Wheatzie

A couple of months ago, I had a brilliant idea.  I was sick. This is hard for me to admit, because I walk around all the time boasting about my robust immune system, which I tell everyone I get because I defy things like hand sanitizer, washing hands, and general good hygienic practices.   This isn’t true, of course; I’m very clean.   But it’s become a big joke among my students and me.   They’ll ask if they can go to the restroom to wash their hands before lunch and I’ll respond with an eye roll and say something like, “Whatever, Princess.   Go ahead,” which always gets a pretty good giggle. So when I got sick, we were all shocked. I missed a day of work…and then another.   I probably could have skipped a third day, but I hate missing school and I’m stubborn and I didn’t have a fever (had never actually had one, in fact; just felt crappy) and I wanted to get back at it.   I love my job.   That being said, I’m not a jerk who’s going to sp...

A few weeks ago, our Student Council announced a door decorating contest.  STUCO members were going to give out fall themes for each homeroom, and homerooms were to decorate accordingly.  The winning classroom (to be announced) would get a pizza party.* “Oh, look!” my seventh grade girls said when they e-mailed us the themes.  “We got PSL!” They seemed excited and I didn’t understand.  “Play Station Live?” I asked, confused.  Typically 7 th grade girls don’t go all bubbly over Play Station Live.  In fact, does anyone get worked up about Play Station Live anymore? “Oh my gosh,” I heard one of them mutter under her breath. “ Clue less,” another agreed. “Like an old lady Karen ,” a third supplied. “Alright, alright, THAT’S ENOUGH.  Someone just please explain to me why our fall door decorating theme is Play Station Live. What does that have to do with fall?” Amid some eyerolls and lots of chuckles, they informed me that PSL in 2022 actual...

I had my current 7 th grade class as 4 th and 5 th graders, but when I accepted a new position as “head of the middle school language arts department” at our school, I got them again. (Titles are so pretentious, aren’t they?  That’s why I only make the kids use it when they’re making direct eye contact with me, which I rarely allow anyway.) “Ugh,” I told them on the first day of school this year.   “You guys were my least favorite class. I was so glad to let you fly a couple of years ago.   And now I have to have you again.” They stared at me, unsure of how to react.   Was I kidding?   Should they laugh? “Are you joking?” one of them asked me. “No,” I replied. They laughed anyway, pleased that they’d had that effect on me in 4 th and 5 th grade.   Seventh graders are jerks like that. Anyway, it is what it is, and I’ll now have them for two more years since “head of the middle school language arts department” in our school means “the only ...

Growing up, I was not necessarily an “outdoorsy” type. Sure, my siblings and I swam at the public pool for a good 8 hours a day each summer while my mom nursed her hangover.   Lest I sound bitter, I’m not:   We had so much fun at that pool, and I became a great swimmer.   Sometimes I visit my sisters, who still live in our hometown, and we take all of our kids back to that same pool to swim.   The kids marvel at the fact that it used to be a simple concrete rectangle as opposed to what it is now: a waterpark complete with four water slides, a climbing wall, and a ninja warrior course. “You had… fun …in just a big square full of water?” my boys will ask me. “Yep,” I’ll respond, nodding my head definitively.   “It only cost a dollar to get in, and guess how much money Grandma would send us with for snacks? Fifty cents.   FOR THE WHOLE DAY.” They’ll gasp and ask what fifty cents could possibly have bought back then, and it’s usually at this point in ...

I once had a friend from Ireland who cocked his head and shot me a not unkind side-eyed glance.   “I sure wish I had a pair of those rose-colored glasses you walk around wearing all the time,” he said. “What rose-colored glasses?” I asked, feeling the top of my head to see if I had forgotten that I had pushed some sunglasses up there.  I also had a different friend who, when I said something stupid, would shake his head and give me a gentle smile and a light pat on the head and go, “Oh, Lisa…,” and I think that would have been a really appropriate gesture in the above moment.  Side note: The head-patting friend was a really great-looking guy, a tall, dark, and handsome strapping specimen who literally—I watched it happen on at least a few different occasions—turned heads whenever he walked into any room. He was meeting me and another friend of mine at a baseball game one summer, and my friend had never met him and had no idea what he looked like.  “Just watc...

I’ve said this before , and I’ll say it again:  I hate field trips. But I love my students, and they love field trips, so I make sure to take them on three or four a year. The rule is, though, that I get to choose where we go. And if I want to visit a greasy bowling alley that reeks of stale beer and broken dreams?   Then guess what, kids?   We’re going bowling! A few of them were upset when I stopped doing the traditional, annual boring field trip to our state’s capitol building and decided instead to take them to the local roller rink for the morning so I could sit at a table and drink coffee while they skated the limbo and played red light green light. They felt comfortable voicing their dismay because for some reason awhile back we stopped teaching that children should be seen and not heard. “Wheatzie!” they grumbled. “We really wanted to go to the capitol!” “Awwww, I’m sorry,” I replied.   “But you know what’ll make you feel better?   Stuffing t...

If you were to ask me what my passions are— Who am I kidding, nobody has to actually ask me what my passions are.   I love talking about myself. Let me start again.   If you were stuck on a deserted island with me and there was no rescue mission in sight, no helpless volleyball to converse with as an alternative, and death hasn’t just yet become the better option so you had no choice but to listen to my incessant babble about myself, I would tell you that my passions are reading, writing, working out, traveling, and coffee.   Not necessarily in that order. I like a good, dark beer on occasion, too. Especially after a successful day of travel that includes something physical like a hike or a horseback ride. The trip to the Grand Canyon that I took a few weeks ago with my husband, boys, and favorite nephew was the best kind of trip because it combined all of those things.   There was also an argument with my 13-year-old son that began during the very first ...