked him which one was his favorite. No response. I reached into his basket and picked out a shiny red car and told him that it was my favorite. Immediately he grabbed it out of my hand and screamed at me “The battle has begun!” (Is that a line from a movie? I’m thinking either Gladiator or one of the Lord of the Rings movies.) It was apparent that his parents had heard this before because his mom jumped in between us like an agent on Obama’s Secret Service detail. In hindsight, I think I was about 1.2 seconds from getting murdered by a plastic bumper and four incredibly tiny wheels. When all of the commotion subsided we sat down at the table and began the girl’s conference. I noticed the boy sit down at my desk, but I didn’t really mind. After all, I had learned my lesson. I plunged through the conference with one eye on the parents and another on Maximus the gladiator at my desk. I soon saw his hand gracefully going back and forth over the desktop like a conductor leading the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. His parents had their backs to him so they were unaware of anything going on. Sensing that my desk could be toppled over or set on fire at any moment I quickly wrapped up their conference and set them on their way. As I walked to my desk I quickly discovered that he had used my desk as a canvas to color on with an orange crayon. The top of my desk now looks like a graffiti-splattered underpass.
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