Since I have started this job, I have questioned a lot of things about kids. Like if their parents should have ever gotten together in the first place. Or how they can possible have that much to talk about at all time that and that they have to say it immediately or they might explode from some unspoken thought. (Really, I don’t remember having that many topics of conversation in first grade. It was basically just pro recess and anti homework.) The one thing that I will never question again is their resourcefulness.
Take this one kid in my class. One of the most common assignments in the class is to come up with sentences using their vocabulary words. Well, this one kid does not want to do it. He just doesn’t. It’s like I have asked him to cut off his own finger with the level of moaning and groaning I get when I tell him to do it.
Well, everyday is a struggle to get him to do his work. And today was a special kind of adventure that would send a nun to the bottle. So this portion of the class lasts an hour and a half. I was generous and gave them 40 minutes to write ten sentences. (They say generous, I say lazy and didn’t feel like doing anything else.) For 25 minutes this kid sat and stared at a blank sheet of paper. Finally I had enough and told him that if he didn’t do his work, he was losing recess for the rest of the week. This is usually a death sentence to a kid, but this one seems to be immune to this threat.
So I could almost see the gears turning in his head as he plots. He decided he was not going to do his work and there was nothing I could do that would make him. So what does he do? He bites the tip of his pencil off. Now really, I wouldn’t have let him get away with that since there are about 700 pencils scattered somewhere throughout the classroom as a result of kids just throwing them on the floor when they get a little dull. So I just gave him another pencil and told him to write or face the impending doom of the principal’s office.
Well that was before I saw that there was a whole other level to his plan that I didn’t imagine. He just opens his mouth to show me that the tip of the pencil is now lodged nice and tightly between his teeth. Oh, he knew what he was doing. Because I had to rush him to the nurse to try to get it out and of course she couldn’t because it’s a tiny little lead point stuck between his teeth. There is only so much a pair of tweezers could do.
So sure enough, we end up having to sit in the nurse’s office so long that school ended and he had to run off to catch his bus. And guess what didn’t get done. His work. He’s a little genius.
This is the kind of evil I deal with all day. The world is just not ready for this kind of evil genius. I hope you prepare yourself for the day when this little boy grows up and becomes our new dictator.
Don't believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities. The things that seem most absurd, put under 'Low Probability', and the things that seem most plausible, you put under 'High Probability'. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you stop thinking about it. The more things you believe, the less mental activity. If you believe something, and have an opinion on every subject, then your brain activity stops entirely, which is clinically considered a sign of death, nowadays in medical practice. So put things on a scale or probability, and never believe or disbelieve anything entirely.
Posted by: Herve Leger | July 21, 2011 at 01:43 AM