Classroom Vinaigrettes

We were sitting around the English office during prep block the other day, listening to our two newest and youngest members of the department giving each other grief. They do it for fun, and we enjoy it, too. I remarked that they reminded me of Tracy and Hepburn.

"Who are they?" Tracy asked.

It's bad enough when my freshmen don't recognize my cultural references. When other teachers are too young to get it, I feel prehistoric. So I explained about Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, told some funny stories about them, and recommended that they rent Adam's Rib or Pat and Mike.

Tracy was still stewing. "I don't know if I've been complimented or insulted," he said.

Complimented, I assured him, and went back to correcting.

A minute later, Tracy said, "You give great compliments. One compliment from you is worth ten from Mike here," gesturing at Mike O'Leary.
Without a moment's hesitation, Mike said, "That's pretty clever, coming from you."

Mike's comebacks are legendary, if occasionally unprintable. Here's one from earlier this year. Jeff McGlashan, our Most Voluble Player, was going on with great perspicacity about something or other when Mike looked up and said, wearily, "You don't have an 'off' button, do you?
You're either 'on' or 'more on.'" Then his eyes widened. "Hey! 'On' or 'moron'! That's good!"

Jeff laughed as hard as the rest of us, and went on talking.

Most of the time, we're laughing about things that happened in class. Kids say the darnedest things, as Art Linkletter (never mind) put it, and they write them, too. Just last week, one of my Journalism students referred to "cracked troops." In another classroom, I saw that students had written something about "pre-martial sex." Maybe that's why the troops were cracked.

The laughs in student work aren't always mistakes. Sometimes they just reflect the interior life of adolescents. I had a student in Creative Writing who wrote a fine story about a young man who is captured by a vampire. The vampire not only drinks his blood, he trains him in vampire skills, including flying. When the boy's apprenticeship is over, the vampire turns him loose. The boy flies back to his own house, looks in the window, and discovers that (gasp!) his parents have moved his stuff! He righteously bites their necks for this terrible crime.

There is also a special category of Spell-check errors. Among them, I have found a soldier who joins the "Green Barrettes," a thoughtful analysis of how Sandra Cisneros tells stories through "vinaigrettes,"
and (courtesy of team leader Jill Lawler), the tragic story of a student who wrote a long piece about writer Virginia Woolf, in which Spell-check changed her first name to an anatomical feature I'd prefer not to mention.

And sometimes, the mistake captures an elusive truth. I'm thinking of a student who explained an obscure reference "in lame man's terms."

I don't mean to suggest that all we do is sit around exchanging witticisms and laughing at students. But it's important that we like each other, that we tell jokes and goofy stories from the classroom.
These little vinaigrettes add flavor to our days.