Camp Post

Being with my friend, Twiggy, in Texas makes me think of camp. I miss it so much in the middle of the winter. So this is for all you camp friends who are a little camp sick.

YOU KNOW YOU'VE BEEN AT J. LOW TOO LONG IF:

-Your goal for the year is to kill a "hoe"

-You remember your first taste of Emergent"C"

-You miss Diet Dr. Thunder

-You look for wagons if you have to move something larger than a shoebox

-You have more than one bracelet with your camp name on it

-You can make anything with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks

-In August, you try to hold stranger's hands

-You know camp sign langugage

-You know of the J. Low Time Warp

-You've had to have Marsha help you with lat bag tapes

-You plan what color of beads you want in January

-You can admit you like the Spice Girls

-You Dirty But Dry your own laundry

-You have one outfit with bleach stains

-The first thing you do when entering the lats is get a set of gloves

-You have mastered the changing without gloves master

-Nose goes and rock paper scissors solves all your disputes

-You have ever bought Flintstones vitamins to remind you of Rhonda

-You know what the keys open

-Your Chaco tan lasts all year

-You hate A/C

-You know if Bridget has had apples, tomatoes, or corn

-You have been run over by a EWC

-You have chigger scars

-When someone asks you to say grace you start thinking of songs

-You know what P.O.P.C. means

-You question the names on the flow chart

-You've worn a bib

-You can discuss the pros and cons of funky utensils

-You've received fudge from the Carlsons

-You can recite Marsha's graduation speech

-You can name which campers have fragile X, leaky guy, vagal nerve stimulators, and g tubes

-You have 50 hot dog recipes

-You save paper all year long to write Happy Notes on

-When you feel sad you go through your scrapbook

-You think an Olympic event should be water balloon throwing

-You know what Little Foot/Big Foot is

-You can name the tattoos that will be at the tattoo station

-You think fried oats are a part of life

-You know each others "schedules"

-You know the favorite napping spots

-You know the word to Yellow Submarine

-You have ever used chocolate milk as a meal replacement

-You have attempted to make gooey butter cake and grilled cheese bits at home

-You ignore expiration dates

-You know where to find the turkey bacon

-You have seen more than your fair share of butts and boobs

-You have used the green gold bond...and regretted it later

-You drink 2 glasses before starting a meal

-You take "lats" trips during the year

-You look for kitty litter afer you spill something

-You don't use the end sinks in the bathroom

-Your disability radar works within 50 feet

-You label things with your camp name

-Half of your phone numbers are programmed in with camp names

-You have a seperate part of your brain for things related to camp

-You can speak "camp"

-You sign your camp name until mid-September

-You cut all of your food before eating

-You like taking nudie showers with others

-You've taken an OP commando trip

-You've forgotten your towel but not been worried because you can always get J. Low ones

-You own more than one J. Low item

-You know what it means to "J.Low it"

-Thinking of camp gives you a slightly giddy feeling

-You know what every cabin's staff bed feels like

-You dread night swims, but haven't actually been in the water for 4 years

-You can name the Square Dance Man's songs in order

-You start dreaming about camp in mid-June

-You have more J. Low shirts than regular shirts

-You have a seperate tubbie for camp things

-You look forward to Fajita Day all year long

The FISH!!!

Time: Approx. 1:30 pm
Setting: Room 208...after lunch read aloud
Characters: Me, a slightly befuddled teacher on a little too much DayQuil trying to get through the day
Budachris (rhymes with Ludacris), a kid who has just too much; too much energy, too much talking, too much moving, too much yelling, too much imagining, too much inattention, too much impulsivity-you get the picture.

Me (reading along as fast as my cold-fogged head can read)
Budachris: (in my ear) Ms A. I have to tell you something
Me (ignoring him and trying to focus on the words swimming in front of me)
Budachris: (in my ear a lot louder) Ms A. I have to tell you something important
Me: Not now
Budachris: (forgetting the pretense of trying not to be distracting) Ms A. It's an emergency about the fish
Me: What? (all reading has stopped now)
Budachris: The fish! It's about the fish.
Me: What? (again the DayQuil making me not as sharp as usual)
Budachris: Something is wrong with the fish!
Me: What is wrong with the fish?
Budachris: They stopped time!
Me: What?
Budachris: They were all swimming and then all of sudden they stopped. The stopped time!
Me: The fish didn't stop time.
Budachris: Yes! They did stop time. They froze it and then they all started it again.
Me: I don't think the fish have the power to control time.
Budachris: They do too!
Me: Ok...? Can we keep on reading?
Budachris: Yeah, I just wanted you to know.
Me: Ok...thanks?

Needless to say this whole encounter left me more befuddled and more confounded. I can also tell you who I am not putting next to the fish tank again when we move desks.

Big Plans

There is a very funny picture book called Big Plans by Bob Shea (illustrated by the guy who did the Stinky Cheese Man). In the book, the protagonist boy gets in sent to the corner and the whole time he is making BIG PLANS! That background to say that I have a 5th grader who is this boy to the letter. I will call him Big Plans because of his big plans. Every day he tells me some story about something that he is going to do and every time these plans are so extravagant and well...big. Today we were riding to Balboa Park and he was telling Budachris (a later story) about how they were going to go to Colorado for Christmas. Not only were they going to go to the snow but they weren't going to go in a car they were going to get a RV. In the past few weeks he has told me about how they (Budachris and him) were going scuba diving, not snorkeling, but diving to catch sharks with knives. They are going to move to Temecula to get a fresh start (apparently 10 is the age at which you need a fresh start). They are going to go to Hawaii and live with a long-lost relatives. They are going to refurbish a abandoned trailer and make it a clubhouse in which they can put their PSP and DS. They are going to move into a dorm room with one of their brothers and go to parties at State. You get the idea...these elaborate stories sometimes annoy me but I began thinking today that these plans may be the only thing that keep these boys going. The community that I work in is pretty hopeless and maybe I should embrace the hope instead of shaking my head in disbelief. Maybe next time I should say, "Tell me about these big plans". Hopefully one day, a lifetime away from now, I will come across Big Plans and he can tell me about how the made all of these things happen...I believe he will because after all he has BIG PLANS!

Ansisters

Calvin (A fifth grader): Ms. A. I think that ancestors are prejudice.
Me: Ok....(imagine bewildered expression)
Calvin: Yeah, because even boys are called ancestors.
Me: Well....(again bewildered) boys can be ancestors.
Calvin: I mean they should call them something else.
Me: Uhhhh...(you can tell I was adding a lot intellectually to this conversation)
Calvin: It's just not fair. They all them annnnsssssiiiissssttteeerrrsss and they should be called anbrothers too.
Me: Actually it's annnccccessssstttorrrr.
Calvin: Oh, nevermind.
Me: (nothing more to say besides shaking my head in amazement)


Ahhhh the joys of teaching second language learners.

You'll Say WOW Everytime

For this story to make sense you need to know three things.

1: My roommate, Catherine , has in the past-much to my amusment and entertainment-clogged the "in-sink-erator" (I know that is like a Dr. Doofenschmertz name for a garbage disposal but scout's honor that's its brand). She has only done it a few times but based on the amount I talk about it you would think it happened quite frequently.

2: We had an "As Seen On TV" Party at our house recently and there is currently a huge table full of As Seen On TV stuff in our garage.

3: Not too long ago, our landlords replaced our in-sink-erator with a new, top-of-the-residential line disposal. I literally quote, "It should be able to take care of anything you have".

Now fast forward a few weeks. My roommate was on the East Coast and I was holding down the fort. I found an amazing little market called North Park Market (you should go, it's on H street) and got a few huge pineapples. I happily peeled, cut, and ate pineapple. After finishing the cutting process I decide to have another go at propagating pineapples. I quite happily peeled the leaves of the pineapple and then decided to put them in the sink. I decided to take this new disposal for a test run. I guess it is fair to also tell you that ground up pineapple leaves have the consistency of a old dish rag. I think it is also fair to assume that you can guess what happened soon after the grinding ensued.

Of course, the other side of the sink starts to fill up with the bits of pineapple, strawberry tops, an orange peel, a few other unidentifiable pieces of previous vegetative matter. I don't panic yet, I being a well-rounded individual have a basic understanding of disposals and pipes. I know that you need to get the clog out and the hope that the clog is not so far in the wall you have to call some guy named Joe who likes to show his butt cleavage.

I open the doors and get the allen wrench. I turn this way and that..who knows what lefty or righty it needs but at this point I still fell confident that I will be able to unclog this sink and no one, including Catherine, will find out about it-this of course would lead to the end of my bit about Catherine and the disposal and I hate losing good material. After quite a bit of turning I try the water, try the grinder, try the hoping, try the mild cursing-no luck.

I decide the best idea is to empty the sink of water and try again. Some people may have thought that I scooped out the water. Those people would be a far sight more sensible than I. I thought the best way to empty the sink of water was to drain it from the bottom. I moved the various sundries from under the sink (not all of them mind you because again that would show some foresight) and started to unscrew the pipe on the left side of the sink. I underestimated a few things in this manuever; 1) the amount of water in the sink, 2) the comparative smallness of the pot that I found, 3) the amount of pressure that was pushing the water downwards, 4) the position of the L bend pipe, which made an amazing deflector for the aforementioned chunky water.

You can imagine my surprise the water didn't neatly fall into the pot like I had imagined but instead shot out (or more appropriately out and up) of the pipe all over me, the inside of the cabinet, all of the things I had left inside the cabinet, and the floor. So there I am sitting in a puddle of water with bits of pineapple in my hair. I undid every pipe under the sink and each time more water filled my already soggy kitchen. I couldn't get the blasted thing to work so I put all the pipes back together and decided that I would wait until Catherine got home and confess my sins. As I stood up, I noticed the drain plug. I plugged up the left side of the sink and turned on the disposal with a muttered prayer. Sure enough that wad of pineapple fiber shot through the pipes and into the ocean (you know all drains lead the to the ocean...Nemo fans?)

At that moment I felt a wave of triumph and then I looked around; I was covered in soggy clothes and had disposal gunk all over me, there was an inch of standing water in the cabinet, every thing under our sink was dripping and soaked, the floor was awash in water and bits of pineapple. My heart sunk....then I remembered the ShamWow in the garage! I gleefully ran out to the garage and got the brand spanking new felt-ish cloth and sure shootin' that ShamWow soaked up about a gallon of water. Again my life was flooded (pun definitely intended) with a sense of victory. Looking around at the mayhem that I had created I just smiled to myself and said "wow". It's true what the infomercial says, "You'll say WOW everytime."