The return of the Christmas crap

Christmas vacation has arrived which means another class Christmas party has come to a close. As usual the gifts from my students were a mixed bag. Well if I'm being honest they were the worst ever. You know it's bad when your greatest gift is a $10 gift certificate to Taco Bell. Here is the complete list of everything I received:

* 8 tubes of pastel colored icing
* 2 sheets of stickers with half of them missing
* a pair of student-size scissors
* a plate of cookies that were carried to school in the rain and not covered with anything (Mmmm a soggy snickerdoodle!)
* a Shrek the Third popcorn canister (I hate popcorn.)
* 4 used Christmas pencils
* a lotion dispenser containing lotion that smells like Betty White
* a cardinal ornament superglued to a pinecone
* a large letter R magnet the size of Ohio with matching notepad
* a St. Louis Cardinals travel mug
* an already read Goosebumps book with Cheetoh's fingerprints on seemingly every page
* a candleholder with accompanying tealight (This was presented to me by a mother who prefaced the opening of it by saying "Here's your gift. I think your wife will really like it." She didn't.)
* a coconut cut in half with a zipper attached to the middle to open and close it along with a face drawn on it in black marker and a straw hat on the top

Needless to say I could get a box of freshly excreted crap on Tuesday morning and it would probably outrank 80% of the gifts listed above. Merry Christmas!

Welcome back f***er

So I returned to school today after a too-exciting-for-words weekend in Vegas. I think I should have stayed an extra day. A boy in my class has been bringing a water bottle to school every day since the beginning of the school year. It's fine when it's 87 degrees outside. Not really necessary when sheets of ice are covering the playground. On Friday before I left I simply told him to take the water bottle home because it doesn't need to be at school any longer. Waiting on my desk when I returned today was a note from his mom which read, "Please allow Noah to keep his water bottle at school. I do not allow him to use the school drinking fountain because he has a history of contracting herpes from fountains." I'm hoping she means that he's getting blisters on his mouth and not on his genitals. If he's sticking his penis in the stream of water from a drinking fountain, I think we might have more problems than just the herpes.

Then towards the end of the day we were doing a seemingly harmless Christmas craft. The students traced their handprints several times, cut them out, and assembled them to form a wreath. Supposedly a boy said to another boy sitting beside him that his cutting was subpar and that his handprints looked more like monster claws. Like any good third grader would do he simply turned to him and called him a "f***er" which echoed all the way over to my desk on the other side of the room. In what seemed like a single bound I leaped over to him, grabbed his arm, and took him into the hall. I went through the typical conversation about how that wasn't appropriate to say at school or really anywhere else. I asked him why he said it and he said that he didn't really think it was a bad word. Rather than calling him a liar directly to his face, I simply said something to the effect of "You're too smart of a boy to not know that was inappropriate." He followed this up by stating his defense while in the process saying the word several more times: "My dad always calls our dog a f***er even though my mom tells him not to say f***er in front of us. She says that f***er is a bad word for kids to hear." It was like sitting through a elementary school production of "The Big Lebowski." Where's the $1 Vegas margaritas when you need them?

Cutting class

It's Friday and the weekend couldn't come soon enough. In the morning Rach and I hop on a plane and head to Vegas for a long weekend. After today an extra day off is much needed.

You know it's going to be a rough day when by 8:43 a.m. you have already shouted the phrase "Get your tongue out of the electric pencil sharpener!" By the time you're 9 years old you would hope you would have learned not to put any body parts near rapidly moving blades.

This week students have been working on adding adjectives to their writing assignments. On the board I had a list of close to 50 adjectives. Their task was to choose two words that could describe the nouns listed on their worksheet (tree, puppy, coat, bus, etc.) The trick was that both words had to make accurately describe the item. For instance, you couldn't say a flat, skinny globe. After a few minutes I called on students to share what they had written. One girl said "a thick, heavy book," while a boy stated "a smooth, red slide." The last boy I called on didn't seem to understanding the activity because he interjected "A black, hairy ball." I asked him what he meant by that because a ball could be black but not hairy. He responded "You know like Shaq." I tried to explain that Shaq wasn't consistently missing free throws because he was shooting with a hairy basketball. As though I wasn't understanding, he spoke very slowly. "Mr. Ritchason....black....hairy.....ballllllll," emphasizing the last word. Oh, okay I got it. I can appreciate a good testicle joke. I'm just disappointed it took me so long to get it.

Near the end of the day we learned about Christmas in Sweden as part of our unit on Christmas around the world. I taught the students that children there celebrate Saint Lucia Day, which is the start of the Christmas season. On that day children wear crowns with lit candles on the top of them. Each of the students got to make their own crowns using glue and strips of construction paper. When they finished they were told to come up to me so I could cut off the excess paper to fit their heads properly. As I was sizing up a girl's crown another student brought up a worksheet he had been working on for me to check. Not paying much attention while I cut, I looked over in time to see locks of hair floating to the carpet. I had cut a good inch or two from the back of her head. It wasn't major but at the right angle it certainly was noticeable. Oh well, I'm on my way to Vegas.

The Christmas pot

Today our school went to the Dragon's Dome to decorate trees for Christmas. As we were entering the building there were two old senior citizens getting ready to leave after a few strenuous laps around the track. One of the guys asked four of my boys "Are you going to be good here today?" to which they nodded. "Not going to be rowdy or anything?" he further pressed as the boys shook their head. This was followed up by a question that is often asked of third graders: "You didn't bring any weed did you?" Thoroughly confused by the old man, the boys looked at me. All I could come up with was a disgusted "Uh no" as I shoved them past the aged stoner. Later on as we were decorating our class tree I noticed that one of the branches was missing. Immediately I visualized the gray haired man puffing on some pine needles.

Family feud

Last night I went to the Sugarland concert at the Civic Center. It was a great time except for the mother/daughter team sitting next to me. They bickered back and forth throughout the entire show. They argued about which parking lot was the closest, which album a song was from, and which restroom was the newest. At one point they even argued about whether or not the cheese with their nachos was too spicy. They followed this up by saying "Oh this guy is probably sick of listening to the two of us." I acted surprised like I hadn't been listening to the whole stinking exchange and said "Oh no, I'm too into Jennifer Nettles." I realized I had opened a can of worms as this was followed up by yet another argument between the two. Another fight broke out over whether she was the main songwriter for the group. I tried to zone them out and have my own silent argument with myself over which one was the most annoying. I think it was a tie.

Set List
Speed of Life
County Line
Want To
Settlin'
These Are The Days
Irreplaceable
Take Me As I Am
Happy Ending
Where The Streets Have No Name
One Blue Sky
Just Might (Make Me Believe)
Down In Mississippi (Up To No Good)
Who Says You Can't Go Home
Everyday America
Baby Girl
Something More

Encore
Stay
Life in a Northern Town
Pour Some Sugar On Me

A lickable/forceable/pleasureable morning

Only half of the school day has is over, yet it has already been an eventful morning. One of my troublemaker boys who I can't help but like walked into the room at 8:30 singing the Ludacris classic "What's Your Fantasy." There's nothing so touching as an 8-year old starting the day singing "I wanna lick lick lick lick you from your head to your toes and I wanna move from the bed down to the down to the to the floor."

Later some students were working on making PowerPoints for some Native American stories they have been reading. As I was walking back and forth something jumped out at me when a girl was writing a summary of the book. She was in the process of typing "The coyote raped the bear..." When I asked her what her sentence was going to say she said "The coyote wrapped the bear up in the blanket she had made." Nothing like a little Algonquian Tribe: Special Victims Unit.

Then just now as I went to the infamous restroom after drinking one too many cups of coffee this morning I watched as a second grader put soap on his hands and then proceeded to put the hand down his pants. I'm not sure if he was using it as a lubricant to pleasure himself or if his balls just needed a good scrubbing. Rather than interrupting him, I tiptoed out and headed to down to the first grade restroom which was far more G-rated.

Tick tock

Thankfully it's almost the end of the day, and Thanksgiving break couldn't come soon enough. Here's a recap of my school day:

* One of my students came up to me in the hall first thing this morning and gave me a hug. However, it was one of those side hugs where unfortunately as he was wrapping his arms around me he managed to grab my butt and my balls at the same time.

* Today we were reading a story about Squanto and how he was sold into slavery early on in Spain. One girl raised her hand and said that her aunt lives in the Phillippines where they eat rice and baby ducks. When I asked her what this had to do with the story, she thought for a moment and said "Oh nothing really."

* This afternoon I walked into the boys restroom to find a boy with his sweatpants down to his ankles with his ghostly white rear showing for all to see. To make matters worse he would pee a little bit in one urinal, pinch his penis to stop the flow, and move on to continue the journey to the next urinal. It almost had a rhythm to it that I kept waiting for a grieving Kanye to come lay down a verse about his mom.

* As if one bathroom tale wasn't enough, later on I went back in there to check on a boy who had been in there longer than an exntended episode of Grey's Anatomy. As I turned the corner I saw him on his knees over the toilet bowl in the instantly recognizable I'll-know-next-time-not-to-order-the-smothered-burrito-at-Fiesta-Ranchera vomit position. I asked him if he was okay to which he replied "I dropped my glasses in the toilet." I stepped forward to get a better view and discovered that they were way down there hiding in the darkened cave part of the toilet. Since water was already dripping off his arms I told him to try again. But as luck would have it he couldn't reach them. So like any good teacher I looked for the crazy janitor. She was nowhere in sight. So I retreated back to the restroom, pulled up my sleeves, and reached in, praying that I wouldn't discover a lost turd. The glasses were saved and now only smell faintly like the port-a-potties at the Heart of Illinois Fair.

So I'm sitting here counting down the remaining minutes of the day as Play Doh goes flying through the air. After today neon green Play Doh mashed into the carpet is the least of my concerns.

Do you smell something burning?

Today we had to return our books to the school library. One of the girls in my class said she didn't have hers. When I asked her where it was she said it was over at her dad's. Then she proceeded to add that she didn't know when she would be back over there. Before I could ask why not, she stated "My mom and dad aren't allowed to talk to each other because the other night she get really mad at him and set his car on fire." I didn't ask but I'm hoping the library book wasn't left inside the vehicle. A charred copy of Charlotte's Web anyone?

Dinger envy

This afternoon we were doing a reading activity where the students had to find words in the passage that fell into a certain category. One of the columns was "Words that end in -inger." Students listed words like singer, ringer, finger, and stinger. One of the boys raised his hand and asked if he could also write down other words that weren't in the story. I agreed and then tried to think of some others. All I could come up with were zinger and swinger. A few minutes later when we were writing them on the board the boy raised his hand, confident that he had come up with something that no one else had. I called on him and he said "dinger." I tried to explain to him that it wasn't a word but he stood steadfast in his choice. I asked him if he could use it in a sentence so I could get some idea of what he meant by it. He smiled and said "My dad has a big dinger" before he burst into laughter. Most teachers would send him to the office, but I just chuckled and said that it was time to move on from his dad's dinger. It should make for an interesting parent/teacher conference next Thursday.

Rut-ro Shaggy

Yesterday for our class Halloween party one of the girls came to school saying that she couldn't find her costume at home anywhere. I assured her that she didn't need a costume and that we'd make sure that she still had a good time. (Awww, here's my Golden Apple). As the party progressed the costumes began to make them hot and itchy, so a few students asked if they could change back into their regular clothes. When one of the girls came back from the restroom she offered to let the girl without a costume wear her Scooby Doo costume for a while. She was really excited and ran down the hall to change into it. How I used to love the old Scooby Doo cartoons as a kid, but when she returned I noticed something that I had never spotted in all those Saturday mornings. She still sported the perky ears, curved tail, and oversized black nose, but it was the appendage between her legs that caught me off guard. I don't recall Scooby Doo having a thin, blue penis. I guess that's what happens when you eat too many Scooby Snacks.