Melissa's Place

Things Kids Do

You really can’t imagine the multitude of stupid things kids can think of doing. It’s impossible to foresee. I know my instructions before a class activity have become a bit silly. Kids laugh when I say, “Now don’t take this flat piece of plastic and lay it horizontally across the top of the sink and turn on the water.” They say, “Miss Loftus, has anyone ever DONE that?”

In fact, today, I forgot to mention that to a class. And you know what my friend Stephen did? Yes….only instead of laying the flat piece of plastic across the sink so the water poured out all over the counter and onto the floor…. He held the flat plastic slide on a downward angle from the sink basin towards his crotch, then turned on the top.

But that’s not even the incident that inspired this blog. Mark and I both do a very simple experiment using syringes (of course, without needles in them). Kids are supposed to see if they can compress water and air by firmly pressing their thumb over the tiny opening and pushing the stopper as hard as they can. Very quickly, kids notice how fun it is to squirt all the air out of the syringe, then put their thumb over the tiny opening and then suck the syringe stopper out quickly. This pullllllllllllllllllllllllls their thumb skin into the stopper, if only for an exhilarating second, and makes everyone exclaim and laugh.
Ha ha ha.
It’s genius. Original.
I see it every goddam period!

So today, a really smart kid in Mark’s class did something even better.
He put the syringe’s tiny end against his forehead and did the stopper-sucking thing….twice. Apparently that’s just too much pressure for a brow. He actually created a bloody geiser smack dab in the middle of his forehead.

So next time Mark hands kids this equipment, he will have to say, “And when you’re using these syringes, please don’t put them in your mouth, squirt other people with water, or suck various parts of your body into the tiny end.”