actual text.  almost.

French teacher:  A 7 foot snowman appeared across the street and its not even December.  Bastards.

Me: Hey,  its  not even Thanksgiving. Things could be worse. It could be on your front lawn.

Silence while I digest this information.

Me: Oh.

Me: Ummm, so what’s your address?

Me: It’s , ah, for a Christmas card.

Me: yeah, that’s it.  A Christmas card.

Me: Ok, don’t tell me. I’ll ask your department coworkers. They cave easily.

Me: I saw this 8 foot inflatable turkey. The tail feathers move.

French teacher:  NO. NO.

Me: you’re so cute when you try to be authoritarian. Does anyone ever listen?

French teacher: Only my students. Occasionally.

Me:  ITS ON ORDER

This is Pted. Pted is the pterodactyl on the cabinet, stalking the flag. The  sign around his neck says ” Je m’appelle Pted.

The silent P  in Pted is pronounced with a slight breathy labial puff, followed by a Gallic nasal intonation, with a soft segue into a hint of a dental and an implied palatal.

I know. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

A French student came to my door and asked, ”  Do you know why you can’t hear pteoydactyls in the bathroom?   Because the pee is silent.”

And then she turned on her heel and left.

One day  I googled the  most  random thing I could think of. ” Inflatable Pteradactyls.”

Thirty sites popped up.  More sites, mind you, than googling ” cats in lobster costumes.”

I  established a decorating fund for it.

Not for me, of course. For Madame Eiffel Tower. But I thought it looked rather impressive with its five foot wingspan taped underneath her projector shade.

The scream when the shade was snapped up was impressive too.

student A:   I bring spice to this class.

student B:  I bring geometry.

When my daughter was 13, I bought her a set of throwing knives for Christmas.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

My daughter mentioned this at work department meeting.  (this might not have been the best moment to share this)  So naturally they all thought she was lying.

Daughter:  It comes off a  little quirkier than it sounds in my head when I say stuff loud like, “Well, my mom wanted me to be proficient in hand to hand combat so she got me throwing knives when I was thirteen.  And then the whole family  (cousins too) went into the kitchen and practiced throwing them at the wall.”

Me:  Yep, sounds a little quirky.

Daughter: well, how would you have explained it? My mom wanted me to be able to defend myself in a Latin American armed forces coup?  (thinking to myself, “I don’t know that I would have casually dropped this at a department meeting.”)

Me:  Vampires. And the zombie apocalypse.

Daughter:  Fair enough. I will correct that at the next team meeting.

Me:  Otherwise they might think I’m nuts.

Daughter:  Um. If you bought your thirteen year old daughter throwing knives to prepare for the zombie  apocalypse, that’s less nuts than self defense?

Me:  Right. Better stick with the Latin American coup story.

On my birthday someone sent balloons and everyone who came in the room said happy birthday.

the next day the balloon was still there.  A girl came in and looked at it and said, ” Oh, is today your birthday too?”

The French teacher stomped in  my room today and asked whether I put the squishy eyeball on her mouse pad.

? ( What, at this point she has to ask? Talk about your slow learners.)

Me: Of course I did. Did you put these cows in here?

An alarming number of cows have appeared in my classroom lately.  This is not, as my daughter unkindly suggested, a pejorative remark regarding my students.

Plastic cows. Wooden cows. Cow pinwheels. Today alone I found three.

One still has a price tag attached.

There are at least a dozen cows in my room with no established provenance.

I confronted the French teacher. Twice. The German teacher. Twice. My friend the monkey ( I’ll explain elsewhere) twice. Two of my students.They all deny culpability. Most laugh, but that’s just scheudenfreude. ( a sadistic pleasure in the sufferings of others)

However, a few things baffle me.

WHERE DO YOU FIND ALL THESE COWS?  It isn’t like there’s a local cow store you drop by and stock up.

WHO WOULD SPEND ALL THIS MONEY ? Of course, I’ve spent at least 100 dollars annoying the French teacher, but that’s me. Most other people are more fiscally responsible.

WHAT IS THE MOTIVE?  The French teacher has motive but not the drive.  Students? Do they all have cars and money to drive around buying  cows on stands, carved cows, plastic nesting cows, china cows, cow  magnets, cow pinwheels?

REWARD OFFERED FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN COMMITTING COW ABANDONMENT.

As I finished up a classroom discussion, a voice called out,

” And now send in the dancing lobsters!”

text to my daughter:  I’m getting a tattoo that says I’m not feeling the love.  I understand. you’re busy picking out the retirement homes several states away from us that you plan to put us in the first time we forget your name. It’ll be “sorry mom, but you obviously can’t take care of yourself and you’ve got to go.

Child:  I’m reluctant to respond because these are getting progressively more entertaining.

Me:  when people ask about you I say ” daughter? daughter who? I have no daughter”

oh wait…once…now I remember

Child: is your memory that bad already? glad I have the retirement home picked out.

Me:  just send cash for the week in Fiji and all is forgiven. oh, and get us the comfy seats in the front of the plane.
BTW, got some yarn to crochet while I wait for the call you were going to return in five minutes yesterday.  Might as well make a shawl to keep me warm when my daughter leaves me out in the cold.  While you party in the sordid underbelly of Washington night life.

I just remembered.  I don’t know how to crochet.

Child: you’re having way too much fun with this.

Me: I’ll just wrap myself up in the yarn and pretend I’m the cat.

Couple of years ago, I had some hand surgery, and the surgeon made these funny little zig zag cuts. Three of them. A student asked what they were, and out of NOWHERE my brain  replied that the cuts were from an initiation into a native American tribe, representing the mountains, the river, and the snake.

Where did this come from? Who knows? It just came out of my mouth. But it came from a teacher. And no one has these weird zig zag cuts. So they believed me.

Then I needed surgery on the other hand, but it was a different surgeon. I told him I wanted identical scars. He was like, ” I can make straight invisible scars.”

I’m like: ” I want matching zig zag scars. Really.”     We can only imagine what he thought.

So then I had two sets of matching zig zag scars. I could tell anyone anything.  The power went to my head.

There are innumerable people out there who believe I underwent ritual cicatrization ( cutting) to become a member of an unnamed tribe. For no other reason that they couldn’t come up with another explanation.

The problem arose when I had a student who desperately, desperately, wanted to join the tribe. I had to tell him he was  unworthy.