Good to know.

At school today: I was trying to find out when the State of the Union address was delivered, and I found this really entertaining and moderately informative commentary on the transcript. There's an overview at the beginning, and there are embedded links to specific responses and observations throughout the text. For those of you who don't find all of that stuff as fascinating as I do, you might want to take it a bit at a time, or just see a few of his comments. I spent about an hour or so on it, though, so...you might not need to do that. Anyway, here's the link.

Also at school today: One of my kids had his eyes dilated at the optometrist this morning and got some film-like plastic wraparound glasses as a gift with purchase. He checked into school sometime around 10am as far as I know, and he still had on the wannabe Ray-Bans at 3pm, just chillin' in the back of the room. So, I'm in the front of the class keeping my serious wiggler focused and finding new seats for a few people at the same time. I'm looking around, scoping out all the seats, and my wiggler speaks up: "There's an empty seat in front of Blade."

Couldn't hold myself together after I realized who he was talking about. That got my whole class going for a good minute or so until I could calm down--because clearly, when the teacher is dying with laughter, it's okay for you to go crazy.

And later on, same class: I'm over in the corner keeping one of my distractables on task when a kid asks to go to the bathroom. I essentially say duh you know you can't go during my class, and he starts to walk away...when my distractable says, "Hey, why you walkin' like that?" I look over and see the kid waddling all spread-legged over to the other side of the room. I'm thinking, Oh crap, literally, so I say GO, JUST GO NOW. He looks over at me all confused and keeps bow-legging it back to his desk. I keep on saying GO NOW JUST GO and waving my hands at the door when my distractable joins in COME ON MAN JUST GO SHE SAY YOU CAN GO and now the other kids are paying attention and they say SERIOUSLY SHE SAID GO YOU CAN GO NOW and the whole time he's looking at us like we're speaking Klingon. Then finally one kid shouts out SHE SAYS YOU CAN GO TO THE BATHROOM!! He goes "Ohhhhhhh" and waddles out, turns the wrong way, turns around, and heads to the bathroom.

A few minutes later, he comes back, still waddling. My distractable says, "Hey, why you still walkin' like that?" as they go to their lockers and I go out to supervise. When I return to the room, I get the update. One student says: "Hey, he's got a bug bite!" Followed by another student: "And it's infected really bad, that's why he's walkin' like that." Followed by a third: "He probably just has an ingrown hair like my brother had."

Nice.