fights – Page 2 – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

Sitting on the couch in the living room right now, watching Hank Azaria do his impressions of Grover and Cookie Monster and Elmo, and really really hoping that as the Jimmy Johns in my belly digests it’s going to take some of the stress away. I don’t know how likely that’s going to be.

Things that happened today, or in the last few days: (this will format poorly. I will fix it later when I’m on a computer.)

It seems like about a third of my kids are suspended right now for one reason or another. At least one, a kid with a seriously nasty past who was pulling As for most of last quarter, has gone from being a student in pretty good standing to up for expulsion in something like two weeks, for two rapid-fire instances of theft (an iPad from another student and then some food from the cafeteria) and then beating the hell out of the kid who snitched on him for the cafeteria theft and then cussing the assistant principal out when he got busted for it. Note that each of these incidents took place on the day he returned from the previous suspension. He was only at my school because he got expelled from another school last year; it seems highly unlikely that I’ll be seeing him again.
A full-scale meltdown from one of my BEST kids (I don’t know what “BEST” stands for and somehow in seven years in this district have never learned; it basically means crazy kids and criminals, and should not be taken to refer to anything positive) involving having to be physically restrained by somebody about four times his size in the hallway and then causing no manner of destruction on his way down the hall– for, apparently, the second time in a row. This happened prior to my class; I don’t know exactly what triggered it.
I’m getting another new BEST kid in that same class tomorrow; apparently the two I have aren’t enough and someone downtown figured that if the first kid was getting expelled I deserved another disaster behavior student in that room. Occasionally these kids aren’t actually that bad and I can’t figure out why they’re in the program; this kid is coming to me after being kicked out of another school so I don’t have high hopes.
Meanwhile, my favorite student is moving to Arizona on Friday and another top-tenner is transferring to another school, also on Friday.
No less than four three-day ISS suspensions for girl drama related stuff; I’ll give you three guesses who might have been involved in that and the first two don’t count. If you said the blowjob-denier from a couple of weeks ago, give yourself a cookie.
The two Kids Who Are Suspended All the Fucking Time are both suspended again; note that these two kids aren’t the kids mentioned above. One of the two has still not made it through a single week of school (this is week… eleven?) without at the very least a day of ISS and for most weeks there has been out-of-school suspensions involved. Apparently he grabbed somebody’s tits in ISS. His mother continues to insist he’s a misunderstood angel. This also happened on Friday while I was out. I’m not sure what happened with the other one.
I wrote up one of my Algebra kids this morning for a situation that he could have ended at any of half-a-dozen points up until the point where I lost patience with his bullshit and wrote him up. There were something like six or seven other kids involved; all of the rest of them saw the wisdom of managing to go a few minutes in the morning without being idiots until they were no longer under my direct supervision. This one… did not. He spent the day in ISS; I found out from the assistant principal that afternoon that she’d been subject to a long harangue from his father about how all I ever do is pick on the kid and it was my fault he was written up. This student, by the way, is only in my Algebra class because we’re trying to keep him out of trouble; I am overstuffing my Honors class to keep this kid away from the shitheads he hangs out with who would otherwise keep him in trouble even more than he is. I made the point to him, and I’m happy to make the point to his father, that if he wants to transfer to a school where he will be allowed to hit anyone he wants, no one will stop him. If his father is foolish enough to pull this move with me instead of with my AP I’m going to take his damn fool head off.
(One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not the same) I bought a Fitbit Force. I’m wearing it right now. Thus far it entertains me but I’m not convinced of its utility in the long run (which is shitty, because it was expensive) and you should expect a longer review after a couple of days.
OH RIGHT: Fleas. Everywhere. Mutant apocalypse indomitable indestructible fucking fleas, because I’m a fucking peasant in a hut in the English countryside circa 1658 and not a middle-class twenty-first century American in a goddamn six-figure house.
That line came before I added the video.
I just found a recipe for egg drop soup. I didn’t know I wanted egg drop soup. I’m startled at how happy this makes me.

It’s Thursday, right?

memphis-bbq-beautiful-ladies-closer

First, a brief public service announcement: the Arby’s Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich is… how do you say it? “Mad tasty, yo?” Is that right? I think that’s how the kids talk nowadays. What I mean to say is that I enjoyed eating it.

People who respond to this by suggesting that I should buy a smoker and make my own brisket and stop eating brisket from Arby’s are going to be alternately mocked, ignored, or set on fire, depending on my mood, just so you know. 🙂

(The young ladies in the picture to the right are not eating an Arby’s Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich; that appears to be some sort of cheeseburger. Hey, it’s what Google gave me. Blame Google. Not me.)

Public service announcement ends.

Apparently we have hit the point where all of the students who understand that I break up fights immediately and prejudicially have left the building, because I’ve broken up three in the gym so far this year, after going an entire school year without having to do it once. The one yesterday was particularly bad since the rest of the seventh and eighth grade girls behaved as if they were at a goddamned WWE match, causing me to hold every last one of their asses in the gym after dismissing everyone else and read them the riot act, including the phrase “I am sick of your shit.” While it might surprise you given my vocabulary in other situations, I don’t often swear (by which I mean, I almost never swear) in front of my kids, and when I do do it, it’s fully calculated and for effect one hundred percent of the time. “I am sick of this,” they wouldn’t have heard. I am sick of your shit made it into every teenage skull in the room. I dispelled another situation this morning before it escalated to the level of a fight, and I think I was able to do that mostly because of the tongue-lashing from yesterday.

Hopefully, tomorrow will slide by with little to no drama.

He said.

(An aside: I’ve been listening to Gnarls Barkley while writing this– I’m not a huge fan and don’t listen to the CD often, but it popped into my head the other day so it’s still up on iTunes. One of their songs begins with someone chanting “wake up wake up,” which reminded me that I really like Bone Thugz-n-Harmony, and now I’m listening to 1st of tha Month. Which kind of entertains me. Also: Your rent’s due, motherfucker.)

(A second aside: One of the tags on this post was suggested by WordPress, and I’m predicting this post gets twice as many views as normal because of it. See if you can guess which one!)

I think that’s about it so I’m going to close with a picture of Seth Greene and his wife, because HOW THE HELL IS THAT HIS WIFE.