Happy Ash Humpday!

To any and all of you who acknowledge such things. Myself, I was a good Catholic boy and went to Mass this evening. Even if I WERE the type of person who could get up to go to a 6 AM mass (instead of oversleeping for 20 minutes like I did this morning), there’s no way I would ever go before school. I deal with enough during my day – bickering, arguing, general tomfoolery – I don’t need the added hassle of being asked, “Why you got dirt on your head?” every two minutes. And since I have a hard enough time trying to explain elapsed time to the kids, I don’t even attempt to explain Ash Wednesday. I know that I do have a few Catholic kids in my class, though. One little girl today asked, “Are chicken fingers meat?”
Yesterday was a super long day. The blank stares. . . the same questions over and over. . . the never-ending tattling – That’s right, last night was Parent-Teacher conference night! One over stimulating hour after another! At least our PTA provided us with pizza before the festivities began.
Last night followed the usual pattern for Parent-Teacher conferences. The parents of the really bad kids don’t show up, the parents who do show up are told that their kid needs to read more, and somebody down the hall is screaming the lyrics to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” at the top of their lungs. Okay, that last one is not usual. Oh, and since most of our parents don’t speak English, we had to keep buzzing the office to send a translator down.
A couple of times, when there was no translator available, we had to settle for one of our students’ older brothers. This made me wonder if they were really converting what we said, or pulling a Mouth from Goonies.
Us: H needs to read at home every night.
Translated as: H has been asking some very disturbing questions about monkeys.
Us: H did well on his last math test.
Translated as: H says there is a ring around Uranus.
Today was just boring by comparison. Please, administration, can we schedule something super fun for tomorrow night?