Evie Says the Darndest Things

Things she has said to me today:
Speaking of Cinderella, "Aw man! I let her get married once and everything was ruined!"
Responding to Chet saying he knows his A-B-Sixes, "Ain't no thang!"
When asked to hold her new baby brother David, "I dare you to do it instead."
When we finally got out of our traffic jam on the 215 tonight "Hot dang!  Time to drive fancy!"
From the depths of her imagination "Hey Em?  Why did God make the world?" Me: "Because he wanted a beautiful place for us to come and live." Her: "So what you're saying is, He forgot about Mars?"
When she walked into an occupied bathroom stall at the hospital today, "Hi!  I'm Evie.  This is my princess backpack.  I have another backpack at my house.  Do you want to see it?  My aunt is also in this bathroom.  Do you want to meet her?"  Random stranger who is sitting in that stall sans trousers: *blank stare of confusion*
And finally, "When David lived in my mom's tummy, he only liked to move when her legs were still.  That means he's nocturnal.  Is he nocturnal because he was a dinosaur?"

Also, this feels like the appropriate time to mention that Chet licked the floor of a Chick-Fil-A today.  It's probably best for these kids that I'm not in charge that often.

Olympic Judging

One of the best parts the Olympic Games is the unique opportunity they provide to judge the naming skills of parents the whole world over. After the first two days of competition, here are the results of the Terrible Naming prelims:

Easily winning the first heat of Unintentionally Hilarious Foreign Names is gold medal favorite Dragan Stankovich of Serbia. As unfortunate as it is to have your name mean Malodorous Beastie, he wins incredible style points for correct usage of stank. He suffers a .2 point deduction for misspelling Dragon.

Are dragons supposed to have manes?

Current favorite in the Go Ahead Bob Costas. I Dare You race is Mongolia's Tsagaanbaatar Khashbaatar. His score is boosted by solid performances in the Awkward Consonant Combinations and Nonstandard Double Vowel categories, but rumor has it he may be disqualified for recycling two complete syllables.

He's a judo champion. Make fun of his name and he will probably wreck you.

And in the lead going into the Boy Named Sue finals we have Destinee Hooker of the United States. Her mother wins full points in both the Misspelled First Name and Obvious Child Hatred categories, with a 2 point bonus for exquisite Personal and Surname Coordination. Final round judges are expected to deduct .3 points for mispunctuation as it really should be Destiny: Hooker.

Forget you, Mom! My destinee is destroying people at volleyball.

We look forward to the medal round next week.

And in Awkward Grading News...

I just read an essay that described FDR as "such an aroused man."

...

I know I should support students who try to use the thesaurus, but all I could think was "Darn him and his frisky polio wheelchair!"

There Go All My Plans...

My hairdryer died yesterday (after a decade of faithful service), so I picked up a replacement today. The new one came with 15 Important Safety Instructions, including "6. Never use while sleeping," "7. Never drop the appliance," and my number one favorite "13. While using the appliance, keep away from your hair."

Thanks. I'll try to keep that in mind while I'm blow-drying my hair.

Aunistee

Was the name of the cashier at In-N-Out yesterday. When my friend pointed it out, I mentally thanked my parents again for making me impossible to find on Google. But then my friend said "what a fun and creative way to spell that name!!"

And then I wept for her future children.

April Fools!

Item number one: I am not actually posting today after a four month hiatus. That is just an April Fool.

Item number two: How does one correctly punctuate April Fools? I mean, the day itself should be April Fools' Day because it belongs to many fools, not just one, but I just can't seem to figure it out without the day on the end.

Item number three: Here is how I celebrated this partially punctuated holiday:

For dinner I served grilled Paula Dean Poundcake and icing sandwiches (many thanks to CakeWrecks for the idea!) Mom actually took a bite of her sandwich before she figured out it wasn't made of bread and cheese.

The sandwiches were accompanied by a side of "tomato soup" made mostly of Rote Grutze (a German Jell-o-esque dessert made of rhubarb and raspberries), with some white chocolate pudding mixed in to cream it up and a little yellow dye to make it look more orangey. The "juice" in the glass is also Jell-o.

I also made a whole pitcher of Jell-o in the fridge, and Aaron totally drank it. He smelled it first and asked if I had replaced the juice with Kool-Aid for April Fools and I said yes, so he drank it. He actually finished the whole cup of partially-set Jell-o. I was impressed!

I'm a big fan of non-vindictive April Fools, so I'm glad that this year we got to celebrate in style.

T minus 71 hours and counting!

I just thought the world should know that I made it through the school year both alive and mostly sane! And there are only 71 more hours left until I move!!!!!

Oh, and the best answer EVER came in on the US history final. The question was about various groups connected with the Civil Rights movement. Drum roll please....
"Well at this time many people hated the Jews, and many blacks were Jews, so they decided to get together and form the Nation of Islam to fight for their right to get abortions."
There you have it: A Muslim is really just a black pro-choice Jew.

I have failed as a history teacher.

Clearly math is not your forte

From an essay on our WWII test "Hitler went all crazy and killed thousands of people, six million of which were Jews."

Mister Teen South Ely Anyone?

This is the word for word and letter for letter transcription of a student test answer I received today. The prompt was "In two paragraphs, discuss the motivation and importance of the Declaration of Independence. (Why Jefferson wrote it, what impact it had on the colonists, and what impact it had on England)." And no, he's not an English language learner. I swear.

"Importance of the Declaration of Independence, was to give English more independence and advantages. Also to have more of a organized environment. but that wasn't to important. At the time it was written, English need more to gain and that was something no one would think of. cause it was something diffrent to gain as much and accomplish as much that English did."

Yup... the English sure do need independence from those oppresive colonies!

And from the runners up:
"Jefferson wrote the Declaraion of Independence to make peace with the colonist and England. I think it had more impact on England then the colonist. To have colonies in America & being in England, I think England had more power for being in America as in England. I"

"The declaration taught the colonists realized that they had duty to their country. England realized that they were not happy with their old king and wanted something new."

I promise... I do actually teach them something...lots of kids got full credit... just not these ones...