The more I learn about the people in general, the more I realize that I must have completely skipped a fundamental part of prepubescent/pubescent development: namely, the whole thing with girls wanting to impress boys (and vice versa). Seriously, I probably jumped from being a 9 year old to a 19 year old. Maybe an even bigger skip than that, since a lot of 19 year old girls are still boy-crazed too. 40-something year old women can still be boy-crazed. Modern pop culture has proved that, so definitely an even bigger skip.
Now, I like to impress people. It's a pleasant ego boost to be impressive. But I've never tried to impress people - specifically boys - because I wanted a certain kind of attention. Or at least I don't consciously remember doing it. Which, I also realize, are two completely different things. But I do remember wanting to be the top student, or the best at something, even if it was only being the best at failing, for the pure competitiveness of it.
So this part of my student's social/emotional development is new territory. Today, I caught Student P (the same student who did the step-and-slide note passing technique last Friday - actually she used the same technique this time too, it seems to be a favorite) with the note above. I promptly put it in my pocket when I confiscated it since I wasn't near enough to a trash can, and thus forgot about it. Until I emptied my pockets when I got home after swimming.
Was it entirely non-empathetic of me to laugh my head off when I read the note? No? Good, because it single-handedly made my week.
First, because it's written proof that my students are human too. Second because, well, it's just so ROFL-worthy. No capitalization, no proper end punctuation, and even "ye" is spelled wrong. But apparently, this boy thinks he is hot enough for Student P - who is on the upper end of the "cute & smart" spectrum, no matter how low her behavior can go - to want to hold hands with him during the school's after-school program. Knowing Student P, there's a good chance these two young love birds had a field day in Start.
Golden. Freaking. Comedy.
And perhaps I'm the only one who thinks so. But I'm not one of those teachers who is above laughing at his or her students. No matter how awfully the day has gone, or how many mistakes I've made to make me wonder why I got into this profession, I'm thankful to discover that I can still laugh at these kids. Because underneath their tough veneer of toughness, they are what they are: kids.
Disclaimer: I reread this entry just after I pressed the publish button and realized that it can be taken multiple ways. I don't mean to say that people are not attractive simply because they haven't mastered formally correct sentence structure. I'm laughing at how hormones can make a person totally non-selective; the absolute opposite of how nature intended, I believe, since even an Alaskan salmon has to pass through vicious tests in order to spawn.
And now I realize I'm comparing my student to an Alaskan salmon. The boys in this class are also on the upper half of the "cute & smart" spectrum, and with the exception of maybe one or two, I can totally see them all as half the faces in the "cute couples" page in their high school year book. The boy who wrote the note probably had to rush, since note writing is a clandestine affair, and didn't bother to spell check.
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