The P-O List, 1-5

Five Surefire Ways To Piss Off Mrs. Hillbilly Mom

1- Say, "People tell me it's boring," about the movie Mrs. HM is showing on the space race. Not a documentary. Not questions in a text. Not writing an essay about what you've learned. Simply watching October Sky. The very nerve of Mrs. HM, torturing students in such a cruel and unusual manner!

2-Laugh as the principal stands behind you, chastising you for squeezing a packet of BBQ sauce at the lunch table so that it exploded on eight boys. Because freshmen are above the law, apparently, and are given carte blanche to entertain themselves during that boring, soul-sucking, twenty-seven minutes provided to seek mid-day sustenance, and Mr. Principal just needs to lighten up, it was only BBQ sauce, and anyway he should have believed the lie that it was an accident as it was being given to an across-the-table lunchmate.

3-Glare at Mrs. Hillbilly Mom at the copier when you storm in ten minutes after she has commenced to copying, and state that somebody interrupted your 300 front-and-back copies of math answer sheets. Never mind that Mrs. HM found the copy machine abandoned, not running, and blinking that it was out of paper. In every single drawer. So she put in 500 sheets to run her 180 copies, oblivious to the fact that you had abandoned the copier to do more important things that surely Mrs. HM does not have to do fifteen minutes before the bell, as evidenced by her staying by the machine to make sure all of her copies come out without jamming or eating up all the paper. Mrs. HM did not turn off your orphaned copies, though she has a good idea of who did, having heard him profess that he does so every time he sees the machine running a plethora of copies unattended, because he is there to run his own copies, not to be a copy-machine clerk for his absent peers.

4-Leave an open magazine on your desk after your quiz, and try to walk out the door at the bell. Because it's not like Mrs. Hillbilly Mom knows whose desk that is, having picked up after you last week, and can't see you trying to make your great escape, and is such a shrinking violet that she won't call you back to pick it up and give you a good lecture, to boot, on how she is not your personal assistant and does not come to your locker and clutter it with stuff that you have to deal with before being able to use your locker the next hour.

5-Stage-whisper, "She's stuck-up," as Mrs. Hillbilly Mom walks by your lunch table, just because she has pointedly ignored your catcalls and attention-getting mouth sounds that you have issued every single day for the last six weeks, even after Mrs. HM told you politely that this act was getting old, and that she does not want to interact with students on her lunch time, just as she does not come plop down at your lunch table and monopolize your time with your peers. She is not your buddy, and not your equal, and has no desire to be, even though she enjoys interacting with you in a classroom setting, in a manner that does not distract from learning.