snapshots from the field

While I'm at it. Here are some notable interchanges I've had over the past week.

Last night around 11pm on the phone with my brother:

"I've been thinking about our lifespan. All our grandparents lived past 80. That put's me at a lifespan of over 90. It's a lot and a little bit..." I keep on pontificating.
My brother gently interrupts me, "Well, that's nice, but how about you think about your alarm clock going off at 5:30 tomorrow morning. That might be a little more helpful."
"You've got a point," I respond, and we wrap up the conversation.

After teaching a map exercise on South Africa and North Carolina while modelling Apartheid-like discrimination with the allocation of resources (rulers and calculators), I chatted with one of my habitual problem kids:

"Hey, J, why didn't you do any work today?" I ask as he's washing his hands for God knows what reason.
"You weren't fair," he said with as much earnestness as he is capable of mustering.
"When?" I ask.
"You didn't give me a ruler," he said.
"I know, it was part of the lesson," I said,
"It still wasn't fair."

Last week on a phone call with a parent:

"You know what I think the worst thing that happened to the US?" he asks.
"What?" I play along.
"Political Correctness," he said.

(This one's had me thinking all week. It makes me think of Thucydides and Jim Crow and the 19th Amendment and modern liberalism. It also makes me want to write a novel. Sometimes, I feel this year I'm collecting characters to populate novels for the rest of my life. At least, that's what I tell myself to inject some humor into a day like today. Yes, apparently, I had a hole in my dress around my ass today. I cannot think of a better audience than 7th graders for that kind of embarrassment.)

Tonight on the phone with Mand:

"They were so ridiculously pretentious, which is so annoying," I say.
She laughs at me.
"It's not like they're my kind of pretentious," I continue. "My kind of pretentious is endearing and entertaining."