Precious Moments

There is much I could say today, but I could not say it any better than her or her, so I will direct you there. I will say that we had a moment of silence today, before which our Assistant Principal did a beautiful reading. The kids were better than I could ever have hoped for, and it made me proud. We sang The Star Spangled Banner at lunch today, and even though the football players on stage with the microphone sang the same verse TWICE, it was still sweet.

Do you ever have those moments where your tongue tricks you, and you end up saying something in such a wrong way? Those moments are only amplified when you have 8th graders to forever remind you of your slip of the tongue! I have never slipped and said a swear word in front of my students, and believe me, this can be difficult with 8th graders. Instead, I seem to have a knack for saying things that are just SO, SO wrong.

Case in point, last year, I was discussing the Harlem Renaissance. At some point, I tied in Prohibition, and I was trying to explain what a Speakeasy was. Somehow the following sentence came out of my mouth: "Since people could no longer drink legally, parties weren't much fun." Before I could backpeddle and explain, I had a chorus of, "So you're saying parties aren't fun unless alcohol is involved?" While I rectified my statement, I still spent the rest of the year hearing, "Do you remember that time that you told us we couldn't have fun without alcohol??"

Yesterday, I had another one of those moments. Lately, the girls have been asking me if they're fat, OVER AND OVER. I never know if they're just looking for attention or if they have self-image issues or both, so I always tread lightly with this, and assure them that no, they're not fat. Because they're not. Most 8th graders don't even have hips yet, let alone extra fat. Anyway, the SAME group of girls kept asking me and pinching their non-existent stomach fat, so I finally said, "LISTEN, go have a baby, then come talk to me about what THAT does to your stomach!" And again, the instant it came out of my mouth, I said, "NO, NO WAIT, I'm not telling you to have a baby now, I meant like 10 years from now, OKAY?" But of course, they latched on to that, and I will now spend the rest of the year listening to how I told them to go have babies.

What really amazes me is that they don't hear me when I tell them FOUR times in a row that we have a quiz tomorrow, but they sure pick up on ONE erroneous sentence!