Monday, February 25, 2013

There's a Reason That Cutlery is Limited

You know today was the full moon, right?

Any teacher would be able to tell you that simple fact, even without a calendar, Google, or the Farmer's Almanac. We just know. It's as clear as the bad haircuts that frame our dark-under-eye-circled faces. Kids kick up their flip-flop-shod heels on full moon day. Oh, Missouri denizens...you need to be showed?

Exhibit A: Genius arrived home after robot practice, sniffing about the kitchen for edibles. He scored a leftover chicken sandwich from yesterday's lunch, a chicken strip, and a vat of honey mustard. The salad was met with a turned-up nose. I casually asked if one of his friends was playing baseball this year. They were starting practice today, a coincidence that has nothing to do with the full moon. Genius, a robot boy, not a baseballer, said that he did not know. I asked about another. "I'm not sure, but he stabbed me with a fork at lunch today."

Oh, he lobbed that one in there like a slow-pitch softball for me to hit out of the kitchen. I SO wanted to say, "Stuck a fork in you? You're DONE!" A clever baseball taunt, you know. But I refrained. Not because I am above such clever repartee. But because that little story hit home concerning MY lunch period.

Exhibit B: A certain table was noted to be acting hinky near the end of the lunch period. It's not like they're on our watch list. It's our sixth sense. Or, you might say, our first-period-lunch sense. We have the younger kids. Freshmen and sophomores. Who sometimes are observed acting positively sophomoric. Like today. One leaned toward the dude sitting next to him, brandishing two white plastic spoons near the neck area. If I didn't know better, I might have suspected he was practicing applying defibrillator paddles to restart a heart. However, because I am smarter than Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted, when she declared that she was going to use an ink pen to rip out her aorta, and jabbed it at her neck...I know that, like the aorta, the heart is in the chest. Good to know.

The duty teacher went to investigate. A not-so-innocent by-sitter inquired, "You mean he can't finish popping that pimple?" Uh huh. At lunch. Check your appetite at the door.

Thank goodness we don't give them white plastic knives. The gash Genius was sporting from the fork was deep enough. Since he wasn't raising a ruckus, I imagine that his forking did not materialize out of thin air. Perhaps he attempted to snag a tasty morsel off the tray of another. He does it regularly around here. But we are not armed with white plastic forks. Nor do we live by the state penitentiary code.

Maybe I need to check Genius's room for a poster of Rita Hayworth. The Shawshank Redemption was on TV Saturday night while he was away at a friend's house for movie night. Not that I want to thwart his escape. I might leave a metal spoon in plain sight.

8 comments:

  1. Our son is now thirty two and when I read your delightful posts about your kids I miss the time when our son was younger.

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  2. Unlike Stephen, I wish kids just went from 12 - 32.

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  3. He needs to tell his friend to look for a rock that doesn't look like it belongs there. Then they can find out that life is a beach...

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  4. This sure took me back to a week in my son's life when the principal called me three days in a row to report on my son's accidental injuries forma pencil, a spider and a baseball bat. That was the week that was.

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  5. I didn't know about using a fork to remove a pimple. I guess using a spoon would be pointless.

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  6. Stephen,
    Yes, one of these days I shall miss this time. Right now I am too busy trying to keep them fed and alive.

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    joeh,
    That would bypass the years that parents are idiots. Idiots from which money flows like water.

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    Sioux,
    Madam, you seem to have fallen victim to a roving gang of ellipses that follow you like...well...like ELLIPSES!

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    Linda,
    Thank goodness he managed to avoid Biter Girl, who leaves her dental imprint on the fleshy upper thigh of young boys at daycare, and Rocket-Chair, who shoves her seat back into the desk edge cupped by fingers at roughly the speed of Evel Knievel launching himself over the Snake River Canyon.

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    Leenie,
    I see what you did there! POINTless, indeed!

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  7. Wow, did you ever bring back memories...of this afternoon. I had a kid hurt himself sitting in his chair, working. Thank heavens no plastic forks were involved.

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  8. Tammy,
    They can find a way to hurt themselves with fluffy cotton balls. My own little Pony broke his elbow running down the hall after school. Then he broke the other one three years later walking up the school steps. I am not asking for a ban on hallways and steps.

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