More On Winning And Losing.

I posted earlier about a battle lost against the mighty window blinds with which I had been clashing for years. Or did I win? I broke them so they are dead and that is like a victory, I suppose. But, now I have no working blinds and that has the ring of loserdom to it. There was another battle lost on Monday. This one was a war of words and a blow to my fragile dignity.

Time: Monday Morning, 8:45 a.m.
Place: The Hallway Outside Ms. Sheep's Classroom.
The Players: Ms. Sheep, Her Cheerful Teaching Assistant (whose cheer has been waning of late) and A Lady With A Mop.

Ms. Sheep: My goodness! There certainly seems to be a lot of water here in the hallway!

Lady With A Mop: (glowers)

MS: It looks like there's been quite a spill here...I'm so very glad that someone thought to bring the mop!

LWAM: (glowers and mutters something rather inappropriate for the setting)

Cheerful Teaching Assistant: I called her...there was a lot of water out here, you see.

MS: Why, how very, very quick-thinking of you, Cheerful Teaching Assistant! You are a treasure to have under my supervision. Thank you for being YOU!!

CTA: (grinning broadly) Yeah. I wouldn't want you to break a hip or anything.

MS: (glowers...she knows when she's been bested)


That one was a loss. No doubt about it. You don't come back from that any time soon. On the plus side, my Cheerful Teaching Assistant has never been more cheerful. She's been downright giddy all week long. Maniacally so...

Until today. Sometimes I get to win.

Time: Thursday, 2:30 p.m.
Place: Ms. Sheep's classroom.
The Players: Ms. Sheep, Her Cheerful Teaching Assistant And A Noncompliant Fifth Grader Who Has Been Arguing About Doing His Sustained Silent Reading For Twenty Minutes.

Ms. Sheep, being older, wiser, and, granted, more fragile of hip, has given up on this argument and is sitting it out at her desk. She knows that she holds his end of the day free time in her hands and that he will eventually catch on to this fact. The Cheerful Teaching Assistant, however, does not have Ms. Sheep's vast years of experience with Noncompliant Fifth Graders. She's feeling the need to impress her will upon him. She makes the decision to play the Encouragement Card.

Noncompliant Fifth Grader: I can't do it! I can't...and you can't make me!!!

Cheerful Teaching Assistant: You can do anything if you really, really try!

Ms. Sheep: (seeing that this strategy is about to incite further and more intense argumentative behavior, attempts a bold distraction) Mary Poppins has a point! All we must do is try!!! (voice rising to a fevered pitch) It's all in the trying! Let's all try together! The sun will shine, the birds will sing, all fifth graders will read silently for ten minutes and the world will be at peace!! Let's be happy and unified in the trying!!! (rises from her chair and risks her fragile hips to dance around the room spreading imaginary Happy Reading Dust while chanting loudly and robustly)

If you BELIEVE
You can ACHIEVE!!!!!

CTA: This is payback for the, "hip" comment, isn't it?

MS: Maybe just a little...

CTA: Well-played.

MS: My hip hurts...


Bonus Awesome Comment From Noncompliant Fifth Grader: Which part of Silent Reading is getting past you two?


I'm not sure that this constitutes a full victory, but we did manage to get our silent reading done and any potential arguments from the reader were lost in his horror at my little Happy "Trying" Dance. If not a victory, we can possibly call it a draw. That hip joke was pretty darned good considering it was early in the morning and all...

My Cheerful Teaching Assistant has an amazingly well-developed sense of humor in spite of her tendency to resort to being Little Miss Sunshine in times of stress. We work together well, as you can imagine. I do believe that there will be a rather hilarious come-back sometime over the next week. I look forward to it.

Victory or not, I think I may just reward myself with a little casting on tonight. I do believe I might be ready for the privilege of starting up a third project. I just got myself a fancy new scarf pattern and I'm feeling the urge to see what it will do. We shall ignore the fact that I have two unfinished projects on the needles that I have sworn to complete before anything else sees the light of day. This is different. This is a Victory Project. (or a Just Let Me Think I Won Project) That concept negates any and all previous contracts with the yarn. I looked it up.

And I'm pretty sure I can knit this one. Rumor has it, all I have to do is try...

SA