Regular readers of my blog, or at any rate, me, will have noticed that I wrote about cats and not about people or students. Oh, students are people. I’m CONVINCED of it.  Upon reflection I realized that many of the Feline Pentatholon and track and field events could easily be adapted to the classroom.

• High Jump: Desk category.  This event originated with boys who did not wish to walk around to their aisle, but leapt over intervening desks. This event must be completed by landing in the aisle without touching a desk on either side. Competitors who trip on the bookbags strewn in the aisle will be disqualified.
• Long Slide:  The goal of this event is to slide all your neighbor’s books, papers and personal belongings onto the floor in one fell swoop.
• Drapery climb:  Drapes are not permitted in the classroom. However, many teachers are found climbing the walls around 2:15. This could be made into an organized event, best scheduled during a  district wide computer malfunction the day before grades are due.
• Trashcan Toss:  This event is EXACTLY like basketball, the only differences being that instead of a hoop you have a trashcan, and it sits on the floor and not up in the air, and instead of a basketball you have a variety of objects, such as plastic water bottles, old homework, paper airplanes and crudely drawn pictures of male genitalia crumpled up into a ball. The goal is to get the object into the trashcan without the teacher observing. This event has a high failure rate because the object inevitably ends up on the floor instead, just proving that Latin students can’t dunk.
• Relay races:This event has several categories.

1.Beginners: Grab someone else’s pencil and pass it around the room until the student wh owns the pencil yells.

2.Intermediate: Students grab someone else’s cell phone and post highly inappropriate  comments to Facebook and  texts  of undying love to random people in the address book. The number of people the phone is passed to and the number of posts/texts form a combined score.

3. Advanced:  Students pass around a  copy of homework answers to as many people as possible. This is a high stakes event because it ends when the teacher notices and gives you a detention and an F. This is clearly a Pyrrhic victory, a reference you would understand if you took my class.

The relay is a highly popular event in college. In this category, students race from dorm room to dorm room, seeking out unguarded computers set on a facebook page. The goal is to post as many salacious and lascivious comments on as many Facebook pages as possible. This too is a combined score.

• Wall bouncing: This competition is best after five days of confinement due to snow and freezing weather. Enhancing performance with use of chocolate and sugar products is strictly prohibited.