Dinosaurs & Cheese

“What’s the difference between moral and morale?  One simple letter changes the whole meaning,” I said with a gleam in my eye, for I was going to teach.  This was a question on a writing test and I was sure my athletes would catch the subtle change.

“It’s a big painting thing,” responded a student.

The first time a student told me that a moral was a large painting, I giggled. I explained the difference and they giggled too.  By 4:00pm, when I had had at least 7 student tell me about paintings, it stopped being so funny.  Today was a homophonic disaster.

Oh well, we’ll try again tomorrow. I’m shore we’ll get it.

On a side note, there was a HUGE thunderstorm on my way back home tonight.  I was driving along, jammin’ out to my country music (I moved to Texas so I didn’t have to be embarassed about my love of country), when WHHOOOOSSHHH :white light and nothingness:  Moments later, I realized it was just a blinding flash of lightning, but at that moment…the first moment of utter white light… my first thought was: Apocalypse.  But not just an ordinary end-of-days, but the zombie kind.  Perhaps I need to stop watching movies. Zombies?

My commute to work takes about 50 minutes each way. Less if I’m listening to rock music, longer if there is any type of persipitation coming from the heavens.  So in my travels, I get to witness a lot of humans doing their bizarre human things. For instance, I watched a middle school aged boy brush his teeth in the car.  Of course, it took me nearly a minute to finally figure out what he was doing. He would suddenly poke his head out the backseat window, sorta bounce up, spit and then disappear back into the car.  He did this several times before he appeared with his toothbrush in his mouth. And it clicked in my head. Ah ha! He’s brushing his teeth in the car.  But then it got me to thinking of what has to occur in the life of that family to make car-brushing an acceptable practice.  I mean, I wasn’t even allowed to move around in the bathroom when I brushed my teeth for fear that I would fall and lodge the Oral-B into my throat. And I was often reminded that if that ever happened, make sure not to pull the wedged tool out of my airway, for I would surely bleed to death. Typical dinner table talk.

Being that today was the first day back to school, I expected helter skelter.  Since it’s a middle school, I wasn’t disappointed.  Two weeks in the life of a 13 year old is innumerably long, so the students were frantic to see one another.  Myself and the rest of the teachers did the typical nod-my-life-is-hell-I-should-have-listened-to-my-grandfather-and-gone-into-law- to one another.  Just another Monday.

In an effort to get my kiddos to work with goal setting, we wrote out our resolutions for 2011.   I wanted them to walk away with a goal that they could really set their sights for and reach for the stars and other teach-like mantras.  My favorite student generated resolution summed up the crux of my efforts to make this activity a serious venture:

“I resolve to NOT flip my hair so much that I break my neck so I am going to use my hand to get my hair out of my eyes.”  Golly, it’s moments like this that makes a teacher proud. :sigh:

So here it is. The first step. The small-step-for-man-giant-leap moment.  I am the proud owner of a small piece of internet. 

 Or perhaps it’s not that dramatic at all. But, it’s been my experience that if one can use hyperbole, it’s better to do so.

As I’ve spent the better part of an hour creating this blogspace (is that a fancy Internet word? I feel it should be. It probably has it’s own domain name at this point), it’s time for me to mosey on to my actual life.  And when I say I’ve spent the better part of an hour, it means that I sat in the computer chair and chewed on a pen cap while The Boy created this whole thing.  So as to ensure that I will not mess up anything tonight, I’ll call it quits.