Saturday March 31, 2007

It all began quite innocuously.  We were celebrating the last poetry class before Spring Break with the traditional Kickaboo-Joy-Juice-brownies and silly games about rhyme and meter, when I made a potentially lethal suggestion.  “Let’s go take some pictures outside,” I said, looking out the window at the sun we hadn’t seen in so long.  Had I stopped to think even briefly about Taelyr’s beginning-of-class stunt, I might have hesitated to unleash him and his cohorts-in-adventure on the great outdoors.  You see, he’d entered the classroom minutes before with his typical flair and verve, climbed onto a desk, and done this (earning an 8.3 from the Russian judge for style and lift)…

He landed with all the grace of a wingless bird bearing a large anvil, causing poor Kristoff to stumble into a desk with a look of horror mixed with pain on his face.  But no, I didn’t remember that event when I made my suggestion that we adjourn to the mud-pit outside BFA’s Janz building for some class photos.  If I had remembered it, I may not have been surprised by sights like these:

Taelyr was actually in midair and flipping in the above picture when he finally thought to ask Austin, “Uh, what are we doing??”

Sadly, Taelyr isn’t the only member of the class who aspires to a broken back and insurance depletion.  Collin tried his hand at a two-part stunt that went something like this:

Step 1 – Launch yourself off Taelyr’s back like a rabid toad leaping from a pond.

Step 2 – Land on poor, longsuffering Austin with your body frozen in the exact position of those plastic soldiers in parachutes I used to play with as a child.

If anyone had told me two months ago, before I started teaching poetry, that I’d be wrangling amateur stuntmen rather than grading saccharine poetry, I would have laughed.  Writers, after all, are pacifists who prefer the lemon-oil scent of mahogany desks to the slightly less enticing smell of adrenaline-saturated sweat!  Hmm…  Apparently not true when it comes to this particular stable of writers!

The stuntmen-slash-lotharios then devised a more ambitious challenge:  a three man pyramid.  It began, as all pyramids since ancient Egypt have begun, with a lot of grunting and lifting and staggering.

Collin’s head was finally put to good use as it played a major “supporting role” in the procedure.  It’s right about at this point (below) that someone asked, “Did anyone step in dog pooh?  ’cause I’m smelling something really bad!”

Poor Kristoff apparently suffered the worst of it, as his face in the following photo attests.  He started whining about pain and looking like he was about to burst into tears, which had the unfortunate effect of making his “friends” laugh all the harder.

It ended as all good things must end (except the real Egyptian pyramids)–in disaster…accompanied by some writhing and very un-he-man-ly moaning.  Anyone else wonder where Taelyr’s other leg is??

We eventually decided that it might be wiser to limit our activities to more traditional open-air adventures like wheelbarrow races.  Note how far back Laurel and Collin are lagging!

I’ll end with Merritt’s equally ill-conceived idea.  He figured being launched into the air by two cohorts, making a full turn in flight, then landing on Austin would be a good way to spend the last minutes of his life.  So he climbed on Collin and Taelyr while I made a mental inventory of the valuable possessions I’d be stripped of after the poets’ parents sued me for inaction in the face of grave danger.  (I maintain that taking pictures to immortalize perilous exercises constitutes “action,” thank you very much!)  Ready…set….

LAUNCH!!!  He turned around in midair and made a safe landing on the shattered remnants of vertebrae in Austin’s back.
 

At that point, I decid
ed that it was time to drag my rambunctious poets out of harm’s way and back to the safety of a classroom where their only reprehensible behavior is generally limited to contrived rhyme (ie. “My love is like a dove”) and A.D.D excesses!

Special thoughts go out to Bethany and Rebekah who were sadly missing on our last day of school!

Have I mentioned how much I love this little class of inspiring wordsmiths?  I give them a hard time and occasionally have to resort to my Aunt Michele voice to keep them in check, but way down deep, below the teacher-slash-tyrant, lies a giggling woman who is oh-so-blessed by the gift of knowing them!