1. Today, one of my fifth graders informed me of the following: "Ms. B, instead of sayin' the 'n' word, we say 'ninja!', and if someone be actin' a snitch, we tells 'em, 'Man, you be actin' so white!'" ::sigh:: Just wanted to keep everyone up to date with the lingo.
2. I found a tiny, baby snapper turtle on the floor in my classroom; I left for about 5 minutes to run an errand, and upon my return, I saw it crawling across the art studio floor. Random. I'm just glad I didn't step on it! One of the ESE teachers decided to keep him as a class pet. They named it Franklin.
3. About 21 students signed up for the after-school art program :)
Side-note to No. 2: When my oldest sister was young, she had a pet turtle. My mom read that turtles need a certain amount of sunlight for their health. So, she plopped Merrill's turtle atop the fence, belly-up. Now, I'm not really sure if mom forgot or read incorrectly about how much sunlight was needed, but basically, Merrill's turtle bit the dust atop that fence post. Too MUCH sun, as it turns out, will cook a turtle. This has been a family joke for as long as I can remember.
Several years later, Merrill's co-workers (knowing this whole story) bought her a pair of baby turtles as a gift. She kept them together in a tank at my parents' house. The tank had some fake palm trees, a few rocks, filter, dirty water, you get the idea. I will never forget Merrill calling me one morning during my freshman year in college, half laughing, half crying. She managed to whimper out that one of her baby turtles had died. Unsure how to react, I suppressed my giggles so as not to seem insensitive until she let out a laugh. Then, I couldn't help myself. "But it's NOT FUNNY!", she squeaked. Merrill went on to explain that it seemed as if this turtle had gotten caught beneath the tower of rocks and stones causing him to be water logged...and as she described, the body was bloated with water from being stuck.
Now, I know it seems cruel to make a joke of this, but honestly, how many people can say they lost two pet turtles in their lifetime: one to overheating and one to drowning? Fire and water? Honestly. Anyhow, a year or so later, she let the remaining turtle go into the wild. I hope it survived, but I'm not sure how turtles make the transition from having tasty shrimp flakes magically appear to finding their own food :)
Cheers.
2 comments:
I want to laugh... I do, but I know I shouldn't. But I probably will anyway.
I just laughed out loud a little too much in reading your post. "It's NOT funny!" I just told the turtle story to one of my co-workers this past week! We started talking about pets and that ended in mom frying a turtle and me running to the ocean with mine. I always told Merrill that I thought the turtle that had survived had murdered the other one and sucked out its essence (of Podling). She told me that the survivor looked twice as big the day she found the dead one. I said "Watch out for that turtle, it's a MANIAC!"
p.s. - thanks for keeping us up on the lingo. :p
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