Out the Window It Went

Saturdays were always sleep-ins. The only day of the week when the alarm clock would not go off at 5 a.m. Little did the family know that this Saturday would change their lives forever.

Dad was exhausted from a very stressful week followed up with a probable job loss. He still had a couple more weeks to work on a project that could save his job.

Mom knew what was going on with her husband and his job and was going to do everything she could to let him rest a lot on this day. She woke up quietly and headed for the kitchen to prepare a really nice breakfast for the family.

The kids ran into the kitchen all excited about the brand new day. The little boy was 7 and his older sister 9. They started talking at the same time.

“Kids calm down dad is trying to get some rest today. After breakfast we will see what we can do today. How does that sound?”

The kids agreed and told their mom that they would go and play in the living room until breakfast was ready.

The little boy grabbed the tablet first.

“Hey, I want to play with that.” the girl screamed.

“I got it first.” the boy yelled back.

Mom ran out of the kitchen horrified that all the yelling would wake up her husband.

“Kids, what did I tell you about dad’s sleeping in?” she reminded them.

“Sorry mom.” they whined.

Mom went back into the kitchen and resumed her chores. Meanwhile the kids played in the living room and dad was asleep in his comfortable warm bed. All of a sudden there was a loud cry. It was the daughter. She was sobbing out of control because her little brother had smacked her face real hard when she took the tablet away from him.

“He hit me! He hit me! He hit me!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Honey, please stop yelling you will wake up daddy.”

“It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!”

“You shouldn’t have done that to your sister young man. Now you apologize.”

“I will not. I was playing with the tablet and was almost winning the game!”

“It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!”

“You asked for it!”

“It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!”

“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!” an alarming roar came from the bedroom.

“I am going to break that thing! Give it to me!”

The father was in the living room. They had awakened him and he was mad.

The kids hid behind their mom.

“GIVE IT TO ME! GIVE IT TO ME!” he grabbed the tablet and as if he were tossing a baseball, threw it out the window.

“There problem solved” he headed back to his bed.

The little children were shocked. How could their father have done that? He simply took the tablet and threw it out the window. The daughter had a problem and was unable to deal with her sadness. She just started bawling and headed towards the balcony.

The father heard a thump and ran towards the living room. His wife was on the floor unconscious; she had fainted and the son was just sitting next to the mother’s body wide eyed.

(Written September 20, 2014) Todos os direitos reservados a Meire Marion.

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The Girl Who Tried to Cheat on the Test

Last class of the day and the anxiety could be felt in the air as the teacher walked in carrying the TEST. It wasn’t difficult in the teacher’s point of view because she had decided that she would include similar exercises that had been done during the classes on the test. Since the kids had done them and had been present for the corrections, they should do well.

Some of the students, however, were not that prepared, especially Berta. Remember Berta, The girl from the story of the student in wolf’s skin? Berta had not studied for the test but it was a grammar test therefore, she would be prepared to use her cheating technique.

On this particular day she was wearing her torn jeans. They were beautiful and fit her quite well, but she had torn them herself and apparently wore them whenever she had a test. Why, you might be asking yourself? Well, the tears that she had made were basically on her thighs. What she did was very simple; she wrote the grammar formulas on her thighs and if she raised the torn area just a bit she would be able to see what she had written. She was confident that she would ace the test.

The test was handed out and placed upside down in front of her. She smiled and thanked the teacher, and anxiously waited for the test to start.

“Three, two, one turn over your tests and have fun!” the teacher said before sitting down at her desk.

Berta thought for a moment the reason why the teacher always said `have fun’ and not good luck like the others. How can anyone possibly have fun taking a test; most of all a grammar test? Slowly she turned over her test and started to read the directions. Oh my, good thing she had written the verb tense formulas on her legs, she thought and smiled.

Meanwhile the teacher was aware that Berta was going to try something. She wasn’t the brightest student in class but she was the most devilish. The teacher noticed that everyone had both hands on their desks as they answered the questions, but not Berta. The little girl had one had on the desk holding her pen while the other hand was on her thigh. She was definitely up to something. And suddenly it dawned on the teacher- could she have written on her legs?

Having this in mind, the teacher decided to stare at Berta to try to find out what she was up to and confirm her hypothesis. Berta could feel the teacher’s eyes upon her, so she looked up at the teacher and smiled. She always got away with murder just by smiling. She was a cute kid and her parents always let her off the hook when she gave them her irresistible smile, and she knew it was a powerful weapon.

A few minutes had passed and Berta checked to see towards where the teacher was looking. Oh my, the teacher was still looking at her. How was she going to check her formulas? She waited a bit. Suddenly the teacher let out, “5 minutes left.”

Berta started to panic. She had only done half of the test. She needed to hurry up. Lucky for her, her classmates when getting up and handing in their tests and blocking the teachers view. Because of this she managed to finish the rest of the test just in time.

As she handed in her test, she smiled at the teacher and said, “I studied really hard for this one.” She didn’t know why the teacher’s face turned red all of a sudden. Berta was proud to have fooled the teacher.

In the meantime, the teacher’s blood pressure rose, she had gotten away with this one for now. But then again, how could she have proved the student had written on her legs without embarrassing the kid? There would be other tests.

“Berta?”

“Yes, teacher.”

“Nice jeans by the way.” the teacher said without smiling.

Berta choked, “Thanks.” A chill ran up her spine. Did the teacher know? Students do say that teachers have super natural powers. Berta quickly left the room and headed to the bathroom. 

(Written September 1, 2014)Todos os direitos reservados a Meire Marion.

An Afternoon in a Teacher´s Room

Report Card time is something dreadful. You need to launch the grades that the students got during the semester on a panel on the extra-net. In addition to that, you have to write a comment that suits the student in terms of behavior and achievements. Not a pleasant task at all when you have to do that for 200 students.

The staff of teachers has come up with a set of sentences to help accelerate this task. Therefore, all you have to do is cut and paste the sentence that best fits the students. After some time you end up always writing the same thing and it seems pointless. However, bureaucracy is part of our daily lives. So, there is really no way out.

This semester the system has changed a bit in terms of time. Teachers had to fill out these comments even before grades were given, so that they could be checked for spelling mistakes or any other mistake that might show up after printing. Now you might think there was a group of people to do that job. But no. The teachers have to do it themselves. I, for one, believe that other people should proof read what we write. You might overlook the mistake when it comes to proofreading your own material. I, for one, also believe that this is a waste of paper. If the space where we need to make the comment were bigger, perhaps we would be able to catch the incorrect word when taking another look online without having to print it out.

This week, since I had a break between my classes, I decided to go into the teacher´s room and work on the editing of my report card comments. When I opened the door, I was thrown back by the singing that was coming from the room. There were ten teachers in that room singing as they worked on their comments. I just stood there and was taken back to the time when the field workers picked cotton and sang their blues away. The soundtrack of that moment in my mind was something like the song “ Day-o , day-o , day light come and me wanna go home”. However, to my surprise, these teachers were singing a heartwarming Samba.

Whoa! What was I getting myself into?

(September 11, 2014)Todos os direitos reservados a Meire Marion.

Listen to the song I mentioned in the text at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMigXnXMhQ4

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