Fer example, yesterday morning while standing on a ten-foot ladder and holding a ten-foot length of plastic sprinkler pipe as an impromptu grabber-arm, I thought, "I'm glad the vandals used the good quality toilet paper that doesn't break apart if you look at it wrong. I'm even gladder that the sprinklers didn't activate after the vandals t.p.'d the school."
It's the end of the school year, which means the shenanigans ratio increases dramatically. We've never been t.p.'d before, and I learned a way to distinguish the good kids from the troublemakers. Some teachers and students helped us clean the mess, and one of the kids looked at a 25 foot tall little leaf Linden that was draped with fluttering white streamers. She said, "How'd they get that t.p. clear up that the top? Wow, they must have had a huge ladder!" I thought her comment was so endearing: this girl had no concept whatsoever of how to fling a roll of t.p. over a tree.
Few days ago, someone spray painted the back of the school:
Given the pentragram and inverted cross, I assumed "eliphas" was a reference to Eliphas Levi, the French occultist. The bottom part ("devi del"), I guessed, was intended to be "devil" before nerves or an interruption led to a misspelling. But the Googles says "devi del" is a proper name in Hindu. Like I said, no two days are the same.
Another year-end ritual is the students from the ceramics class who break their projects by throwing them against the exterior walls.
Each year, I get a bunch of questions like, "Why go to all that trouble to make something so pretty and then destroy it?" I might be reading into things, but I credit a contempt for school. Some kids feel stifled in school -- but they never vandalize, never cut class, never tell their teacher to stuff it and go to hell. But they can take objects they made in school, and destroy them by the dozens at school. I think that's telling.
And this classic tune takes up permanent residence on my mental jukebox this time of year:
1 comments:
That little girl's comment about the big ladder was very cute.
Have to say I would have gone with the Muppet's accompaniment of School's Out. But there's no accounting for my taste.
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