Excepting vs. Accepting

They will take gold bars, first-born children and possibly pounds of salt, but for god’s sake don’t give them actual US currency.

Note: a few days later this was changed to “accepting” so it turns out they would take cash after all. Also note that this gas station sign is a favorite sighting when traveling the long road (Lombard) to St. Johns. It’s always wishing people a happy birthday or congratulating them for something or other. It’s one of the treasures of Lombard street, as far as I’m concerned.

Misleading Headline

The picture this headline makes in my head is that remains were found sometime in the past near Blue Lake Park and were moved back to their proper place, but turned zombie-like and wandered back to Blue Lake Park again. However, the sub-headline clarifies things:

Apparently it was a different set of remains this time. No need to worry about zombie remains here in Portland, folks.

Slow Children

Now, I have been known to refer to certain children–and adults, for that matter–at my school as “slow.” But would I ever use the term to market a product? N-O, No! Slow isn’t a professional term. Try “delayed.” So this postcard made me laugh. Several times, as it came to us repeatedly.

ps. The child on the front who is most probably unmotivated, slow or discipline-problemed? What were they thinking?

Random sign maker.

This random sign made me laugh. Writing this from the future, I can tell you that this random sign maker posted funny things throughout spring quarter, making my climb up three long flights of stairs to my math class much more fun.
It says:

The Vagina Monolouges
The Elbow Quatrains
The Tooth Performances
The Kidney Sonatas
The Eyebrow Sonnetts.

Kid conversations: Alien Invasion

Trapped inside for yet another indoor recess this week I had the following conversation with some members of the K/1 class.

A group of boys was playing with pattern blocks and as I watched them I realized that one of them was talking about dropping a bomb.

“What’s your classroom rule about bombs?” I asked. The thing I love about the K/1 class is they will usually tell me what the rule is, even if it means they have to stop doing what they were doing.

“There’s no rule about bombs.” Owen assured me, most enthusiastically. However, he is one of the K/1’s who won’t necessarily tell me the whole truth. I waited to see what he would say next. “There is only a rule about guns. No guns.” He continued.

“Actually, “Alex put forth, “the rule is no weapons.”

“No weapons at all?” I asked.

“No.” a chorus of boys assured me.

“Well, a bomb is a weapon.” I told them. “If you have a rule about no weapons, then you can’t pretend to drop bombs.”

“What about missiles?” asked Thai, seeking a loophole. I told him that alas, missiles were weapons too.

“Spears!” Owen, the optimist, asked.

“Nope, also a weapon.”

“Well how are we supposed to play alien invasion if we can use weapons?” Owen, was a bit perturbed at this point.

“I guess you are just going to have to use peace, love and understanding,” I told them, “because you can’t use weapons.”

Kid-made signs

A trend in education that has more fully developed since I was a kid myself, is to let the children make signs and posters explaining things. At school we have kid made posters to explain our recycling system and classrooms usually use kid generated posters to explain topics they are studying. So of course, when a class has a fundraiser the students make the signs. This makes for some fabulous signs including this one where the child was suddenly transported back, syntax-wise, to the early 20th century:

Donate money
to Allegra’s Class
in need for hobo’s
and
other
homeless people
and more.
Please!

The sign stayed up for about a month and I giggled every time I read it.