where cider meets condensed milk: Does your sister have any hobbits? (A cautionary tale)

where cider meets condensed milk

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Does your sister have any hobbits? (A cautionary tale)

Being asked this question made my day. I know she has a hobby or two, but now I'm imagining my dear little sis with stacks of Frodo and Meriwether in her closet alongside her party clothes. Another gem came from the same class of rowdy 1st year junior high kids, following day. A smiley dude, who is about hobbit-sized, called me over to check his spelling for an activity on days of the week. He had written, "On Tuesday, I eat beaver." Understandably, I nearly fell out of my indoor slippers at something so inadvertently vulgar, but it turns out that "Bee-bah" is a the fond nickname of a bucktoothed classmate, and cannibalism is a running joke. Naturally. I'm really going to miss my weirdo students out here in the Shire.

Regardless of whether my sister has hobbits or not, I have an elementary class full of hobbit-punks intent on ruining the already-fragile psyche of their homeroom teacher. The other day, I was told to arrange a lesson on Halloween for all the grades, and right before class starts, the teacher tells me to also teach the question "How long/tall is it?" and hands me a measuring tape and ruler. The homeroom teacher is 22, in his first term out of university, weighs about half as much as I do, and has all the confidence of a hamster in Xanex withdrawal who feels threatened by wood shavings. I get contact anxiety sitting next to him. His kids are really friendly and noisy, but a few of the boys call him by his first name and tease him mercilessly about everything. This target question had nothing to do with Halloween and didn't seem like a good idea. We could measure things in their pencases and furniture in the room, and it would be a good, innocent lesson, I tried to tell myself. But had the cleaning-time Disney-medley music playing on the intercom suddenly changed to a minor and ominous key, I would not have been a bit surprised.

He and I walk in, incidentally wearing an identical color scheme, and the kids start yelling out, "You look like you're married! Ask Rachel-sensei to marry you! You need a wife!", some ruder comments, and so on. Nothing new. We get through the Halloween song and activity, and I have to delve into "How long is it?" I don't think I need to explain where things led from here, but needless to say, it wasn't good. There was taunting, a bit of yelling, a scuffle where the teacher had to wrestle a determined boy coming at his crotch with a ruler, and the consequent scolding of 2 boys in the principal's office. I think my teacher is on the verge of nervous breakdown. I wanted to crawl into a cubby and not come out until springtime.

Word to the wise: Don't teach this sentence, and never doubt the audacity of 5th grade boys. Especially ones wielding rulers.

posted by Raychaa @ 6:59 PM

1 comments:

At 12:07 AM, Anonymous said…

do you miss me? i stayed in the shire with you. and am now in the shire of chennai....