Fubrise !

Ah yes, Halloween is almost upon us, as evidenced by the godawful art projects appearing around the school. Our class contributed to the collective ugliness by hanging tiny mummies in the window, made from white tissue paper wrapped around clothespins. Seemed like a cute idea, but we soon tired of hearing that they looked like tampons. I personally thought they looked more like really fat doobies. We have no idea why, but whenever someone opened the door to comment on our dangling lady supplies, Fang would jump out from behind the bookcase and yell "Fubrise !"

Another autumn favorite is the infamous self-portrait, accomplished by tracing around a child's body as they roll, squirm and otherwise resist all attempts to capture their souls and likenesses, and then are embellished with webbed fingers and the child's very broad and abstract interpretation of facial features. As is always the case when you allow pre-caffeinated staff and small children to work together on projects, the resulting portraits from our classroom bore little resemblence to the actual children they were modeled upon. Single A's was almost as tall as I am, despite him being a normal-sized first grader (with a luxurious mustache, but otherwise typical for his age). After watching me dance around the classroom with his deformed body double, Single A quietly announced "It's on", then proceeded to tear his own arm off.

Oddly enough, I have been afflicted yet again with a smartass PE teacher named Mark, which made me fiercely miss my favorite Texan windbag. This particular Mark is a favorite with staff and students alike. He and I spent one morning debating over whether Packers fans should trade in their Cheesehead hats for fudge ones, as suggested by Adam Carolla, or whether they should just become Chargers fans and call it a day. I have no idea why those two options were linked together in his mind, but his sincerity was without question.

The Penguin had another attack of the bratties today, causing all staff in the vicinity to pause and wonder if perhaps they'd made a serious vocational error. The other students, knowing that Misha was about to appear and put an end to the frivolity, wisely refrained from chiming in their own opinions on the stupidity of the teachers, the poor quality of the school food, and the useless, mindless paperwork. Although I am in agreement with Penguin on every one of those topics, I also kept my mouth shut, but did consider setting him up on a blog of his very own.

During lunch today, Single A offered me a grape the size of his big toe. After I thanked him, he gave me an inscrutable look and then said, "It's a big one, like your mouth."

I had a surreal moment during dinner with Sweet Dick Willie and Clark Kent after the Highland Games. We were busy debating the acting chops of Harvey Keitel vs. Brad Pitt when I suddenly spotted a spider on one of the helmets of a football player displayed above me on the flatscreen TV. The fellows didn't believe me at first, but eventually couldn't deny it anymore- grown, steroidal men were indeed walking around in public with little red spiders on their heads. Not creepy, fanged spiders that denoted ferocity, just dumb looking spiders that could have been drawn by one of my students. How many mascots does a college team have to go through before they decide a Crayola spider is the best they could come up with ?

Outta time, catch ya later....