Yes, Miss Lanigan

Tonight, I had a wonderful exercise in regression. Tiffany is getting her degree in education and has to present a biology lesson to fourth graders. She was really nervous about it, so she got us all together tonight to present her lesson to us. In order to really give off the school atmosphere, we were told to act like fourth graders, which we did in spades. We talked out of turn, we didn’t listen, we did stupid stuff – everything fourth graders would do, and more.

• Me: Miss Lanigan, I want to write on the board next
• Sarah: Miss Lanigan, don’t let Mike write on the board. He’s too stupid to write.
• Me: No, you’re the stupid one.
• Sarah: No YOU are.
• Carling: You two be nice and get along. Right Miss Lanigan?
• Miss Lanigan: Yes, Carling. They should get along.
• Sarah: Teacher’s pet!
• Carling: Am not!
• Me: Are too!
• Katie: Miss Lanigan, Mike won’t stop kicking my chair
• Mike: I’m not doing anything!
• Katie: Yes, he is! He’s kicking my chair.
• Me: Miss Lanigan, they’re in love.
• Rich: Yeah! Katie and Mi-ike, sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
• Miss Lanigan, I lost my lima bean.

We doodled on our papers, and we made faces at each other, and worst of it was when Tiffany passed around a spray bottle to water our lima beans. We went a little overboard on that one, especially with Carling.
Ahh, good times, bad memories. It was nice to do that, for several reasons. First, it was nice just to remember what it was like back then. I started drawing on my paper and I immediately flashed back to doodling in elementary school. I remembered the angular s and the weird chessboard thingy, which I’ve recreated here for you.


Second, it was refreshing to take on a role I didn’t play as a child. I used to be the teacher’s pet/ cry baby (Who would have imagined?), but this time, I was the troublemaker. Tiffany made me sit up front with her, I was such a nuisance. It was a lot of fun. I wish I had gotten into trouble more often in fourth grade.