Memories

Do you ever have one of those moments where even while you're in it, you realize you'll probably remember it forever? I had one of those yesterday. And, it wasn't a particularly out of the ordinary moment, or even one that I think anyone else would think was funny, but it was just one of those times for me.

I have a student...we'll call him "D." Let me paint a picture for you. D is a 6th grader. He seriously can't be more than 4 ft. tall, and he's gotta be one of the shortest students in the school. He's a little black kid, and I tell you this because he's very fair skinned but has all of these freckles, kind of like Morgan Freeman (only lighter skinned). His voice is this crackly, scratchy sound but still he has that cute little kid sound to his voice. And he's seriously one of the funniest kids I've ever met. He's so easy going and light-hearted, constantly cracking jokes, etc.

So for the last month or so, I have been meeting with his class (4 kids total...very nice) down in the teacher's lounge. In the lounge is a vending machine. I think the top couple of rows are chips and pretzels and things like that. The next couple are candy bars, followed by a couple of rows of gum, poptarts, granola bars, etc. I made the mistake the first day I took them down there to buy a thing of starbursts to share with them, so every day after that, they wanted to know if they could buy stuff out of the machine.

Yesterday, a couple of minutes before the class ended, D proceeds to stand in front of the vending machine and nonchalantly rate his "favorites" out of the machine, first by food type (i.e., candy bars, chips/pretzel type stuff, snack stuff, etc.), then determining his top 4 favorites out of the entire machine (which realistically only has 15 or so different things in it). What made it so funny was how enthusiastic he was in describing his favorites and why they were his favorites. I know that this description probably doesn't make it sound funny, but I was dying. I laughed so hard.

Tomorrow is my last day with D's class. I think I might have D again next semester (which starts on Tuesday), but the rest of them are done. Some of the kids that I've had this semester I think I'm going to miss. Unfortunately, on the whole, I can't say that about most of them. I think in part it is my own fault in not having the right attitude about this job, but I also think it's by virtue of the type of student I have. This job can be very rough sometimes...I just keep hoping it will lead to a teaching job next year. We'll see...