Survival of the Modern Man: Three Days Until Summer Break

Have you noticed your local teachers recently? You can hear them humming a tune, singing along to the Musak at the store, or even, God forbid, smiling for no reason at all?

Have you also seen the fear and panic on parents faces in the same stores?

One man's joy is another man's scream for boredom saving ideas for their pre-teen.

Ahhh. It there must be only three days until summer break. Smell the teen-spirit. Yuck!

Summer is a 'wonderfunly' time. Yes, I know that is 'unproper' English. But after another year of working with middle school kids who feel it is their duty to destroy the English language, run around punching each other, and who feel scientific discovery is finding what foods splat the most colorfully on the concrete when thrown out a second story window, it takes a few weeks to recover and become an articulate, semi-normal functioning member of society.

Me need still time to more recover now.

I don't get paid for summer breaks. Let's make that clear first and foremost. Teachers are only paid for the days they work, but have their checks pro-rated so that they aren't living under bridges in the summer and eating ramen noodles every day.

As a teacher, you feel you've earned summer break, while the rest of society feels you don't:

Let's see...

It's said teachers make 5-10 decisions every five minutes. Now, I know most of them have to do with the bathroom and making Solomon-like decisions over homework excuses, but they are still decisions, none-the-less. That means that I've made 87,840 decisions this year, minimum. That of course, is on top of teaching, dealing with good parents, bad parents, kid horrible and triumphant back stories, kid failures, and kid successes that make you both question and celebrate the very humanity that we are all a part of. Plus, google 'teachers suck' and find 3.8 million hits. Type "teachers are awesome!"and you’ll get 2 hits, both written by lonely teachers. No stress here.

All of this decision-making may be why I often stare blankly into the fridge late in the evening. My wife will ask me what I'm getting and I suddenly break down crying, "I just can't decide anymore!"

I know, a little too much information.

That's when she closes the refrigerator, opens the cabinet, and pours me a glass of the hard stuff. Yep, herbal tea is helps sooth, calm, delicious, and prevents one from becoming a raging alcoholic.

Smart woman, my wife.

So, let's just say I don't have any summer vacation guilt, or an herbal tea problem, as far as I know.

So if you're going to survive this craziness that is the last few days, remember the following:

Your control of the classroom is now hanging by a string. Live with it:

First, you know, the students know, and the parents know that there is nothing left to do. It's just killing time from here on out. This may be the only time of year when you ask a student to do something and when they chirp back like they always do with a, "Why?" you really have no legitimate reason. From what I've seen lately, the answer is usually, "Because this video is interesting," or "Because kickball is fun and exercise is good for you." It's time to throw away the lesson plans and just enjoy the circus or your head will explode.

There are more hormones flowing than at a NFL weight-lifting session (but these are legal):

Be careful. You may actually need to wipe yourself down with a towel after walking through the hallways because you're swimming in a sea of teen and pre-teen hormones that rage like a hurricane on the coast, only it's slightly more damp. See the grabbing over there? See the hugging over here? Carry a pry bar to pull the kids apart, love is in the air. Remember, teenage and pre-teenage love is natural. It's just not legal.

It's graduation time!

The kids in the high schools are getting their graduation gifts, which tend to be automobiles that you, as a teacher, could never afford. Remember, don't be bitter. However, it helps by making a slow leak in the student's tires for emotional fulfillment in these situations. You can't be too smug with a flat tire on your new Cobra.

Sing:

Hey, in three days, I'm gonna be singing "No more teachers, no more books!" with the kids as we run giddily out of the building. Just admit it, it's a catchy tune.

I didn't expect to see you here:

An added bonus is that we all get to look forward to the uncomfortable feeling as student and teacher meet accidentally in various stores and amusement areas over the summer. Discomfort you can actually cut with a knife!

Yep, as a teacher life is good if you can just survive the next few days.

I just have to make sure I clean my school towel before I hit the beach.

The Modern Man and Boring Sports Sorts Part II

I know that you my loyal reader, hang on every word. I mean this literally, as someone hung (hanged just never seems correct to me) themselves after reading this this blog just the other week. So here is the link to PART I, just in case you missed it. You also might want to click here for a stunning example of free speech at our nation's capitol.

2) The Pitching Change

One of the reason's we were raised on AL baseball (which allowed us to hate the Yankees) is that there are fewer pitching changes. However, just last night, the Yankees changed their pitcher 3 times in 4 batter. Donald Trump doesn't change wives that often.

Now, the pitchers get warm-up time in the pen and then more pitches on the mound. There are about 10 minutes of commercials and I swear that they hire people to wake the crowd up from their warm-up induced beer stupor at the games.

The following is a completely true falsification of a conversation with my wife who came down to say high during a baseball game, but there was another pitching change:

Wife: What are you watching?
Me: I can't remember.
Wife: Can you clean the garage.
Me: Sure. I can't think of a reason why not.

How wrong is that? This is dangerous stuff I'm talking about man.


Solution: Let's go with softball on this. Three pitches for warm up and PLAY BALL! If you can do that, your team can drink on the field. We'll call this the David Well's rule.

3) The free throw

I know, you get excited when your team gets fouled, but it completely halts to flow of the game. It also gives them an excuse to do a TV time-out. Plus, they always do a close-up face shot of the guy shooting, and quite honestly, I don't need to see the sweat, zits, and phlegm on Chris Kaman in HD. Really, I don't.

Solution:

How about playing an ancient guessing game of skill and luck, using the cheerleaders and the dancers? We could call it:

"Thong, briefs, or nothing!"

The fouled guesses the correct underwear type of a random cheerleader/dancer pulled from the group, your team gets 2 points and the ball out. If you get it wrong, you just get the ball out. You could throw in guessing the color in the second half. Not only would it be more entertaining, but it would be a huge boost to the ratings.

4) Golf

John: "Bob, we're waiting for Sergio Garcia to hit the ball. We'll be back in five minutes."
Bob: "Thanks John! Tiger is lining up his put, we'll be back in ten minutes."
Jim: "Tigers last shot reminded me of a similar shot made by Johnny Miller in the 1972 Hooter's Invitational. However, that shot was interesting because the ball got lodged in the bellybutton of an overweight ex- gymnast and Johnny made his next shot standing on a lawn chair, while smoking a Camel, drinking a Crown Royal and dog-gone it, put it two feet from the hole. He popped that sucker right out of that enormously fat navel with a seven wood, I believe."
Bob: "Really Jim? That's amazing!"
Jim: "No Bob. I'm just so bored. So bored."

Solution: The Flake and on the Lake Invitational
Each golfer is given a set of clubs randomly put together from garage sales and Goodwill sets. There could be real wood-woods. There could be left handed clubs. There could be clubs so old that they are endorsed by golfers who are actually dead. Plus, they will be forced to use only balls that have been sold by a kid who found them in the lake.
Plus: Two hour time limit. Sorry, John Daly. running will be required.

Solution 2: NASCAR GOLF: Players must drink one beer at everyone other hole. Betting is mandatory. Smoking prefered. Swearing is required. Hey, John Daly needs a chance, too.

So there you go. Let's take the BORING out of sports! Or else, people will only Tivo sports from now on. With Tivo, I can watch an entire football game in one hour. However, that does mean I'm free to clean the garage. Hmm. I wonder if this Paint Ball World Championship is boring?

Oh my gosh, yes. I may have some ideas to help...

The Modern Man and Boring Sports Sorts

As a modern man, you believe sports were invented a few thousand years ago when the caveman walked with the dinosaurs. Sports were a great invention because they allowed men to interact and talk to each other in socially acceptable ways and stop whacking each other over the head with clubs. Can you imagine a conversation with a man now days without sports?

“How are you doing John?”
“Great! How about you?"
"Fine!"

Now three hours of uncomfortable silence as they watch the bugs fly by.

In fact, some believe sports was invented by women as an experiment to stop men from all the whacking that was going on (insert your joke here), but it was an experiment that went horribly wrong. It did prevent men from much of the violence they were doing to each other, but caused untold and unexpected emotional damage. After all, sports has caused huge amounts of damage to once loving relationships, torn apart family life, and emotionally scarred thousands of Detroit Lions fans.

Aren't sports great?

Sports are supposed to be entertaining, but I'm finding that in my old age, sports is getting more and more boring. So I've created my top 4 most boring experiences in sports as a warning to all. I'm not sure what the warning is, but I want to make sure that you're warned. I just don't know why.

1) The television time-out, injury time-outs, and time-outs in general.

If there is one aspect of sports that can kill an emotional high quicker than a meeting with your boss, it's the TV time-out. This has to be a reason I'm getting less interested in football and basketball and more interested in interacting with my family. Here's the actual play by play from an actual, fictional, game:

Football:
"Welcome back from the commercial break! Here's the kick off. (Five seconds of action). He's taken down at the 22. We'll be right back after these 30 commercials!"

Problem: Football has become:

kickoff-commercial-three and out, punt-commercial-injury-commercial.

Solution: Since football players need the money, we can still have commercials, but during the action by using a simple microphone.

Mike the QB: "Five! Thirty-two! Drink! Budweiser! Budweiser! King! Of! Beers! Hike!"

Mike the LB: "I'm going to rip out your AFLACing lungs, Jake Plummer!"

Basketball and time-outs:

"Whoa! You just missed it during the commercial break. What a great play! He jumped in the air and called time out! We'll be back in 20 minutes with the next five seconds of the game, when another exciting time-out will be called."


Solution: Seriously. How many time-outs do they get on top of scheduled time-outs? The last two minutes of any game takes at least 45 minutes!

New rule. Twenty second time-outs only, last five minutes. You get one.

Or at least make the breaks interesting:

"After this commercial break, we will have the results of Kobe Bryant's paternity test!"

Otherwise, I don't have time for this.

Hockey: one time out.
Soccer: None.

Part II: The Pitching change, coming soon....