Flack's Daily Smack

I work in a school with very young children and I'm continually amazed at what some of the students pick up. Sometimes it's cute while other times it can be downright annoying.

 

One student in particular is always quoting phrases from his favorite storybooks or movies. He has even picked up some of my own expressions... er, let me back up:

 

Growing up, my mother used to use the expression, "oh my word!" - inserting the word "word" where commonly something unpleasant might be. I have only ever heard my mother use this expression. Without much thought, the expression escaped my own lips at school a few times. Much to my surprise, this student picked up the expression and says it quite frequently. It usually cracks the rest of the staff up... it's almost like he is making a joke at my expense.

 

At lunchtime, the same student insists on running a fork through his hair - like the "dinglehopper" scene from Disney's Little Mermaid. Now, don't get me wrong... it was cute the first hundred times or so, but I'm getting a little sick of having to clean the food out of his hair. (Perhaps the parents of children who have been negatively influenced by Disney films should band together and form a class action lawsuit. Naw, just joking.)

 

Oh, I'm just going off on all sorts of inane tangents, but I gotta tell you another story. There is another student that I was teaching to read. One of the pages in a book I made for him said, "The horse's name is Mr. Ed". Whenever he got to this page, he would get this insanely evil look on his face and say, "The horse's name is Mr. Bill" (Mr. Bill is the name I let the students address me by).