August 22, 2012
-
The Daily News
1 This is coming to you LIVE from Evergreen Valley High School. It is fifth period, which at this school is right before lunch. I hear applause coming from my neighbor’s classroom. I hear massive applause in my room. I’m pretty sure my neighbor’s was real though.2 My class is quietly working on an assignment right now.They are reading The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The majority of them have never read the story.
3 All my classes strike me as really intelligent this year. A lot of teachers have said that about the younger classes. They seem polite, well spoken, and cheerfully bright. Usually by now I have had classes try to pull things. Or by now, I will usually have had at least one encounter with a snarky kid.
4 These guys are remarkably quiet. In fact, it alarms me that I haven’t heard anyone laughing at the subtle humor in Walter Mitty. Personally, I love the running gag of Walter Mitty never getting the grocery list right.
5 I especially like when his wife scolds him for not putting on his overshoes in the thick of winter, and why he didn’t just put them on in the store where he bought them. Practical woman. Thurber throws this one out there, however, Mitty’s retort: “I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home.”
6 Keep in mind that this is all coming to you live. In keeping with fun coincidences, the second I wrote that last item, I heard laughter coming from the room next door, and then more applause, which esteemed colleague, this guy named Cheli, has been getting the entire period. In my frabjous mind, the laughter was from the Mitty retort.
7 Bo Cheli, my next door neighbor, went to the same middle school I did growing up. He’s significantly younger than I am, but then, who isn’t? It’s tough lingering here at 39.
8 Interestingly, he also is somewhat of a wiseguy maverick. Raised in the same area. Go figure. By the way, when we were young, they didn’t really have middle schools. They were called junior high schools. Someone, somewhere decided a change of title would be pretty nifty, and the rest is history.
10 Still more applause in Cheli’s room. He must be having a big inning.
9 I got applause all five periods last week, which is sort of like hitting for the cycle.
10 Moving On, Part the First: Baseball.11 I’m quickly getting over the Melky stuff. A good Dodger series can do that.
12 My guess is that he isn’t the only guy in professional sports being naughty with a needle.
13 His idiocy was making a website, making up a product, and trying to announce that he took the product not knowing it was totally juice.
14 Whatdya in third grade dude? The worst teacher on the planet would have sniffed that one out. He should have been given a gold medal for stupidity.
15 Moving on, Part the Second: Back to LIVE school: Okay. Got an hour and a half of lunch. Got back, and it is now the last class of the day. I have 26 students and two are absent. You getting this? That’s 24 students. I hope they don’t split this class up due to lack of interest.
16 Of course, my stomach now wants to growl loudly because it is digesting lunch. Always seems to happen at quiet moments in life. I’m in church, for example. Or a I’m in a library. Or I’m in a classroom with 24 shy students, all of whom are super quiet.
17 To stop the growling, or at least to mute it, I drank a ton of water, so it is now hardly happening, but it is funny. The kids haven’t really noticed. They are all business on this test.
18 Moving on, Part the Third: Giving this bubble test was great. It was obviously hastily assembled for the early school opening. I told the students to open their test booklets to the first page. They obeyed. This is what it said on the first page: Check your answers. Then close your booklet and wait for instructions. On the second page it said this: STOP This is the end of the test.
19 Fast read.
20 The third page started on number 65. I kid you not.
21 The very last page ended with DIRECTIONS TO THE STUDENT and instructions to read “samples” 1 and 2. The answer sheet doesn’t have samples 1 or 2.
21 Fortunately, I’m used to lunacy, so I walked my students through it.
23 I said, “Just find number 1 on page 4, and then go to page 5 when you are done doing that. Piece of cake, yo. You guys are smart; you’ll figure it out.”
24 For the record? I didn’t really say, “Yo.” That was a feeble attempt at embellishing a story, which I am quite certain most writers of non-fiction probably do.25 And so we arrive here.
26
27 Missed Mars by a slice.28 Most of us are at least in the vicinity.
29 Moving on, Part Four: all that stuff about the test was true. I even took a picture of both pages, but I’m sure that posting pictures of tests on a public blog might possibly be something I shouldn’t be doing.
30 So I won’t. The kids figured it all out pretty well, although it did slow a few of them down. I’ll adjust today.
31 So nothing heroically newsworthy today. I enjoyed watching Hector Sanchez catch Timmeh last night. He was pretty swell. He has improved. If you’re not a Giants’ fan or a baseball fan, you probably couldn’t care less.
32 I had to give the guy some props though, because he has learned how to catch a pretty difficult pitcher.
33 Moving on, Part Five: I’ll leave you with a couple of items I copped of Phyllis Diller’s obit, written by Sandy Cohen of the Associated Press. Diller wasn’t glamorous or lovely to look at, but she had a rough edge that delighted audiences. She went through several marriages, finally bringing a fictitious husband named “Fang” into her act, prompting her at one time to say, “Fang is permanent in the act, of course. Don’t confuse him with my other husbands. They’re temporary.”
34 Her career began in San Francisco at the Purple onion club, and it took off from there. She had previously worked for a radio station writing ads.
35 Cohen tells of her network debut in a wonderful anecdote: “She made her network debut as a contestant on Grouch Marx’s game show “You Bet Your Life.” (Diller, asked if she was married: “Yes, I’ve worn a wedding ring for 18 years.” Marx: “Really? Well, two more payments an it’ll be all yours.”)
36 Classic.
37 Hope you all have a great day.
38 Peace.
~H~
www.xanga.com/bharrington
