Ah...much better

OK, things are back to normal now. Thanks to all of you who fell into my "pity-trap" and sent me kind words. That was a rough day. I woke up feeling like crap, and things just got progressively worse. Little things started to pile up and make one big dung-heap on my forehead. The next day was oh, so much better. Good day at school, great dinner, a phone call from Craig, these are things that make bad thoughts go away. Plus, I started tutoring that night and had a good time. It's nice to feel needed.

The funniest thing happened yesterday in class. This is blogworthy...

We're doing a "word wall" activity where I introduce a word, we put it into sentences and questions, find words in the same "family", and make up new words using the same letters. It's something we do everyday, and a new process for me. I've had word walls in the past, but it was as simple as writing a word on a card and then putting it up on a wall. Very different.

So, the word is "yet" and we're going through finding rhyming words. We're doing words like "bet", "met", "pet", and so on. Then one kid says, "sheet", and all the kids start snickering. It takes me a second to realize that the way they pronounce their i's can sometimes be like long e's. For example, our word "it" is usually pronounced "eet", so all the kids think he just said "shit." I laugh it off and tell them that the word they're thinking of is spelled s-h-i-t. We do a few more words and then this girl says, "I think I know another word, but it's French." I tell her to go for it and she says........"Fuckshit."

I'm horrified, but I realize that it went completely over all the kids' heads. Not one of them got it, except for maybe the new kid from Miami, who like me, is in a mild state of shock. I tell her, "No! No, don't ever say that again. You just blended together two of the worst cuss words in the English language. And tell whoever it is that's teaching you these so-called French words to knock it off."

You can't see that I just had to take a break from typing because one of my student's moms just popped in to tell me about her terrible ex-husband. She proceeds to tell me that there is a big dance tomorrow night at some school nearby that a bunch of teachers from here are going to, and asks me if I want to go. Seeming innocent enough, I tell her that I'd love to. She says, "Give me your cell phone number" and when I do, she says, "Yes! I have a date with my daughter's teacher." I reply, "You won't be jealous when I look at other women, will you?" and she says, "No. I can share you." What's up with that?

This place is crazy.