Hello All! It is Friday again. Thank goodness! And since we have all made it to the end of the week in spite of the fact that today was both a full moon (or the end of it) and Friday the 13th, I thought I would celebrate with a "Friday Funny." As a teacher, I have so many stories of things that students have said or done that definitely fall into the "You can't make this stuff up" category. So, here's the first one. I'm hoping to make this a pretty regular thing. And teacher friends, if you have any quirky stories that you would be willing to share please send them on! I will give you credit or keep things anonymous to protect the guilty...err...innocent. ;)
This goes back to three years ago during my very first year teaching. It was towards the end of the day and the bell had just rung to signal a class change. One student was writing on my board on her way out the door and she quickly scribbled "I love you Ms. Pannell - BM." I actually hardly noticed because this was something she did on a pretty regular basis. On this day though, my first student in the door for my 7th period class did notice. We'll call him B. And he made an observation that I never would have thought to make!
As he walked to his seat, B looked at the board to see what the assignment was for the day. I heard him start to chuckle and asked what was so amusing to him. He said "Oh, just those initials. Who wrote that?" I told him and he replied, "Well, I feel sorry for her. I wouldn't want those initials." Not really following where he was going with this, I asked why. And he explained as if it should be as clear as day to me: "BM, Ms. Pannell. Ya know, BM. Like bowel movement!" I got a little tickled over this and just shook my head at him and reminded him to be polite.
By this time a couple of more students had trickled in before the tardy bell. One of those students overheard this conversation and looked very perplexed. Not wanting to miss a chance to repeat his observation, B was all too happy to try to catch his classmate up on the joke! But my second student, Z, still looked confused. Then he said "But those wouldn't be the initials. It's VM." At this point both B and I gave Z a confused look of our own! I tried explaining, "No, dear, those are the correct initials," but Z wasn't having it. He was sure it should be "VM" and even went on to explain that it should be "VM for valve movement."
At this point, I was having trouble keeping my composure because this poor kid was convinced that this particular bodily function was a "valve movement" and not a "bowel movement"! I tried to explain that no, it is most definitely "bowel movement" but that I could see why he could hear someone say the term and mistake it for "valve movement". He continued saying that he was sure it was "valve movement" because it was a "valve" that everything went through. Oh my!
As luck would have it, the Biology teacher walked by my classroom. I was able to flag him down to help explain to Z not only the correct terminology but also the correct physiology! Ha ha! The Biology teacher got Z set straight and gently reminded him that they had covered all of that the year before in Biology I. After the impromptu science lesson we were able to get back to English, which I was much more comfortable with. I guess this was one of my first experiences learning that kids really do say the darndest things and boys of any age love good bathroom humor!
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