Few people know this, but I briefly taught high school back in San Antonio before moving up to the big city. It was a last minute, emergency type situation, and I was thrown under a bus that is high school elective classes. I taught speech and composition in a portable class room out by the football field in the middle of August. Our air condtioning went out on a regular basis, and it was hell trying to keep the kids settled down. Our textbooks took six weeks to get there, I was under constant attack from the football coaches to pass their players, and parents interest in their children's education seemed to border on the lacksadaiscal. In short, there was no 'To Sir With Love' happening on the south side of San Antonio.
I recently came across one of the papers of a student of mine, who shall remain nameless. Little prick was a football player whose average, if done correctly, would have come out to a 37 for the semester. I was pleaded with and cajoled by the football coaches to let him slide, to let him do anything to make a passing mark. I finally acquiesced and allowed him to turn in, two weeks late, no less, his final project, which was a persuasive paper on any topic of his choosing. Many of the students did their best with the paper, and the subjects ranged from why to vote for Al Gore (it was 2000) to why Vince Carter was the best basketball player ever. Mr. X's paper was on the topic of 'Why People Shouldn't Talk Shit.' I was rooting through some old scripts last week and happened upon it. I have faithfully reprinted it, without correcting sentence structure or grammatical errors, below.
'My topic for my 9 weeks final speech is I don't like people who talk shit. I don't like people who talk shit.
My first reason why I dont like people who talks hit is they can't backit up like some punk XXXXXX XXXXX he talks alot of shit like he calls me a pus*y and then I go up to him ad say 'What,' and he just punks out real quick.
My second resaosn why I dont like people sho talk shit is because they thing thiere hard ad there not like first thellze all had and then theyll just punk out like shi*.
My last ad final reason why I dont like people who talk shit is because people act all hard but their not ad I think you should just act like the person that you really are ad act like you noramlly act cause you aint hard you punk b*tch.
These are my resons why I hate people who talk a lot of shit. Thank you!'
I wish I could say that I made this up, but I didn't. I hope there will be no liberal mamby pamby wishy washiness about the state of education and how we could let our children get to the age of 16 without a basic understanding of the English language and the written word. I agree whole heartedly, but I also think that education starts in the home and teachers and administrators can't be held accountable for every single thing that's wrong with our children.
And I don't feel guilty about posting this. This particular kid threatened me any number of times and I had to have him suspended once. He and his friends caused me no end of problems in trying to reach out to the kids who did want to learn. But Mr. X raises an interesting point that I think we should consider more and more. Namely, all you shit talkers out there better beware, because we know you're gonna punk out real quick.
Enough said.
Now, a little nod to the men of MoMA's May is for moustache month party!
Muy Sensualidad!
Not to be outdone, the ladies of the lobby get in on the 'stache action!
As the sun sets on another May, we bid a fond farewell to this cabron's bigote.
Let it ride!
