What are you doing? Jazzercize!

Last night at Supper Club, we were short a few chairs and I ended up in the living room with Aaron and Scott. Somehow we started talking about ways we got in trouble in school. It was really a pretty pathetic conversation, seeing as how we've all got goody-two-shoes tendencies. Aaron talked about talking a whole class into hiding from the teacher because she made them re-learn cursive in eleventh grade. Scott talked about sneaking out of school to eat lunch off campus and running into the principal at Taco John's. Me? I had nothin. Aaron's cursive story prompted me to talk about my woes as a third-grader learning cursive, when my left-handed self wouldn't cooporate with slanted letters and I got bad grades. Scandalous. Twice in my school career, I was sent to the principal's office. The first time was in kindergarten, when the teacher told us not to mess with the overhead projector. Paul Walden walked over to it, messed with the knob and pronounced it "cool". Well, anything Paul Walden could do, I could do better. So I started messing with it, too, and the teacher caught me. I still maintain that a trip to the principal was a little harsh for a five-year-old, but such is life. The second time was in sixth grade. We were playing Around the World in math class. For the unfamiliar, Around the World is a game involving flash cards. The first kid in the first row stands next to the kid behind him. The teacher holds up a flash card, and the first one to call out the correct answer moves on to the next kid and keeps the card. If you lose, you take the desk of the kid that beat you. At the end of the game, the kid with the most cards wins. My dear friend Randa took Around the World (and all other competitions) VERY seriously. She had this stance she would assume to get ready for the card, as if bending your knees and pointing your finger could make your brain calculate multiplication faster. I was sitting in the back of the room with Callie. Cool kids that we were, we weren't too concerned with the game going on. What we were concerned with was making fun of Randa. We started imitating her poses as she made her way around the room. Before too long, we were doing some kind of strange Around the World dance, and laughing our heads off. Our teacher, Mr. Houser, did not appreciate the commotion we were causing in the back of the room. He made his way back (sloooooooowly, agility was not his strong suit) and asked Callie what in the world she thought she was doing. She looked him straight in the eye and said, "Jazzercize." At this time in my life, my sense of humor was clearly not fully developed, because I found that answer to be the funniest thing I had ever heard. I laughed obnoxiously loud, and we were both sent to the principal's office. We had to sit on the green vinyl couch in the waiting room while the rest of the class went outside for PE. We never had to actually go inside the office... I guess just sitting in there was punishment enough. It must have worked, as I never really got into trouble at school again.