I am a fourth grade teacher, living in West Virginia. I just looked at my W2 form, and I made a whopping $$,$$$ this past year. I’m too embarrassed to share this sad little figure with you. I just stared at the paper for a long while and then thought……WTF?
So, to supplement my meager earnings, I have been trying to come up with a way to make some extra money. There’s a media lady that wants to put an ad or two on my blog posts for $30. No, I would need at least $40 to live a more comfortable lifestyle. I could write a book. A lot of my facebook friends (3 of them) think I should write a book. I think so too. But, that takes time….and talent.
OR>>>> I could invent something…..hmmmmm, an invention.
I really don’t care to invent anything, but I do think I have come up with something that will make me a millionaire. I AM SURE. My fellow teachers across the country (and some in Canada) will surely want to buy this for their classrooms.
I have lately been trying to come up with a way to make a flask out of a pencil. It looks like a pencil, but if you push over the eraser, you can sip some hard whiskey while your fourth graders are taking a test.
Why, you ask?
Because I am having one hell of a year. I don’t drink that often, maybe a total of 10 beers a year, but I am ready to start drinking in the classroom. Hard liquor. Especially after really taking note of what I make every year. Bird crumbs….no, bird poop from the bird crumbs. That’s what I make.
I think I could be in trouble for drinking hard liquor in the classroom, but I’m not really sure on that one. (I hope you idiots who have no concept of “tongue in cheek” will please head to another blog if you don’t realize that I KNOW that it is wrong to drink in the classroom…..but then again, I will have to check the law in WV. It may be permitted). We do have a margarita machine in the teacher’s lounge, but sometimes you should need something a little harder to match the kind of day you are having.
So, I figure I could take a regular pencil, drill a hole down the middle, and attach some sort of invisible hinge for the eraser….and fill it with booze. I could even sing a little song before I partake, just to get me in the mood (set to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot”)
“I’m a little pencil, full of lead
here is my tip and here is my eraser head
when I get all steamed up, then I shout,
“Just tip me over and pour me out……”
So, the next time a student tells me that M. is telling everyone out on the playground that A. plays with monkey titties, or the next time that J. decides he wants to fake burp and fake sneeze all flippin day, and I can’t take it any longer, I can quietly pick up the pencil, which I will call “the WRITE Stuff,” push over the eraser and just take a swig or two. Then, I wouldn’t care if someone is fake sneezing or fake burping all flippin day. I wouldn’t care when someone asks me what page the assignment is on, right after I tell them AND write it on the board. And I won’t care that M. is telling everyone out on the playground that A. plays with monkey titties. Because, you know what? Maybe she does. Quit the damn tattletaling Goober head.
One of my students asks me every day, “Is this the day that you are going to have a stroke?”
“No, Andy, not when I have “The WRITE Stuff.”
But, then, reality smacks me across my living-in-a-fantasy-face. The pencil will not hold much whiskey. One little swig and it would be time for a re-fill. What to do? What to do? Well, hell, I can make a bigger pencil, right?
That’s more like it. Teachers are going to love this. I think I have found my Field of Dreams.
If you build it, they will come.
So drink up, my dear underpaid teachers., drink up.
