I was unloading my car for work Monday morning and noticed a white box.  I have a lot of crap in my car, so that wasn’t unusual, but I didn’t remember this particular piece of crap.

I opened it up. It was a porcelain cow creamer with a sugar bowl in the shape of udders.

My classroom has become a repository for cows in alarming numbers. All of unknown provenance.

But my car? How are they getting into my CAR?

Of course, as per previous cow post, it could have been there for days. Or was it?

I  accused the usual suspects who all denied everything and/or fiendishly laughed. As usual.

I accused my husband of collaboration.

I examined the cow for clues.The price tag of $27 was still attached. Who would pay $27 to annoy someone?

Then it dawned on me. The only person who would dispose of their disposable income on cows would be someone with my genetic material.

My offspring.

When you pour the cream comes out of the nostrils.

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.

I gave a friend a perfectly nice Christmas pig and she surreptitiously returned it to my lawn in the dead of 7pm 12 months later.  After the season for winged pigs on one’s lawn was over I returned it to her lawn.

I had a student with me who made the sign ” Winged Attack Pig- Don’t be fooled by the halo”.   After we settled it in on the lawn and set up the sign we got back in the car. She was silent a moment and then said, ” I’ve never done anything like this before.”

That’s what happens when you have a sheltered childhood.

Walking by two best friends in class today, I heard one say very seriously to the other:

“You know, when you laugh, you sound just like a deranged billy goat.”

Today my seniors asked me what I thought about when I heard the word pancakes.

Me: Umm….food?

Them: The first thing you think of isn’t a girl with her chest pressed up on a window? How about waffle? Did you know that waffle means vagina or sex?

Well, now I just feel stupid.

Me: What, is this like, a thing now?

Them: No! We’ve never heard of it. And we’re the cool kids!

The reason for the inanity of this conversation was  the fact that the members of  a volleyball competition  had their team names nixed for being inappropriate. This was determined by running every team name through the urban dictionary to see what came up.

I started searching.  Did you know that window can mean slut?  And book. You want to talk trash about a girl and not get caught?

” Hey, did you read that  book last night?  You get past the title and into those tables of contents?”

Set, as in mathematical sets, and set in volleyball, can also mean sex. Any play on words containing set (it was volleyball after all) was not allowed.

I believe  I have been a serial potty mouth.

Honor. That can be some pretty disgusting stuff involving body fluids and excretions.

Character is a polite way to refer to a drunk.

I couldn’t stop myself.

I typed in Spanish. Interesting sexual positions.

I typed in French. Do you really have to ask?

This site, I might add, is a user generated  site. Anyone can contribute. Have a party. Think stuff up. Imagine what you could do with Washington monument.

So breakfast foods and anything with set, which happens to be the term used in volleyball, were all denied.

Only the urban dictionary, manufactured by teenagers with creative minds, was the standard by which all these names were investigated.

Interestingly,no one googled any names. So the Reality Kings, with the hashtag hot mommas, was approved.

Check it out. The first fifty hits are a porn site.

There is no  logic in  this place.

Text to  my daughter today.

Me: Did you send your Dad a lobster costume?

Her: No. it was for you.

Me: It was addressed to your Dad and it was for a dog.

Her: Well, I read the reviews. They didn’t have one for a cat.

Me: Ok. I got the shark tatoos.

Last year I bought a friend a santa cow and a winged pig and left it on her doorstep.

I should have staked them to her lawn with concrete blocks.

This year I see this picture posted.

I thought perhaps this was just a photo op to annoy me. Apparently not.  They came in the dead of night. Or 7 p.m.

It isn’t nice to return gifts. The pig no doubt feels unwanted and unloved.  We have not a single decoration up this year. But we have a light up flying pig.

When I was a kid, blue collar workers from Philadelphia would come down on weekends and live in boathouses, shacks built out over the water on Clam Creek.  One lady named Becky, who in  my memory was about 80, sat outside on a bench all day and drank beer. All day. I once went in her boathouse and looked in the refrigerator. It had nothing but Budweiser and a jar of relish.

When I was about thirteen I brought one of my school friends down there during the summer. As we walked down the aisle, he whispered to me, ” EVERYONE here is drinking beer!”

I’m like, ” So what?”

He said, ” Yeah, but its only ten o’clock in the morning.”

My daughter’s friend from high school remembers that my daughter asked me if she could go to a party and I said no. She had to stay home and help fix the bulkhead.

I don’t remember saying that. I thought we just used her for test borings and drilling.