Right after I finish telling everyone, "put your name on your paper, that way I can get it back to you if you lose it," I will find three papers that fell on the floor - none with names on them.
The day you are counting on every minute of class time, there will be an unannounced fire drill.
The kid coded for having "anger management issues" and who might need to be restrained is always the strapping six-footer, never the kid who's sixty-five pounds soaking wet and barely tall enough to ride alone at the carnival.
There's always one kid who wants to call you out on the arcana of your subject area and argue with you at length about how wrong you are. This kid is never popular with peers.
The girl wearing the teeniest-tiniest pair of shorts ever manufactured on the planet will be wearing them with big, thick Ugg boots. Because consistency is the last thing on their minds.
The disorganized kid who needs help remembering to wear underwear on the inside is always the kid to whom the crazy stuff happens that results in much, much greater disorganization. The dog really DID eat the homework, for example.
The girl who acts all giddy and giggly and helpless always has a flock of boys swarming around her like white on rice.
They are never the boys you want dating your daughter. Or son, for that matter.
The boys you DO want dating your daughter (or son, for that matter) are the polite, clean, well-spoken, responsible, and kind ones.
They are never the ones the giggly/giddy girls are targeting.
I can't speak for the boys, but I bet the principle is the same.
Speaking of boys, the ones who use "homo," "queer" and "fag" as epithets most often are also the ones who are most touchy-nudgy with each other.
The day you are totally fired up about your lesson, a teachable moment will come up about something else and you will always forget to go back to your original idea. Until that night. In bed. When you will sit bolt upright and think, "Dang! I forgot to go back to ______!"
The week you have nothing much going on, you will have no correcting to do and no school deadlines to meet. The week that the furnace dies, the car needs to be inspected, the baby has croup and your husband can't take the day off is the same week that progress reports or grades close and you have three major assignments that have to be corrected before you can be caught up.
Speaking of which, I have that pile of correcting juuust waiting for me, even as I write this - which brings me to one last eternal verity:
You will never feel like doing the correcting you have to do, even when you sit down with the express intention of doing it.
Every one of these is bang on.
Posted by: john | October 17, 2009 at 12:44 PM