I am teaching all three of my world history classes right now all about ancient Rome. This is my favorite period of ancient history. I'm trying to get them to get it, and I think one kid out of sixty cares. I guess I didn't expect much more.
There is still a massive plane fueselage in my classroom, and I found out that it is from a DC-10. And guess what? There really ARE barf bags in some of the seat pockets! And even some of those emergency cards illustrating the correct way to go about a water landing. Isn't that rad? Well. I thought so. I haven't had the opportunity to see the "Judement House" play thing that the plane is a part of, but I will try to this weekend.
My parents in law were in town last weekend and they rearanged the living room. It was kind of weird to come home from work and find everthing upside down. Whatever. It's not bad. The TV now picks up 4 channels instead of 3. And one of them is TBN, home of Benny Hinn, my favorite heretic.
I can't remember how many nights in college Ben Hardesty and I would stay up watching Benny's wacky shenanigans. In case you haven't seen him, Benny is a televangelist with a changing accent from an undetermined foreign country. Vaguely middle eastern. But one time he had his brother on the show and he was named Lou or Jake, and looked and talked like a mechanic from New Jersey. I think Benny's faking it.
Anyway, Benny heals people by blasting them with "fire" from his hands, sending people to the floor wriggling in ectasy that would make Hildegaard von Bingen jealous. Sometimes Benny gets cocky and "dribbles" the "fire" like a basketball and then sends it to a person with a hook shot motion.
Among other things, I've heard Benny tell the audience that they need a "Holy Spirit enema", and he said "I wish the Holy Spirit would give me a maching gun, I'd blow your head right off!" And then there was the time that he told people with dead relatives to place their hands on the screen and that he would raise them from the dead. I guess Benny fans sometimes leave family deceased family members around the house.
I have family in San Diego area. I have an uncle and aunt and cousins that live in Poway. Poway is now on fire. Whoa. I have no idea if there house is still there. My uncle and aunt are actually in Guatamala now, so they aren't there to evacuate. My father is in San Diego and is going to see if it's still there when they let people back on the roads.
My cousin Bethy is studying at Westminster west in Escondido and I heard that she had to evacuate as well.
I'm from Southern California and I remember how menacing fires could be.
Dude.
Yesterday I told a particular story to one of my classes for the third time. I didn't plan on telling it to three different classes, only one, but the other two demaned to here it. It started a couple of weeks ago when my 7th grade History of the World class was acting like screaming, sweaty monkeys. I have them right after lunch and they come in all worked up. Anyway...
I was having no luck calming them down so I made a deal, I would tell them a story that would make them laugh if they would chill out. So I procedeed to tell them the Spring Break story about Brad Norris about two years ago. Now, some of you reading this already know this story, and a few of you were there. For those of you who haven't heard, I will give a brief recap. I live in South Florida. This means that everyone is stoked to go to your folks' house for Spring Break. So there is always a crowd. Which is the way I like it. Anyway, one evening during spring break we decided to drive to Clamatis street in West Palm Beach, which is THE place to go clubbing. No one was planning on going inside, just seeing the sight. So we pile into a couple of cars (there was maybe 6 girls and 6 guys) and Brad starts talking about how he is going to do party boy. In case you aren't familiar with the show "Jackass" party boy is a regular feature in which a guy (Chris Pontius) dons one of those "tear-away" Adidas warm-up suits with only a thong beneath, only to rip off the clothes and dance and harass some innocent bystander. Brad has already bought the uniform. So Clamatis street is crazy, there are literally thousands of people on the street with mind-numbing music booming from each of the dozen clubs or so. Brad walks across the street from the rest of us Covenant folk and approaches two girls talking. "YOU LIKE THIS SONG?" Brad shouted over the music, but they didn't pay much attention. "I LIKE IT! IT MAKES ME WANT TO PARTY! I FEEL LIKE PARTYING RIGHT NOW!" And with that he rips off his jacket and pants and bares his stark-white 90 pound body to the throngs of clubbers, wearing only a tiny blue speedo. The girls JUMP back and one lets out a shreak. And Brad is off, bumping and grinding his way down the side walk, twirling his clothes above his head, and crosses the street while doing that between-the-legs flossing motion. A parked motorcycle cop near us was laughing so hard he almost dropped his bike. Really. The crowd had initially come to a standstill, mouths agape. Now they were cheering him on like it was a Covenant-Bryan game or something. So Brad makes his way SLOWLY to us, apparently savoring every minute of it and there was a guy that STOPPED MAKING OUT WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND and PUT A DOLLAR BILL IN BRAD'S SPEEDO, Brad's Auschwitz survivor physique still gyrating. It was awesome. So that's the story. The kids loved it. The next day the 8th grade demanded to hear the story about the crazy dancer. So did my journalism class yesterday. Man, that took a while to write. You read all of that?
P.S. Brad was wearing a bowtie too.
Well, I've joined the rest of you with my own blog. Why do I need to feel the need to detail my daily happenings in a public forum? The answer is simple: I am the most fascinating, interesting, and profound person on planet earth. I am also the most humble.
Anyway, my name is Nat. Maybe you know me. I'd like to have my name at the top of my blog, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. It's probably really easy. But I don't really know. I graduated from Covenant in 2002. I am a teacher. A history teacher. At a small Christian school in South Florida.
The school is holding a program to scare people into churches called "Judgment House". There is apparently a scene depicting an airplane crash and when I walked into class Tuesday morning I saw this where there is usually a row of desks. It is an actual airplane fueselage. Really. In my little class room. An airplane seems like the sort of thing that you would mock up in plywood for a school production, but someone actually took a saw to a 727. The overhead compartments even sort of open. No barf bags though, I checked.
