I am, what you may call....

The whitest man in America.

I was thinking about this two weeks ago prior to hanging out with some old friends from elementary/middle/high school. It had been 8.5 years since I'd seen these people, so I thought of what I would tell them my life has been. Well, below are my characteristics:

1. I'm now married. I'm one of 6 people my age between DC and NY married.
2. I teach.
3. I teach in a school in a toe-ed up neighborhood of The Bronx.

By the way, the T in The Bronx is capitalized. Who knew?

4. I don't dance...or at least I've been accused of counting my steps while dancing. It doesn't actually get paler than that.

Anyhow, I was thinking for a bit that teaching in the Toe makes me somewhat hood in my own right, but then I thought about it and decided that it's a very white thing to do. I feel like it's full of, "I'm going to go in there and make a difference". That's not my intention. My intention is to go in there, have a fun job, teach some kids some stuff, learn to dance and the latest fashions/slang words from the kids.

Also, I decided one day that calling places the ghetto or the hood was played out, so now I want to start calling it the toe. Thoughts?

Anyway, new slang word learned yesterday: "Tight".

Now, you might say that tight has been used for a long time...but perhaps not in this way? When I was cool, tight was used to describe something fun...or cool. Now it's used to describe someone who is really angry. Who knew? Perhaps this is always what the meaning was, but hey, like I said above, white guy over here...can't blame me for the powder shower at birth.

So the key to getting kids to pay attention in class is get them, what we call, "engaged." The easiest way to do this is to relate subject matter to them. So today we're talking about patterns. I asked where we can find a pattern in a song and someone said "the chorus". That's what I was getting at, but I took it a step further and brought it to a rap song...and then my shine came through. I said, "So you know when someone spits lyrics yo...." and went on from there.

There is no way any of these kids would ever pass up the opportunity to not turn their head and say, "wait, what the fuck did he just say?" So I did that to get them paying attention.

But I have to say it as white as possible or risk getting made fun of for other reasons by the kids. So whenever I say a line like that, I always add a yo at the end just to see how it goes over. Half of the laughs are at me, but at least they're paying attention at that point...which is always the goal.

and the day before one of our answer was $2000, so I had to say, "yo that's 2 gees y'all".

At least I entertain myself.

Lastly, congratulations to Dr. Devon Quick....formerly Mrs. Devon Quick...formerly Devon Van Leer for getting her doctorate in Paleontology. What's Paleontology you ask? Why it's the same field that Ross Geller got his Ph.D in.

Dr. Quick submitted her dissertation, presented it and passed the interview phase as well. So now she's a doctor too. Way to go Devon. As a congratulatory salute, here's a picture that always makes me smile....

....please note I now have to find a photo online that makes me laugh. This is a stream of consciousness blog after all.

Well, blogger won't let me post photos so that ain't happening. But way to go anyway sister...now fix my effing computer if you're so smart!