Keeping it all together.

I had to cover a class today. I guess I really don't mind too much. After all, I get extra pay, and I get to rummage through other people's stuff. Oh, stop rolling your eyes. You know you do it, too.

Anyway, so I had to cover for Mrs. Kilby, who also teaches English. She had one of those modification meetings to attend, and like I said, I generally don't mind. But here's the thing. When I walked into her class, I was nearly decapitated. Mrs. Kilby had these random paper clips chains hanging from the ceiling. The room looked like some sort of bizzaro Cirque du Soleil. Now, I often use paper clips to hang student work from the horrific acoustic tiles, but never this low, never so low that I could put my eyes out... and where was the student work? These were just paper clips. No glorious acrostic poems tethered to them or anything.

"Okay, I give," I point upward and say to the girl in the first desk who is applying her "Vamp" by Chanel lipstick (and takes her time to finish up before she answers me).

"Mm. That's Mrs. Kilb's new diet. New chain, new diet. New paper clip, one pound gone. Get it?"

Yeah. I got it, all right. I got that this place is enough to drive us all to the crazy house in different ways. I mean the adding of paper clips to the ceiling does have that carving the "years locked-up" tally on a jail cell wall feel to it, doesn't it?

Oh, and for crying out loud, how many times can you lose the same pound? From my calculations, it looks like about a hundred annnnd... nothin'.