Picture Day, The Screen & The Witch, Oh My!

I survived Picture Day.

Which, for those of you yearbook types, know was something just short of a miracle.

And which, for those of you non-yearbook types (but fans of this blog), know for me was probably a miracle of sorts necessitating divine intervention.

Even Mother Teresa would have found Picture Day trying.

It certainly tested my resolve to remain Ninja Teacher.

I almost set my hair on fire and ran out of the building when I arrived at 6:30 in the morning and saw the gigantic screen hanging from the auditorium stage.

You know, the stage that roughly 2,000 children, faculty and staff needed to navigate across to get their school pictures made.

Yeah, that stage. The one that was blocked by the giant screen hanging down. The screen that rivaled the dimensions of the green screen in the Wizard of Oz.

Yep, the screen that needed a special password code and either a Phd in technology or some sort of divine intervention in order to raise it. Yeah, that screen.

It took almost two hours before The Screen was raised because apparently only one person knows the super-secret instructions on how to do it.

During that two hour time period, I sort of felt like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. I'm fairly certain I probably acted a bit like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. And, I think it's a safe bet that I may have even looked like the witch in the Wizard of Oz.

And just in case you were wondering, I'm not talking about the good witch either.

Yearbook Pages, Brains & Things

With the stock market taking more twists and turns than Judge Roy Scream, most of you probably don’t care that nary a yearbook page sits in the submission folder. (Unless, of course, your name is Rod and you’re a yearbook rep.)

In my defense, I didn’t plan it that way. In fact, by my count, at least 30 or so pages should be sitting at some printing plant in Kansas. Instead, they remain here in Texas while I sing my own rendition of the Scarecrow’s song. My version, aptly titled, “If they only had a brain…” goes something like this…

“If They Only Had A Brain…”
If they would just turn in some pages
I would not be all ragin’
castin’ about the blame
And their grades would be amazin’
and I would be all a praisin’
If they only had a brain…

You see, I put a hold on all the pages after I discovered a new way to spell quiche…

K-e-i-s-h

As if that wasn’t bad enough (and don’t you think it ought to be?), another page stopped me quicker than a hall fight. At the top of the people section pages, the kiddos are running lists of things. (OK, admittedly, the list-thing thing should have sent up red flags), but they aren’t exactly lists. Instead, they’re pictures (which after the Quiche Incident is probably a good thing).

As I checked over the pages, one page in particular caught my eye. The one where a girl lists five things she does after school…

Picture #1…a snack. Okey-dokey

Picture #2…homework. OK. Good.

Picture #3… four guys. Uh-oh. Not Okey-dokey. Not good. A definite EEK! And, a definite throw that page speedy quick into the Things-That-Will-Get-You-Fired folder.

And, my friends, if I need to explain that thing to you, well then perhaps you need to sing your own version of “If I only had a brain…”