Growing up, my two brothers were called Tactless and Clueless. My sister and I didn’t have nicknames. I should have. I should have been called Oblivious.
Last year cows started appearing in my classroom in alarming numbers.  At the end of the year there were 23.  I never once saw anyone put a cow in the room.
Last week I saw a cow filled with toothpicks. Wearing sneakers. Not me, the cow.

Since my  desk is a repository for six foot stacks of paper that have no place to live because the papers in my three filing cabinets said the others papers couldn’t move in, he may have been there for days. Weeks even, before I noticed him.

I was looking for some post it notes around my desk. Some of my students, exhibiting obsessive compulsive disorder, cleaned and organized my desk. I looked on a little shelf that had an aluminum tin.That’s where they probably were.  I pulled out the tin.