The Ricky Martin Incident

My 10th year of teaching elementary school begins in a few weeks. If I've learned anything over the last decade it's that A) Teachers are really just good actors with a lot of materials and B) Everyone thinks teachers need a lot of materials, which means that everyone gives teachers all their old crap on a regular basis.

Oh, intentions are always true. "Every classroom needs more books!" "With budget cuts, the school could really use this bag of half-used pencils." "This bag of 10 randomly shaped felt pieces can surely be put to use in a classroom with 26 students."

Which is why I recently acquired 4 bags and 3 huge tubs of stuff from various sources, including my mother. Who, for some reason, thought my classroom needs 350 small white paper bags.

The bins came from an ex-teacher who, no doubt, had acquired most of that stuff from other teachers. I always have wonder how many teacher's hands that math worksheet book has passed through, or what district originally issued that atlas to some 4th grade classroom.

Anyways, it took me 4 hours, but I went through everything and either found a home for it on a shelf in my classroom or in the 'free crap' pile that I'll put in the staff room in a few weeks. Right next to a tray half full of cupcakes, no doubt. Teachers' staff rooms are totally the place where junk food goes to die. Cupcakes, brownies, cookies, Christmas candy (in August), Halloween candy (in February)...it's bad.

Anyways. Again.

So one of the items I acquired was a good sized, laminated world map. I decided I actually had a use for it and began to unroll it to hang it in the front.

Now, a lot of random, unexplained things have caught my attention over the past few days. The two paperclips on our stairwell. The fact that I washed large amounts of Kleenex in 3 loads of laundry in a row (it looks like it snowed in my house). The nursing bras I found in my bra drawer (ummm, my kid is almost THREE). The morning my son made me talk only to his stuffed polar bear, not him. But, the randomness that slapped me across the face as I unrolled the map was, by far, the most random randomness.

Attached with old putty on the Caribbean Islands, sandwiched between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, was a 1/2 inch picture of Ricky Martin's face.
It was all I could do to not start singing "She Bangs" at the top of my lungs.

I can only imagine the events leading up to my find. Ricky Martin was hot, what, like 5 or 6 years ago, maybe? I have to assume that some 7th grader was obsessed with him, knew enough geography to know he's from Puerto Rico (and where the island is), was completely bored during her history class one day, peeled putty off of something else, took this picture off the front of her binder, and affixed it to the map. And, for whatever reason, the teacher never noticed it when taking it down and putting it in the 'free crap' pile in the staff room. Probably next to a plate littered with brownie crumbs or half a pizza.

The map? Taped to my whiteboard. The picture? Has a new home in the garbage can. The randomness? Continuing. While playing with his firetruck, my son just informed me that horsies are loud. Clearly the only appropriate response to that was "She bangs, she bangs".