Cranky

In no order, here is a list of things shitting me this week.

• I don't like or trust my boss. When I first met him I thought a used car salesman had stumbled into our school.
• The moron from the rich school trying to tell me about how shockingly dumb her Ben or Bruce or Bill or whatever the hell his name was, to make herself look like she was a saint for dealing with it. When I said I have 24 of your Ben/Bruce/Bills and they don't speak English she told me it wasn't a competition. Really? No shit. Well fuck off and stop trying to get sympathy out of me you arse clown.
• People asking me when we are going to have kids. We've been married for, umm.... like 12 weeks now.
• Liars. But they shit me full stop all the time.

Ok, that was a surprisingly small list considering the rage blackouts I have been having of late.

Things not shitting me this week.

• I didn't get knocked off by an axe murderer in my sleep. Always a plus.

The Easter Who?

I'm not very good at telling stories in 500 words or less so I apologise in advance.

Today was the first day back after the Easter long weekend. I said to my lemmings, "Let's do some recount writing!", in my best I'm-excited! voice. So the drill goes, I do it, they do it. It's called modelled writing people. Anyway I did it and then they went to do it. I get them to draw the pictures first cause they're dumb and forget what they're writing about. In fairness it's really bloody hard work for them and they concentrate so freakin hard on what letter "on" could possibly start with that they forget the rest of the sentence they were writing. The picture helps their long suffering teacher. I like to jab it a lot and screech "Yes but what were you telling me!!!!!". It's a long, slow, drawn out, painful process.

So all my lemmings are sitting there drawing away except Bob (name is changed to protect his identity. One day he might actually become literate and be able to read this). I ask Bob what the dealio is.

"Sweetie, where's your picture?"
"...."
"Honey, do you remember what you are meant to be doing?"
"...."
"Mate, what did you do for Easter?"
This at least brings an expression change. From vague to blank.
"Bob, honey, do you know what Easter is?"
After much careful deliberation Bob slightly adjusts the tilt of his head to indicate that no, he has no damn idea what the hell Easter is. Apparently the eggs, the chickens, the bunnies, the chocolate and the fully grown man in a white polyester suit sweating like a mo fo are all there purely for decoration. Oh and Jesus. Jesus has something to do with something. I think he went behind a rock and laid a chocolate rabbit that regurgitated a fluffy chicken. Or something like that.

But I digress.

"Ok, is there anyone who can tell Bob what Easter is?"
Lemming 1 "It's Jesus day!"
Lemming 2 "Egg! Egg! Egg! Egg! Egg!", at which point I thumped her on the head to stop the CD skipping.
Lemming 3 "Dat bunny rabbit bring you chocolate egg!"

Lemming 3 had me. I thought that was the funniest thing ever. Don't know why, can't explain, but I thought it was piss funny that he called the Easter Bunny "Dat bunny rabbit!"

Anyway, I gave up trying to get anything out of Bob.

Later in the day our neighbourhood hippie Miss Hippie (clever name change I know) popped in for a visit. Well she floated/drifted in but you get what I am saying. She has an actual job at the school but I'm not sure what it is, but she loves the kids, the kids love her and she is as mellow as all fuck which is nice. Now Miss Hippie has a wicked sense of humour, i.e., the same as mine. So I was regaling her with the story of Bob and Lemming 3's explanation, when who should appear in front of us, but Lemming 3 himself. Seeing as I am all for using the small children in my class to keep myself amused, I started prompting Lemming 3 to say "Dat bunny rabbit!" again.

Me: "Lemming 3, tell Miss Hippie who came to see you on the weekend."
Him: " *crickets chirping* "
Me: "What happened this weekend?"
Him: "Easter"
Me: "Yep and who gave you the chocolate eggs?"
Him: "....", his expression clearly reading, this teacher is a tool.
Me: "Who sneaks in and gives them to you?"
And very slowly, so his dim witted teacher can keep up he says "... Daaad..."

Moral of the story? There is no Easter Bunny. And for this poor lemming who didn't even know his name, I don't think there has ever been an Easter Bunny, there has only ever been Dad.

At least Dad is not a total bastard. At least he bothers to give him the eggs.

I have come back to say that shit fire hell that was one looooong post. About shit fire hell. It amused me at the time though. I laughed belly laughs with tears.

Easter. Shit.

So it's Easter. With so much political correctness, religious views, teacher bashing and Easter Bunnies v Easter Bilbies, I decided that for the first time ever, I just wasn't going there with my kids. Usually I do the whole deal, egg hunt in the class room (cause let's face it, it's all about the chocolate), the Easter basket etc etc. Out of respect to the one child in my room that is Muslim, and the fear that "this chocolate has been sitting in a box in a warehouse that 25 years ago was a soil processing plant that may have contained peanuts" might kill one of my kids, I made an educated decision to not even acknowledge the reason my lemmings and I were not going to see each other for the next 4 days.

Everything was going great guns, none of my kids bought me an Easter present - which, rumour has it, is what teachers at all other schools in the universe get from every child every year; personally I think it's an urban legend - and as such I was confident that my plan was going to come off without a hitch.

We were halfway through a maths lesson on length, when my arch nemesis - a six year old girl, cute as hell even though she looks like a boy cause her mum shaved her head, and an eye roller from the womb - asked "When we make da Easter basket Miss?". To which they all cheered at such an intelligent and amazing stroke of genius, followed by a brief yet powerful wave of shame that they hadn't thought of it earlier themselves.

I was like a deer caught in headlights (cept we don't have deer, so a kangaroo perhaps?), had a momentary freak out, and then played it so cool and told them that *scoff* "Of course we're making Easter baskets! What kind of a teacher do you think I am?" I then spent the lunch break scurrying madly trying to find templates and glitter and glue and pom poms.

My poor little bastards. We had an assembly sprung on us at the last minute, our moron deputy principal took forever talking shit about shit and by the time we got back to our rooms we had about 40 minutes, to colour, cut, glue and decorate the baskets. When the bell rang at the end of the day and all my lemmings filed out with the rest of the school, their little baskets looked so sad, what with their handles missing, rabbit ears chopped off , sticky tape trailing after them and no eggs to put in them.

These kids have enough disappointment in their lives and I'm sad that I just gave them one more thing to be disappointed about. Except I think they were too grateful to have lopsided, half arsed, sticky tape overloaded, empty baskets to even be disappointed. Poor bastards.

The Drunk, The G-String and The Bus Stop

I swear to god this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

This morning I was driving to work. It was about 7am like it usually is, and as I drove past the bus stop on the busy main road to turn the corner into the school's main entrance, I just happened to look up and saw a sight I don't think I'll ever forget.

There was a drunk woman stumbling into the bus stop from the school grounds. I didn't really think anything of it cause that in itself is not actually a very uncommon occurrence. Then as I got closer I discovered that her pants were unfortunately tight as I could see every little lump and bump and that was without really paying much attention.


Then I got closer and realised that holy shit fire she didn't actually have any pants on. Except, turns out that she did... A black g string that had disappeared up her butt. How do I know it was up her butt I hear you ask? Well that was because at that exact moment she bent over and showed me it was up her butt.

Sadly for me it did not stop there. She then whipped her g-banger off, bent over and proceeded to pee, yes pee, ALL over the bus stop.

Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, why the hell did you keep watching Ms Anonymous?!! The answer is that it all happened in the space of about 3 seconds and it was like all these bizarre pieces of information that my brain was taking in and then put them all together in the last tragic moment.

Anyway it turns out I wasn't really that special anyway and that there were others who had seen her shenanigans. The school cleaner called the cops, who came and took her away, after seeing her with her gentleman caller and someone else saw her rolling her boob tube down so all of her girly bits were foot loose and fancy free.

By the end of it all I was left with a few questions.
1. Was she drunk or high?
2. I wonder whose mother she was?

Then I felt sad and hoped that the cops had her bundled up and taken away before any of the kids arrived to discover that the reason their mum wasn't there to get them to school that morning was because she was naked and trashed and roaming the streets.

The Letter S, L & Pea Soup

Just so you know (and by you I mean the ant that is crawling across my screen), maS still can't spell his name. He can, however, now tell me that his name starts with 'S' and that 'S' says 'ssssss'. Yay maS. Another small miracle is that yesterday after 25 minutes of me asking the questions along the lines of:
"What letter is this maS?"
"Do you know sweetie?"
"Do you need me to tell you?"
"It's the letter 'L'."
"What sound does 'L' make maS?"
"No honey that's what 'F' usually says"
"No that's what 'Y', 'B', 'D' 'G', 'P', 'Z', 'R' and 'C' says. It says 'lllll'."
At which point maS passed out with exhaustion on the floor and that was his day.

On another note, I have the sweetest, loveliest, just plain bestest class to teach that I have ever ever had. By this time of the year in any of the years passed I would have had at least half of the following things happen:

• a desk thrown at me (multiplied by about 174)
• chairs thrown at me (multiplied by about 8453)
• a chairs at a time thrown at me. Only happened once so far.
• a computer desk flipped. With computers still on it
• a book shelf pushed on the rest of the class
• slapped with a pencil case. One of those vinyl bastards and it stung like a mo fo
• stalked down a jetty/wharf/pier/whatever you want to call it by a nut job with a knife. The nut job was a 10 year old who's eyes rolled in his head.
• shoved, then pushed, then pulled to the ground, then nearly kicked. I'm little, I rolled.
• had a seven year old threaten to commit suicide by jumping off the second story stairs
• same seven year old tell me "I'm gunna kill you bitch!" with his eyes rolling in his head and a manic smile on his face. Incidentally he's not related to the previous eye roller.

Apart from the 10 year old knife wielding eye roller and the attempted kicker, they were all my little Year 2/Grade 2/Seven year old rays of sunshine who unleashed the hounds of hell. Which is so sad I think it induces more tears than watching The Notebook. Like I said though, this group of kids are nothing like that and I alternate between feeling smug and chuffed with myself, and terrified that their true natures are going to come out exorcist style. I'm taking a rain coat tomorrow to protect from the pea soup vomit just in case. Wish me luck.

Rain rain go away

God damn I wish the shit hole rain would go away. Yes yes blah blah drought blah blah other parts of the country drinking mud blah yaddah yaddah blah. Whatever. I am freaking Over. It. There is some sort of chemical element that turns kids into feral shit psycho pains in the arse retards. True god. Today I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of going out into the playground to supervise play time in the downpour. With the prep kids. Who are all about 4 years old and have had about 5 weeks of schooling. So they are really good at following instructions. And when you scream "Don't run on the concrete!" at the top of your lungs they just look at you quizzically while their feet keep moving on the spot not dissimilar to the road runner before they run off. I am sure I heard one of the little upstart punks yell "beep beep" as he ran off into the sunset.

The Year 1 kids, bless their hearts, have decided that every time the bell rings they are all going to scream at the top of their lungs. That god awful ear splitting squeal of a scream. That makes me wish I could learn how to head butt kids and make it look like I tripped. (A skill I believe they should teach at university. Don't give a shit what your teaching philosophy is. True god.)

Then after the joy of that migraine inducing spell outside I went back in with my poppets to get them ready for their PE/sport/whatever you want to call it lesson. Which was clearly going to be a roaring success considering the monsoon outside. So they're packing their crapola up ready to go and one of my girls, who surprisingly is one of my more capable students, runs out of the room with a look of pain on her face and leaving a trail, nay, a puddle in her wake. In all the excitement the poor chick somehow missed all the warning signs that her bladder needed to be relieved of its cargo. So relieved it was. All over the carpet. What ensued was some smooth manoeuvring on my behalf to cover her tracks. Literally. I did all but sing and dance to distract my lemmings, ah hem, children and divert their easily diverted attention away from said tracks. I delivered my lemmings to their PE teacher and took the dry-underpantsedly-challenged student down to the office to see what we could to dry her out. On the way though we met the most painfully stupid and biggest waste of space arse clown that exists. The Year 7 testosterone charged yet stunningly dumb male. Who was walking circles in the rain. Being a tool. And I had to open my mouth. Just couldn't help myself. Apparently though I pressed the wrong buttons and I pressed them a tad too hard. Because my afternoon ended with me dragging and all but carrying my dry-underpantsedly-challenged student while the moronic Year 7 tool who I found out the hard way was high as a kite on god knows what, chased us screaming "What the fuck are you looking at you stupid bitches! What the fuck are you looking at you stupid bitches! What the fuck are you looking at you stupid bitches!". Well you get the idea. We made it to the office in relative safety and welcomed by being asked if rain induced moronic behaviour was now spreading to teachers. At which point I discovered my button pushing had been witnessed by all of admin…

I hate the rain.