DAR #21: Happy April Fools' Day! I was in a high school social studies class today when a counselor got on the intercom to explain the testing schedule for state testing: if you're testing, be here at 7:30 a.m. If you're not testing, school will start for you at 11 a.m. An incredulous student, proud of his cleverness, said, "It's April Fools' Day. The late start isn't for real. The testing is."
Mostly, April Fools jokes aren't that funny. At one high school where I taught, years ago, students released crickets into the building as a joke. Those crickets' descendents chirp in the roof all year long. At the school where I worked in Dallas, students turned the high school into a petting zoo with goats and sheep and chickens (do you pet chickens?) and such. It might have been funny the first year, but I found repeats unimaginative and a mess. The year the school burned down, seniors who had complained about inadequate student parking parked their cars on the new foundation. That made a point and was somewhat amusing. They still didn't get any more parking.
The most amusing and work intensive high school prank that I've heard of was at a school that had a pond. Students had disassembled a friend's plane (with his permission--must have been a private school), and reassembled it in the lake to look like someone had crashed there. They fooled not only the school administration but also the local news media.
My best was not so good, but it was my best. My father had sent me money to invest in a Roth. I sent him a thank you note, saying that I had decided to use the money to pay off our new deck instead. He didn't scroll down far enough to see the "p.s. just kidding."
My friend Allison told us about her husband changing her cell phone ring to something obnoxious (maybe it was "Liet's just get drunk and screw" ) without telling her. He called when she was in an attorneys' meeting. She rolled her eyes when she heard someone's obnoxious ring and finally bashfully opened her purse to turn off the offensive noise when she realized that obnoxious sound was coming from her purse.
Oh, wait, there's something on your shirt...Mary
A Photograph of me without me in it
A photograph of me without me in it
Mary -
ReplyDeletei marvel at your ability to come up with so many new and interesting things to say... can't help but think that sally smisson would be very pleased! So just now, I was tossing and turning, and i began to worry about ann's safety. and then my mind started to wander and i forgot about ann and i began to worry about you; you have covered so many topics that you must be running out of things to blog about. so i thought i would throw out some ideas. (meanwhile, i see that today's topic was april fool's day. i love the cell phone ring thing, next year i am going to do that to my kids). i suppose the next logical topic would be easter (easter bunny, easter baskets, peeps, jesus, resurrection, easter music, easter sermons, the pope, easter meals, easter egg hunts.) so anyway, i was thinking about that poem "desiderata" and how you wrote it out in calligraphy and hung it on your closet door. what did that poem mean to you and what (if anything) does it mean to you now? or did you just like the way it looked. and what is your stance on noncat pets? how about your favorite teachers? i thought you might have some interesting thoughts, given your own teaching experiences and all. memorable students??
ok, i think i am now sufficiently sedated so that i can try going to sleep again. please don't hurt ann!!
"My father had sent me money to invest in a Roth. I sent him a thank you note, saying that I had decided to use the money to pay off our new deck instead. He didn't scroll down far enough to see the "p.s. just kidding."
ReplyDeleteNo wonder your father keeps bugging you about your Roth information.