They Welcome Me With Open Mouths

Put on your sciency chapeaus. We will be delving into the realm of genetics humor today. Wait! Come back! It's fascinating. I swear.

Not everybody can enter the classroom and be greeted with a request such as this: "Will you buy a washer and dryer for your room?"

"Oh, I don't know. Let me think on that for a minute. Let's see. Um. The answer would be NO!"

"Well, you really should. Because I am tired of my sweatshirt getting my drool all over the sleeve every day. I need to wash it."

"I have never in my life seen so many people so proud to announce the fact that, 'I don't want to be educated.' Seriously."

"Oh, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom! I don't really sleep every day. I just nod off towards the end."

Uh huh. Welcome to the world of upperclassmen. Not that they're unpleasant. This is the best group I've had in...let me see...EVER. But their fascination for science is not the same as mine. Just yesterday we were reading about Mendel and his pea plants. Well, the textbook DVD was reading about it while the book pages were projected onto the screen up front. But is seems that some people were not soaking it up like the dry sponges I imagined them to be. Perhaps they were sodden with saliva.

The book included a picture of Mendel. It was posed. He had a stern look, though not quite a frown on his bespectacled face. I'm not sure how photography worked in the mid-1800s. Perhaps he had to hold still for a while before the picture was ready. Anyhow, my students are a visual bunch. They focused on the photo rather than the text about how Mendel came to study his tall/short, round/wrinkled, yellow/green pea plants.

"Gosh. He could have fixed himself up. Nobody would want to date him like that."

"Um. Gregor Mendel was a monk. He lived in a monastery with other monks. So I don't think his top priority was attracting dates."

"Wow, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom! You know so much!"

That information was in the caption under the picture.