In Which Miss Jill Is Smarter Than a Fifth Grader

Times I was sick when I was a secretary: 0
Times I have been sick as a teacher: Constant

Seriously, something has been jammed up my sinus cavity since the start of March. If you have any ideas on how to combat this issues, please share (SAHMs, that's you).

Anyway, that is not the subject of this post. Like his forefathers in the Old Country, my landlady's eleven-year-old son, Bosnian Bookie, has a bit of a gambling problem.

Bosnian Bookie: You know, Julius Caesar was murdered by his son, Brutus.
Miss Jill: Ummm... I'm pretty sure that Brutus was not his son.
Bosnian Bookie: Oh yeah, I'll bet you a Papa John's. Go look it up.
Miss Jill: Deal

Next Day
Bosnian Bookie: I bet you a Papa John's that you can't tell me what song this is.
Plays Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
Miss Jill: Do you not realize what generation I come from?

As We Are Eating The Ill-Gotten Pizzas...
We start to play a game in which we have to go through the alphabet naming a country for each letter. I love this game. We get to O.
Bosnian Bookie: Olan.
Miss Jill: That is not a country.
Bosnian Bookie: Yes, it is in Africa.
Miss Jill: No
Bosnian Bookie: I'll bet you $5
Hand shake

A few minutes later my landlady whispered to me to make a bet involving her favorite restaurant.
Miss Jill: I bet that I can name the fifty states faster than you (I can do this in under 30 seconds)
Bosnian Bookie: Deal. Washington....... California..... Texas......
Landlady: It will take you three allowances to pay for this. Next time you had better bet your Wii.
Bosnian Bookie: Ummmmm... Do you want to do a bet about science or sports? I will bet my television and my Wii for your laptop.
And that is where I had to draw the line.

In Which the 10th Graders Play the Roles of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

A few months ago, I was calmly violating copyright laws, when my co-worker rushed in and attempted to execute a hostile takeover of the copy machine. I stood my ground and said, "Aren't you supposed to be teaching a class right now?" He shrugged his shoulders so I continued with, "Who is watching your class?" With a mischievous grin, he silently pointed to the heavens.

Jr. Miss Bronx 1975: The Clash of the Civilizations

From time to time, my students regale us with tales of teachers past. The track record/rap sheet of one of them, let’s call her Jr. Miss Bronx 1975, includes:

• Keeping money that students collected for charity.
• Extracting a monetary fine each time a student used a slang word.
• Forcing students to give her birthday gifts.
• Assigning students in one class to bring in food for her birthday party, and then throwing the party, with the food, in a different class.
• Coming to school without makeup one day and scaring everyone (this event is still discussed regularly).

Needless to say, she did not enjoy a long and lucrative career with the Turkish school. On Thursday, while I was teaching the eleventh graders, I heard a knock on the door. I answered it, and found myself face to face with a woman sporting a bouffant wig and arachnid fake eyelashes. This look works a little better on the 3 train above 96th (or the JFK Delta counter), than at our school. With hand extended, she said, “Hi, I’m Jr. Miss Bronx 1975. I’m sure you heard lots about me, all of it good.” Like a mother bear, I quickly scanned the room and noted the stark contrast between vibrant headscarves and the ashen skin of petrified faces. I stammered, “Yeah, girl. I’ve heard great things about you.” And then she was gone.

I closed the door and the room filled with nervous laughter and shouts of, “Your grade is F! Your grade is F!” Apparently that was one of her catch phrases.

At lunch, the visit was the topic du jour. The secretary asked, "Do you know why Jr. Miss Bronx 1975 came today?"
I responded hopefully, "To visit the kids?"
"No," she replied with a giggle. "She is selling underwear and wanted to show some samples. She was hoping that we would want to organize a lingerie party."

Then she pulled out a catalogue featuring full-figured lovelies in girdles. As I am currently the most scantily clad person on our staff (as a practicing Mormon, if you get my drift), I was pretty sure that the party would be a bust.

In Which Miss Jill Loses A Wrestling Match With A Record Player

I have to preface this entry with the disclaimer that I wrote these paragraphs for my writing class and there are some major factual errors. If you ask me to write about a scar, you are forcing me to embellish, because I am not athletic and have no scars. Most of it happened, but not in the same night. Furthermore, all of my earliest memories involve high school basketball games (my baby blanket had basketballs and the head of a brave Indian warrior), so if there was a game, we were probably there.

While my father was bravely leading the Preston Indians to victory against rural Idaho’s basketball elite, my twenty-five-year old mother spent yet another night of solitude with two baby girls. My placid little sister languidly nibbled on a toy as I slithered around the apartment in a frenetic trance, leaving a path of unparalleled destruction in my wake. Unfortunately for me, we both revealed our dominant character traits very early in life.

Shortly after I attempted to recreate the Nazca lines on the living room floor with a pilfered crayon, my crime spree violently ended as my colossal forehead lost a dual with a record player. As blood poured from my contorted face, I like to believe that I felt a pang of remorse as I faced immortality in one of the most iniquitous moments of my young life. Amid the din of my banshee wails, my mother looked frantically for the doctor’s phone number. My sister continued chewing, unfazed. In rural Idaho of the early 1980’s, doctors were in short supply and a future arsonist was the closest option.

Fortuitously, he exhibited the same finesse in restructuring my forehead that he employed in torching his home for the insurance money, because the only evidence that remains of my indiscretion is a small, nearly invisible scar.

In Which Miss Jill Learns That You Are Only Cheating Yourself, Part 2

Disclaimer: I don't know of any high school students who read this blog, so I think that it is safe to divulge this information.

People like to dis teachers for spending a fourth of the year in a Caribbean cabana with a daiquiri in one hand and a chick lit novel in the other, but they clearly don't understand the trials that we face in the trenches on a daily basis. While most New York City teachers have to worry about getting trapped in the crossfire of a shootout or poked in the leg with an A.I.D.s needle, at my school our Waterloo is a cheating epidemic. This happens at most schools, but as we do not face most of the normal issues caused by angst ridden adolescents, we have nothing better to do than eradicating this plague.

My beloved co-worker, "lilsexygina," asked the kids about their cheating history and they admitted to:

* Making an innocuous looking poster with all of the answers on it and hanging it on the classroom wall. This is a stroke of genius previously seen only in Agatha Christie novels. Along a similar vein, during a different test, they hung the questions on the front of the teacher's desk.

* Writing the answers in invisible pen that could only be seen with a special light.

Some that I remember from high school:

* The school constantly had fund raisers in which students sold candy bars for their clubs and teams. Thus, everyone incessantly had candy bars on their desks. A girl in my class purchased a candy bar, ate it, and put the answers to a test inside the wrapper and puffed it up.

* I told this story a while ago, but I have new readers, so I will repeat. Our "A.P." U.S. History teacher gave us a million random tests at the end of the year and he left them all on the table in the classroom. My classmates stole the tests and filled out scantron forms with the answers on them. Unfortunately, a widely circulated answer key rewarded the young scholars with a 59%.

Lilsexygina asked her Facebook friends the craziest ways that they had cheated and here are a few of the responses:

* "this takes a lil work but......gently rip of a the label off a 20 oz. soda...scan it....delete the nutritional info...add in formulas....color print out label...glue back to bottle....pretty simple....lol..."

* "i had a math final where i had my friend come into my school, i went to go to the bathroom, handed him an extra copy of the test, he did it and texted me the answers lol" Note from the editor: This is a devoted friend

* "Small 8 size font on tiny paper"

* "[a] classic is taping the cheat sheet to the bottom of the shoe of the person in front of u lmaoo, everyone has to be in on it tho."

I know that most of you are Mormons, so if you have a funny cheating story to share, just say that a random "third party" committed the offense.

In Which Carnys Follow in Obama's Footsteps and Win the Noble Peace Prize

I remember standing on the shore of Lake Managua and thinking, "This place is the absolute end of the Earth." Conversely, I often feel like New York City is the very center. It's diversity is the only thing standing between me and a one-way ticket to South America. A beautiful thing is that you often get to witness people with different backgrounds come together for a common purpose-futile vulgar screaming at subway irregularities, engaging in combat against post office employees, dissing on the landlord.

One of my best examples of this was Halloween of last year when the nineteen-year-old model dressed up as a Greek goddess. The men of the West Village showed unanimous approbation, as she provoked a frenzy of wandering eyes. Several people thought that she was a celebrity and started frantically paparazzi-ing her. My friend and I trailed behind (I was contemplating my less sexy costume as an FLDS polygamist) and as we observed, a universal truth was illuminated-men of every background appreciate a 6 foot tall, scantily clad, nineteen-year old. I never thought that anyone could match that kind of universal appeal, until I spent a few hours in the park today.

Close to my bench, a man tied a tightrope to two trees and blasted music evocative of a 1970's game show. If you look carefully, you can see him performing in the background.



He was an instant hit-Arabs, Jews, Indians, Euros, you name it-everyone wanted a piece of that rope. First, a Rasta family rode by on bikes and the dad asked his daughter if she wanted to try. She responded with an enthusiastic yelp, but she got punked, because her dad continued riding.

Next, an Orthodox Jewish girl gave it a try-



As I am no Talmudic scholar, I have no idea if she is supposed to be holding hands with a hippy.

However, the most enthusiastic carny in training was this Asian guy with shades:



He was so into it that I saw him get the hippy's number and they parted with an embrace (it wasn't a Ryan Seacrest moment though, the hippy had a female counterpart who he would periodically make out with to celebrate a successful crossing).

I think that after this discovery, I have no choice but to ask Hillary Clinton to put a tightrope over the Kashmir.

In Which Miss Jill Unwittingly Becomes The Arts and Crafts Teacher

The last week of the quarter can be a stressful time for students who have spent the semester yelling irrelevant comments at periodic intervals during each class. As Judgement Day looms sinisterly, they begin stalking the hapless teacher, begging for extra credit. In my case, saying yes is an invitation to receive dozens of plagiarized essays that have been put through google translator, so I generally decline. However, I received some unsolicited works of art this semester. On the last day of school before spring break, I was surprised by these creative masterpieces:

A Glitter Shirt



Parts Of The Body Of a Squid With Coffee Spilled On It

In Which Miss Jill Shares Hard Earned Economic Advice Part IV

Summer, 2001ish (Actually I have no idea when this happened, I just picked a random year)

When I was a college student, I always went home to work during the summer. As soon as I got home that year, my little brother, Ty, started inviting me to do things.

Ty: Don't you want to go and see that new movie?
Miss Jill: Sure, but I don't have any money.
Ty: No problem, it's on me.

Blockbuster, McDonalds, all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet, you name it, we did it. And my unemployed teenage brother financed everything. The only strange thing was that everywhere we went, we paid in change (even in sit-down restaurants). It was the greatest summer of my life. I never stopped to ponder the origins of his wealth.

My mom got suspicious and started to ask one too many questions. She finally exposed that every time she gave him lunch money the previous school year, he saved it in a plastic bag and watched it multiply. To this day, no one knows what he ate for lunch that year

On a completely unrelated note, is there anyone else out there who is struggling with this addiction?

Delta Strikes Again...

I guess that I am not the only person who has been victimized by Delta employee's anger issues:

Delta Catfight

I hope that those passengers also got an upgrade!

Teen Girls Beware

My teenage brother, Baby Troy, was working on a packet called "Healthy Relationships" for his health class and he was presented with a scenario involving a girl who wanted to break up with a much older man. My mother looked over his shoulder and realized that Baby Troy had some sage advice for Martina:



Has this ever happened to anyone?

The Ultimate Grudge Match: New York Vs. Chicago, Part 2

I thought that this New York video was hilarious, in spite of the fact that Taco Bell is my favorite restaurant:



Fashion
New York: When spring begins to bloom, New Yorkers shed their ubiquitous black coats and we are treated to a world class fashion show (although in neighborhoods of my price range it is more like spandex midriff halters highlighting muffin tops that Little Debbie would be jealous of-ok that was corny, I admit it).

Chicago: I don’t know where to start with this one. Yesterday we were lucky enough to enjoy 70 degree weather and Chicagoans celebrated the occasion by committing Fashion Jonestown* 2010. Striped polo shirts with plaid shorts, spandex ensnaring beer bellies in a vice-like grip, t-shirts with “clever” messages (How To Keep An Idiot Busy For Hours: See Back of Shirt)- my Midwestern pride suddenly seemed fatally misplaced.

Winner: New York. However, I prefer Chicago because I am suddenly one of the best dressed, instead of a bottom feeder.
* Mass suicide

Economics
New York: Items on the fast food “dollar” menu have random prices like $5.78.
Chicago: My dad, Big Willy, pays for everything and I suddenly can go to sit-down restaurants.

Winner: Clearly, Chicago

And one more Chicago advantage-spending time with my favorite guy, my brother Baby Troy. I had a picture of him making a weird face with a straw in his mouth as my cell phone wallpaper. One of my students saw it and said, “Who is that hot guy?” When I told them that I had a teen baby brother they asked, “Why doesn’t he go to this school?” I replied, “He’s not even Muslim, you can’t marry him anyway.” With a dreamy look in her eyes, a girl whispered, “For someone like him, we can make exceptions.”


Today’s Winner: Chicago