Adolescent Humor

Over the past year, I have occasionally blogged about my classroom experiences. Some were sad, some were shocking, but I have decided to share three that were just downright endearing and silly.

1. I always started my reading and English classes with fifteen minutes of silent reading. It was a directed activity where I asked the students to look or be aware of a certain grammatical or rhetorical device in their novels which would then lead into the lesson that followed. The students became accustomed to this and on this particular day the room was deathly quiet. Only the sound of pages turning could be heard, when suddenly a student farted. It was one of those where the person was trying to suppress it but did not succeed, so it came out sounding like a whistle. I instantly knew who it was because the kids sitting around him looked at him and he blushed. To help him save face, I pretended not to notice and I tried to suppress a giggle. I was not successful. One giggle led to another and soon I was laughing so hard I was draped all over the podium. Those who knew what I was laughing about joined with me, the others half-laughed half-wondered what had happened. I wasn’t laughing at the boy; I was laughing at my effort to not laugh. You know how that goes.

2. I always fancied myself a good classroom disciplinarian and to this day I still live in that dream. On one occasion, every time I turned my back on the class, rubber bands flew all over the place. I gave them the stink eye and warned them to put their rubber bands away, but it kept happening until one hit me on the back of my head. I told the class they had two minutes – two minutes! – to put all their rubber bands on my desk. I was going to step out and when I came back in if I found any on them, I was calling their parents AND sending them to the principal! I marched back into the classroom to find fistfuls – and I mean fistfuls – of rubber bands heaped on my desk. I laugh about it now, but I didn’t then.

3. My high school classroom had no windows, so when the lights went out, the students and I were thrown into pitch darkness. I warned my students not to move. I didn’t want anyone tripping and getting hurt. I didn’t want anyone to panic. I knew I could not get to my desk, so I asked the class if they had cell phones (against school rules and could be confiscated at the time) or cigarette lighters (even more against school rules and could get the students severely disciplined) would they please give us some light. Someone yelled out in the dark if it would get them into trouble. I answered no, this was an emergency. I was amazed at the number of lighters and cell phones that lit up the room. I was able to get to my desk and distribute several flashlights among the kids. The lights were out for almost half an hour that day, and no, I never reported the students who saved us that day, but we did have an understanding for the remainder of the year.

It helped to have a sense of humor when teaching adolescents. They kept me on my toes, a reminder that I taught real human beings and not just little automatons.

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit. I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease. Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought. I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt diffe

Teenagers: Stinky Little Extraterrestrials

Years ago, a skunk sprayed our yard during the night and the next morning I trekked out to my car to drive to work and unknowingly stepped into the oily residue. I tracked skunk stink into my Jeep and onto the carpet in my office, a room I shared with a kind and forgiving co-worker. It took a week or two and several large cans of Lysol and air freshener to get rid of the smell. Ever since my profound Close Encounter of a Second Kind (I never saw the skunk but it left evidence of its presence), I became a skunk expert. I learned the way of the skunk. My experience imprinted itself into my hippocampus and I acquired a heightened sense of smell. I can detect a skunk several miles away, outperforming a normal human nose that can only start to do the same at one mile. I have the same uncanny sense about adolescents. After 30-plus years of teaching teenagers and having raised three of my own, you might say, I have reached the Close Encounter level of a Fifth Kind: I have actually

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have. I sputter. I hyperventilate. I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties. I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back. While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several). Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married. (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.” I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less. You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting. Me

Raquel Martina Martinez

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