A student pulled open the door of my classroom closet.

“This is the only closet in this building I could open and find a squashed pink flamingo”

This is true.  Right next to the hula skirt.  Some things are necessary for my mental health.

I’ve been told that I’m easy to buy gifts for.  This was my Mothers Day gift from my daughter.  Handerpants.

Jockey shorts for your hands.

When my daughter was born, we lived in a boathouse.  Not a houseboat.

(I had a long argument with my first grade teacher about this)  Shacks that people stored boats in around the prohibition period. They were built out on a wooden pier over the bay. When they took the boats  out for the summer, they moved in a bed, a lot of beer, and a toilet on top of a hole in the floor. (They’ve been somewhat upgraded since then. But not a lot.) Did I mention the beer?

Ok, it looked a lot better 20 years ago. This is the day after Hurricane Sandy. Well, it looked a little better.

Whaddya want? They’re BOATHOUSES for crying out loud. They’re quaint. Rustic. And this is also the day after the hurricane.

Then we moved into a warehouse. Just down the street. It used to be the Evening Star Yacht Club. It was still just a big warehouse with a bunch of sailboats in it. So we built an apartment in it and lived there.

The warehouse was on a marina. When my daughter was about ten she put a sign in the marina store that said

“Hypnotist: 2 hypnotisms for 75 cents.”  And she got customers.  She hypnotized boat captains.

My father lived next door in what we called the Little House, which was not small, but was to distinguish it from the Big House, which was not big, right down the street. He had a pet seagull named Jonathan (for Jonathan Livingston Seagull) which being hand fed by my dad grew to be as big as a turkey.

He went out in the morning with food and cawed to call him. So imagine the seagull on the far right, only an old guy with a resemblance to Abraham Lincoln.

He would sit on my dad’s car and crap on it mightily. My dad moved his car two buildings away. The seagull was found on it every morning.

My daughter randomly mentions these things to people. They don’t believe her. I can see why.

“Its like, you know, when you’re transporting to an alien world.”

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.

Events in the Pentathalon:

• The Couch High/Long jump
• The Vase Filled With Flowers and Water Tackle
• The Long Skid through the pile of mail
• The High Dive into the water dish
• The Drapery Climb

Should a contestant seamlessly segue from the couch long jump into the vase tackle he/she receives double points. The same for a segue into the long skid, which must end with both contestant and mail falling off the end of the table.

TRACK AND FIELD

• The Litter Putt: This event measures how far a contestant can fling litter from the center of the litter box. There are both two and four paw categories.
• Relay: contestants make two complete circuits of the house with one trying to bite the other’s tail. This event frequently ends badly, like Canadians and ice hockey, with contestants  deciding to loudly bite the crap out of each other.

In the 70’s book, A Child’s Garden of Grass, or Everything You Wanted to Know About Marijuana But Were Afraid to Ask, the main character, Ernie Lundquist, the alleged source of all the information, has a revelation while high. It was so important that he attempted to call the White House to tell President Nixon. He was unable to get through, but wrote down this revelation. The next day this is what he read:

” You may not like pickles, but after all, it is the only thing you can do with cucumbers.”

I have moments like these. Like yesterday.

” The answer is C and did you know that egg rolls are really just Chinese burritos?”

One day I saw this in a magazine. My reaction:  I GOTTA GET ME ONE OF THESE!  I could take it to school and put it in the student bathrooms.

No, I am not an 8 year old boy.

Then I realized that school bathrooms don’t have lids, and you have to attach it to a toilet seat lid. I was crestfallen. But I could give it as a gift! What a great gift! I knew just the person.

No, it was not an 8 year old boy.

I gave a woman over the age of 12 a toilet monster and she wasn’t remotely shocked, puzzled, or offended. She understood the joy it could bring. That was when I knew she was my friend.

I desperately wanted her to put it in the bathroom her three daughters used. She kept saying she was waiting for the “right moment.”   What right moment? You ply someone with water or beer and let nature take its course.

Isn’t it wonderful? And they come in assorted colors.

One night during a party, a friend of her son came in to use the facilities. They heard a shriek and then saw someone run outside and pee in the rhododendrons.

Her daughters had no reaction to the toilet monster at all.

I asked one, ” How can you not have a reaction to a toilet monster?”

She sighed.  ” You just don’t understand what our home life is like.”

It has come to my attention that Gallic Girl, Madame Talk Through Your Nasal Cavity, thinks that this blog is all about her. Well, I have 75 posts, and at least  25 of them are NOT about her. Maybe more. So coming soon, is a post NOT ABOUT THE FRENCH TEACHER.  I suppose she’ll stop reading the blog now. Insufferable ego.

The french teacher ( notice the lower case “f” which  is my subtle put down, although not so subtle if I have to point it out. I need a more sensitive audience) sent out a group email and EXCLUDED ME. Ok, so there are 13, 14 people in our department. She couldn’t add on more than nine. Do I believe this? No, of course not. This is an opportunity for me to feel aggrieved, forgotten, unloved. Whatever.

ME: You forgot me. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Latin teacher.

Her:  Oh shush. It wouldn’t let me tag anyone else.

Me: Oh shush. merda tauri.  That be Latin speak. Let me see…you got 9 out of …14 of us? That makes me chopped liver. And you a vegetarian. I am so putting bacon bits in your coffee.

Her: IT WOULDN’T LET ME TAG ANY MORE PEOPLE!

( notice all caps? she’s starting to snap)

ME:I am creating a crowd funding event to raise money to put a giant winged Santa on her roof, with interchangeable parts so it can be a giant elderly cupid for Valentines day. At least$ 150 for the inflatable, $200 or so for the workmen, and a$ 100 or so to keep the Frenchie and spouse preoccupied at the local watering hole while this is anchored permanently onto their roof. WHO IS IN?

After all, I like a laugh or so too.I’m just too insignificant to be included…… send those donations in folks! Wow. got $150 already. I might be able to add a blinking giraffe

I am so investing in the remote controlled inflatable shark.The one that bites.