Fifth-Grader Kills Off Aliens

As a teacher's assistant working with third, fourth and fifth-graders, I'm very wary of dogs, aliens and unavoidable tragedies of epic proportions. 

Approximately 30-some odd years ago, when I was in fifth grade, all my friends, neighbors and I owned homework-eating dogs. These dogs look like any other dogs. They are only identifiable by being caught in the act. This also poses a problem since they very rarely are.

Regardless, my homework was targeted by these dogs more so than either of my sisters. Perhaps because I did so much of it. Maybe mine was tastier. Whatever the reason, it was most unfair how often I came to class empty handed because of that nefarious dog.

Even worse than the dogs in those days were the aliens! They buzzed around like scavenging mosquitoes. They took anything that wasn't nailed down like, for example, my homework. Imagine that.

Those aliens weren't picky, either. Besides homework, they took house keys, car keys, money, dog leashes, books, pencils, paper... You name it. They took it.

As if the dogs and the aliens weren't enough, we also had tragedies of epic proportions in those days. You know the kind. These are the inexplicable events that just randomly occur that cause homework sucking vortexes to materialize out of thin air. There's no explaining them.

Honestly, it was a miracle that I ever even finished high school. The amount of time I spent guarding the work I did left me with little time to do it. Despite my due diligence, I was not able to protect the amazing amount of homework that I produced!

This, of course, explains my dismay to my fifth-grader's response concerning her lost math packet last Monday. I stopped her and asked if she had found it.

"Umm," she said. "No, Mr. Haworth."

"Holy shmoly," I exclaimed. "Was it eaten by a dog?"

"We don't have a dog, Mr. Haworth," she said, and giggled.

"Aliens," I said. "It must have been aliens! They took it, right?"

"There's no aliens, Mr. Haworth," she replied.

I stood there a moment, stunned.

No aliens? No homework-eating dogs? Her casual comments killed them off quickly and efficiently. I simply didn't have the heart to allow her to kill off the tragedies of epic proportions. Despite her predicted reaction to these tragedies, I am certain that they still exist somewhere in this world.