September 29, 2005
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The Daily News
oy.
1 Who knew?
2 About a week ago, this girl came in my class with a baby hamster. As I usually do, I ignored it, knowing it would surface about sixty times during that class, and that kids would yell, "Mr. H, there's a RAT in your room!" and that if it even slightly slipped out of the kid's grip, that teenage boys would try to stomp it to death with huge shoes.
3 My usual reaction when there is a "cute" little pet is to play it off with a sense of humor, and then ignore it until the student brings it back at the end of the period, and we all crowd around and look at it like it's Princess Aurora or something.
4 Let me preface this with saying that ANY time an animal enters your classroom, your lesson is done. If a dog, for example, stands in your doorway with his tongue hanging out, it doesn't matter WHAT you are teaching, all attention will instantly go to the dog.You could be in the midst of the most romantic Shakespearean sonnet ever written, or putting the finishing touches on an eloquent recitation of Poe's hauntingly beautiful Anabel Lee, and the class will inevitably go for the dog with his tongue hanging out. It's the law. In Joe-the-Bear's Book on the Laws of Teaching, Joe sez this: Given an animal, it's over.
5 Good ol' Joe.
6 Well, this fine week I began to notice that several kids started showing up with baby hamsters, and that they began appearing in several classes. I STILL didn't think too much of it, until I soon began to notice that EACH hamster was a different hamster!
7 Sounds like a bad movie, doesn't it? Then yesterday, during sixth period, this one hamster became the star of my class. He began singing "Hello, M' Baby", seriously upstaging my riveting lecture on using sensory details in writing. I felt upstaged, and left for my trailer. Seriously. By sixth period, a cutish little RODENT was getting more respect than I was! I literally left the room because it was SO absurd.
8 I finally returned, and order was restored. In fact, after a fashion, I felt sorry for the poor little fellow, because he looked delirious.
9 Hey, he had been in there only one day!
10 Anyway, I asked Courtney, this girl who was holding the little guy, if he was okay, and she told me he was despondent, and hadn't been eating and all. So I bonded with the little fellow, and the class had an "awwww..." moment.
11 I then asked Courtney about the hamsters, and she told me that there were about 80 million of them all over campus, and that some girl had been selling them to the students...
12 Okay...
13 By my estimate, nearly 80% of the classes will have a hamster disrupting them by the end of the day today. As far as I know, only one teacher has booted a kid for holding, and the rest did the Princess Aurora thing. What a brilliant prank.
14 This particular little guy in my sixth had around twenty names too! I can't remember one of them, except Frankie, so Frankie it is.The kids started telling me hamster horror stories, stories of HUGE, savage litters that have parents eating their young.
15 I went online and found a few things out about hamsters. I found that they are rodents, that hey are generally nocturnal, that their incisors continue to grow, that they BITE, and that they are fierce, anti-social fighters.
16 I never HAD a hamster in my life, so I had NO idea. Evidently that stuff happens, AND they multiply at alarming rates. I'm now on alert. I already have roof rats suddenly running around my neighborhood at home, and I'm starting to get a tad worried.
17 And last night, while I was watching the Giants give up on their season, I heard Mike Krukow suddenly yell, "Critters!" and two RATS ran behind home plate at the Giants/Padres game. He also mused, "only at Petco Park!" Haha! Good one, Kruk.
18 But yeesh.
19 Enough for me.
20 Tomorrow I bring my big old fat cat, Todd, aka, Mr. T, and Corey, who is one awesome mouser.
21 Oy.
22 Hamsters, man.
23 I gotta get another job.
24 Who knew?
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