Having A Ball

My students are working on their science projects that are due on Monday. I am giving them time in class because some have trouble getting to a partner's house to put the finishing touches on their scientific masterpieces. I bought six packs of colored paper, a dozen-and-a-half glue sticks, some Elmer's glue, and a dozen rolls of tape. Times are tough. I even let a couple of them take home a glue stick. Because that's how I roll.

One pair of girls experimented with floating an egg in varying concentrations of salt water. The pictures they had printed did not turn out well. Their efforts to draw eggs were less than gallery-worthy. In an effort to improve their artwork, they surveyed the room for items that might help them render a project-worthy depiction of an egg. "Hey!" one called to a boy across the room. "Do you have a ball?" The room fell silent. The reality of what she had just asked sunk in. Another girl giggled.

"Well, now I know how to get you all quiet."

The low hum of freshmen trapped inside four walls started up again. One lass had missed the exchange, so intent was she on putting tape on the back of my suicidal posters, a job she had requested to take her mind off the lump she discovered behind her ear a few moments earlier. A lump diagnosed by Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's first class of pre-pre-med students as, "...a mass like my grandpa found and had cut out and they still don't know what it is and now he has a bunch of scars," and, "A lady at my mom's work had surgery yesterday for one of those."

The inattentive lass turned to the class. "What? Did she ask Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, 'Do you have a bong?' "

"No!"

"That's just wrong!"

"Why would you ask a TEACHER something like that?"

Exactly. According to one class, I never even went to college.