It's All About the Peen, 'Bout the Peen, and Vigilance

As a professional educator of children, Mrs. Thevictorian must remain ever-vigilant. An innocent faux pas in any other job setting might garner a chuckle, a groan, or elicit an apology. An innocent faux pas in Val’s line of work could result in a job target, a dismissal, or the yanking of one’s license out from under one faster than a tablecloth from under a magician’s Thanksgiving dinner table setting. So Mrs. Thevictorian remains ever-vigilant.

Take yesterday, for example. Our lesson led to a question about a peacock jumping spider. The pupils clamored for me too look one up, so I consulted my BFF Google while it was displayed on the projector at the front of the room. There were a couple of tiny pictures. I brought up more images. All pretty much the same.

THEN the class clamored for a VIDEO. A video of the special dance the male peacock spider uses to attract a mate. I refused. “Oh, come on!” they begged. “Look! Right there on Google! A link to a YouTube video of the magical mating dance!” Still, I refused.

“You’ll have to look that up on your own time. I won’t show something I haven’t previewed.”

“But it’s just a tiny spider! It’s so cute! We want to see the dance!” Let the record show that this class is composed completely of female pupils. Thus the cuteness factor in their yearning. “No. Anything could show up in the sidebar of that video. I’m not taking that chance. I won’t show a YouTube video unless I’ve previewed it, and maximized the screen so the only thing seen is that video itself. Not gonna happen.”

Because, you see, one time I was previewing a video about monkids (moneys being raised as human children by people with too much time and money), and in the sidebar was a video about the animal with the largest testes. I was very lucky those gargantuan balls caught my eye, because then I knew I would not be showing this particular monkids video to my pupils.

So today, I’m in the computer lab, checking science project procedures with my younger students, those on the very cusp of high school. In between looking over materials printed and brought to me for perusal, I was checking out news from around the world on my BFF. Of course I was in the Science category. On a monitor the size of a Jumbotron, which faced out into the U-shaped lab, since I was using one the same as the students. I read about ravens who know they’re being watched, and won’t bury their food and try to fake-bury it, showing that they can reason and plan ahead like humans. And about how ancient humans ate tortoises. Yeah. Shocker there. Why wouldn’t they? And then I noticed, just under that story, another headline: Erect Arachnid Penis Trapped in Amber. I closed out that screen toot sweet!

Because when you’re Mrs. Thevictorian at work, you must remain ever-vigilant.