The Sense of Humor of an 8th Grader

The best part of my days is interacting with my students. I honestly can't express to you the joy that they bring to my life.

So far this week, I have literally been in tears from laughing several times. And it's only Wednesday.

The things that have had me in hysterics consisted of one of my 8th graders (Eric) presenting his independent reading project to the class (The project is called Parade of Characters, and the students dress up as the main character in the novel they are reading and talk to us as though they are that character). Well, this kid went above and beyond. He had the entire class in hysterics! For the entire day, I would have random flashes of his presentation and find myself giggling about it again. Awesome. (oh, and doubly awesome, after school today another student came to me and was asking if I had the book Eric had presented in my classroom library. Apparently, he was interested in reading it. How do you spell V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!) *sorry, I am drawing a terrible blank on the title, otherwise I'd give it to you.

Then, of course, there was the fundraising kick-off assembly where students were chosen at random to be part of a cookie eating contest. One of my otherwise shy 8th graders got up there and when asked his name responded, "Jim." (His name's Matthew). I laughed so hard; I cried. Jim?! What in the world would have posessed him to say that? The best part was that the guy in charge was not from our school and continually referred to Matt as Jim. He had no idea, and I think everyone was laughing too hard to bother to correct him.


And then there was this afternoon, when I was in my classroom grading papers. A graduate of my last year's 8th grade class and a current 8th grader generally hang out in my classroom on Wednesday afternoons while they wait for their sisters to finish volleyball practice. They were chatting, and I was grading papers. At one point in the conversation, the graduate (Josh) said to the 8th grader (Matt, a different Matt), "Can you say the months backwards?"

The interaction that ensued went something like this..
Matt: t thonths
Josh: what?
Matt: tuuu uthmonths
Josh: can you say the months backwards?
Matt: het thonms
Josh: silent, confused pause
Mrs. (Sorry): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

(Interpretation: Matt was trying to actually say THE MONTHS backwards, and Josh had no idea what the confusion was. He was patiently waiting for Matt to start saying: January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May, April, March, February)

As soon as my laughter broke into the conversation, they both figured out what had just happened and joined in with me. We had a nice little stomach grabbing, eye-misting laugh over the whole thing, and then Matt immediately swore me to secrecy.

Well, don't you worry, Matt. Your secret's safe with me.... and the world wide web.

I guess you could probably say that in some ways I have the sense of humor of an 8th grader. I mean, with the excitement I've been feeling every time a New Moon trailer comes on tv, I certainly feel like an 8th grader. I suppose there could be worse things, though, right? At least this way, one thing I can say for sure is that these kids are keeping me young.


**Add on: The book that my student presented was The Greatest Salesman in the World