Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be flashers.

It's been spirit week here for the last 4 days. Each day there's some new theme: crazy hair day, pajama day, piss off your teacher by making a paper beard/mustache set and taping it to your face day......ok, that last one wasn't really one of our themes. That's my everyday reality: spirit week just adds a whole level of chaos to my surreal existence.

Today was school colors day. Each grade level wore a different color (thank god, we got black this time around. It's easier to dress in all black than to figure out which pair of pajamas you can wear to school without getting fired) and we counted how many students participated in our first period class.

Now, I'm pretty liberal when it comes to counting participation. A half-black sweatshirt will probably get you counted. However, several kids have to try and push that line to its naturally absurd extreme.

"Hey, I have black on my shoes!", Sam said, flashing the bottom of his sneakers, which had black treads. "I have a black binder!", shouts Caelan. "My shirt is mostly black, why didn't you count me?", demands Jack (point of clarification: Jack was wearing a bright red T-shirt with some black text on it. Maybe 5% of it was black, which would explain why Jack is failing math, if that's his definition of "mostly").

Yeah, nice try guys....

I had managed to deflect most of these comments when Braden stands up. "Hey, I'm wearing black!" he proudly proclaims, pulling up his shirt and yanking up the waistband of his underwear to show me he's wearing black briefs.

The other kids in the class suddenly look like they're all watching the same tennis match. As one, their heads all turn to stare at Braden, then swivel to gauge my reaction.

Actually, I'm not quite sure what the appropriate response is at this point either. First, the last thing I ever want to see is an 11-year old boy's underwear. Second, this is dangerous territory for any teacher: any rumor of impropriety can kill your career.

My head spun to look at the other, safer side of the room so fast I'm surprised I didn't give myself whiplash. "Um, Braden, sooooo not going there....."

"No really!" he interrupts me, "It's all black...." And, to my horror, he actually starts to unbutton his pants to he can show me his underwear is all black.

OMFG, I am NOT going to jail because I have a budding exhibitionist in my class!

52 ways to touch yourself without taking your clothes off

Mrs Chan came up to me today (she's my instructional aide in charge of helping my special education students). "You have to move Veronica," she stated baldly. She's normally good-natured, but her face brooked no argument today.

Crap, what now?

"Sure thing, but why?" I asked (It does have a bearing on where I move them. For example, talkers and wigglers get moved next to bossy kids so they get the crap kicked out of them whenever they bug the people around them. Daydreamers get moved in front of me so I can badger them to my heart's content).

"Well......," she started, then looked uncomfortable. Definitely not normal for Mrs. Chan. "You know how Ryan sits behind her"

Um, yeah....

I nod.

"You know how he's started to wear those silky pants?"

Uh oh. I have a sneaky suspicion I know where this is going.......

"Well.....he sits at the corner of the table, you know.....and lately, he sits with his legs around the table leg.....and then he starts talking to Veronica and he starts rubbing himself on the table leg.......", ..........and Mrs. Chan pauses significantly, looking at me expectantly.

Thankfully, this isn't my first rodeo.

"Let me guess: he's masturbating on my table leg while he's talking to Veronica, right?"

Mrs. Chan looks so relieved, I have to laugh: it couldn't have been easy on her, trying to tell me this.

"So you're going to move Veronica,right?"

I assure her I will move Veronica. What I don't tell her is, moving Veronica isn't going to stop Ryan getting his jollies on my table leg (I am sooo not touching that table again). Now that Ryan has figured out his penis does other stuff than urinate, it's probably going to see more rubbing than a ShamWow.

I had to call my mom and tell her about this. You see, mom's a former special education teacher. I thought she could use a laugh.

"Oh that's nothing," she replied. "Did I ever tell you about the book Maggie (Maggie was the name of her instructional aide) and I wanted to write? We wanted to call it '52 ways to touch yourself without taking your clothes off'. Seriously. In one school year, we counted 52 separate ways."

Wow.

And she proceeded to tell me several of her favorite ways her students figured out how to pull out that ShamWow cloth and buff up the classroom without taking off a stitch of clothing. Here is a few gems gleaned from her years of experience:

- The Obvious- reach down the pants.
- The Less-Obvious- reach in your pockets.
- The Less-Obvious-2-pretend your hands are cold and shove them in your crotch to warm them up.
- Ryan's favorite: straddle a table leg.
- lean against the edge of a desk and wiggle.
- take an umbrella (only works with the long kind, not the collapsable kind) and roll the handle back and forth rapidly in your hands in front of you.
- pull your shorts up really high and wiggle.
- put an open book in your lap and wiggle: also known as the single-cover method.
- the double-cover method: put the book in your lap and open and close the cover rapidly.
- lean against the door frame, face-first, and roll in and out of the room.
- put a stapler in your lap and rock (makes an unfortunate "click-click, click-click" noise. Also have to worry about accidental stapling).
- put a large rubber eraser down your pants and wiggle (notice how a lot of these require vigorous wiggling? Welcome to my world).
- straddle a chair and rock in a 180 degree circle from left to right.

As my friend Chuckles says, "I.....I got nuthin...."

Pull my finger....

In its infinite wisdom, the state has decided that it wants to do its standardized testing online this year (for those of you who don't remember standardized testing, it's the bubble test you had to do every year in the spring that took 2 hours a day for a week). This sounds like a great idea at first: it saves paper, cuts down grading time, reduces waste, eliminates a lot of error, and means I don't have to sharpen 60 #2 pencils for once.

In reality, there are a few problems. First, teachers are total technophobes. I know teachers that can't change their own wallpaper. You want them to administer an online test? To students that can probably circumnavigate our own porn filter? Second, our students type at, like, 10 words a minute. Seriously, they hunt and peck like retarded chickens. They'll be taking the reading test for a month.

But still, the state dictates, so we follow. So on a Friday afternoon, when I'd rather be playing World of Warcraft, here I am, trying to figure out how to administer the state's reading test (WHY?! I don't even administer the reading test!!!).

Let me set up some background knowledge before I continue. Kyle is one of the teachers at our school. I guess you could describe him as a big kid. He sings in a very loud voice as he walks down the halls. For superhero day, he dressed up as TeacherMan and pretended he could fly outside the windows of all the 8th grade classrooms. He even changed the marquis screen savers of all the 6th grade teachers to say "I Love Skool" to drive them crazy because he knew half of them didn't know how to change it back (technophobes, remember?).

So anyways, we're all sitting in the computer lab, running through a tutorial on how to administer and complete the state's online reading test. To amuse myself, I'm trying to see how fast I can get through the tutorial without reading anything (because I know that's what all the students are going to do).

The room was fairly quiet, so what happened next startled everyone.

From two computer banks in front of me came a loud ripping sound, as if a sheet of silk cloth had been rent in two. A shocked silence filled the room. Then pandemonium broke out. I looked up just in time to see five teachers dive out of their seats and sprint towards the corners of the room, panic on their faces.

When the dust had settled, Kyle sat alone in the middle of the computer bank. The entire room glared at him. His face turned a dark shade of red.

"You weren't supposed to hear that," he muttered......