Wednesday, February 16, 2005
please give me a raise
Ruminate.
Sure it sounds fun, almost like sitting around sharing stories about the salad days while sipping a lager or two with the companionship of old friends.
Or yes, it could still be introspectively pleasant to "to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly" or "to engage in contemplation" as our dear friend Webster defines it.
But, my dear reader, by now I have little doubt that you know me better than that. After all, I'm a Special Ed. teacher.
You have been warned.
Read on at your own peril.
(But by all means, please, keep reading.)
Unless you were born in a barn and live under a rock somewhere you surely know what month February is.
(as an aside: 140 years after The Civil War and The Man is still keeping the brothaman down. Sure, it's Black History Month, but what month is it? February. The shortest month of the year. There's what, 400, 500, years of brutality and oppression and The Man can't give up a long month like for example May, or August?)
Today we had our annual Black History Month Luncheon at school. It is, with no sense of the irony attached, the one day of the year when we as a staff come together and celebrate all the freedom, progress and other liberal hippie PC crap that goes along with it by eating a giant hearty meal of all the foods associated with the worst stereotypes.
For Chris'sakes man, today for the first (and hopefully last) time, I ate a piece of a barbequed pig's foot.
I say again: I ate part of a pig's foot.
I've seen pigs. I've seen where they walk. Yet I still ate a piece of a pig's foot. As I was at school, I did it without the benefit of liquor.
It wasn't that bad.
And yes, there were also huge quantities of fried chicken and watermelon.
I say again: served with a complete lack of irony.
The staff at my school aren't the only ones enjoying a gluttonous feast of cholesterol, salt, and nutritionally empty carbohydrates, all served with copious quantities of animal fat. You know, good old fashioned Southern diet food.
Mmmmm. . . animal fat.
We are, after all, there for the children. The must also partake of the bounty. So they partook.
I learned that one of my student's, this one, really loves meat that comes on a bone. Chicken, ribs, and slightly disturbingly yes, even pig's feet.
I haven't seen anyone gnaw the meat off a bone with such gusto and outright ravenous intensity since Aunt Gladys got drunk on Old Style and devoured a bucket of KFC at the family reunion picnic in 1986.
Anyways, the luncheon goes just fine. We all sit together in the cafeteria, as a class and as a campus and just plain feast out. An hour or so goes by and the whole campus is all drunk on food.
So we go back to the classroom. Unofficially to nap as best as possible, but officially because I have planned a fun filled afternoon of exciting instructional activities that relate to a curriculum for Black History Month.
Right.
So we get back to the room, everyone just kinda chills. Around 30 minutes uneventfully goes by, then. . .
For some reason at this moment in time, my teaching assistants are not in the classroom. I'm seated at a desk in the middle of the room, working, I mean really working and not wasting time on the internet reading the blogged wisdom of my compadres, making cool stuff on my classroom eMac that the kids can play with to expand their knowledge and their skills.
I hear this low noise, like a loud swallow. . . in reverse.
I try to pretend like I didn't hear it.
One of those seconds long eternities pass.
Out of the corner of my eye I see this student holding his hands near his face, like you do if you drink water using your hands as a container.
"This just can't be anything good," I tell myself.
I am so right.
He has vomited, nay, ruminated, into his cupped hands. They are full of halfway chewed and slightly digested bits of barbequed meats, along with other bits of things you find in a stomach 30 minutes or so after a very filling lunch.
And he's eating it.
Again.
As I am calmly and carefully escort him to the trash and the sink so that he can clean his hands without dumping his stomach goo all over the floor, this thought pops into my head:
"Wow, that barbeque still smells really good."
You were warned.
|
Sure it sounds fun, almost like sitting around sharing stories about the salad days while sipping a lager or two with the companionship of old friends.
Or yes, it could still be introspectively pleasant to "to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly" or "to engage in contemplation" as our dear friend Webster defines it.
But, my dear reader, by now I have little doubt that you know me better than that. After all, I'm a Special Ed. teacher.
You have been warned.
Read on at your own peril.
(But by all means, please, keep reading.)
Unless you were born in a barn and live under a rock somewhere you surely know what month February is.
(as an aside: 140 years after The Civil War and The Man is still keeping the brothaman down. Sure, it's Black History Month, but what month is it? February. The shortest month of the year. There's what, 400, 500, years of brutality and oppression and The Man can't give up a long month like for example May, or August?)
Today we had our annual Black History Month Luncheon at school. It is, with no sense of the irony attached, the one day of the year when we as a staff come together and celebrate all the freedom, progress and other liberal hippie PC crap that goes along with it by eating a giant hearty meal of all the foods associated with the worst stereotypes.
For Chris'sakes man, today for the first (and hopefully last) time, I ate a piece of a barbequed pig's foot.
I say again: I ate part of a pig's foot.
I've seen pigs. I've seen where they walk. Yet I still ate a piece of a pig's foot. As I was at school, I did it without the benefit of liquor.
It wasn't that bad.
And yes, there were also huge quantities of fried chicken and watermelon.
I say again: served with a complete lack of irony.
The staff at my school aren't the only ones enjoying a gluttonous feast of cholesterol, salt, and nutritionally empty carbohydrates, all served with copious quantities of animal fat. You know, good old fashioned Southern diet food.
Mmmmm. . . animal fat.
We are, after all, there for the children. The must also partake of the bounty. So they partook.
I learned that one of my student's, this one, really loves meat that comes on a bone. Chicken, ribs, and slightly disturbingly yes, even pig's feet.
I haven't seen anyone gnaw the meat off a bone with such gusto and outright ravenous intensity since Aunt Gladys got drunk on Old Style and devoured a bucket of KFC at the family reunion picnic in 1986.
Anyways, the luncheon goes just fine. We all sit together in the cafeteria, as a class and as a campus and just plain feast out. An hour or so goes by and the whole campus is all drunk on food.
So we go back to the classroom. Unofficially to nap as best as possible, but officially because I have planned a fun filled afternoon of exciting instructional activities that relate to a curriculum for Black History Month.
Right.
So we get back to the room, everyone just kinda chills. Around 30 minutes uneventfully goes by, then. . .
For some reason at this moment in time, my teaching assistants are not in the classroom. I'm seated at a desk in the middle of the room, working, I mean really working and not wasting time on the internet reading the blogged wisdom of my compadres, making cool stuff on my classroom eMac that the kids can play with to expand their knowledge and their skills.
I hear this low noise, like a loud swallow. . . in reverse.
I try to pretend like I didn't hear it.
One of those seconds long eternities pass.
Out of the corner of my eye I see this student holding his hands near his face, like you do if you drink water using your hands as a container.
"This just can't be anything good," I tell myself.
I am so right.
He has vomited, nay, ruminated, into his cupped hands. They are full of halfway chewed and slightly digested bits of barbequed meats, along with other bits of things you find in a stomach 30 minutes or so after a very filling lunch.
And he's eating it.
Again.
As I am calmly and carefully escort him to the trash and the sink so that he can clean his hands without dumping his stomach goo all over the floor, this thought pops into my head:
"Wow, that barbeque still smells really good."
You were warned.
|
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