Instinctively rancid

This morning I was in the hallway testing one of my students. He was asked to read two pages of a book and then I would ask him questions about what he read to check his comprehension skills. The book he was reading was about animal instincts, traits that they are born with. After he finished I asked him to tell me some examples of animal instincts. He sat completely still and silent for a moment before he began in short, measured sentences. "Dogs...chase...moving...things...like...cars...and...tennis...balls." It was kind of unusual because while he's a shy kid, he doesn't usually stammer along when he talks. I finally asked him if he was alright and he dissolved into a sea of giggles. I made out the words "I farted" as he gasped for breath. It was like when someone tells you a wave is coming just seconds before it crashes down on you. Almost immediately the hallway smelled like a sewer. I kept waiting for Donatello, Leonardo, and the rest of the ninja turtles to come bursting through the walls, wielding their numchuks in hand. His excuse? "My mom made fajitas on Saturday so I've been doing this all weekend."

The secret alliance

Two months ago I got a ticket for leaving the car on the street during a parking ban. I honestly didn’t know that it was supposed to snow. The next morning I climbed into the car to find a ticket for $100 sitting under the driver’s side wiper blade. I kept putting off paying it because it’s not like I have $100 lying around to pay for my stupid mistake. Two weeks ago I received a summons in the mail to appear today at my hearing. I figured I’d go down to the police department, plead my ignorance, and maybe just maybe they’d let me off.

I’d never been to the new police department that’s been open for the last several years. My mom used to be the police chief’s secretary so I knew my way around the old city hall. The new center is a sprawling complex that includes the police department, city jail, sheriff’s department, county jail, and most of the additional departments of the city. I wasn’t sure where to park so I just found a spot and pulled in, making sure I was parked within the yellow lines and not in an unauthorized zone. That’s all I needed, another ticket while I was inside trying to get out of a ticket. As I was heading towards the nearest door, I noticed another woman who had just gotten out of her car next to mine. She was wearing a t-shirt that read “If my music is too loud, then you’re too ugly.” I’m still not sure what that means. “You here for the traffic hearing?” she asked. I admitted that I was and asked if she knew where I was supposed to go. She instantly transformed into a tour guide, pointing out what every building was. All she was missing was a microphone in hand and a red wind breaker with her name stitched onto it. I’m guessing she’d been down there (i.e. locked up) a few times.

As the two of us strolled inside hand in hand, I was told to sign in, take a number, and wait for my number to be called. Looking around the room, you could see people practicing what they were going to say to try to get out of their tickets. It was like sitting around with a bunch of people all getting ready to audition for a bit part in “My Name Is Earl.” A guy in his mid-20’s was sitting across from me loudly relating the events of last night. They shut the bar down at 4 a.m. and headed for a late night meal at Hardee’s. If the thought of drinking 17 Coors Lights isn’t enough to make you puke, thinking about adding a Jalapeno Thickburger on top of it should do the trick. In fact, I think the guy was still drunk.

An older gentleman sitting to my right told me that he was there because his truck was in the tow-away zone at Wal-Mart. I assumed that he was just sitting there waiting to pick up his wife at the door or something logical like that. Instead he later said that he parked there to run inside and get groceries for the week. He was so surprised when he came out a while later to find a $250 ticket on his windshield. Uh…duh.

As each person came out, those of us waiting looked over to see what the result was. Over and over again each person replied that they still had to pay their fine. It wasn’t looking good. After waiting for about 45 minutes they called my number. I went into the tiny room and sat down at the table as the door closed behind me. Two women sat on the opposite side and opened up my case file. (At least that’s what I’m going to call it because it makes me sound tough and dangerous. Like one of the felons on Law and Order: SVU.) They asked me my name and I told them, also explaining that the spelling of my last name would need to be corrected too. Once a Richardson, always a Richardson. As I told them this the ladies looked at one another before one of them asked “Are you Linda’s son?” I smiled and said that I was. “We love your mom,” the other one said. This was looking good. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” one began. “We’re going to void this out but you can’t tell anyone we did this.” I eagerly agreed, knowing that I’d write about it in my blog. This is why I could never work at some place like the CIA or the State Department. I’d be spilling all of the secrets. Anyway, I thanked both of the women profusely as I headed out. All eyes were instantly on me as I walked out of the room. I threw up my hands, looking downtrodden, and said that they gave me 60 days to pay off my fine. Sorry, I was sworn to secrecy.

Outhouse

So after being mercilessly teased with nice weather over the last several weeks, it looks like spring has finally arrived. I for one love it for many reasons, as it hearkens the reopening of Double D's, the conclusion of indoor recess, and the countdown to the end of school (t-minus 30 days). When I get home each afternoon we've been spending quite a bit of time outside, playing in the backyard and going for walks in the neighborhood. Last night before dinner I took Ella and Liam out back to play for a bit. For Liam this basically comes down to seeing how many wood chips and stray pebbles he can put in his mouth. Ella runs around like a wild woman, going down the slide, driving her car, and visiting her imaginary farm in the shed (complete with chickens, monkeys, and dinosaurs). After a half hour she told me that she needed to go potty. I told her to head inside and use the potty chair just inside the door rather than going all the way upstairs to use the big toilet. After a few seconds she comes out carrying the chair and places it right in a section of wood chips. She's often afraid that she's going to miss something and this was no exception. She sat down and relived herself as though this is a perfectly normal thing that happens everyday. You can almost see the relief on her face in the photo below. Aahh.

Not quite ready for fourth grade

Three days each week we have reading stations set up around the room where students go from one to the next every twenty minutes. I don't know what it was today that produced such strange behavior, but this will go down as one of the oddest school days in recent memory.

* With one group we talked about similes where two things are compared using the words "like" or "as". We went through a worksheet together that had a series of sentences. The students had to figure out whether or not the phrase was a simile. The fourth one down read "You are as wise as an owl." The boy to the right of me turned to look at me and stated "I'm part owl." He said it with such conviction like when someone says they're part Cherokee and a quarter Irish. I gave him a quizzical look and said simply "What?" With a straight face, he added "I'm part owl because I stare a lot." He was being dead serious. I tried to explain to him that this just made him similar to owls and that humans and animals don't come from the same relatives. This was lost on him as he emphatically declared that he was related to an owl. Unless his uncle dressed up as Woodsy the Owl from those catchy 80's commercials, I'm not buying it. Give a hoot, don't pollute.

* Another group had just finished reading a book about the Titanic. I asked them to jot down some facts they learned from reading the book. Several of them wrote down that the ship was the length of three football fields and that about 1,500 people died. However, I'm beginning to think that one girl read an entirely different story. When I called on her to share what she had written she told me that the people on the Titanic were traveling to America to gain their freedom. Um, no, that was the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. She proceeded to add that not only were they in search of freedom but they also wanted to be able to own dogs, a luxury that was unavailable apparently in England. Just to check my facts, I Googled "bulldog" and found that they've been around in the U.K. since 1568. The cherry on top came when she added that some of the survivors from the Titanic went on to throw coffee in the river. I don't remember Kate Winslet throwing cans of Folgers into Boston Harbor. It was as though this girl had taken a history textbook, shoved it into a blender, and turned it on for several seconds. I'm sure next week Saturn will be a decorated war hero who is trying to become the next American Idol.

* Another group was reading a story about glaciers. We discussed that glaciers become so heavy that gravity pulls them downhill. This invariably led us to talking about what gravity is and how it keeps us rooted to the ground unlike things in space. I explained that when you see video of astronauts floating around in the air this is due to the lack of gravity. This spurred their curiosity and led them to begin asking questions about how they sleep up there and how they cook their meals. One boy raised his hand and when I called on him he added "Astronauts just pee in their space suits since they can't use the bathroom." I explained that this wasn't true without going into all of the details about what amounts to not much more than a funnel and a garden hose.

* My final group of the day came by after finishing reading their book about sea mammals. They were asked to create a newspaper article to highlight what they had learned. Before beginning the task we went around the table to share some examples of important things to write down. One girl shared that walruses are killed for their fur for clothing, their meat for food, and their blubber for fuel. I explained that this was a large fact so to make sure that they left themselves enough room to write the whole things. One of my habitual troublemakers turned to me and said "I've got a big one." When I asked him what his fact was he was his usual goofy self and told me that he had a big, fat elephant. As it was almost the end of the day I played along and asked him where his big, fat elephant was. His response was "In my pants" to which he dissolved into a sea of obnoxious laughter. Spoken like an obnoxious, immature college freshman trying to hit on a girl way out of his league after 17 beers at the Sigma Chi house.

Malicious horses

This week our class has been reading a story called On Granddaddy's Farm which describes a group of children who spent their summer on their grandfather's farm in the 1930's. The children fill their days washing up in the swimming hole, eating homemade biscuits, and jump in the haystacks. A girl in our class raised her hand and said "My dad took me to a farm before. He got on the horse but it bucked him off. Then the horse stepped on his privates on purpose." Well horses are malicious animals.

Special

I just got back from spending the last hour in a special ed room full of first and second graders. Their teacher had to step out for a meeting so they pulled me in their since I have a student teacher. Let me just tell you that I have complete admiration for special ed teachers. It takes a truly gifted person to do that job day after day. Being in there felt like the longest hour of my life. This from a guy who spent 60 minutes in the waiting room of the E.R. with a collapsed lung and sat through an entire set by the Counting Crows when they opened for John Mayer.

As soon as the teacher left one of the boys started crying. Now this wasn't your standard tear or two. Rather it was uncontrollable, snot-streaming-out-of-your-nose sobbing. I tried having him come sit beside me, making goofy faces, talking about recess, all to no avail. I became so desperate that I began secretly supplying him with jelly beans that I found in a dusty candy jar. After eating 75 jelly beans I'm sure he'll have a royal stomach ache by lunch time and be bouncing off the walls from a sugar high this afternoon but at least it kept him quiet.

While they were completing a worksheet a boy raised his hand. As I went over to answer his question he simply said "I like Home Alone." I responded that I liked it as well and that as soon as he was done with the assignment we could talk about it. Refusing to do work, he just kept yelling out lines from the movie.

This is it. Don't get scared now.
Buzz, don't be a moron.
I hope that I never see any of you jerks again.

I tried unsuccessfully to get him quiet but by that point he had the whole room's attention. Smiling he yelled at the top of his lungs:

I wouldn't let you sleep in my room if you were growing on my ass!

A boy sitting on his own in the back of room continually picked his nose the entire time I was in there. It's bad enough to pick your nose but wiping your boogers in your hair is where I draw the line. Needless to say, after the teacher returned and I started to exit, the boy ran up to me, wrapped his snotty fingers around me, and gave me a big hug as he nestled his crusty head into my chest. I love happy endings.

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.