The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, aka Samuel “lazy-ass” Clemens)

This is part of Luker and Sorcia’s “Back to School Special” month of titles.  If you’d like us to rip a new hole in something particularly awful you recall from school-days of yore, put it on our Suggestions Page or in the comments!  Also, don’t forget to vote on Luker’s last name! 

Fuck Hinn – a story of racism and cross-dressing written in elitist vernacular, with under-developed themes of homoeroticism. 

Punch him the fuck out, Jim.

By Sorcia MacNasty

Oh, this book.  I don’t know what god-awful (and probably male) powers in the universe got together and decided to mind-rape the fuck out of a generation, but I had to read this goddamn thing 4 times before I was 22.  That’s 4 times too many, loyal readers.  If you didn’t have to read it, you’re probably Canadian/European, home-schooled, well-adjusted or some combination of those things.  I personally believe that it’s wide-spread in American schools simply because crotchety old department heads of public school English departments get their jollies from allowing the N-word back into the classroom in an official capacity.  You stay KKKlassy, public schools. 

Spoiler Alert for any lucky soul who has escape this nonsense!  Ok, we get Huck Finn, a filthy youth clearly in the pay of Samuel Clemens, since he opens the story with a foreal plug for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  Thanks for the lesson in marketing, ya douche.  Then he SUMS UP Tom Sawyer for us.  God.  Really?!  Long story short, Huckleberry has been adopted by a kindly widow, inherited a pile of gold stolen from robbers and is chafing under the Widow’s well-meaning efforts to turn him into less of a filthy urchin than he is.  Naturally, he resents this.  I guess we’re suppose to side with him or laugh at him (Twain goes out of his ever-loving way to make Huck appear as superstitious and ignorant as humanly possible, because I guess under-educated abused children of alcoholics are hilarious?) but it’s hard when you’re distracted by the N-word being thrown around like pinata candy. 

Anyhow, he gets kidnapped by his dad, fakes his own death and hooks up with Jim, a runaway slave, whereupon they raft down the Mississippi River together and have ridiculous “adventures.”  Wocka-wocka — Huck dresses like a girl!  (Just like Tom did in Tom Sawyer — what the good hell, Twain?  You need to tell us something?)  These “adventures” allow Twain the opportunity to heartlessly mock all walks and forms of Southerners, good and bad alike, including cruel lampoons that make fun of poems written for DEAD CHILDREN.  Nice.  Defenders of Twain say that he is deliberately trying to exploit the failures of Reconstruction, which is fine, except that the lazy bastard never bothers to suggest how to actually correct or escape the situation.  He just criticizes the shit out of everything and we’re all supposed to be “Har-dee-har-har!”  He was like a 19th-century Glen Beck, and just as humorous.  

Keep in mind that this whole thing was written by a financially-inept tool who fame-whored his way back into good credit-standing, even lecturing while his daughter died of fucking meningitis while visiting her childhood home — the one her dad thoughtfully lost to outstanding debt.  Where’s the mockery of dead kids now, Clemens? 

There is one good character and one good moment in this book.  Jim, the runaway slave, is both smarter and kinder than any other character, and also provides the few moments of genuine humor (i.e. not Minstrel Show in quality), usually when he’s fucking with Huck.  He’s also the only one on the raft who has a good reason for running away, since he’s a SLAVE.  The one good moment is when Huck finally (and I do mean FINALLY, it only takes the little sonofabitch 31 chapters to get there) decides to NOT turn Jim into the authorities despite the law-breaking involved in harboring a runaway slave.  He doesn’t actually decide that slavery is wrong, of course, but he does realize:  “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” – hell being better than turning over your best pal to be lynched (Twain 202).  And that’s a pretty profound moment.  If the book ended right there, we’d be gang-busters. 

Unfortunately, what follows gets off-the-chain ludicrous instead.  From Chapter 34 to the end, mother-fucking Tom Sawyer shows back up (there is even MORE mistaken identity…  Seriously, did Twain have any other goddamn tricks in his bag from creative writing class?!)  and the reader is treated to a slap-stick account of the two boys torturing the good-shit out of poor Jim, who is locked in a cabin, awaiting punishment for his running away.  What the Fuck, Huck?  You’d rather go to hell than turn in your pal, but Tom shows up and you’re totally cool with putting rats and snakes in his cabin?! 

There is all kinds of stupid little boy pranking throughout the last ten chapters, leaving any sensible reader exasperated, confused and annoyed.  How do they get away with still teaching this shit in schools?  Twain is happy to allow the boys to complete revert to a level of immaturity that is baffling, and, in the light of Huck’s newfound humanity, depressingly pathetic.  It’s impossible to draw a decent lesson or moral, because Tom KNOWS that Jim has been freed all along and is still happy to devise tortures for the man while he waits, psychologically tormented by the knowledge he might be branded or even lynched for running away.  The only good part is that Tom does, in fact, get shot.  Unfortunately, he lives. 

In sum:  Mark Twain just made you sit through 30 chapters of excrutiatingly boring 19th-century hijinks, and when he finally bequeaths a decent moral, he reverts right back to even more preposterous hijinks.  For God’s sake, WHY?!  The only explanation I can come up with is that he was a complete and utter LAZY ASS.  Twain at his desk:  “Oh, man, my brain is tired from writing a few compelling and moralistic sentences.  Better get back to the cartoon bullshit.  Immortalized literature — here I come!  BWAHAHAHAHA!”  And then I picture him tossing back his shaggy head in maniacal laughter before inviting Tesla over to talk about coils. 

SO, what is billed as a poignant and funny bildungsroman is in fact a pack of lies.  There is no “coming of age” when the hero reverts back to childhood, jackass.  Funny?  I guess, if you completely hate yourself.  Poignant?  Sure, for misanthropic recluses.  Whatever good parts of this book that were initially celebrated were first noticed by predominantly white male critics who waxed philosophic about Twain’s message about boyhood and freedom.  Fine.  I get that times change regarding values and ideals, especially in literary trends.  But why on earth are we still shoving this particular, and very convoluted message down teenage throats?  Idiots will tell you:  Oh, it’s such a good story about Racism/Reconstruction/Vernacular language/Coming of Age. 

I beg to fucking differ.  You want a good book about racism?  Read Frederick Douglas or Ralph Ellison.  You want a good book on the Reconstruction?  Read Jubilee by Margaret Walker.  Want to read dialect and high-quality dialogue?  Read anything by Kate Chopin.  Need an honest coming-of-age story?  Good fucking christ — take your pick!  And really, I am pretty sick of reading about racism and the Reconstruction from any Old, Dead, WHITE guy.  There are too many alternatives, and we are doing students and the literary canon a disservice by still including this tripe. 

Some particularly absurd lines: 

–  “I don’t take no stock in dead people.” (33) 

You and everyone whose seen The Sixth Sense, Huck honey.  Seriously, though, Huck is so fucking superstitious that this line is just patently dumb.  It’s Twain’s sad attempt to show how silly the Bible seems to young people — ooooh, what a radical idea, Twain!  Tell us more about the malaise of teenagery and their distaste for adults being boring.  Blah. 

–  “Git up and hump yourself, Jim!  There ain’t a minute to lose!”  (81) 

Har.  This is funny because I’m a twelve-year old. 

–  “I seen it warn’t no use wasting words — you can’t learn a nigger to argue.  So I quit.”  (95) 

Wow, Twain, thanks for the lesson in hateful racial assumptions. 

– “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”  (216)

Oh, the irony.  He says this about two assholes who get tarred/feathered and right before he viciously goes along with Tom’s plan to make Jim’s imprisoned life a complete hellish misery. 

Huck and Mark Twain TRIED to be good.  They really did, and they even were, for a little space in a misguided time.  But it’s just like Homer Simpson said, “Son, you tried your hardest and you failed.  The lesson here is, never try.”

The Thrill is Gone

Ok, young punk-ass hood rat Generation Zero, listen up.  Just because you all only remember poor old Michael Jackson as the crazy white guy with daddy issues does not mean you don’t need to mourn the bad ass who gave us this:

Got it?  Now quit making ill-timed, bad-taste pedophile jokes and get to learnin’ those Thriller steps.  And just remember: You might not be as weird as Mikey ended up, but you aren’t one shred as talented, either.  And nothing your shitty generation has produced musically* will ever be remembered the way MJ will.    

 

*  In other words, I am specifically addressing the fucktards who helped make Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears and [all] boy bands famous.  Thanks for nothing, you tools.  You get to judge my generation’s icon as soon as the rest of us get to start judging you for the hypocrtical, v-card ring-wearing bunch of musically incompetent degenerates that you all turned out to be.

Biz Markie and Inevitable Drunken Rape

Alright, folks.  Here’s the deal.  I just got back from the Big Apple, and I am going to presage this video by vaunting my newly found expertise:

I drink.  A lot.  And then sing.  And then need a cab.  And then sing some more. 

That being said, let’s look at the uh, more bizarre fucking message of the video:  Let a Stranger Take You Home.  WHATHEFUCK, Heineken?!  Clearly, brewing beer does not put you in the position to know what it’s like to be a young drunken girl, strange and counter-intuitive as that might seem.  I know, I know.  Drunk driving is kinda bad… But so is being tits-down tipsy at a bar and being haunted only by the thought, “Well, the beer men said I can just let a stranger take me home…. Ooh!  There’s one!” 

And no, I don’t believe they’re referring to these Strangers, Perfect though they might be… 

Back to Video #1, Exhibit C (for Clusterfuck).  That cabbie?  He’s about as ethnic as pledge day at Auburn University, kid.  Just sayin’.  Also, I have a hard time finding a cabbie that will let me smoke a cigarette in his precious, shit-reeking auto, much less one who is going to cheefully jam with me to ancient rap stylings.  Finally, who ARE those kids?!  18-year-old hipsters are now big fans of Biz Markie?!  Where the fuck all have I been?  Oh, nevermind.  I’ve been here.   

Anyway.  Trip to NYC was divine.  I made a spectacular fool of myself at Karaoke, but at least I did it with friends.  I also captured pictures of the sites: a naked man in a deli, an accordian player wearing a Boba Fett helmet, the menu from a German place honestly named “Lederhosen” that featured “Delicious German Pickle” as a real item.  And yes, while there was certainly drinking, at least I didn’t lay down in public this time.  I don’t think… 

But then, who knows?!

Conservatism Can Be Hilarious!

If you’re at all interested in sociology and modern politics, check out Total Drek.  One of my favorite features of this blog is the rip-roaring outrageous examinations it conducts of Conservapedia.  Really, there is almost nothing more simultaneously funny and heart-breaking as these terribly written, barely researched articles that so single-mindedly serve close-minded fuck-wittage that it’s hard to believe it’s not a joke website.  Take, for example, the article on “Feminism,” where the characteristics of this terrible harpy creature are listed as follows (from least offensive to the Moral Majority to the most?  Who knows…):

• believe that there are no inherent differences between men and women and that much inequality is the result of men oppressing women^[4]
• oppose chivalry and even feign insult at harmless displays of it
• view traditional marriage as unacceptably patriarchal
• shirk traditional gender activities, like baking^[5]
• support affirmative action for women
• detest women who are happy in traditional roles, such as housewife,^[6] and especially dislike those who defend such roles
• prefer that women wear pants rather than dresses, presumably because men do^[7][8]
• seek women in combat in the military just like men, and coed submarines
• refuse to take her husband’s last name when marrying^[9]

My favorite is the one about baking.  And in case you’re wondering, those links to “research” articles are from sources where the info is taken wildly out of context or from right-wing crazy magazines. 

You don’t even want to know what they think about Homosexuality.  It will boggle your mind.  The funniest pseudo-facts they give about gays include that homos like to smoke more than the hetero population and that lesbians are more inclined to obesity.  No, really.   

And Evolution?  Bitch, please.  Science is sooo last year, apparently.  They bring up evolution in like every possible article, deriding Darwin as though he were some kind of child-molesting sociopath.        

All of which, I suppose, is to be expected of deliberately uneducated (read: home-schooled by the LORD) hate mongers.  But to behold the differences in their George W. Bush page compared to the Barack Obama page?  Not. to. be. BELIEVED. 

Just to give you a taste, here is the picture they feature of the Bush family. 

Sweet Grandma's Tit Sling

Aaaand, here’s the one of Barack Obama. 

I think he looks fetching

Yeah.

So, if you’ve got an hour to kill and a good hold on your threshold for rage, take a gander and have yourself a chuckle.  If, on the other hand, this kind of thing makes you want to pop Rush Limbaugh in the nuts with a cold, wet towel, then I’d suggest you stay safe in the blogosphere.

A Word

So, while I don’t normally post anything remotely serious, I thought it was only appropriate to make mention of the incredibly historic election we’ve all just survived (some of us just barely).  I really thought that if I had to put up with another week of manic calls from any and all political parties, I was going to slam someone’s head into a voting monitor.  But now it’s all behind us and we can move on, I hope as a collective nation.

I think it’s appalling that people are already darkly predicting Obama’s assasination.  I feel that these dire ”concerns” really only tend to mask sour grapes over his winning, and a vague racism that folks can hide behind the idea of avoiding conflict, i.e. Sure he’ll be the first black president, but will it be worth all the “trouble?” 

Let me tell you about trouble.  Trouble is forcing half the population to sit on the back of the bus because of the color of their skin.  Trouble is cross burning and lynchings going unchecked.  Trouble is what you call it when justice is witheld, hurt goes unredressed, and poverty is allowed to flourish, all because of prejudice.  Our nation has comitted atrocity after atrocity, even genocide and the establishment of internment camps in the pursuit of avoiding “trouble” with people perceived to be different from the established white, European norm.

Your damn fucking right that it’s time for change.  It’s time to change our view of power and prestige in this country.  It’s time to change our outdated attitudes and to avoid making suggestions about policy and social distress only to cover up a deep discomfort felt by some about a black man being in charge.  It’s time to change this world so radically, so drastically that no child of Barack Obama’s nor any child of any color anywhere needs to fear growing up to become president.  We need to stop speaking of the “shocking” victory of a black man in the rural South, since to do so only gives attention to those among us who deserve our attention the very least. 

I don’t give a good goddamn who you voted for.  But we have got a new president now, and it’s a whole new age, a whole new world.  Nothing will ever be the same again.  And I, for one, thank God for that.

Fun with the Bible!

I mean, what is really NOT fun about the bible?  Well, except for the seriously deranged who take it literally.  But a lot of my kids are taking Intro to Christianity classes, and they don’t seem too traumatized, though they’re often shocked that Jesus is black and Jewish.  Just look at these amazing notes that one girl took while going over the Old Testament:

• David has 2 more sons, Absalom and Amnon
• Absalom had a sister called Tamar
• Amnon loved Tamar
• Amnon raped Tamar
• Amnon hated Tamar
• Tamar was deeply sad and lonely
• Absalom kills Amnon 2 years later

Doesn’t it read like a series of Facebook status updates just gone terribly awry?

Speaking of brown people, Christ-like and otherwise, Halloween was a bit of a let-down.  My rules must have been too hard-core, as only two groups of kids came by.  One girl was an indiscernible goblin of some kind (hey, there was effort, and she wasn’t a slutty goblin, thank-you-Jesus); she was with a kid in a fedora, whom we naturally assumed was Indiana Jones.  However, when pressed, our young Indy looked puzzled.  “Indiana who?  No, I’m going as a Jew.” 

We thought, at this point, it was best to stop asking questions, not the least of which was, “how does a fedora and a hoodie qualify a surly young black kid to pose as a Jew?” And then I missed the other group while in the bathroom.  When I came back out and eagerly asked what they were dressed as, my husband thought for a minute and then said, “I think they were dressed as a group of black kids.”   

Anyway, dear loyal readers, make sure to go vote on Tuesday if you haven’t already, speaking of black men who are being maligned by “Christians.”  Try not to stumble over the racist fuck-tards, women-haters and closet-pedophiles on your way to the polls. 

Also, I’m borrowing (read: stealing) this from Spinster in Training:

 

But it would be like a world without sunshine!

I am still unsure the difference between a linebacker and a tight end, but nonetheless teaching football players has introduced me to other, far more useful phrases.  Granted, given my whiteness, I probably can’t use them in public without cruel guffaws of derisive laughter, but at least I’ll know what the young folks are talking about in line at the grocery store.  And really, I rather prefer “Let’s bounce!” to the more insipid, “Let’s go.”  Or, “What you bumpin’ to?” versus “Good sir, what fine instrumental might you be listening to?” 

However.

There is one phrase I take some offense at. 

Whenever the football players are in tutoring, they tend to get ravenously hungry.  Who knows why?  Probably this has to do with the fact that every person with an office in that building keeps it stocked with a veritable bucket of candy.  One of my kids had 10 fucking cavities and he was sucking on a Tootsie pop the next day.  It’s mesmerizing.  Like watching a baby stick his paw in a light socket for the very first time.  Aw. 

Anyway.  They love suckers, lollipops and, most of all, popsicles.  Naturally!  It’s 98 degrees outside and they usually have to walk a ways to get to the tutoring center.  I’m not insensible to this kind of need.  To cut down on, say, all five of them leaving the room at once, though, I make only one kid go and bring the requested popsicles, candy, high-fructose injection of choice, back to the room.  So when that kid leaves, he’s barraged with “orders” which are then, bizarrely, followed by: 

“No homo!” 

Excuse me?  What does that even mean?!  Is there a small homosexual dwarf abiding in the freezer, one with a surly nature, apt to bounce out, attach itself to your face and demand to be carried back to the tutoring session?  Where he’ll anally penetrate them all?! What is the danger, really, of even FINDING a homosexual in the athletic department, beset as it is with beefy masculinity, young males primed to defend their non-butt-fucking territory* with slurs and shows of flexed muscles. 

I guess the fact that these kids are kept in dorms, then on the field, then in the weight room, and finally in the showers ALL together, all being male, makes them feel the need to bristle and declare for the big straight team.**  They have all spent serious quality time with each others’ wee-wees.  I imagine that makes them all protest too much. 

“No homo,” they explained to me, is added to the end of any request that could in any way, shape or form be construed as a request for gay sex.  In case, for example, if anyone dared think that, by asking for a cherry-flavored Popsicle, that young master Nut-Crusher was really looking for a rim job, he could quickly squelsh such a sentiment by bellowing “NO HOMO!” at the top of his lungs directly after said-request. 

The problem is that they eat this shit all the time, and now it extends to foods and items I never before thought of as remotely sexualized at all, much less gay. 

Example:
“Gimme a paper towel — NO HOMO!” 
“What?!”  I asked, genuinely bewildered. 
“You know, how homos need to clean up all that baby batter gone to waste on the floor, when they done.”   

Straight people… don’t? We just leave puddles and puddles of junk juice all over the place until our carpets are as brittle as toothbrushes? “Sorry, guests/in-laws/cable guy, you might want to wear cleats in this room… this is where the magic happens!”

Another example:
“Man, lemme borrow your computer battery — NO HOMO!”
I stare at him, confused and baffled, like a college grad forced to watch Nancy Grace.
He makes that “tsking” sound that black people often direct at me when I’m being particularly obtuse. “You know what homos use batteries for!” He barks belligerently.

Er, for their Gay-dar? Their ipods full of gay-tunes?

“Naw, man — they use batteries for sex toys!”

“But, do they need to? All that gay sex is probably pretty satisfying on its own, or they wouldn’t be risking society’s judgement and Jerry Falwell’s wrath to enjoy it, would they? Also, dude, I totally know your girlfriend and she totally owns a vibrator. Just sayin’.”

Also, I don’t like the definitiveness of the statement — it sounds too much like they’re outlawing all homos, ever, from ever, you know, thinking homo things. And I don’t want to live in a world with “no homo!” Where would I get advice on cool drinks and decent music?! So pass the paper towels, popsicles and batteries!! Let’s all get our homo on!!  

 

*Yes, I know I’ve got to stop talking about butt-fucking in these posts.  One might just pity me for encountering it with such goddamn frequency in my day-to-day life.

** Regardless, I grew up subconsciously thinking that the guys who were the most homophobic ended up being the gayest of the pack. Maybe that’s not entirely true, but then, most straight guys I know don’t shower with 100 other naked men.

Since You Asked

Best pick-up line of the summer school session (so far)?

“Anybody ever tell you you got a black girl body?  Tha’s right.  I said it.  Iss fo real, too.”

THEN, when I’d moved on, the same dude TEXTED ME:

“You ever had a black man?  Is ok — you can tell me later.”

The Pedophile’s Reading List

I shouldn’t be making fun of this, but, well, I will. Because I’m a bad person. And because I like to judge others.

One of the professor’s whose class I’m tutoring this summer has opted NOT to teach traditional British literature. Fuck off, old dead white guys. Milton, you can just suck it, you Puritanical bat-wing face. Shakespeare? Pfft. No one really likes you anyway, with your homoerotic sonnets.

Rather, he is teaching a class dedicated to children’s literature of the Victorian and Edwardian period. Well, sure, I mean, it’s not like he can justify a summer filled with Dr. Seuss, not even with a doctoral thesis behind him. But from the Victorian period? REALLY?! This was the era of British history when they covered up piano stools that looked too much like real legs because they were worried that sexually repressed young men would take to humping the furniture. It’s the era of arranged marriages and women being told to “Lie back and just think of England.” For the love of cheddar, they even threw poor old Oscar Wilde in the slammer for diddling guys — the poor bastard got hard time! In other words, it’s just not an era I readily think of as being accessible to children.

Here’s the reading list:

Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Look, kids! Writers like LSD, too!)
George MacDonald’s Fairy Tales (kids stabbing giant’s hearts, bitches who can’t stop laughing)
Kipling’s The Jungle Books (My students were all excited — they were just going to watch the Disney movie. No, no, I chuckled. That won’t help you AT ALL. There are no singing bears in this weighty tome!)
Selections from Wilde’s short stories (Yes, the same poor bastard tried and convicted of diddling)
J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (maybe the creepiest depiction of idealized homo-socialism ever: Don’t grow up and get married — stay with your boys and play with swords forever.)

The girls in the class are charmed. They refer to everything as “pwecious.” The boys, however, are just fucking baffled. They didn’t get fairy tales the first go ’round — they were busy outdoors throwing smaller kids in garbage cans and stealing tire rims. You know, normal boy stuff.

One of them said, after throwing Alice down in exasperation: “Know what I think? I think this fucker [Lewis Caroll] wanted to get with little girls.”

From the mouths of babes.

I was also informed, sadly, during the course of this same conversation, that white people will never be able to speak “negro”… When I begged to differ, they promptly asked me, “Yeah? What does ‘skeet skeet skeet’ mean?”

There was a pause as I considered the many definitions that popped into my head visually.

“Does it involve sports?” I ventured, going for another area where my expertise is limited, nay, nonexistent. I guess I was thinking of Skee Ball. They hooted for a few minutes, as I waited patiently. Then they said they didn’t want to tell me.

I got mad. “Listen, Chuckle-Faces. I spend an hour of my life every day explaining the hallucenigenic ravings of pedophiles to you, so the least you can do is tell me what one stupid term from ‘da hood’ means.” My use of ‘da hood’ got them going again so there was more waiting.

Finally they played me some horrible song where the term comes from — all I remember are the following lyrics:
“To the window/to the wall… til the sweat runs down my balls! (skeet skeet skeet)”

I stared at them blankly, all the more baffled because they showed me some wacked out version of the song utilizing the penguins from Happy Feet to sing this vulgar shit.

“So it means… something about your… balls?” I ventured timidly. They all exchanged glances and then one of them said, “Yeah, sort of.”

“Sort of means something about your balls? That’s a pretty broad topic, pal. That’s like being ‘sort of’ pregnant or ‘sort of’ retarded.”

“Oh, just tell her.” Turning to face me, “It’s cumming in a girl’s face.”

“That’s it?! I thought it meant some seriously crazy shit!” I exclaimed.

Now they’re staring at me.

“Man, we gotta hang out some night,” Finally one of them said, approvingly.

Now, in retropect, “Skee Ball” doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

Grapples, Black Men, and Shakespeare

 

Though not necessarily in that order.

First, “Grapples” is pronounced like “Grape-els” — long A.  Not like “grapples” which is actually already a word.  What are grapples, you ask?  Oh, just the most delicious thing ever.  They are McIntosh apples infused with grape juice.  Even if they do tend to make your fridge smell like dimatapp, they are pretty durn tasty.  I brought in a bunch to keep in my room (and by “room” I clearly mean, “keep in the teachers’ community fridge) to sooth myself with after a long day of teaching. 

Well, considering that most of my kids actually live on property that involves one or more real apple trees, they don’t spend a lot of time at the produce sections of grocery stores.  So they’d never heard of Grapples.  I passed them around so everyone could have a bite.  It was like throwing crack into a pool of strung out detoxers. One kid, I swear to God, ate the core and everything.  Only a stem was left on his desk when he was done.

The new thing they’re all watching on Youtube and so, ergo, repeating amongst themselves ad nauseum, is this little ditty:

What’s truly wrenching is that I know FOR A FACT that this is the most exposure these kids have generally had to any black person.  And I believe they take it as God’s honest truth that the way he’s talking and behaving is a good template for how all black people must talk and behave. 

Finally, we’re finishing up MacBeth and this is treated as a national tragedy.  No.  Not Kidding.  They’re getting downright whiny about returning to all the other old dead white men we need to study this semester.  They want to know why they can’t do theater all semester.  The ensuing dialogue:

Devil Children (pouting):  Why can’t we just do more Shakespeare?

Me:  Because this isn’t a theater class.  It’s British Literature.  You guys have a theater class offered here that you can take.

Devil Children (in unison):  *howls of laughter, derisive comments about said theater class* 

Me:  What’s wrong with the theater class?

Devil Child:  We have to do kids’ shows.  We’re doing one about fairy tale characters being put on trial.  And only homos and jackasses take theater. 

Me: (getting my dander up)  Want to explain to me how ‘homos’ and ‘jackasses’ are two related groups? 

Devil Child (chagrined):  Oh that’s right.  You like the homos. 

Me:  Yes, yes I do.  But that’s besides the point.  You’ve all just expressed a desire to continue doing theater.  Doesn’t that make you all homos and jackasses? 

Different Devil Child:  No, because it’s not theater.  It’s Shakespeare. 

From the mouths of babes…

They were even able to maturely sit through all the sex scenes in Shakespeare in Love.  Of course, I always warn them beforehand:  “Close your sweet virgin eyes, precious children!  There is a sexy-time coming up!”  Which naturally is answered with snorts of derision, but at least I can say to angry parents later that I warned them.  My husband thinks I should yell at them:  “Take your hands outta your pants and use them to cover your eyes!”  But I feel this is too…  specific.  

I have to say, it’s gonna be a sobering day when I have to leave off treading the boards with the kids in order to go back to the duller existence of classroom notes and worksheets.  It’s like I told them when I started the unit:  “MacBeth is my gift to you.  No one else at this school has tried to give you any Shakespeare.  When you graduate in May, you will be able to say, for the rest of your life, that you DID MacBeth.  Someone will quote it and you’ll know the meaning deep in your bones.  Your life will not be always more colorful and passionate because you’ve learned Shakespeare, but for the rest of your lives, you’ll have a few moments of profound joy and pride, knowing you might be the only person among your peers that just understood a joke on a sitcom or got the right answer in your head to a Jeopardy question.  And I’m here to make sure you’ve have the pleasure of earning those moments.” 

Oh well.  Back to the other old dead white men.