I, Spritopias

This week was a rollercoaster. Tuesday we had a field trip to the symphony. We are on the same state highway as several universities but when we go on a field trip to one of them we never take our road, we take another one. A five-minute trip in bad traffic turned into forty-five minutes.

During this sojourn in the school bus, my students decided that we had been kidnapped and that we were being taken to Canada. This posed a problem for them because they had not brought their passports – which they do not even have. I tried to assure them that if we crossed the border into Massachusetts that I would say something to the driver.

To American children, Canada is this amorphous municipality, which is only slightly less ridiculous than Bolivia. They decided to make passports in case I was unable to stop the bus driver from taking us there and out of nowhere produced construction paper, scissors, glue, markers, and white paper. I was alarmed by this in part because they never have their supplies on hand in class and because they never do such good work on creative projects in class or display such acuity in their penmanship. Apparently, bouncing around in the back of big yellow was exactly what they needed to do well on this assignment. I put a stop to the counterfeiting when they produced a stapler. By that point, I had about enough.

They decided this show of force on my part was ‘strange’ and that I must be a clone of myself. The real me had been kidnapped (apparently by the bus driver) and hidden in Canada to be later harvested for my organs. This is when I decided that the bus must be filled with fumes and started to open windows. They were not getting enough oxygen. They were eating too much candy. They were being deprived of some vitamin or mineral.

The principal, who was on this trip as well, decided that they had reached a saturation point of being in my care that had come to a head where perfectly reasonable situations – a school bus driver being alarmingly inept and getting lost – had turned into something blown out of proportion and into the ridiculous – cloned elementary school teachers filching their students and pocketing them in Canada.

We arrived at the symphony and as soon as I settled into my seat fell asleep. I would wake up, alarmed, and then fall back asleep, I fought a losing battle to stay awake. My problem is that as ridiculous as my students can be, they are well behaved; I knew I could sleep and did. They realize that our loosely educational trips to the movies, mini-golf, and Mc Donald’s would stop if they behaved like the (excuse me) children from other schools. While I was asleep, they explained to an alarmed teacher from another school that I was actually an android and had merely powered down during the performance. They also took pains to make sure she understood that I was an android and not a simple automaton or robot. I was designed and built in Canada, my purpose was to harvest the organs of people who asked too many questions, and perhaps she should mind her own business.

The teacher they were talking to told me that I was the worst teacher in the world for falling asleep in a warm, dark room with calming music playing – and perhaps I am – but it is not easy being a Canadian designed android sent to harvest the organs of nosey public school teachers.

Comments

[Yvonne]

You should have told her it was part of your students' lesson - responsible behavior without direct adult supervision. Obviously YOUR students passed, did hers? :)

[cosmic]

Thank you for figuring something out for me. I just realized that I am a clone. The real me has been living it up for years in Canada. She is rich, lives in a huge mansion and spends her time partying and playing. Now I get it. Cheesh! No wonder my life is so dull.

[l'empress]

How wonderfully creative of them! They're obviously destined to work for the government.

[golfwidow]

Damn, they got passports moving quicker than the State Department, didn't they?

[Christopher]

Now we know where those jobs have been out sourced to

[Sally]

Say, when is Organ Harvesting season anyway? Is there a town festival to mark the occasion?

[Sally]

Happy Valentine's Day!!

[Audrey]

I have not yet learned my lesson and am still reading your journal during History. Luckily, it is dark and there is a movie playing, so no one can hear me giggle in the front row.

This is going to sound horrible but your students reminded me of when my brother and my cousin made up the game "Cross the Reeoh Grandy" and made "green cards" out of green index cards a few years ago. My cousin even went so far as to "laminate" his, using a stapler and a Ziploc bag. My brother, who is now 16, still carries his around in his wallet, just in case the INS tries to deport him, even though we are almost whiter than Michael Jackson, but not quite.