Funny lines from '07

It's that time of year again - time for another year-end wrap up of some of the more humorous occurrences from another school year. In just one week, school will be over, which means that for ten weeks, I can double the dosage of my nightly alcohol intake and waste away the hot humid days dicking around on YouTube and Ebaumsworld looking for videos that will make me laugh. This is necessary because in the summer I go through laughter withdrawal. As I've said many times in this space, if you have the right attitude and pay attention, you can laugh your ass off every day in a mediocre public high school. So let's get right to this year's recap of some of the funniest things that happened over the past nine months.

For a change of pace, I didn't teach regular English this year. Instead, I taught small classes of struggling readers. While this was in some ways exhausting, it had its plusses. I didn't have to grade much work, the classes were small, and the kids, being dumber than you average high school wingnuts, provided much unintentional humor. I was supposed to start each class with something called a "Read Aloud," an aptly named activity, as it entailed me reading aloud to them for two to three minutes. (We educators are clever when it comes to naming activities. I bet you can even figure out what "Bus Duty" entails, huh!) I could choose whatever material I wanted for the Read Aloud, so most of the time I would find interesting and humorous news items. Crime stories usually garnered the most interest, as most of my kids, being of the dumb variety, had already had brushes with the law, from simple friskings to flat-out arrests. One day I took a poll, and of the 51 kids I had in my classes, 42 claimed to have at least been frisked in their lives. (It would have been 43, but I didn't count the poor girl in third period who claimed her one weird uncle still frisks her two or three times a week just for kicks.)

One day I read a story from a local newspaper about two bumbling bozos who did something incredibly stupid and got arrested. I think it involved speeding, weapons and weed, but I can't remember. As I was reading the story to my first period, I got to the word "paraphernalia." I stopped and asked if anyone knew what that word meant, figuring that this group of marijuana veterans would all just roll their eyes and say "Of course, you asshole." But no one did. Remember, words aren't exactly these kids' strong point. So I started to explain the word, when one boy shouted, "Oh, I know what that is. It was on my dad's arrest sheet! I had to look it up, yung!" Then he proceeded to define paraphernalia for the class. I'm sure his father would have been proud. I know the kid was proud of his knowledge. I'm just glad it wasn't a story with a phrase like "forced deviant sexual intercourse," because had those words been on the arrest sheet, he'd have looked those up, too, and I'm sure he'd have chimed right in with the definition.

When I read this same story to my eighth period, I was barely through the first line when a girl screamed, "Oh, this is about my cousin Tony!" I apologized and told her I would stop reading. Her reaction? She insisted I keep reading, then broke in throughout the story with added details and corrections. So much for embarrassment. She was beaming proudly the entire time.

Keep in mind as you read these items that almost all of my kids were black this year. My principal said I would be great with these classes because I am so good with black males. (Note to Johnny Mathis: Don't get any ideas.) Race is an open topic in my classes, and the kids get pretty comfortable talking about it and joking about it. In January, I introduced these struggling readers to a series of easy-to-read novels that all take place in a black high school with almost all black characters. The kids took to these books like ... well, like black kids who are finally getting a chance to read a book with black characters after years of being force fed boring stuff from dead white guys. One kid, probably the weakest reader I see all day, chose a book called The Gun. On Day Number Two of their independent reading (a brand new concept to most of these kids, believe me), I asked him how he liked his book. His response? "This shit is good! I loooooove reading books about niggas gettin' shot!" No one batted an eye, not even me, although on the inside I was dying. I was just glad he finally found a book he wanted to read. He got a little impatient with the book by chapter six, because, according to him, "This book is good, but still ain't no niggas got shot yet. But there are a lot of niggas in this book." His disappointment was real, but so was his reading, so I let it go without a bullshit teacher lecture.

This same young man also offered his assessment of why our school had not yet gone to the dreaded block scheduling, where classes are 90 minutes long. When I was telling his class that several other schools in the area had instituted this system, this boy, a self-appointed spokesman for his race, said, "Mr. Bitters, we ain't never gonna have that, because black people can't sit still that long." He said this while on his third trip to the pencil sharpener that period. And he was using a pen.

One day in eighth period, my biggest nightmare student was once again carrying on about something when I walked in to start class. He looked as if he were ready to fight a small boy in the back of the room. I asked him why he was so upset. The reason? "Because Clyde called me a 'cum gazzler.'" Feel free to consult every dictionary you own for the verb "gazzle." I don't think you'll find it. But if it were a word, I think that boy had a reason to be upset. I don't think I'd like to gazzle cum either.

Other times it was a more pleasant experience to walk into class and hear a student's story. I had a senior girl in the yearbook class who was very smart but very lazy, and over four years of high school she cultivated a hilarious yet frustrating persona of the girl who, despite her ample brain power, did as little as possible just to squeak by. One day she told me about what happened in her English class that morning. "Mr. Bitters, we got the coolest assignment in English today!" It involved the movie V for Vendetta and an exercise on alliteration. It sounded cool and creative. I was thrilled to see her finally excited about something school related. I asked her how she was going to approach it. She gave me that are-you-an-idiot look, then said, "Oh, I'm not going to do it. Please! But if I was ever going to do an assignment in high school, this would be the one I would do." Needless to say, I wrote her about as glowing a recommendation as I could for her senior portfolio. This is the same girl who listed "Trophy Wife" as her number one career goal, and when asked by the principal what she intended to do after graduation, said, "Uh, you have it wrong. The question should be 'What am I not going to do?' and the answer to that is 'Get a job.'" Is there any wonder why she is one of my all-time favorite students?

There were many more classic lines, but they don't all merit a story. For example, "One time my mom was beating me so bad she started to have an asthma attack, so she had to stop. But not a minute later, she came back with her inhaler and kept beating me." Or the exchange, "N-O spells 'NO!'" "Yeah, well O-N spells 'OWN!'" I know that makes no sense, which is why it's so funny on about five different levels.

Sometimes parents are responsible for in-school humor. I had one kid who was always in trouble for one thing or another. He had been put into the school's discipline database nine times for selling candy to other students in his classes. Somehow, the teachers got him to stop this disruptive activity. Soon after he went out the candy business, his mother, who works with a program in the school and has a free pass to come and go as she pleases, knocked on my door in the middle of my first period class. She asked if she could speak to Terry, saying she was proud of him for going two weeks without getting in trouble for selling candy. I said sure, as I am all about positive reinforcement. Two minutes later, a smiling Terry came back into the room, carrying the tangible reward his proud, well-meaning mother had given him. What was he carrying? A bag of candy. (I bought a Snickers bar from him.)

Although kids screwing up can create some of the best humor moments, sometimes the kids can be funny even when trying to do the right thing. Two boys were making fun of one of the janitors in the hall one day. They were doing a pretty good imitation of this man behind his back. But then the one said, "Shhhh ... stop it! You're talking too loud and he's gonna hear you!" This bit of sensitivity was refreshing, but unnecessary. The janitor, you see, is deaf, and his deafness was what they were making fun of. And they were afraid he would hear them.

Sometimes a kid can be intentionally funny, like the time this spring when a kid asked me if he could use the restroom. In a rare fit of trying to be a real teacher, I said no. He said, "But Mr. Bitters, I gotta take a shit." Some teachers would report this to the FBI and try to have the kid sent to a federal penitentiary. I just said, "James, the only time I want to hear any specifics about one of your bodily functions is if you have to say, 'Mr. Bitters, I'm having a heart attack.'" He went back to work for about six seconds, then said, "Mr Bitters, I'm having heart attack ... in my ass!" The pass got written when I finally stopped laughing.

Despite all those edu-gems, my favorite moment of the year didn't even take place in one of my classes. A quiet sophomore honors student whom I had last year ended up in the class of some 112-year-old old-school ballbuster of an English teacher. The kid made it his mission to get under her paper-thin skin every chance he could. One day, in yet another example of her non-teaching laziness, she had the kids find their own vocabulary words in the novel they were reading. They were to list 20 words they didn't know, find out what they meant, and use them in original sentences. The next day, she was going around the room asking for one example from each kid's list. When she got to Chris, he said in his most deadpan voice, "My word is 'succeed.'" Instead of battling him on choosing easy words, she said with great disgust, "Okay, use it in a sentence." His sentence was two words long. "You suc....ceed." Go ahead and say that out loud. He got three days of in-school suspension - and immediate admittance into the Ned Bitters Hall of Fame.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.