Does that mean he's gay?

Today one of my students, George, decided to run around squealing "Now I'm a girl! I'm a girl!" as if he had just had some dramatic transformation. And so I just let him do it. It wasn't even worth telling him to keep it down.

It was a standardized testing day today, and it's going to continue for the rest of the week. This isn't even the real deal, just a practice. The new wave of thinking seems to be that if you burn a student out before the "real" test, that must be a positive thing. No child is Left Behind in terms of testing. They are all punished equally, so if nothing else, my students liked life a little bit less today.

A few of my students wanted to have a "serious" conversation with me today during their math class, and I obliged. They asked me (and they weren't kidding around...) if a guy looks at another guy up and down (scans), does that make him gay? I was so close to bursting out laughing, but I held it in saying that looking a person of the same sex does not make a person gay. Of course I didn't say the word sex. But they got the general idea of what I was saying, and the girls kept arguing that it does make the person gay. Nevermind the fact that not long before, George had been running around claiming to be a girl and talking in a high-pitched voice. It's really when a guy looks at another guy that they become "gay." Why my students don't keep their thoughts to themselves, I'm not sure.

It's overdue...

So here I am in Okeechobee. And I have stories.

I think someone one labeled my generation as the first generation without last names. When I went to college, I always introduced myself as Mary, just passing by the fact that I actually do have a last name. That the four letters of my first name are actually not my entire identity. I still have no last name.

I always called my teachers Ms. Something and Mr. Whatever, not always caring or trying be polite, but because those were their names. My teacher name should be Miss Lammers. It's not. It's Miss. Miss, I forgot my homework. Miss, can I go to the bathroom. Miss. Miss. Miss! I still only have one name, now I guess it's Miss instead of Mary.

I don't take offense to the lack of last name-ness that prevails. It's nothing personal. The students call everyone Miss, except for those they call Mister. All's fair. I don't make my students (I only have 15 in class) write their last names on their papers either. I guess if I started calling them by first and last name all the time, I would make them call me Miss Lammers. But right now, laziness has prevailed. I call them one name, they call me one name. No one has a last name anymore.

Maybe people outside of Okeechobee (population 5,000) have last names. I'm not really sure. The closest town of any substance is a good 45 minutes from here, and that's if you speed. If you go the speed limit, don't bother. With all the traffic and the honking, you might as well stay home, and be content to just dream about the days when Miss was just a precursor to the real name, not the name in and of itself.