Here Comes The Hotstepper

so while i was home last week, i was lured into an afternoon at bring-your-sister-to-work-day by the promise of homemade ice cream. and let's be honest, eighth grade science class is an adventure not to be missed. next time, i am definitely bringing aaron to show him that kim's job is worse than his.

first, the security in at the middle school is INSANE. i had to hand over my license, which was scanned into some machine that somehow retrieved my driver's license photo and printed it out onto a name tag that allowed me to go to the principal's office. and nowhere else. when i let the harried secretary know that "miss j" was expecting me, she had me wait until she could find someone to escort me down there. eventually i was allowed to travel the M.S. hallway, flanked by a security officer of some sort and two 6th graders who had just gotten into a scuffle in the boys locker room at gym class. i can't legitimately use the word "fight" for these two scrawny punks who probably exchanged girl slaps before mr. security butted in.

i helped answer questions out of the pH workbook (most of which i still knew the answers to, go me!) and then kim paired me up with some pipsqueak in the back row who thinks he's too good to have a partner. i knocked him down a peg by pointing out that he was doing everything wrong and did he really want to mess up our ice cream? i also learned that salt (the solute) decreases the freezing point of ice (the solvent), melting the ice into water that is colder than 0 degrees C. this is why people salt roads and sidewalks in bad weather. side note: i have even USED this info recently!

an afternoon of science experimenting later, i came to two realizations:

1. all middle schoolers are ugly. yes, all of them. sure there are some that could be labeled more attractive than others, but this is mostly a result of superior personal hygiene and a modicum of fashion sense, and so it would be more correct to say that some M.S.ers are cleaner than others. they are all awkward, lacking in self-esteem and have some display of disproportionate features.

2. all M.S. boys are of questionable sexual orientation. they have at least one of the following attributes which calls their masculinity into question: a high, squeaky voice. a super-preppy outfit bought off the mannequin at american eagle. long, shaggy pete wentz hair. a lot of cologne. a distinctive giggle. an opinion on who is the cutest boy in the twilight movie.

although they are oblivious to pretty much everything not within a 2 foot radius of their wandering minds, the kids are fairly entertaining. some boy asked miss j: can ben help pass that out? i asked him if he had just referred to himself in the third person. and even though he was super-dorky, he still knew what third person was! (and correctly answered yes.) mostly i tried to picture these kids hanging out in a dark cafeteria at a M.S. dance gyrating awkwardly to ini kamoze, whose only #1 song hit the charts in 1995 and was a favorite during my own awkward (and apparently ugly) M.S. days.

act like you know, rico
i know what bo don’t know
touch them up and go, uh-oh!
ch-ch-chang-chang

{lyrics immortalized by ini kamoze}

it wasn't a total loss though -- the ice cream was good! kim also dumped a huge bag of ice water on some girl's leg which was funny. and at the end of the day, they all went home!

kim and i did go see the twilight movie together the previous night, so we were prepared for the discussion on who was the cutest boy. (edward, overwhelmingly, despite his awful lisp.) i thought they were all weird looking. and on a side note, it was a GREAT movie. i love low-budget films with bad acting, poor continuity, weird music and awkward, teenage dialogue. no seriously, i do. i definitely recommend it for mindless, teenage-vampire-romance entertainment and don't worry boys -- rosalie is a big-booty-judy and will keep you entertained too.