"Stick bug! Walk yo twig legs over here and help me with number two!"
"You like a popsicle stick! You wide from the front, then you turn to the side and we can't see you no mo'!"
"Why it smell like beef jerky in here...oh yeah SLIMMMM JIMMM!"
Then Brett in fourth block:
"If you was a booger, I'd pick YOU."
"You out of gas? 'Cause you been drivin' me crazy!"
Lord help me. This past Friday, I took Quinn and Ananias skating. It was really interesting to hang out with some of my students outside of RMS' walls. Perhaps more interesting was the fact that so many kids wanted to go when I offered. Since it was a Friday night and the activity was skating (aren't my boys waayyy too cool for skating with Ms. M on a Friday?), I didn't think many would express interest, but I had kids BEGGING me to pick them. It was kind of cute. This morning, they were still asking about it.
We hadn't spent five minutes in "Starlite
"You makin' fun of my grill??"
"Um...no. It really...brings out your....smile."
Quinn told him her shoe size and he screamed at her for not reading the sign that said the skates were only in men's sizes. When Quinn snapped back that she should take her business someplace less sexist, he almost took her shoes without giving her any skates in return.
"She got a STANK attitude!!" he told me, glaring at Quinn.
"I know."
"No. No you don't. You don't know nothin' about stank attitudes 'til you work in this window. You wouldn't last a DAY here."
I merely raised my eyebrows and exchanged looks with my students. "I might know more about stank attitudes than you'd think. And I don't think YOU'D last a hot MINUTE where I work!" Quinn and Ananias laughed in agreement. For some reason, this pissed the guy off so much that he walked out of the skate room and around the counter.
"You don't know me. You don't KNOW attitudes 'til you met me."
Quinn mockingly rolled her head side to side. "Oh yeah?"
"Don't EVER roll your head like that again."
Quinn rolled her head like that again. "Attitudes? Hold up, let me take my earrings out and then we'll talk attitude!"
Ananias straightened up and put himself in between the creep and us. Side note: Ananais is about the most ripped 15-year-old you've ever met. His dad makes him work out every day, and his nickname at RMS is "Steroids." I employ him from time to time to be my bodyguard ( "Ananias, I pinched Will on the back of his arm when he tried leave class and he's planning his revenge. Could you make sure he doesn't get within a five-foot radius of me all day? OK, thanks."). He could rip someone from limb to limb, and he's got the temper to actually try.
$12 Grill slacked off and put his arm around Ananias. "Earrings," he mumbled. "How she gon' take out earrings she ain't even got in?" Ananais shot me a look that said, "Let's go. Now."
So we did.
In the car, I learned that Quinn spends her weekends smoking outside the K gas station and that Ananais got kicked out of his former school for throwing a text book at his old science teacher. ("Umm, you're not going to try that on me are you?" "Nawww, Ms. M we cool."). I played Hank Williams Jr. for them and they cried until I changed it. They were quieter now that they were out of their element, and I think I was too.
Picture it. Three figures on skates, their dark silhouettes gliding in time to Jay-Z's rendition of "Forever Young." Nothing unusual at first glance, but when the light from the old disco ball is thrown the right way, you see that two are skinny blondes and one is a muscular black boy. Two from the same subsidized housing block, the other from a preppy white neighborhood in Alabama. One's a confused college graduate in the so-called prime of her life, the others are at the height of their awkward adolescence. The girls cling to each other as their legs flail underneath them and the boy gracefully laps them, confident in his movement despite his bulk. All three wonder silently what compelled the other two to skate away their evenings in this company. A strange trio they make: Sarcasm, Steroids, and Slim Jim.
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