My Wife's Seventh Graders

[luke]

I'll raise your tourrette's on Oprah a Maury paternity test. No shit.

In my class, we had about two kids die in car wrecks. One was drunk driving, the other was just an accident. Think the kid with leukemia was a class ahead of me. When I was in the 8th grade, a friend of mine in the 7th grade shot his 9th grade brother to death in a hunting accident. Another guy got shot in the face on New Year's Eve one year.

Fuck, it just goes on and on, damn shame so much of it's a blur.

It's weird, though, since I was about 19, I haven't heard of anyone I know from home dying.

[rockysigman]

Wow, your stories all trump mine. My high school was pretty death-free while I was there. When my brother was a freshman, a sophomore killed himself. And a girl I graduated with (but had barely talked to since middle school) had an aneurysm and died about two weeks after graduation. This one kid who graduated from my high school a year ahead of me that I used to be on the swim team with died in a house fire after my freshman year of college. Every parent in town was calling each other to make sure that everyone's kid's new college houses for the upcoming year had smoke detectors.

[chrisfan]

luke said:

I'll raise your tourrette's on Oprah a Maury paternity test. No shit.

For real? What's the story there?

The tourrette's thing was more of a shock than any sort of excitement. Actually, he was on Good Morning America first. That was when all the people I still know from high school started e-mailing saying "Did you have any idea Jeff had tourettes? Neither did I!" It was when he was on Oprah that the real kicker happened though. Oprah brought on a guy who'd been his best friend in high school to reunite them and talk about how wonderful it was that he was so much better. Quite frankly, I don't even remember these two guys being friends, but I wasn't close to either one, which probably explains that. But they were both going on and on about how hard it was growing up because you know how teenagers are - they pick on the kids who stand out as strange. This talk of course led to another circulation of e-mails saying "How the hell did anyone pick on him if none of us even knew there was anything wrong with him?!?!?" But since Oprah doesn't take viewer phone calls, we'll never know the answer ...

[rockysigman]

I once saw the older brother of an old elementary school friend of mine on Judge Judy. His girlfriend kept accusing him of dropping their baby. It was pretty awesome.

[tuneschick]

Judge Judy, seriously? That's fantastic.

God, my high school seems so boring now. Think we only had one kid die the whole time I was there (who unfortunately happened to be a friend of mine.) Since then I've heard of a few other deaths, mostly suicides. A few attempted ones too.

But damn, I don't know anyone who's gone on to make a fool of themselves on national TV.

[tuneschick]

Actually, make that two kids, since I just realized my friend's brother (who was also killed) was at my high school too.

[luke]

My story is actually sorta similar to that, Chrisfan.

I heard from the hometown grapevine that a girl from high school had been on Maury and it would be airing on so-and-so date. She was this perfectly ordinary girl in high school, not some sort of white trash raging whore like you'd expect to see on Maury, so it was kind of weird. Definitely the sort of girl I'd never have thought about again if the ol' small town rumor mill hadn't picked all this up. I'm not even sure how that happened, being that she'd moved away, but I guess small town folk keep tabs on their own.

I skipped class that day to watch her on Maury. She looked very little like I remembered her, and had certainly turned into the white trash raging whore that you'd expect to see on Maury. And he WAS the father.

[dolly]

Twas the lad's funeral today. I couldn't attend as it was my final assessment day

Quite a death toll from my old schools too - 4 I can think of off-hand - but I don't feel comfortable listing them. Especially not today.

And as for making a twat of yerself on national TV - I knew someone who went on Trisha (our equivalent of Oprah) who went on as a 'ladykiller' who women just can't resist. The funny part is that he is nicknamed 'Weazel' because he looks like one, has a ginger mohican he dies black/blonde/pink/etc etc , wears leather studded pvc pants, chains, and other regulation Viv Westwood style punk gear and is the most ugliest creature you ever did see with buck teeth, squinty eyes and scrawny physique and speaks with the most common and moronic accent you could imagine. Weirdest thing is though that he really DOES/DID get the ladies. Trisha could barely contain her disgust and contempt for him. It was hilarious.

[luke]

I was about to retire this thread because my wife is now at a different school teaching gifted (smart gifted). But now I'm hearing all these stories about the Freaks and Geeks, so it may have to keep going.

[strat-0]

I was placed in a gifted program when my family moved from Houston to the SF bay area in California. I was in the third grade. I was singled out for ridicule and laughed at right away because in a class exercise I said "big" and "little" for "capital" and "small" letters, and because I talked funny. Never mind that I was correct about the letters. Pretty soon, they put me back into the mainstream program for the rest of us shmucks. Hell, that was easier anyway.

[rockysigman]

Luke, you can't retire this thread. It is the best thread since Dinner with Riley's parents.

[luke]

Well, he retired that one.

But only because he doesn't love his parents.

[rockkid]

snap

[luke]

Well, my wife doesn't teach degenerate seventh graders anymore. Now she teaches sixth grade honors kids. They're just as quirky, only they seem like babies to her because, for one, most of her seventh graders were way too old for the seventh grade, and two, even at the right age, there's a HUGE gap between 11 and 13 year-old kids.

She's got this one psycho redhead kid who always goes nuts and yells. He clenches his teeth together and breathes real hard when he gets mad, and the wife says it's real hard not to laugh at him. He usually cries, too. And he forces all his words out of his mouth, like angry people do.

His parents told my wife not to discipline him because he "doesn't like it when people tell him what to do." Which is obviously his problem right there. Wife didn't listen, of course.

Anyway, so my wife was doing one of those projects with the kids where they bring in song lyrics that they think are poetry. She was pretty surprised at what the (honors, at least) kids listen to these days- lots of Beatles, Bowie, even some stuff like the Shins. Lots of crap, sure, but kids these days really do listen on a higher level than our little grunge/gangsta rap infested minds did at that age. Okay, maybe not, but they do dig deeper, I guess because they have to.

Anyway, Redhead, he asks my wife, cheeks all puffy and angry with his teeth clenched, "Is it okay if we bring in some goth rock lyrics?"

My wife is all, "Uh...so long as it's appropriate for school, that's fine."

Then tells her again, "I'm gonna bring in some goth rock," and again she goes, "That's fine, as long as it's appropriate for school.

She doesn't expect him to bring in some Bauhaus or anything, but thinks the kid might show up with some Nine Inch Nails or something, right?

Next day he comes to class with a sheet full of Evanescence lyrics.

[Ampage]

Hey! I like Amy!