Different Strokes For Different Folks

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is about to reach the boiling point. Enough is enough. These kids need a good dose of real-world behavior modification. As in, if you act like a tool in the real world, somebody is going to hand you your a$$ on a platter. Or maybe in a torn paper sack with grease spots.

THREE classes today sported kids who could not keep their hands to themselves. It's springtime, you know, and there's a storm brewing tomorrow. All we need is a full moon tossed in to spice it up. These kids poke and knock books off the desk and rip each other's papers and take each other's pencils and touch, touch, touch each other. Doesn't matter if it's the first thing into the classroom, or in the middle, or just before the final bell. They pinch. They squeeze. They prod. They slap like prissy little schoolgirls. Guys whack each other in the nuts and tell the girls they can't play (because they ask, don't you know) because it wouldn't be fair, unless the guys get to poke them in the boobs. Yes. That's what I have to overhear. Think their parents would want to know that? I tell them every year, "Don't say anything in here you wouldn't want your parents to know. Because I'll tell."

I am not alone in my simmering pot of resentment. At lunch, another teacher said she gave her class permission to pelt Sleeping Slug with whatever they had handy. That might be going too far, giving them such permission. She thinks that Sleeping Slug wouldn't dare go to Mr. Principal and complain, "Somebody hit me really hard with a sports bag full of aluminum bats." Because then the conversation would go:

Who hit you?
I don't know.
Why don't you know?
I just don't.
What did they hit you with?
I don't know.
Why don't you know?
I didn't see it.
Why didn't you see it?
I don't know.
Then how do you know you got hit?
Because it hurt.

That could go on forever. Which would at least keep Sleeping Slug out of her class for a while during the Who's On First routine. I, however, think Sleeping Slug would go to Mr. Principal and tell him exactly what happened. "Pupil hit me with a sports bag of aluminum bats while I was sleeping in Ms. Torture's class." Uh huh. That's how it would go down.

My tactic is to separate the offenders and give more tedious work, letting the class know that I am very sorry that they all must suffer the consequences, due to not being part of the solution. Peer pressure works miracles.

But I guess battery does, too.