Laugh Or Cry

I have a story to tell. I know, quite a surprise, huh? It's actually kind of two stories, but they both happened today, and they both made me think: you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Which brings me to that Stephen King story, "The Body". The kid, Vern, is not so bright. He has buried a jar of pennies under his porch, but can't remember exactly where. So Vern spends all his time digging for his pennies, which may or may not have been stolen long ago by Vern's hoody brother, Billy. And Gordy, the narrator, says, "You don't know whether to laugh or cry" about Vern digging all those holes for pennies that may not even be there any more.

Am I the only one who remembers this scene? It's in the movie, Stand By Me, as well. But whenever I mention it, people look at me like "Humor her. Just let her make the point, then we can nod politely and go on about our business of planning our regular kick-a$$ party to which she is not invited. Ever."

Anyhoo...one of my classes was doing some journal writing, and a kid raised her hand and asked, "Mrs. Hillbilly Mom? How do you spell photo blahblah?" I asked her to repeat herself. She said it again. I heard, "Photo blahblah." So I said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand the last part. Photo- what?" I was thinking what's going on? Am I having a stroke? I've never heard a word like that before. What is she saying? The girl said it clearly: "How do you spell photo-grapher?" I was flabbergasted. So I just spelled it. After all that, I was much too exhausted to tell her, "It's pronounced phu tog ra fur."

The other instance occurred this morning. I gave my mathies a little worksheet for bonus. It had some facts from the four core subject areas. They had to subtract without calculators, fill in some blanks about electrons, put some sentences in proper sequence to tell a story, and answer some geography questions. There was a paragraph about maps, and part of the question said, "Name the seven continents."

I had even allowed the students to work in pairs. Here came a couple of them to my desk. "We don't understand this question." I looked at it. On the three lines that were given for them to write the names of the seven continents, there was only one word. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was NOT a word. It was this: aeiouy. And one of the kids said, "I didn't know there were seven. All I can think of is six."

Sweet Gummi Mary! This was not the class referred to me for English! These were the mathies--the students whose English skills were OK, but whose math skills were suspect. Not only did these two misread 'continents' as 'consonants'...they didn't know the difference between vowels and consonants.

I did not let on. I just said, "No, it's asking for CONTINENTS." Supposing that saying it louder would make them understand. Just like you do with foreigners. It worked! But sadly, Russia is not a continent. And neither is Mexico.

Some days, I am merely a part of the problem.