Ah yes....

...now I remember a big reason I started this blog... I try to limit myself to one facebook status post per day, and some days are simply worth more than that.

"Tornado...there's a tornado..." I heard a familiar, melodic voice say at 9:50 this morning.

Today was the first Tuesday of the month. So, of course, there was a planned tornado siren at 10:00 am. One of my students (the one I mentioned before with the sing-songy voice) is horrified of the tornado siren. When he was at Thomas Paine (now he's at the Middle School) the tornado siren was right outside their window, and it traumatized him. Needless to say (well, maybe not needless), he spends the entire morning of every first Tuesday preparing for the event, even though the siren is really very quiet at the Middle School.

I see him starting at 9:50. SO, at promptly 9:50 he wanders into our room sporting these massive, retro, ham radio-esque headphones, and a distant expression. "There's a tornado drill," he says in that melodic voice. I had forgotten about the whole thing until then, but Sandy reminded me of his fear... So much for my language lesson this morning! :) We looked at a few pictures, but he was clearly distracted/agitated and kept interrupting me with a quiet, "I am very scared..." or, "Do you want to go for a walk?" I finally took the hint and we began wandering the halls to get someone's mind off of the impending disaster.

We ended up camping in the teacher's lounge (empty at 9:55 am) to ride out the storm. I sat us down next to the vending machines, which were conveniently droning and emitting loud gurgly noises, in hopes that they would drown out the siren's dreaded wail. Mission accomplished. :) We sat at our table, humming to ourselves and listing words that rhyme with each other, until about 10:05. (In your mental picture of this, please do not omit the retro ham radio headphones. Very important.) He didn't hear a thing. I did, but the vending machines were droning at so similar a frequency that someone wearing large headphones would never notice... As we walked back to our classroom, he kept saying, "The siren is all done...it was canceled..."

Yes...of course it was. :)


Whoops. I really didn't mean for that story to take up so much space. I had other things I was going to write about.....but that's probably good for now!


(Yes, this post is sandwiched by "now"s....parenthetical statements excluded.)