Dill or gerkin?

I'm fully aware that my charming little seventh grade cherubs receive hormones during the year that they spend with me, usually at Christmas or over Spring Break. This is not something any of us look forward to. However, even I am sometimes stunned at the severity of this hormone attack on what used to be a nice, normal child but is now a raging pile of screaming hormones.

One of the symptoms, aside from the expected obsession about sex, is the fact that any and all common sense (if there was any to start with) simply disappears. There is no thought process along the lines of "would this be a smart thing to do?" In fact, I'm not sure there's any thought process at all outside of any process revolving around sex.

If there were someone thinking along the lines of, "Hey, maybe this isn't the right place to be doing this," then we wouldn't have had a group of boys on our team bringing a condom to lunch, purchasing a pickle, placing the condom over the pickle, and then whopping and hollaring and stretching and swinging the condom (with the captive pickle) all over the lunch table causing the girls to scream, squeal and basically pitch a fit.

And oh yes, I bet you can just guess...just guess...who was involved in this little escapade.

Fabio Boy (who's father has returned to Iraq and as a result Fabio Boy is now back in full form, his mother apparently incapable of managing him) was the ring leader (no surprise there). And along for the fun was one of my advisory kids, Stoner Boy (another skater who can't keep his head off his desk, but who I actually really like), and Stoopid Boy, the critter who declared everything (except perhaps pickles and condoms) is stupid. Stoopid Boy took the cake, however, when it was reported that he had the pickle doing vile things with a pop bottle.

In any case, what really made me mad, just madder than anything, is that sneaking, coniving, amoral Fabio Boy talked one of our special ed kids, Gullible Boy, into taking credit for the entire event. See, Fabio Boy knows he's on the short list for alternative school and apparently he has no self-control and can't help himself, so when he does something as stupid as the pickle stunt, he has to find someone to take the fall. And that someone was Gullible Boy. Fortunately we have witnesses who squealed, and security tapes to view, so I'm sure the truth will come out.

Whether or not Fabio makes it to alternative school (there may not be a slot) remains to be seen. We can always hope.