Virgin?

Yesterday after packing the last box, slapping on the last label, wrapping up seven files (one of which the school had never even entered into the system - nice!), and carting three vehicle loads of stuff to summer school I had my paper signed and turned in my key. My first year as a teacher is signed, sealed, and completed. I can not yet process that, so instead I decided to celebrate by taking my mom out to dinner as she is visiting from home. We went to a local bar-b-que restaurant that has good food and decent prices and I decided to have a drink because it had been quite the day, week, month, year. So I ordered a strawberry-pina colada and no questions were asked. My drink arrived and I was surprised by how incredibly sweet it was and how cheap they were with the alcohol because I could not taste any but decided that it was not necessarily bad tasting. Our food then arrived and I decided to not say anything because I had not eaten all day and just wanted to enjoy a good meal. I did notice that there were no effects from the drink and, well, I would be a cheap date in terms of drinks because while I have never been drunk I can tell that I have had a drink after just one. So the bill arrived and printed neatly on it was "Virgin strwbry colada". The manager who took our drink order assumed that I not only was underage but so underage that it was not even worth askng for my ID to check and plaed the order for a virgin drink. I did not know whether to laugh or to be offended. So I informed our waitress, who looked barely legal herself, and let the offended side explain the situation. My virgin drink was free but I received no apology. So now I look so young that they do not even think to card me? Nice! I made sure to save the receipt because it is a classic and once we were in the car the laughter exploded. I am almost 26 and I still do not pass for 21 yet - or apparently anything near 21. Ugh! And everyone who reassures me that I will love it when I am 60 - that so does not help anything! And when I am 60 and want senior citizen discounts I am sure it will piss me off to have to drag out my ID each time then too! :) Lord help me if I try to go somewhere truly forbidden, like a Casino or a night club! Sixteen year old highschool kids can get drinks with fake IDs easier than I can when I am honestly 5 years older than is required. So the moral of the story is just because the drinker is a virgin does not mean the drink must be a virgin as well.

Brought to You By The Letters AA

There are days when I feel like I have screwed up. There are days when it seems like I have brought my body with me to work but left my brain behind at home. However, even on my worst days I look pretty darn good compared to the workers at a restaurant who managed to get a three year old drunk on Margauritas. Someone, somewhere, had the brilliant idea to keep the apple juice and the marguirita mix in identical containers without labels. After all, nothing bad could ever come from that mix up! No one would ever pour liquor into a child's sippy cup and give it to them with their little child-friendly meal, never noticing the distinctly different smell of apple juice and alcohol. I must say that this child, he has a future in some fraternity somewhere in about 15 years. Most children I know when given a cup full of marguerita would have spit and sputtered and refused to drink it. He chugged with apparently speed and skill to make even the most beer-hardened frat brother proud. It did not occur to anyone that something may be wrong until the child began to lose his child-friendly meal. Congratulations Junior, you have been drunk and had your first hangover by the age of three! I can only imagine what the future will bring. As for the genius who made the executive decision to put apple juice and liquor in identical, unmarked containers - he's at home practicing the phrase "do you want fries with that?". And yet he will still make more money than I do and be more respected. I know companies are targeting a younger audience but I think this is a bit much. At least wait until the child can reach the bar without needing a booster seat...or until he can drink from an open cup!

I don't have any balls?!?

One of my students uses a voice output device (here is a sample of a simple voice output device Go Talk 20) to communicate a large part of the time. We use it a lot during learning activities and he is learning to identify objects by color (i.e. purple crayon, red block) and say complete sentences (I have a purple crayon. I want a purple crayon. I see a purple crayon.). He recently started working on a new device that we are testing out that allows a lot of choices to be presented to him. Previously he could only have eight items presented, which meant it was limited in what he had to discriminate between when I asked him a question and in what he could request. So I brought along his new device and his items that we had been working with on his home visit on Friday. We were plodding along working on colors and objects (he was not in the mood to cooperate - I don't blame him, after being in school for 3 hours I don't think I would appreciate having the teacher show up at my front door with more work either). He picked up his device and began to insistently push the picture symbol for the toy ball that we had played with in class. Without thinking out of my mouth tumbled the words "I'm sorry, I don't have any balls." Oops. I froze, not knowing if his mom would want to laugh as badly as I did or if she would not appreciate the humor of the situation. Later when she cursed as she tried to put the cover on his self-opening scissors (which is a lot harder than it sounds) I swallowd another round of giggles. Maybe it is a good thing he can't imitate what we say? At least that day it was!!