Thursday

I visited with Tom and Mike in the staff room until 8 this morning. By the time I rolled around to my room, several students were standing outside my door eager to get in. How nice that is!

****

A bit of humor from first block.

Kaine asked me if I had seen a news piece on the ‘werewolf boy.’

I knew who he was talking about since I had seen several shows on the boy (and his brother) who have a rare skin condition where their hair gross wildly all over their bodies, giving them the look of werewolves.

“Yeah, I’ve seen those brothers. I believe they work for a circus,” I said. “But I’m not sure of the disease they have.”

“Oh,” Kaine said, “it’s called werewolves’ disease.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, hoping to get him fired up.

Then his buddy, Zach, beat me to the punch. “It’s not called werewolves disease. I’ve seen that show too.”

“No. It is called werewolves’ disease.”

“Yeah,” Zach added with a smirk, “that’s the idiot’s name for the disease.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well, it should be called werewolves’ disease,” Kaine concluded.

*****

One of my former students, Ben, has a penchant for 80’s and 90’s rock. So we can always strike up a conversation. Usually, he swings in to ask me what I think of a CD he is thinking about buying (I think he is one of the rare students who still buys CDs as opposed to just getting them off itunes – but then you lose out on all the cool artwork and stuff that goes with an actual CD).

During my prep, I was in the middle of grading an essay when I damned near jumped out of my chair from Ben and his friend, Chris, charging into my room and asking, “Mr. Reynolds, which album should I buy . . . Dirt, Piece of Mind, or Room on Fire?”

“What?” I said, my mind still back in the paper.

“Dirt, Piece of Mind, or Room on Fire?” Ben asked.

Switching gears I answered, “Well, you gotta go with Dirt. It’s one of the seminal grunge albums of the ‘90’s. I mean Alice in Chains made a classic album. You have “Angry Chair,” “Rooster,” “Down in a Hole,” and “Them Bones.””

“Yeah,” Chris added, plopping himself on top of one of my chairs.

“See,” Ben said. “I won. I knew he’d pick that one.”

“Well, Piece of Mind is okay, but it’s got a couple clunkers on it like “Quest for Fire” and that song based on Dune. It's not Maiden's best album.”

Then we launched into a brief discussion of what Alice in Chains’ album is better: Dirt or its predecessor, Facelift.

Satisfied, Ben and Chris headed back into the hallway with their mp3 players in hand.

I went back to the essay.