On a lighter note

It's been a rough week, I'm not going to lie, but now it's Friday and time to switch gears, so here are some little bits of humor from life at the middle school.

Upon discovering that I do not have a TV in my house and that I have seen next to none of the essential movies of the past decades, some of my teacher friends were giving me a hard time, and one of them said, "What, did you grow up, like, Mennonite or something?" I busted out laughing and said, "Yes, actually...Wait, did you know that?", thinking he did and was just making a joke. Then I saw his face get red as he said, "Oh. God. That's embarrassing."

In one of my 7th-grade math classes today, I was teaching one of my favorite students how to solve algebraic equations without resorting to the trial-and-error method. I showed him, "Look, you just reverse the operation, and poof, the number next to the variable disappears! Magic!" He just looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said, as if he were explaining to a small child, "Miss, that's not magic. That's math."

Also today, I got to help chaperone a group of students on a bowling excursion. The other adults and I got in on the fun and bowled as well. Before we started, one of the other teachers, without our knowledge, gave the guy at the desk goofy names for us all to put up on the scoreboard, names like "Z-Rocker," "Abinator" for Abby, and "E-tastic" for me. The rest of us, sitting at our lane, watched our names come up in their five-letter versions: "ROCKR," "ABINA," and then mine: "TSTIC." We nearly died. One of the English teachers told me she'll never be able to think of me as anything else. How am I supposed to go around applying for teaching jobs with a nickname like "Testicle?" I'm just praying none of the students ever find out.