Believe it or not, under all this sarcasm I'm usually a pretty positive person, but to be completely honest there just haven't been too many reasons for me to smile recently and my frame of mind has been suffering. Work's been frustrating and overwhelming, and after hearing some pretty depressing news over the weekend I came to work only to hear even more depressing news which, although unrelated, made me relive what I felt on Sunday all over again. It sucked. I was sad. I desperately needed a hug.
But one of the hardest things about teaching, aside from the fact that my trips to the bathroom are limited to frustratingly small and specific windows of time, is that so much of it is acting. So you're miserable? Tough. Get over it, smile, and keep on as if infinitive phrases really do matter in the grand scheme of things. (And for the record, they don't.) So anyway, by 5th hour my resources were nearly depleted, I was feeling beyond low and was basically just waiting out the end of my day, trying to keep it together until its end when I could drive home, crawl into bed and be done with it already.
Enter: my 6th hour
I've taken to calling my 6th hour my monkey house because they have reached a level of silliness and absurdity that is truly epic. Although there are several key figureheads of the monkey house, the clear leader is RJ. I'd attribute RJ's behavior to my suspicions that his attention deficit hyperactivity medication has completely worn off by the end of the day when he reaches my room, but I suspect there might be more to it than that. Secretly, I suspect the root of the problem that is RJ lies not in his ADHD, but in his absurdly large self esteem. He's constantly referencing how hot he is, how his mere presence makes the temperature in the room skyrocket and the impressive size of his "muuuuslces." Mix all this with puberty and a very foul mouth and, well, he's a force - the silverback gorilla in the monkey house that is my 6th hour.
So anyway, back to me. Recall that I was feeling pathetic and low and sad and la de la de da - poor pitiful me. About midway through the hour, I let the kids break for a stretch and a drink, since the temperature in my room must have been somewhere near 80 degrees and we were all feeling a bit sticky. Somehow in the chaos of the break I had lost two of my monkeys, RJ being one of them. Knowing that it's never good to have monkeys wandering loose, I interrogated the rest of the monkey house until the escapees were ratted out. Apparently, there was a rumor that there were nipples* next door and they boys set out to see them for themselves.
Low and behold there they were, posing as students in Mrs. B's neighboring classroom, waiting hopefully for the promise of the nipple sighting. After profuse apologies to Mrs. B, some simian whining and a small struggle, I managed to wrangle my escapees back into their cage. When I asked RJ what the hell he thought he was doing, he shot back, "Aw, that room's better. They have nipples in there!"
To which I said, "Well, we'll watch that movie eventually in this class too."
"When?"
"When we study Romeo and Juliet. But we won't see any nipples. I have to fast forward that scene."
"But whyyyyyyyy?! We're old enough, dammit!"
"Sorry. I guess you'll have to rent it and watch the naughty bits at home."
"Aw man, that's dumb! I have my own naughty bits at home!"
Now, it's this last sentence that I'm still struggling with. Did he mean some female friend's naughty bits? His own? I can't be sure, and frankly I don't really want to contemplate either interpretation too closely, but I do know one thing - the whole scene made me laugh. Hard. I had temporarily forgotten everything that was making me feel so low and, although it's a bit shameful for me to admit, I was sort of thankful for RJ and my 6th hour monkey house. (Although I wouldn't mind too terribly much if their doctors would up their medication every now and then.)
*Not wanting to assume your familiarity with Zeffirelli's version of Romeo and Juliet, please note that there is one scene when - if you watch very closely, squint, and tilt your head to the left - you can see a bare-chested Juliet. The anticipation of this rare, curriculum-sanctioned nipple sighting tends to build around the end of February and gain momentum throughout the semester until the students finally get to see it and all of its blurry beauty for themselves. For the record, I usually fast forward the scene because, well, I value my job and have no real desire to see nipples. I have, however, occasionally "forgotten" to fast forward the scene when you can see Romeo's bare butt because, well, it is a nice one.
But one of the hardest things about teaching, aside from the fact that my trips to the bathroom are limited to frustratingly small and specific windows of time, is that so much of it is acting. So you're miserable? Tough. Get over it, smile, and keep on as if infinitive phrases really do matter in the grand scheme of things. (And for the record, they don't.) So anyway, by 5th hour my resources were nearly depleted, I was feeling beyond low and was basically just waiting out the end of my day, trying to keep it together until its end when I could drive home, crawl into bed and be done with it already.
Enter: my 6th hour
I've taken to calling my 6th hour my monkey house because they have reached a level of silliness and absurdity that is truly epic. Although there are several key figureheads of the monkey house, the clear leader is RJ. I'd attribute RJ's behavior to my suspicions that his attention deficit hyperactivity medication has completely worn off by the end of the day when he reaches my room, but I suspect there might be more to it than that. Secretly, I suspect the root of the problem that is RJ lies not in his ADHD, but in his absurdly large self esteem. He's constantly referencing how hot he is, how his mere presence makes the temperature in the room skyrocket and the impressive size of his "muuuuslces." Mix all this with puberty and a very foul mouth and, well, he's a force - the silverback gorilla in the monkey house that is my 6th hour.
So anyway, back to me. Recall that I was feeling pathetic and low and sad and la de la de da - poor pitiful me. About midway through the hour, I let the kids break for a stretch and a drink, since the temperature in my room must have been somewhere near 80 degrees and we were all feeling a bit sticky. Somehow in the chaos of the break I had lost two of my monkeys, RJ being one of them. Knowing that it's never good to have monkeys wandering loose, I interrogated the rest of the monkey house until the escapees were ratted out. Apparently, there was a rumor that there were nipples* next door and they boys set out to see them for themselves.
Low and behold there they were, posing as students in Mrs. B's neighboring classroom, waiting hopefully for the promise of the nipple sighting. After profuse apologies to Mrs. B, some simian whining and a small struggle, I managed to wrangle my escapees back into their cage. When I asked RJ what the hell he thought he was doing, he shot back, "Aw, that room's better. They have nipples in there!"
To which I said, "Well, we'll watch that movie eventually in this class too."
"When?"
"When we study Romeo and Juliet. But we won't see any nipples. I have to fast forward that scene."
"But whyyyyyyyy?! We're old enough, dammit!"
"Sorry. I guess you'll have to rent it and watch the naughty bits at home."
"Aw man, that's dumb! I have my own naughty bits at home!"
Now, it's this last sentence that I'm still struggling with. Did he mean some female friend's naughty bits? His own? I can't be sure, and frankly I don't really want to contemplate either interpretation too closely, but I do know one thing - the whole scene made me laugh. Hard. I had temporarily forgotten everything that was making me feel so low and, although it's a bit shameful for me to admit, I was sort of thankful for RJ and my 6th hour monkey house. (Although I wouldn't mind too terribly much if their doctors would up their medication every now and then.)
*Not wanting to assume your familiarity with Zeffirelli's version of Romeo and Juliet, please note that there is one scene when - if you watch very closely, squint, and tilt your head to the left - you can see a bare-chested Juliet. The anticipation of this rare, curriculum-sanctioned nipple sighting tends to build around the end of February and gain momentum throughout the semester until the students finally get to see it and all of its blurry beauty for themselves. For the record, I usually fast forward the scene because, well, I value my job and have no real desire to see nipples. I have, however, occasionally "forgotten" to fast forward the scene when you can see Romeo's bare butt because, well, it is a nice one.
Labels: monkeys, nipples, overly verbose me
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