Aeschylus' Turtle: The GAME

In which we shall see: Drama-related non-drama FUN.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I know I haven't been around for a while - I've been so busy trying to figure out how to teach high school AND have some kind of life outside the "job" AND clean and pack my house (hint: only the first of those three things is something I've made any headway with) that I haven't thought really at all about blogging. If you live for my blog posts, sorry... no, really, I'm sorry - that's just pathetic. (Ironic future blog post: List of Current and Exciting Hobbies That Do Not Involve Keyboards.) But I still love you.

Last weekend I spent all day Saturday (unpaid) at the State Drama Competition; quite frankly, it was oodles of fun. No, I'm not being sarcastic. (Seriously.) I was hoping to sit in on a few of my students' competition rounds to watch their final performances, but instead I was corralled in the library with the other teachers for the day tabulating all the scores as they came in from the judges. Instead of being cranky and surreptitiously ticking off the half-hours in mechanical pencil on the wall, I found myself at a table with the teachers from West Jordan, Jordan, and Skyline High Schools. It was FANTASTIC. First off, to combat his ADD, WJ started a "State Competition Bingo Sheet" complete with odd gestures, swear words, and bodily functions relating to another teacher's newborn baby. Listening to him trying to get random people to say some of the things on his sheet was hilarious. Watching the other people at the table try to keep straight faces as he did so was just about as good. (Next year, J plans to bring official Bingo cards for the entire room.) It took me back to "Fred Bingo" from college (also referenced by a teacher that I went to school with) and that's just good times for everybody.

Second, S taught us an absolutely BRILLIANT game - once we learned how to play, it was nearly impossible to focus on anything else. Evidently, back in college S and one of his roommates realized that every person resembles one of four animals. The full extent of the game is looking around, identifying an animal, and sharing your results with another player. That's it. We pegged our table (we had one of each), all the remaining occupants of the room (under our breaths), and then on the lunch break wandered the halls of the school and zeroed in on students. You don't even know. I got a better workout from laughing that day than I had doing anything else in months. YOU HAVE GOT TO TRY THIS.

The animals:

RAT: It's all in the teeth. Pointy chin, slightly (or not-so-slightly) bulbous eyes. Females are rarer than males in this group, making for much more exciting finds. WJ.

MONKEY: Round face-shape. This has to do more with cheeks, forehead, and ears - it's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. Me.

PIG: Nose, of course. Otherwise monkey-ish faces will slide over the line if the schnooz has a tip-tilt. Big eyes, small eyes, ears, cheeks - it all comes down to the nose. J.

BIRD: In a way, this one is about the "direction" of the face. The long, straight nose, the delicate bones, the lines that move the eye in a smooth swoop down and out, with the chin and mouth pulling into a ski-jump. They're also just "bird-like". One woman who was sure she'd be pegged as a pig turned out to be a bird because of the actual shape of her facial features. S.

Once you start noticing, and passing on your observations to someone else, it's really hard to stop. My students have no idea why I was stepping into their conversation groups, "listening" intently (I haven't a clue what any of them said), and then ducking out just as I was about to burst into laughter. We four teachers would wander around the commons area where our kids were gathered, make a few mental notes, and then re-group to giggle and nosh on fruit salsa and cinnamon tortilla chips WJ had liberated from one of his crew. It was a very good day.

Honestly, a day like that (even unpaid) would nearly be enough to make me reconsider becoming a real live high school teacher. (And apparently the school's administration is interested in keeping me on as a real teacher, too - but that's another story.)

Family Home Evening, Date Night, Shopping at the Mall - you haven't lived until you've tried The GAME.