Like most people who work I hate monday. Hate it. Despise it. I feel nothing but a deep loathing of it the moment the clock strikes 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Monday is the monkey that sits on my shoulder poking me in the head with a stick, but not for the normal reasons.
I don't hate going to work. I love it. My job allows me to stand on a soapbox and basically preach the gospel according to Knight all day with very little or no opposition. Its is heaven until I think about the one part of work that I don't like: my Monday kids classes. I only have two of them, but they both are evil in their own special way.
My first class is full of 3 adorable, wonderfully well behaved little girls and a boy. They are all about 4 or 5 years old. The girls like to climb on me and the boy, who we will call Damien (yes, from that movie.), likes to ignore me, ruin games, and occasionally harass the girls. The girls if left to their own devices would probably take turns beating his ass until he started behaving properly, but I can't let that happen because I am a good teacher or something.
The last Monday Damien decided to have a moment in my class. I had all the students sitting around me, which actually means they were laying all over me like a group of flies on a dead bloated cat. We were playing a game where they had to guess the name of an object before their classmates. If they guessed correctly they got the card. Damien actually did pretty well at the beginning of the game, but, because he refuses to listen to anything I say in class, could not guess any of the other cards.
The girls did really well and I let them know it. I like to praise my students. Well Damien saw this and decided to throw a fit. He threw the two cards he had won, started crying, and proceeded to stomp around the classroom kicking cushions.
I was shocked.
I had never done that before. He likes me. Well outside the classroom he like me. He actually gives me a new Disney postcard everytime he comes to class. In class he is a different animal all together though and this day he was just a screaming crying animal.
At first I didn't know what to do with him. I just kinda stared at him with my mouth open and then I started to channel my mother. I picked him up and sat him on the cushion and told him to stop crying now. Of course, he is japanese, four, and hysterical so my words were absolutely useless. He did stay on the cushion though. I continued class with him wailing and eventually was able to convince him to say pizza.
Next time he does that I think I'm gonna sit him in the corner or something. I carry him out to his mother.
So that was my first kids class this last Monday. My next one is usually bad, but the loud mouthed annoying child was absent so I could actually tolerate the shinaningans of the crazy child with bad skin better.
But I had my adult students to deal with. I have this one adult student, a elemntary school teacher, who speaks english at a really high level. We have great conversations about politics, fashion, movies and all kinds of other interesting things. THis last Monday I stepped up on my soapbox and preached about the dumbness of wearing a mini skirt in the middle of winter. She said that with long boots it is okay. I countered that if your bear leg is exposed to the winter elements and you walk around shivering and basically chanting, "I'm cold. I'm cold. I'm cold.", you are an idiot and deserve to be sprayed with cold water.
I think I argued my opinion so strongly that her faith in my straightness was shaken. As class was coming to a close she started asking me about having children and I said that I will probably adopt because the chances of me having kids are very slim, and then she asked me if I like girls.
At first I didn't understand her question cause there was absolutely no segue from adoption to girls. So I asked her if she meant like little girls to adopt and she is like no. She meant women. She caught me way off guard. So since class was ending I quickly muttered that, "Girls are Ok. I guess," and kinda bolted out the room.
SHE ASKED ME IF I WAS GAY!
I think she is trying to get me fired. Me being gay is not a proper topic to discuss with students... I think. It's weird. I hope that the next time she takes my class she talks about something safe like pie recipes. I actually told her how to make peach cobbler. She'll never try it, but I solidified my coolness in her mind, and probably my gayness.
