Under ordinary circumstances, I’m not really the type to bribe my classes with candy.  I hand it out now and again, certainly, and will use it as a minor incentive for minor stuff that they would be doing anyway.  For example, we write every Friday morning; I give the kids who read what they write a Jolly Rancher.   Sometimes I give them two if whatever they wrote manages to entertain me.  I used to do a trivia question every week that was due Thursday; kids who got it right got a piece of candy on Friday.  (You may be seeing a theme here.)

I’ve been trying to give away the same container of Jolly Ranchers for a while now, to the point where I thought they were getting old– at least to the extent that it’s possible for Jolly Ranchers to get old– and I decided that today I was finishing off the container no matter how ridiculously contrived the reason for handing out Jolly Ranchers was.   Making this easier was the fact that most of my knuckleheads in first and second hour are suspended right now, so the kids were much more likely to behave than normal.

“Work on this assignment,” I declared grandly, “and I shall reward those of you who do not annoy me with these Jolly Ranchers.  Perhaps more than one, if you please me greatly and are not otherwise foolish.”

(Yes, those exact words.)

Fifteen minutes later, they were noisy.  “Remember, folks, Jolly Ranchers are at stake here,” I said.

…

One of my smarter kids– I swear, one of the smarter ones– puts her hand up.

“Is you sayin’ you gonna give us steak, too?”

(I’m reproducing her words precisely.  She actually generally doesn’t talk like this; her speech gets more slangy when she’s expressing surprise.  True story.)

For a moment, this confuses me.

“No.  What?  Jolly Ranchers.  No steak.”

The students go insane.  There is a chorus of complaints.  I remain bewildered.

“You said Jolly Ranchers and steak!”

Sigh.

There has to be a factory somewhere that’s actually hiring, right?