Learn Me Gooder (17 page)

Today was filled with more turns and surprise twists than M. Night Shyamalan’s small intestine.

While entering the classroom this morning, Ava asked me, “Is it true you love –” and she said something that I couldn’t quite understand. It sounded like “cupchup,” and I wondered for a moment if I was speaking with an Ewok. Asking her to repeat the question didn’t clear it up for me. It was still, “Do you love cupchup?”

I finally broke down and asked her, “What is cupchup?”

Several other kids chimed in with, “Ketchup!!”

While understanding dawned on my face, Ava looked a little peeved and said, “That’s what I said! Cupchup!”

Apparently, Mrs. Bird used me as an example in a graphic organizer yesterday. She was teaching the kids to make a chart with the main idea in a big box and three supporting details in smaller boxes. In her example, “Mr. Woodson” was the main idea, and the three details were “Tall,” “Math teacher,” and “loves ketchup on macaroni & cheese.”

The timing of her sample poster could not have been more perfect – or ironic, depending on how you look at it. While the kids were now familiar with my affinity for the red nectar, I discovered today that not everyone in the cafeteria was.

I had an incident at lunchtime with a lady that I had never seen before and whom I hope never to see again. She was some kind of food services bigwig from the district, and I didn’t catch her name, so I’ll just call her “The Ketchup Nazi.”

I didn’t bring my lunch today, so I bought it from the cafeteria. They were serving hamburgers and mac & cheese. I’m a growing boy, so I got both. Then I grabbed a handful of ketchup packets and put them on my tray. When I got to the cash register, I encountered the Ketchup Nazi.

She looked disapprovingly at my tray and said, “Sir, you are allowed one ketchup packet per item, and additional packets will cost 25 cents each.”

I replied the way I think anyone would have – “Are you kidding me??!?!” (Notice I very politely did not include the word “effing.”)

She did not respond favorably to that, so I grudgingly went back to the counter and put all but two of the packets back. But when I returned to the cash register, the Ketchup Nazi still gave me grief! She said that the mac & cheese did not count as an “item,” and therefore I could only have one packet free of charge.

I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to hurl chicken fingers and epithets at this woman.

I choked all of that down, though, paid for my meal, and walked away with my complimentary quarter-ounce condiment door prize. But then, something wonderful happened. As I passed by my classes, Katie, sitting on the end of the table, offered me her ketchup. Seeing this, Ava offered me hers as well. As did Temperance, and Jacob, and Isabel, and even Victor!

Wow. I mean, wow. Some of these kids frustrate the hell out of me, but talk about selflessness. They really know the way to touch my heart.

Later today, I got to have more fun with some of them. Today is Tuesday, which means enrichment day, and we would normally play basketball. However, since it was rainy today (no outdoor activities) and the gym was occupied, we joined Mrs. Bird’s Games Club in her room. I spent the entire hour playing two favorites of the kids – Uno and Connect Four.

Playing Uno with the kids was hilarious. They spent most of their time peering over the tops of their cards, looking like the poodles in the famous poker painting, and they never tracked whose turn it was. When it was someone’s turn, I would look at him, and he’d get squinty eyed like I was about to call his bluff. I had to verbally remind almost everyone when they needed to play a card.

I could inevitably count on Eddie to try to play a red 3 on top of a blue 7. In the first game, I had to be the one to burst his bubble when he had one card left, there was a green 4 on top of the discard pile, and he giddily laid down his last card with a look of triumph on his face and shouted, “Khan-tay!”

“Um, Eddie, you can’t play that yellow skip card now.”

It’s a really good thing we weren’t playing poker, or anything for money for that matter, because these kids can’t hide their cards OR their emotions. They’re about as subtle as a radioactive eighty-foot-tall lizard wrecking downtown Tokyo. As the cards were dealt out one by one to begin a new game, the kids greeted each card with a cry of, “YESSS!!” or, “I GOT MY FAVORITE CARD!!” Whenever I played a wild card and changed the color, I was serenaded with either, “THANK YOU, MISTER WOODSON!” or, “NOOOOOOOO!!! NOT RED!!”

Really and truly, though, despite the fact that it makes for a longer day, I do enjoy seeing these kids out of the context of my classroom, where I tend to get frustrated with them easily. I like being able to take a step back and play games with them, instead of chastising them for adding two amounts of money to find change or calling a cube a triangle.

Plus, I can totally kick their butts at Connect Four, and even better, they’re never going to charge me 25 cents for a packet of ketchup.
Later,
Tom Ayto

Has anyone ever told you that you have a very devious mind? I’m not really sure I agree with you that it would have been worth a dollar to buy four packets and “accidentally” squirt them on the Ketchup Nazi. The kids are still getting over an imagined monster from one Stephen King movie, after all. Do we really want to recreate the prom scene from Carrie in the cafeteria?

Hey, you know what this Sunday is, right? To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was Valentimes.”

I just can’t seem to get across to my kids that this is not how you pronounce Valentines! They all say it wrong. Just like ketchup becomes “cupchup” and pizza is “pixa.” Oh well, when our own principal pronounces “segue” as “seg-yoo,” maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about enforcing correct pronunciation with the kids.

Speaking of cupchup, how can you still not understand why ketchup is so important to me? It’s like my fellow Virginian, Patrick Henry, once said, “Give me ketchup, or give me death!”

Sure, everybody knows he really said, “liberty,” but what most folks don’t realize is that Liberty™ was the colonial version of Heinz.

Since Valentine’s Day is on Sunday, we had our school party today. I now have enough candy to last until the end of the world (Thanks a lot, Ancient Mayans!).

Wednesday, I sent home a flier with the kids that included a class list, so that they would be able to bring a card and/or goodies for everyone, and no one would feel left out. There’s nothing worse than to be sitting at a desk with one lowly Snickers bar, while the kid next to you can’t see over the pile of candy and mushy cards.

Before the kids left my room, though, I had them write in huge letters, “PARTY ON FRIDAY.” I told them repeatedly NOT to bring snacks until Friday.

Lo and behold, at 7:20 yesterday morning, the first kid through the door was Victor, carrying a big box of homemade cupcakes. Victor is not exactly the freshest Rice Krispie Treat in the pan. When I reminded him that the party was on Friday, and that he himself had written that note on his flier, he said, “I know! But my mom said I had to bring them today!”

The cupcakes were in a shallow cardboard box, covered with a sheet of tinfoil. I was very tempted to start a class science project this morning, to examine the effects of oxidation on yeast, as in cupcakes left out on a shelf. Instead, I went to the cafeteria and got some plastic wrap, and the snacks were able to survive until today.

Victor wasn’t alone. He was the only one who brought edible foodstuffs, but several other boys brought cards. Their listening skills just never cease to amaze me.

We had shortened classes today and started our party around 1:30. I wanted to pass out little candy hearts with messages like, “Kick some math!” and, “Signs does matter!” but I just couldn’t find any at the store. Instead, I got a couple boxes of Star Wars and Spiderman cards to give to the kids while they passed out their cards and goodies.

A few highlights from the party:

Lex and Tyler did not bring ANYTHING for anybody else, yet they sat at their desks shouting, “I didn’t get one of those yet!!” at the kids who were passing out goodies.

Nestor, who couldn’t read the names that his mom had printed on the Valentines, kept coming up to me and asking, “Mr. Woodson, who is this one for? Who is THIS one for?”

Lakeisha and my new kid, Charles, brought ginormous bags of Hot Cheetos and shared them by dumping a pile on each desk.

Betsy showed up with what looked like pink eye, but the nurse cleared her in the morning. At the party, Betsy handed out cupcakes and frosted cookies, putting her hands all over them as she went. Hopefully my class on Monday will not look like a bad Polaroid picture.

I overheard Charles turn down one of Betsy’s cupcakes, telling her, “I can only eat things that are sugar-free.”

First of all, it’s odd to hear the words “sugar-free” coming from ANY child at my school, but it’s odder still to hear it coming from THIS kid, whom I’ve lovingly dubbed “The Round Mound of Sound.”

Katie gave me a really cute little teddy bear that just might find itself regifted to a certain teacher very shortly.

Speaking of said teacher, I asked Jill last week if she could go to dinner on Sunday night, but she said her mother would be in town. Undaunted, I decided to do something romantic anyway, and I ordered flowers to be delivered to her today at her school. I picked out a lovely arrangement of multi-colored tulips and included a note that said, “I’m really enjoying getting to know you. Love, Jack.”

Brownie points for me, right?

Maybe so, if they had actually been delivered. I spent the whole day hoping to get a nice little text from Jill saying she loved the flowers. Instead, at 3:15, I got a message from the flower place saying that their shipment had run late, but that they would make it up to me by making a special Saturday delivery tomorrow – free of charge.

It’s to a school, numbnuts!! Nobody will be there tomorrow!!! AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!

So why am I emailing you when I should be following up on this travesty? Good question.
Talk to you later,
Captain Dateless

Thanks for sending me that link to the site that sells custom-made candy hearts! I just might have some printed up next year! I really wish that you had ordered some with your funny phrases. My favorite was “Pete Humps Unlimited.”

Payroll Pete would have loved it!

I finally did get Jill’s flowers tracked down and picked up, though I had to go to the FedEx hub to get them. So I’ll be hand-delivering them at our V-day make-up dinner on Wednesday evening. Not quite the surprise I had planned, but still romantic nonetheless.

The romance will have to wait till then, though, because I’ve still got these kids to deal with in the meantime. One less than before, actually, as Ta’varon announced loudly this morning that his brother had moved back to Kansas. I’m a bit stunned that it really happened and Demontrae is truly gone, especially since Ta’varon is still here. However, stranger things have happened, and I still have plenty of challenges to keep me on my toes.

Case in point – Lex, one of my extremely hyperactive, misbehaved, needy little boys, asked me a very interesting question today. So of course I gave him a very interesting answer right back.

He asked, “Mister Woodson, why do some people grow up to be bank robbers?”

I could hardly help but give the answer I did.

“Well, Lex, those people just never learned to make good choices. It probably started with them making very bad choices in the third grade, like stealing pencils, lying to their teacher, and touching people in bad places. Then they did things like that all the way through the rest of their school years. Which is why it’s so important to start making good choices NOW, when you’re still in the third grade.”

I have no doubt that deep down, underneath that boisterous, uninterested-looking exterior, Lex forgot he had even asked me a question midway through my answer.

This morning in science class, we watched a short online video called “Sock Seeds.” In it, two kids put socks over their shoes then went outside and walked around for awhile in an open field. When they took their socks off, they observed all of the seeds that their socks had picked up. The kids then “planted” one of the socks in a shoe box filled with potting soil, watered it, and declared that in a few short weeks, they would have a small garden sprouting from the sock seeds.

At the point in the video where the little girl started to bury the sock in the soil, Lance realized what was happening and enthusiastically told the child next to him, “That’s where they get socks from!”

I have no doubt that he will go home tonight and bury a dollar bill in his back yard in the hopes that a wonderful money tree will grow.

Still, his confusion pales by comparison to this afternoon’s hysteria from another third grader. Mrs. Fitzgerald and Mrs. Frisch could barely get through telling me the story after school today, they were laughing so hard.

They have a little girl named Un’Kommon, who had a bit of a fit in the library today.

Yeah, that’s her name. I’m guessing she does not have any siblings named Subtle or Low-key.

Mrs. Frisch had taken her class to the library after lunch where Mrs. Drogz, the librarian, read a story to them. This story involves a grandmother raising her granddaughter out on a farm. At a moment of conflict in the story, the gentle folk are threatened by a rattlesnake. The grandmother tells the girl that she is going to get a hoe to fend off the snake.

The instant that line was spoken, Un’Kommon got wide-eyed and blurted out, “She sinned!!”

Mrs. Drogz, utterly befuddled, tried to explain, “No, sweetie, the grandmother was just trying to protect the little girl. That’s why she needed to get the hoe.”