Boys Have Penises, Girls Have Vaginas

The moment that I have been dreading since January 31 of this year has at last arrived. Tomorrow, I must begin to teach the students in my science classes about the material in Chapter 22. I will have to stand in front of a room full of 12 and 13 year olds and say words like "penis" and "testes" and "vagina" and "scrotum" and God knows what else, all the while trying to keep myself from blushing uncontrollably and attempting to quell the inevitable tides of nervous giggling that will arise from the children in the room.

No amount of training can prepare somebody for something like this. Like a soldier preparing for war, the best you can hope for is that you can walk off the battlefield with your dignity intact and your conscience clean with the knowledge that you have braved honorably.

Aside from this impending doom, this has been a rather eventful month...at least as far as work has been concerned. A week of state testing, open house, progress reports, conferences, and two teacher workdays have left little time for much else. I'm discovering that this is a difficult time of year for teaching. Students simply stop caring about anything once open house has gone. As far a they're concerned, their parents have already seen their best work, and it's all downhill from there. Trying to get them to understand that there is still work to do, and their grades are not yet decided, is a monumental task in itself.

Apart from work, there has been little going on, save for a trip down to the San Diego area from May 20-22 in order to see Star Wars with Shane Bonham, et al. I also had to settle a bet on a certain plot issue from the film...turns out I lost.

That Saturday, while Shane was busy working on some website design stuff, Erika and I (along with their baby, Ethan) drove down to Pacific Beach to meet up with our friend, Officer Adam, for lunch. Unfortunately, he was delayed by having to deal with a miscreant who had been bludgeoned with a pool cue as part of a drug deal gone bad. When he finally arrived, he had just enough time for a quick lunch at Jack in the Box.

It was a little odd seeing Adam in his police uniform. Here's a guy I've known for ten years, and all these people are treating him with respect and responding to every word he says. Even I was a little intimidated by him...it's not everyday you can eat lunch with somebody packing heat. After lunch, we went and checked out his squad car, and I accidentally trapped myself in the back of his car, sitting there like some common criminal while he ignored my pleas of innocence. Luckily, Erika was kind enough to open the door and release me.

This past weekend was, of course, Memorial Day. The long list of things that I had hoped to accomplish (clean my bathroom, get caught up on grading, etc.) remained largely undone as I spent the weekend lounging around the house and going to two different BBQs.

Over the next couple weeks, things will be pretty busy, both workwise and socially. I've got to finish out the school year, then get ready for summer school, which starts June 22, and try to lockdown a position for next year, so I don't need to worry about that over the summer. This weekend, I've got a party in Hermosa Beach to go to. Next weekend, I'm supposed to go camping with some people (assuming I can get my grades finished by then) and, the weekend of the 17th, I'll be in Vegas on account of a college buddy of mine is graduating from some top secret Air Force school there.

I'll try to keep you updated, but I make no promises.