So I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but somewhere today in the middle of a lecture on the finer differences between transitive and intransitive verbs, I ended up teaching a classroom of seventh graders how to use…wait for it….Pager Code.

yeaaaaah I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear from some parents about that one.

The digression from lecture went something like:
Me: “Okay so transitive verbs and direct objects are always together! They’re like, BFF14324.”
Class: “…Miss Weight, you just snapped and spoke in numbers, what was that?!”
Me: “143?! you don’t know 143?! Hello, it means “i love you!””
Class: “you are out of your mind.”

So to prove how in my mind I really was, twenty minutes later, after confessing all my horrible fashion choices through junior high and describing how I somehow managed to live until the age of 17 without a cell phone, I had taught them the entire pager code alphabet, and all the cutesy sayings we used to use. This generation isn’t aware that there was any life on this planet before text messaging, so they found the whole thing fascinating. It was like we were cracking some Nazi war code or something.

It was all “How do you write “llamas?” Miss Weight?!” “How do you write “chocolate?!?”” “How do you spell my name!!” and every random thing they could think. I was so cool for a minute. Then they made me swear not to tell other classes about it, so we could have a secret language. Then they made me a giant “We love Miss Weight” poster, spelled out in pager code. Its hanging on my computer monitor.

I think I have created a monster. Twenty five foot tall 12 year old monsters, so be exact.

In other news, we had an ice-skating social on Friday! It was aaaadorable. I purposefully left my socks and money in the car, determined not to skate for fear of mortally embarrassing myself on the rink. But its amazing how powerful the whine of 100 pre-teens can be when they combine their forces. So I buckled under tween pressure and laced up the skates and made a few laps…and it was pretty fun and it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be, because I was supported and surrounded literally at all times by at least twenty seventh grade girls, gripping my sweaty hands and steadying me on my feet. And all the seventh grade boys were promising to dive in front of me if I looked like I was going to fall, and sacrifice their bodies for my sake. It was so precious.

And of course, ice-skating, being the romance-inducing sport that it is, inspired several previously unknown couples to hold hands as they stumbled around the rink. And every once in a while a student would come up and say “Miss Weight! so and so and so and so are holding hands! ahhhh!!!” and then skate off to tell someone else. So funny.

The eighth graders also keep trying to set me up with the other single and only male teacher, the tall, dark, handsome Mr. Vince (first name Jonathan, its confusing). He is a really good ice-skater, so the kids had the whole “oh he can help you learn how to skate, Miss Weight!” idea going, but I resisted, knowing if we’d held hands and took a turn it would be photographed and up on Facebook before I got home and I would never hear the end of it until June 2010.

Awesome moment of the past few weeks came this morning…normally when students are late to my class, I make them stand in front and sing either “I’m a little teapot” or “Grey squirrel.” So this morning, one of my favorite students, four feet of freckles, tells me
“Miss Weight, I’m on time, but I’m going to be late, because I have a present for you.”
“…okay…?! I’m nervous.”
So he walks in slo-mo until I tell him alright, you’re late, lets see what this ‘present’ is.
He gets up in front of class, and sings “Grey Squirrel, grey squirrel, shake your bushy tail” in Latin. Which was amazing. But….
the Latin word for ‘tail,’ which he’d gotten off the internet?

‘Penis.’