Man, I can’t even imagine what kind of crazy shit it must have brought on ten thousand years ago to look up in the sky and see this happening:

I’ve eliminated one possible reason for The Surge: it hit me this afternoon (in the midst of teaching an algebra lesson and, to wit, being observed in same by my assistant principal) that it was possible that I was in the midst of a wave of spammery.  Not the case; Akismet has only caught a handful of spam comments in the last couple of days.  At any rate, it’s not quite 4:30 and I’m about to catch yesterday’s traffic.  I already have more uniques than I’ve ever had in a single day, for the second day in a row.  Still no clue where everyone’s coming from.

Anyway.  Let’s tell a DC story; I teased this with a sentence earlier but I figure you maybe deserve the entire story.  One of the problems with my career is that I am occasionally forced to act as somewhat less than a decent person because I am a teacher.  (At this point I spend twenty minutes digging through my archives to look for a post about a couple of kids finding me at a gas station and demanding a ride home; I can’t find it.)  (EDIT:  Aha!)

This is one of those stories.

For the first time, the hotel we stayed at on the DC trip had a pool, and a pool with reasonably late hours so that the kids stood a good chance of being able to swim both nights we were staying there.  They had a couple of hours during the first night, as a matter of fact.  The chaperones just went downstairs and chilled next to the pool while the kids splashed and threw each other around, occasionally reprimanding stupid behavior (true, hilarious fact: after one transgression, one of my chaperones– who is our gym teacher– actually made one of the kids get out of the pool and do push-ups.) but mostly just watching.  By the time the pool closed most of them (and the chaperones) had gone back to their rooms and it was just down to me and a couple of kids.  Now, the hotel has a rule– which they had been informed of– that denizens of the pool need to be wearing shirts while wandering around in the hotel.  One of my girls, while getting out of the pool, discovered that one of her roommates had absconded with both a) her shirt and b) her room key.  Neither of these are really big problems, mind you; I had her drape her towel over her shoulders (large towel, slim girl; no biggie) and I had extra copies of all the keys in my room.

We knocked on their door first; nobody home.  Well, fine, I’ll go get my key and let you in.  I turned and left, not really expecting her to follow me; I didn’t even actually notice she’d tagged along until I had my room unlocked and was halfway in.  At which point it hit me that the hotel hallway camera was about to record my ass taking a half-naked soaking wet fourteen-year-old girl into my hotel room.  

I’m still not sure whether making her stay in the hallway counts as an etiquette breach– I suspect it was a bit of an asshole move– but… yeah.  No, we’re not letting that video get taken, even just for a few seconds, even if leaving you in the hallway to drip while I go inside and figure out where I tossed the envelope full of room keys seems kinda rude.  And thus the sentence, which, delightfully, cracked her up once I said it.  And then the keys were located and she was let into her room and all was well again.

(Had a similar moment on the way home where several kids tried to get me to add them as friends on Snapchat.  Uh, guys?  Snapchat is for sending nekkid selfies.  Ain’t no damn way I’m adding you on no Snapchat.  Sorry.)

Ah, teaching.