Kids making me laugh

Today, after struggling to gain the attention of excitable juniors after they received their quiz scores, I had almost complete silence, and was ready to talk some Murakami. Then, I heard it, that noise that you hope is just someone moving a chair but you feel in your gut is more. Everyone heard it. Everyone thought the fart came from the goofy kid with the long unkempt hair. But no, it came from the fashionista girl sitting next to him. How did we know? She started laughing and excused herself. She didn't stop laughing. It became a belly laugh. At first, I tried to stay stern. But the laugh became contagious, and I soon caught it, and then the kids started pointing at me, and pointing out my laugh, and soon the entire class was laughing. At a fart. That sort of thing doesn't happen too often, especially with Juniors. I just couldn't help it. Those last 5 minutes of class? Not much learning going on then. Mostly laughing. I did manage to talk a little bit about the book. A little bit.

*****

And it was a fun day. I had to cancel practice on the field because of rain, so the baseball team worked out in the weight room. I found out I can bench 225. But, even better, a group of my players decided to jump rope towards the end. Eventually, it became a game of double dutch. Seeing a bunch of baseball players trying and mostly failing to double dutch jump rope in the basement, over and over again, getting smacked in the head with the big plastic jump ropes, laughing and hooting and hollering, and sometimes getting it right... it was just a really fun time. And, I got home before dark for the first time since the season started.