Jennifer

So, you wanted tales from college. This is a tale from middle school. 

First of all, you have to know that I am apparently known for my “Um”s. Students tally them. Two years ago I let on that I knew, and that didn’t improve the situation, so I’ve gone back to pretending that I have no idea why a pair of kids might be listening intently while simultaneously, apparently totally distracted by a tally sheet between them with, um, 40 – 80 tally marks on it. 

Earlier this week I noticed the students were oddly distracted in a different way. Something to do with their hands. Watching each other, not me. Suddenly I remembered “zap” – a student writes a time on the back of someone else’s hand, and a name on the inside. If the zapped student looks at the name before the time indicated, he/she has to … I didn’t know what. I thought maybe kiss the person, or ask them out, or something. Are you-all familiar with this game? 

Sure enough, that’s what they were playing. I couldn’t really find out what the rules are, because they know they shouldn’t be doing it. (Although they’ll claim it’s fine to play, they’ll lie about how it works.) Some students will challenge your authority to disallow it at school. But I did a pretty good job, I thought, both telling other teachers to be on the lookout for it, and telling the students they had to stop and there had to be no consequences to the zapped students for quitting NOW. 

One colleague decided to play it cool. She found out from older students (who play less innocent games) that if you look at the name before the indicated time, you have to ask the person out and kiss them. (Duh.) Then, in the next class, she got various students to show her their hands without letting on she knew about the game. I think she may have inflicted permanent psychological damage, because apparently she started laughing so hard she couldn’t teach when she saw the principal’s name and her own name – but those poor kids couldn’t check why she was laughing because their times weren’t up.