take me to the place i love

The kids were little horrors today. I feel like I'm blogging about my first year of motherhood, and I've reached month five where the novelty has worn off, the baby isn't all that cute yet, and all he/she does is annoy me. Yeah, great maternal instincts going on here.

I drew the short straw and ended up alone with

15 students (6-14 year olds).

There were three main incidents that stuck out.

(I actually had another picture for the top

that showed up on a "demon children" Google search but it creeped me out too much.)

Incident 1) The crying game.
It was break time, and I was finally allowed to ignore the manic laughter, yelling and verbal sparring. I looked down, attempting to correct some of the homework thrown my way, when I heard a voice; "Jake's crying." I looked up, and sure enough, the rotund little 9-year-old was sobbing – his eyes were squinched up and massive tears were rolling down his cheeks. According to Jake, another boy named Josh had grabbed his head and shoved it into the back of a chair. Josh denied this, saying that he had been very light and friendly in his actions. There were no witnesses (surprise) and Jake's older brother, Brian, was laughing, while another student called him a baby.

Anyways, I couldn't figure out what exactly had happened, but Josh (the supposed head slammer) has never had any disciplinary problems before, and Jake can be melodramatic, so I made Josh apologize and left it at that.

Incident 2) The broken arm.
No, nobody broke their arm. Buuuut, I had a wonderful conversation with Brian (Jake's older brother), and imparted terrific medical/life advice. The conversation went something like this.

Brian: (looks over at me and groans) My arm hurts.
Me: (looking up briefly) I'm sorry.
Brian: How can you tell if your arm is broken?
Me: Your arm isn't broken.
Brian: How do you know? How can you tell?
Me: You would know.
Brian: I think my arm is broken.
Me: No, it's not.
Brian: Yes it is. Ow.
Me: How much does it hurt?
Brian: (with a fairly stolid face for someone with a broken arm) A lot. When I raise it like this it starts hurting when I go too high. (he points at his shoulder)
Me: Okay, well it's not broken.
Brian: Do you have to go to the hospital if your arm is broken?
Me: Your arm isn't broken.
Brian: But do you have to?
Me: Yes. If your arm was broken, you'd have to go to the hospital. But your arm isn't broken.
Brian: Can you break your arm from doing push ups?
Me: What? No.
Brian: That's how I hurt it, I was doing push ups at school.
Me: I'm pretty sure you can't break your arm doing push ups. (Several freak push up accidents pop into my mind)
Brian: But it hurts! (rubs shoulder again)
Me: (doing appropriate miming) Were you doing push ups or pull ups?
Brian: Push ups.
Me: Your arm isn't broken.

I'm sorry. That was long, and there was no need to stick it all up (and hopefully you weren't waiting for a satisfying conclusion), but I needed to give a sense of how asinine and fatuous the conversation was. (Yes, I just discovered fatuous. Ideal, eh?)

Incident 3) The banshees.
Evan and Dylan are two 6-year-old identical twins who are equally adorable and evil. They make me glad that I don't actually know a Calvin in real life. Jason, another 6-year-old, is their crazy sidekick with anger management issues (balls his fists, growls, kicks things, and yells when he's upset.)

Anyways one of them, possibly Evan, looked at me and asked me if it was possible to scream so high that nobody could hear you except dogs.

"That's what I heard," he continued, shifting in his seat.

"Oh. I'm not sure. Maybe," I stuttered out.

I usually make answers up, but that's because I know the answer and want to mess with them. I knew there were sounds that were higher than human range, but I wasn't sure how likely it was that a human could produce a noise that high pitched. (Which apparently, they can't, according to someone on Yahoo.)

Just in case you didn't guess where this was all heading...this is what happened: Jason got really excited and silently opened his mouth really wide, with a look of excited horror, pretending he was screaming. I laughed and told him to stop because he'd start attracting dogs. (Yes, this might look like I was encouraging him, but I always encourage silent activities.)

All the other kids at our table who, of course, were listening to our conversation, got excited at Jason's silent scream and decided to join in. That's when it got less silent. The silent screams quickly turned into mostly silent screams (with bits of high pitched squeaking slipping out) and then into plain old shrieking. My shouts for silence didn't help the cacophony, and the other table with older kids stared in annoyance.

I came home and debriefed over dinner with my housemate Becky who also works with kids. We did our usual story exchange and she made me feel a bit better (at least my kids aren't all learning to hear. literally)

Aside from these incidents, the kids spent their time chasing, hitting and shouting at each other. Which means I spend my time chasing and shouting at them. My only solace is that I'm allowed to frequently yell "No touching!" at them, pretending that I'm in Arrested Development. The joy is always short lived.

And now a shout out to my fabulous and dedicated international reader Natalie. Natalie follows my blog in Thaliand, she always gives me positive affirmation, and has been a wonderful wingman, EV lunch buddy, TCK sympathizer, social conscience enforcer, and shorts pusher (that came out weirdly.) While I'm listing traits, she has lovely dark hair, big green eyes, and enjoys walks on the beach. But not with you or you or you.