Thursday, September 28, 2006

Hillbilly Mom Ain't Nobody's Fool

Next week is the beginning of October. That means two faculty
meetings for me. And a payday. That is how my world is measured
out. In three weeks it will be the end of 1st Quarter. I told you the
school year was almost over!

My boy did not get elected to Student Council. He doesn't seem
mind very much. One of his teachers asked about him today.
"How is he taking it?" I told her he didn't seem to care. "He should
have made it," she said. That's my boy. He's an adult-pleaser. The
kids want the clowns, or their friends, elected. My boy is not in
band, and he's not in sports, so there are fewer kids in his circle
of friends. He understands that. And I know kids at this age. I'm
glad I prepared him ahead of time.

The cats left us a special gift on the porch this morning. A baby mole.
At first, we thought it was a mouse, but it was too big to be one of
our variety of field mice. Also, it was lacking the long mousy tail,
and had funny feet. It was very dead. It was still there when we got
home. I suppose I'll have to be the one to go kick it off the porch.
Nobody else can make a decision around here. Hillbilly Mom's
work is never done.

This is HH's bowling night, which to the boys means: FAST FOOD!
They chose McDonald's. The girl tried to hand me a soda, and I told
her, "The lid's not on." To which she snapped, "I know that." Well,
then, Little Miss Smarty-Pants Minimum-Wage Worker, why did
you try to shove it out the window at me? Is that the new procedure
at this fine establishment that made the news two years ago for
serving a hamburger with crystal meth powdered between the
burger and bun to a local law enforcement officer? Because if it
is, then I think I'll drive my business two stores down to Sonic.
You deserve a break today, LMSPMWW. In your left ulna.

I can't get away from the people pissing me off. The students must
smarten up soon. They must learn that they can't fool Mrs. Hillbilly
Mom. This is what happens when I get students new to me. They
don't know the ropes. For example, you don't try to tell Mrs. HM
that she graded your paper wrong after Mrs. HM has just gone
over the correct answers on the board. "Look. I got this one right."
After first asking, "You didn't write that negative sign in there when
I went over it, did you?" Mrs. HM inspected the paper more
closely. She erased the negative sign, which was drawn quite
heavily, and found underneath it a RED negative sign. Which
she writes on the paper to show why the answer is wrong, and
to prevent such a scenario from happening. "Look here. I put
that there to show you that the answer should have been negative.
Don't tell me again that you didn't change an answer, because I
will know."

Oh, and then there's the class who thought it would be funny to
goof around during the reading of the classic Tom Sawyer. At the
end of class, Mrs. HM opened up her gradebook, and said, "I
told you that on reading days you get a participation grade. Three
of you will get a zero today." You would think I'd taken candy
from the babies, what with all the crying about how "That's not
fair! We read! You said as long as we read we would get the
points." Perhaps they were not listening to the fine print, which
stated that if they disturbed other people trying to read, all bets
were off. Gotta read the HM Clause, kiddies.

Great Googley Moogley! I am not as dumb as they want me to be!

2 comments:

Mommy Needs a Xanax said...

I once got my shirt AND my hair very, very caught in a barbed wire fence between my mom's garden and the neighbor's pond. While I was trying to escape the grip of the fence (and becoming more tangled in the process) I was also half-heartedly yelling for my mother to come help me. I was too far from the house for her to hear. About the time I realized that I was really stuck, an alien-looking rodentcreature came out of nowhere and started scuttling toward me with his weird hands and his no-eyes. My screaming and struggling intensified, and my mother finally heard and came to my rescue. The alien rodent? 'Twas a mole. My mother? She laughed. Clothes, ripped. Flesh, torn.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Miss Ann,
Was this a different time from when you wrecked the motorcycle in the field? Because methinks perhaps you should just sit on the porch, what with all the calamities that befall you when you go out to play.

Those moles are a sneaky lot. We don't have any molehills to make mountains out of. At any moment, we might be standing on a burrow of them and never know it.