I've been sitting here for 37 minutes waiting for inspiration to bite me in the butt. Nary a nibble has touched my ample flesh. So I must resort to the last thing on my mind before I rushed through the Mansion door to begin my unpaid job of cook, server, busgal, dishwasher, butler, fashion consultant, mediator, maid, gofer, whipping gal, and concierge.
The Pony misspoke. Mark your calendar. That happens about as often as the plant in the Dennis the Menace movie blooms. He is a wizard with words, my little Pony. Last week, he matter-of-factly mentioned that one of his Academic Teammates was sullen for the last half of practice. I told him that word is not at the top of the vocabulary list for most 7th-graders. He asked what I meant. "Well, you might as well let your nerd flag fly if you're going to go around talking like that."
On the way home this evening, I tried to call Gadabout H to discuss the dinner menu. Would it be burritos in whole-grain tortillas, or Hamburger Helper Cheeseburger Mac (the vote of the #1 son), or leftover spaghetti made with Barilla Whole-Grain Pasta? (We try to keep Gadabout H in top form). Twice, he did not answer my call.
"I guess he's talking to one of his girlfriends."
"Maybe. But I think he's shoving his face."
Goodness. Wouldn't that be a sight for sore eyes! I asked The Pony if he meant that Daddy H was probably stuffing his face. The Pony isn't sheepish often. But he was today. "Yeeessss. That's what I meant."
I believe that's the first time he misspoke since he was a baby strapped behind the driver's seat in a child carrier. For the longest time, we could not understand why, the minute we turned onto our gravel road, The Pony became agitated, and started babbling, "Toe mop! Toe mop! TOE MOP!" He would start squirming and try to slide out of the car seat. Sometimes, he would dissolve into tears. If I told #1 to unbuckle The Pony and hand him up to me, The Pony cooed with glee. The tears stopped instantly.
It took a month or more before #1 cracked the code. "Mom! I think he's saying, 'Come up! Come up!' "
And he was.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
A Piercing Question
I found this poll at Message in a Bloggle:
*Would you get your nose pierced?
*If your nose is pierced (probably a long shot for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's readers), is picking difficult for you?
*If you had to have one piercing other than the ears, what would you pick, and why?
Hop on over there and leave your preference.
I would never get my nose pierced. That is oogie. How can you have something inside your nose all the time? Won't you want to pick it out? And how can you blow your nose and wipe away the snot? That's got to be painful. Like when you get one of those pimples up inside your nose, when the least little touch brings on waves of inner-nose agony, the likes of which might make a less hardy woman faint.
Nose piercing is OH SO JUNIOR HIGH. Or in these modern times, OH SO MIDDLE SCHOOL.
So I guess we've pretty much established that Mrs. HM does not have her nose pierced. Her ears, yes. And that's as far as it's gonna go. My dad almost cried when I did that back in high school. I suppose it's because he never could stand pain.
As for the last question, it disturbs me on several levels. Why does it not seem so far-fetched that we might actually be required to submit to piercing? Big Brother might need an obvious way to track us, in case On-Star and cell phones suddenly quit working. But piercing would not really be practical, because we could fill our holes with somebody else's personal low-jack device, unless those mandated piercy thingies were welded in and armed with an alarm like a home-arrest anklet.
Sigh. IF I HAD TO get another piercing, it would definitely not be my tongue. Those fools sound like idiots with that hardware bobbing around in their mouths. Whoop-ti-freakin' doo, tongue-piercers! We all know you did it to provide sexual pleasure for your partner(s). We don't need to hear the ins and outs of which piercing position pleasures women, and which pleasures men. So stop flapping your tongues about it.
Which makes me reach for the brain soap again, since that makes me think of the high school girls who won't change clothes for gym, and won't go to the bathroom at school because somebody might hear them, and would absolutely flip out and revolt if PE showers were required as they were back in my day...who go to a total stranger for a very special piercing in their nether regions. AND take a friend along to hold their hand for company.
I would not get my butt cheeks pierced together like Steve-O on Jackass. I would not get my upper ear cartilage pierced with a row of holes for tiny fake jewels, because it's already too hard to hold up my head some days when I am sleep-deprived. I would not get my bellybutton pierced because the stud/ring/freakin' full-size weightlifting barbell would disappear in my ample belly folds. And I would most certainly never ever get one of those hillbilly gangsta meth-maker nipple-to-nose chain doodads that one of my eighth-grade students longed for in the former Geographic Center of the United States.
All told, if I was required to poke another hole in my flesh, it would be an eyebrow piercing. Because people could see it, so it wouldn't be wasted. And once it was there, it wouldn't hurt or irritate tender flesh. It would be easy to keep clean.
But I would stay indoors during thunderstorms.
*Would you get your nose pierced?
*If your nose is pierced (probably a long shot for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's readers), is picking difficult for you?
*If you had to have one piercing other than the ears, what would you pick, and why?
Hop on over there and leave your preference.
I would never get my nose pierced. That is oogie. How can you have something inside your nose all the time? Won't you want to pick it out? And how can you blow your nose and wipe away the snot? That's got to be painful. Like when you get one of those pimples up inside your nose, when the least little touch brings on waves of inner-nose agony, the likes of which might make a less hardy woman faint.
Nose piercing is OH SO JUNIOR HIGH. Or in these modern times, OH SO MIDDLE SCHOOL.
So I guess we've pretty much established that Mrs. HM does not have her nose pierced. Her ears, yes. And that's as far as it's gonna go. My dad almost cried when I did that back in high school. I suppose it's because he never could stand pain.
As for the last question, it disturbs me on several levels. Why does it not seem so far-fetched that we might actually be required to submit to piercing? Big Brother might need an obvious way to track us, in case On-Star and cell phones suddenly quit working. But piercing would not really be practical, because we could fill our holes with somebody else's personal low-jack device, unless those mandated piercy thingies were welded in and armed with an alarm like a home-arrest anklet.
Sigh. IF I HAD TO get another piercing, it would definitely not be my tongue. Those fools sound like idiots with that hardware bobbing around in their mouths. Whoop-ti-freakin' doo, tongue-piercers! We all know you did it to provide sexual pleasure for your partner(s). We don't need to hear the ins and outs of which piercing position pleasures women, and which pleasures men. So stop flapping your tongues about it.
Which makes me reach for the brain soap again, since that makes me think of the high school girls who won't change clothes for gym, and won't go to the bathroom at school because somebody might hear them, and would absolutely flip out and revolt if PE showers were required as they were back in my day...who go to a total stranger for a very special piercing in their nether regions. AND take a friend along to hold their hand for company.
I would not get my butt cheeks pierced together like Steve-O on Jackass. I would not get my upper ear cartilage pierced with a row of holes for tiny fake jewels, because it's already too hard to hold up my head some days when I am sleep-deprived. I would not get my bellybutton pierced because the stud/ring/freakin' full-size weightlifting barbell would disappear in my ample belly folds. And I would most certainly never ever get one of those hillbilly gangsta meth-maker nipple-to-nose chain doodads that one of my eighth-grade students longed for in the former Geographic Center of the United States.
All told, if I was required to poke another hole in my flesh, it would be an eyebrow piercing. Because people could see it, so it wouldn't be wasted. And once it was there, it wouldn't hurt or irritate tender flesh. It would be easy to keep clean.
But I would stay indoors during thunderstorms.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
A Deficiency Of Bicuspids
Maybe it's just me, but I believe that if you are missing three of your upper front teeth (though not in a row), and you work in a job serving the public...even if you don't feel like smiling, you can at least be civil and not snarl and throw chicken breasts at the patrons.
Is that too much to ask? Really? Especially if there is page of large-font printing taped to the hot food case, inviting people to apply for a kitchen job, duties of which include "cheerfully interacting with customers."
It does not matter that you are boxing up gas station chicken. Or that the see-through plastic hairnet you are required to wear is not all that flattering. You must suck it up and deal with your lot in life, or find a way to better yourself. A good start at which would be cheerfully interacting with customers. Seriously.
Maybe you are a vegetarian. Maybe your meth dealer can't make bail. Maybe you are depressed that Tennessee has overtaken Missouri as the number one state for the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. Take heart. At least we can still claim elementary teachers involved in prostitution rings. From the looks of that photo, you might be able to excel at the world's oldest profession, despite your deficiency of incisors and bicuspids.
Perhaps I should purchase my take-out chicken from a more upscale establishment.
Is that too much to ask? Really? Especially if there is page of large-font printing taped to the hot food case, inviting people to apply for a kitchen job, duties of which include "cheerfully interacting with customers."
It does not matter that you are boxing up gas station chicken. Or that the see-through plastic hairnet you are required to wear is not all that flattering. You must suck it up and deal with your lot in life, or find a way to better yourself. A good start at which would be cheerfully interacting with customers. Seriously.
Maybe you are a vegetarian. Maybe your meth dealer can't make bail. Maybe you are depressed that Tennessee has overtaken Missouri as the number one state for the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. Take heart. At least we can still claim elementary teachers involved in prostitution rings. From the looks of that photo, you might be able to excel at the world's oldest profession, despite your deficiency of incisors and bicuspids.
Perhaps I should purchase my take-out chicken from a more upscale establishment.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Even Steven, Now Hear This!
Because Even Steven rules my world, I would be remiss in assuming that yesterday's good fortune might stand alone. So I will now balance my universe by reporting other events of the previous day, which might sway the cosmos and re-establish even keel to Hillmomba.
Silly Mrs. Hillbilly Mom! One would think she just fell off the turnip truck, expecting her students to blindly follow directions like so many prairie cut-out children listening attentively to Miss Beadle in the Walnut Grove one-room schoolhouse. Mrs. HM foolishly supposed that the ground rules established over the past three quarters of the school year would still apply. That the enumerated proclamations of her Never Ever List would remain in effect. But that's not what happens when you give freshmen a stopwatch, a ruler, and a box of dominoes. A day older and a day wiser, HM allows you a peek into...
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Never Ever List Addendum
*Never, ever impale your allotted see-through plastic ruler on a pencil and turn it into a helicopter.
*Never, ever take a perfectly-working stopwatch and swing it by the lanyard, like a flapper might fling her beads, especially when you carelessly let it fly into the wall, resulting in a stopwatch that won't stop, which is kind of frowned-upon in the stopwatch world.
*Never, ever use the dominoes that you should be lining up on end in order to topple them and calculate speed in centimeters per second as building blocks for you own personal, colorful Stonehenge.
*Never, ever use Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's see-through plastic rulers as swashbuckling blades in an illicit classroom swordfight.
*Never, ever use your group's designated see-through plastic ruler to whack yourself repeatedly on the forehead.
*Never, ever swing the lanyard on your stopwatch in the manner of a slow, ineffective (though environmentally friendly) classroom weedeater.
*Never, ever put your mouth on the whistle that is attached to the lanyard of the stopwatch that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom had to borrow from Arch Nemesis because one of hers was mysteriously broken, because for all you know, the previous whistle-blower might have had oozing chancre sores on the lips (and if you don't know what a chancre sore is, you should pay closer attention during your health class instead of asking the guest speaker wildly inappropriate questions).
*Never, ever dangle your stopwatch and swing it back and forth in an effort to hypnotize a member of another group into not realizing what a ginormous pest you have become.
*Never, ever use the see-through plastic ruler that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom so lovingly loaned to you as a drumstick on a box of textbooks which rests upon an off-limits table.
*Never, ever expect to be congratulated and rewarded for confessing that you just broke a see-through plastic ruler, one of a 30-ruler set, not some cheap Devil's Playground knock-off, by reaching over to measure the dominoes, but accidentally catching the other end of the ruler on your foot, which caused the see-through plastic ruler to bend severely, and then snap.
There. That should provide for no whammies for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.
Silly Mrs. Hillbilly Mom! One would think she just fell off the turnip truck, expecting her students to blindly follow directions like so many prairie cut-out children listening attentively to Miss Beadle in the Walnut Grove one-room schoolhouse. Mrs. HM foolishly supposed that the ground rules established over the past three quarters of the school year would still apply. That the enumerated proclamations of her Never Ever List would remain in effect. But that's not what happens when you give freshmen a stopwatch, a ruler, and a box of dominoes. A day older and a day wiser, HM allows you a peek into...
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Never Ever List Addendum
*Never, ever impale your allotted see-through plastic ruler on a pencil and turn it into a helicopter.
*Never, ever take a perfectly-working stopwatch and swing it by the lanyard, like a flapper might fling her beads, especially when you carelessly let it fly into the wall, resulting in a stopwatch that won't stop, which is kind of frowned-upon in the stopwatch world.
*Never, ever use the dominoes that you should be lining up on end in order to topple them and calculate speed in centimeters per second as building blocks for you own personal, colorful Stonehenge.
*Never, ever use Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's see-through plastic rulers as swashbuckling blades in an illicit classroom swordfight.
*Never, ever use your group's designated see-through plastic ruler to whack yourself repeatedly on the forehead.
*Never, ever swing the lanyard on your stopwatch in the manner of a slow, ineffective (though environmentally friendly) classroom weedeater.
*Never, ever put your mouth on the whistle that is attached to the lanyard of the stopwatch that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom had to borrow from Arch Nemesis because one of hers was mysteriously broken, because for all you know, the previous whistle-blower might have had oozing chancre sores on the lips (and if you don't know what a chancre sore is, you should pay closer attention during your health class instead of asking the guest speaker wildly inappropriate questions).
*Never, ever dangle your stopwatch and swing it back and forth in an effort to hypnotize a member of another group into not realizing what a ginormous pest you have become.
*Never, ever use the see-through plastic ruler that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom so lovingly loaned to you as a drumstick on a box of textbooks which rests upon an off-limits table.
*Never, ever expect to be congratulated and rewarded for confessing that you just broke a see-through plastic ruler, one of a 30-ruler set, not some cheap Devil's Playground knock-off, by reaching over to measure the dominoes, but accidentally catching the other end of the ruler on your foot, which caused the see-through plastic ruler to bend severely, and then snap.
There. That should provide for no whammies for Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A Red Letter Blue Ribbon Day
This has been the most fantastic day ever!
First of all, I got almost seven hours of sleep last night. SEVEN!!! And my students were relatively calm and uninjured while toppling domino rows to calculate speed in centimeters per second. My older students spent an hour on Study Island, soaking up knowledge.
The cafeteria served grilled cheese and chicken nuggets, but the only person in the lunchroom eating grilled cheese was Stuart. Which meant more for me, me, ME! Sure, I brought my lunch of chicken strips. But that didn't stop me from scoring a grilled cheese sandwich. FOR FREE! It was delectable. Crunchy, toasted, hard-as-a-rock, with glowing yellow processed cheese food uniformly distributed in the middle. Yum!
But the best part was after school, just before I had to leave and pick up The Pony at his academic team practice. I head the little chime from my phone in my pocket that means incoming. I thought about letting it wait, but because the #1 son was on a trip to a Newmentia academic meet, I checked.
I WON A WRITING CONTEST!
That chime was an email telling me that I'm a winner, and my selection will be published with photo and author bio on the contest-holder's website. Sweet Gummi Mary! I'm flabbergasted. I'd tell you more information, but that would ruin my deep cover in the Blogger Protection Program. I will say that the category was memoir, naturally. Because Mrs. Hillbilly Mom could not invent a story to save her soulless soul.
Please excuse the shouting and exclaiming. It's been a fabulous day.
First of all, I got almost seven hours of sleep last night. SEVEN!!! And my students were relatively calm and uninjured while toppling domino rows to calculate speed in centimeters per second. My older students spent an hour on Study Island, soaking up knowledge.
The cafeteria served grilled cheese and chicken nuggets, but the only person in the lunchroom eating grilled cheese was Stuart. Which meant more for me, me, ME! Sure, I brought my lunch of chicken strips. But that didn't stop me from scoring a grilled cheese sandwich. FOR FREE! It was delectable. Crunchy, toasted, hard-as-a-rock, with glowing yellow processed cheese food uniformly distributed in the middle. Yum!
But the best part was after school, just before I had to leave and pick up The Pony at his academic team practice. I head the little chime from my phone in my pocket that means incoming. I thought about letting it wait, but because the #1 son was on a trip to a Newmentia academic meet, I checked.
I WON A WRITING CONTEST!
That chime was an email telling me that I'm a winner, and my selection will be published with photo and author bio on the contest-holder's website. Sweet Gummi Mary! I'm flabbergasted. I'd tell you more information, but that would ruin my deep cover in the Blogger Protection Program. I will say that the category was memoir, naturally. Because Mrs. Hillbilly Mom could not invent a story to save her soulless soul.
Please excuse the shouting and exclaiming. It's been a fabulous day.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Today, In Casualty...
Anybody who's anybody, who has set a spell on the Mansion porch since its inception, will recall that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a big fan of ER. She watched every episode. She has most of the DVD boxed sets. So to use "casualty" in reference to an emergency room is just OH SO ELISABETH CORDAY GREENE of Mrs. HM. But that's how she rolls.
Today a strapping young lad attempted to enter the classroom of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Normally, HM is in the hall as the students arrive, with her door propped open by a purloined doorstop. But she was momentarily delayed second hour, and a couple of young 'uns had to open the door to enter. Which is not something excessively complicated.
Here's a little refresher. Push down on the door handle lever. Pull the door open wide enough for your body. Let go of the door handle. Step through the doorway. See? A child could do it. But apparently not a fifteen-year-old. That mean old door has a metal latch on the side that comes out when you let go of the door handle. It's deadly. It gouges tender wrist flesh until blood flows.
After a threat to sue both Mrs. Hillbilly Mom and Newmentia for the pain and suffering, Walk In Wounded recognized the stigma that might be associated with a person unable to walk through a door without hurting himself. He even declined a proffered Scooby Doo bandaid. Mrs. HM offered to look into padding the door and walls to prevent further injury, but WIW decided that was not necessary.
Thirty minutes later, in the same class, a dainty lass stabbed her own finger with her own mechanical pencil. She didn't even look depressed. Her story was that her pencil flipped out of her hand, and she tried to catch it, and a piece of lead broke off in her inner knuckle. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom inspected the dry but smudged wound, and advised a follow-up with the school nurse when she made her scheduled appearance three hours later. Pencil-Cushion attempted to heal herself by digging at the embedded graphite with tweezers from her purse, an illicit doctor's bag of sorts. This effort was rewarded with seepage of plasma and erythrocytes. Pencil-Cushion had the good sense to accept Scooby Doo onto her flesh, but was heard ten minutes later complaining that he would not stick. That happens when you keep lifting it to see how much graphite, if any, remains under your skin.
When fourth hour rolled around, and a girl appeared at Mrs. HM's elbow expounding on how the water bottle she had sneaked from lunch in her purse had leaked all over her pants and shoe (flip-flop, who cares that it's still freakin' winter in Missouri), and that she needed to go to the bathroom to dry herself off (good luck with that, there are no paper towels, only a hand-blower)...Mrs. HM could only envision a heels-over-head concussion resulting from the water droplets on the floor. With no yellow plastic sign to mark the sixth Great Lake, situated coincidentally under the Gouging Door of Death, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom verbally warned the entire class to stay away from that area until it evaporated. Which didn't take long, what with the draft whipping from the window behind Mrs. HM's control center to the door and hallway and under the kitchen door and out the open back door of the kitchen into the 48-degree parking lot. (The cooks can't stand the heat, yet they can't get out of the kitchen).
I really need to sit down and wave one of those End of Times signs.
Today a strapping young lad attempted to enter the classroom of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom. Normally, HM is in the hall as the students arrive, with her door propped open by a purloined doorstop. But she was momentarily delayed second hour, and a couple of young 'uns had to open the door to enter. Which is not something excessively complicated.
Here's a little refresher. Push down on the door handle lever. Pull the door open wide enough for your body. Let go of the door handle. Step through the doorway. See? A child could do it. But apparently not a fifteen-year-old. That mean old door has a metal latch on the side that comes out when you let go of the door handle. It's deadly. It gouges tender wrist flesh until blood flows.
After a threat to sue both Mrs. Hillbilly Mom and Newmentia for the pain and suffering, Walk In Wounded recognized the stigma that might be associated with a person unable to walk through a door without hurting himself. He even declined a proffered Scooby Doo bandaid. Mrs. HM offered to look into padding the door and walls to prevent further injury, but WIW decided that was not necessary.
Thirty minutes later, in the same class, a dainty lass stabbed her own finger with her own mechanical pencil. She didn't even look depressed. Her story was that her pencil flipped out of her hand, and she tried to catch it, and a piece of lead broke off in her inner knuckle. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom inspected the dry but smudged wound, and advised a follow-up with the school nurse when she made her scheduled appearance three hours later. Pencil-Cushion attempted to heal herself by digging at the embedded graphite with tweezers from her purse, an illicit doctor's bag of sorts. This effort was rewarded with seepage of plasma and erythrocytes. Pencil-Cushion had the good sense to accept Scooby Doo onto her flesh, but was heard ten minutes later complaining that he would not stick. That happens when you keep lifting it to see how much graphite, if any, remains under your skin.
When fourth hour rolled around, and a girl appeared at Mrs. HM's elbow expounding on how the water bottle she had sneaked from lunch in her purse had leaked all over her pants and shoe (flip-flop, who cares that it's still freakin' winter in Missouri), and that she needed to go to the bathroom to dry herself off (good luck with that, there are no paper towels, only a hand-blower)...Mrs. HM could only envision a heels-over-head concussion resulting from the water droplets on the floor. With no yellow plastic sign to mark the sixth Great Lake, situated coincidentally under the Gouging Door of Death, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom verbally warned the entire class to stay away from that area until it evaporated. Which didn't take long, what with the draft whipping from the window behind Mrs. HM's control center to the door and hallway and under the kitchen door and out the open back door of the kitchen into the 48-degree parking lot. (The cooks can't stand the heat, yet they can't get out of the kitchen).
I really need to sit down and wave one of those End of Times signs.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Pennies For Your Charity
There is a conspiracy afoot to defraud Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's class out of free pizza.
A certain club has been holding a penny drive for 4th-hour classes. My class had the entire canister filled, and in addition, had to place that canister inside a large ziplock bag filled with rolls of pennies. All of my classes, having observed canisters in other rooms, voiced the opinion that Mrs. HM's 4th hour had it goin' on, and was bound to win the pizza.
Throughout the contest, I questioned the student-powers-that-be in regard to the rules. Could we, for instance, put dollars and paper money in the canister? No. We were assured by grand poobahs in the club that only pennies were allowed. So we grew slack in our penny harvest. We lay back in comfort on the fat of our obese Pennyland. Oh, we appreciated the two key donations from the kid who moved for a week and then returned. And the girl who gave the bag chock full o' pennies, who has since been banished to alternative school. But we were not eager to stick out our necks and venture to the bank to cash in our lowly paper for pure penny goodness. That would have been folly. We were surely leading the entire pack, by cracky!
Yesterday, the pennies were harvested. Yep. A sprightly lass waltzed in carrying a gray plastic tub of the sort used to bus tables in a diner. There were five regular canisters inside the tub. I warned her that she might throw out her back with the addition of our bag/canister. She scoffed. Still, I made her set the tub on my desk while we added our plethora of pennies. Just to make sure she did not tip over from the strain.
Today, an insider told us that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's class is in third place. And that we are only 24 cents out of second. BUT...the insider also revealed that Arch Nemesis is in the lead, and had $21 in PAPER MONEY! I call shenanigans!!!
We could easily have donated paper money. We thought it was against the rules. Same for silver. We were told that silver is subtracted, like in voting jar contests for Pie the Teacher. Now we feel cheated. It doesn't pay to go by the rules. That sponsor needs to put out the rules in writing, for all the scoffrules out there who could at least be caught and disqualified, if we had the rules in writing.
There are three days left. They were added to the contest in the hopes of harvesting more beans. And the beancounter swears that we should be the leader. Because we went by the verbal rules. It doesn't matter anyway. My teaching buddy, Mabel, is withholding her wad for the final countdown. I am confident that she will usurp the title from Arch Nemesis.
Disclaimer: there is nothing in the rules about telling a girl with $8 in penny rolls that the PE class is not allowed to participate. Really.
A certain club has been holding a penny drive for 4th-hour classes. My class had the entire canister filled, and in addition, had to place that canister inside a large ziplock bag filled with rolls of pennies. All of my classes, having observed canisters in other rooms, voiced the opinion that Mrs. HM's 4th hour had it goin' on, and was bound to win the pizza.
Throughout the contest, I questioned the student-powers-that-be in regard to the rules. Could we, for instance, put dollars and paper money in the canister? No. We were assured by grand poobahs in the club that only pennies were allowed. So we grew slack in our penny harvest. We lay back in comfort on the fat of our obese Pennyland. Oh, we appreciated the two key donations from the kid who moved for a week and then returned. And the girl who gave the bag chock full o' pennies, who has since been banished to alternative school. But we were not eager to stick out our necks and venture to the bank to cash in our lowly paper for pure penny goodness. That would have been folly. We were surely leading the entire pack, by cracky!
Yesterday, the pennies were harvested. Yep. A sprightly lass waltzed in carrying a gray plastic tub of the sort used to bus tables in a diner. There were five regular canisters inside the tub. I warned her that she might throw out her back with the addition of our bag/canister. She scoffed. Still, I made her set the tub on my desk while we added our plethora of pennies. Just to make sure she did not tip over from the strain.
Today, an insider told us that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's class is in third place. And that we are only 24 cents out of second. BUT...the insider also revealed that Arch Nemesis is in the lead, and had $21 in PAPER MONEY! I call shenanigans!!!
We could easily have donated paper money. We thought it was against the rules. Same for silver. We were told that silver is subtracted, like in voting jar contests for Pie the Teacher. Now we feel cheated. It doesn't pay to go by the rules. That sponsor needs to put out the rules in writing, for all the scoffrules out there who could at least be caught and disqualified, if we had the rules in writing.
There are three days left. They were added to the contest in the hopes of harvesting more beans. And the beancounter swears that we should be the leader. Because we went by the verbal rules. It doesn't matter anyway. My teaching buddy, Mabel, is withholding her wad for the final countdown. I am confident that she will usurp the title from Arch Nemesis.
Disclaimer: there is nothing in the rules about telling a girl with $8 in penny rolls that the PE class is not allowed to participate. Really.
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