Bermuda Triangle Secrets Discovered!

After spending extensive time as a first grade teachers assistant (nearly three years, now), I've made a startling discovery. First-graders are really aliens in disguise!

There is a slim possibility that I may be wrong about this one. In fact, my alternate theory is that my first-graders really are just kids, but they can communicate directly with extraterrestrials!

Where's your evidence, you may ask. I give you exhibit A -- Dee (obviously NOT her real name!). Dee likes to walk around and mark on everyone's work. To mere mortals and school teachers, the marks look remarkably like scribbles.

What she is really doing is writing the same message over and over again! By writing the same message multiple times, it's more likely to be seen and read by those keeping an eye on us. You know, the 'ones' with whom she is communicating. Pretty sneaky!

Then there's exhibit B, Bo (not his real name, either!). Not as subtle as Dee, Bo likes to teleport within the confines of the classroom.

"Bo," I say, sternly. "Get off the computer and park it at your desk!"

"I am at my desk, Mr. Haworth." And, sure enough, there he is, sitting at his desk.

"Bo," I say again a millisecond later. "Please get out of your cubby and sit down!"

"I am sitting, Mr. Haworth." Again, there he is, sitting in his seat. 

It's almost creepy how he does that.

The secret to the Bermuda Triangle lies within the minds of these first-graders.

Like the squadron of planes that disappeared, inexplicable classroom phenomena have taken place under my watch.

Pencils, pencil sharpeners, crayons and markers have been known to disappear without a trace. I've even had an entire table disappear! Strange leaks have occurred around the water fountains and sinks. I think I've even seen single shoes laying around, though I've never spotted a kid wearing only one shoe...

And then there are the amazing moving desks. Whether the kids sit at them or not, they slowly rotate around the room, like a rotisserie on super slo-mo.

I've analyzed the details and here are the facts. I'm an assistant in three classrooms. A triangle has three sides (and three vertices! First grade info!). Three strikes and you're on red. Three colors for behavior. Three parts of a story (beginning, middle and end). Eighteen students per class, which is divisible by three! I could go on.

Rest assured that when my rooms begin humming, my kids' eyes start glowing and the water fountain water begins bubbling, I will be in the principal's office. We will be discussing my million dollar contract or my immediate transferral!

Students - Three, Teacher - Nil

School has begun yet again. The work days leading up to the students arrival were uneventful. I actually got to bed on time. Everything was going smoothly until I woke up and -- BAM!

I had stepped in the shower, which is the first thing I do upon waking. That's when I dropped a new, full bottle of shampoo. I managed to hit only one of my ten toes. I went through my day believing piggie R4 (right foot, fourth toe) to be broken.

As the week progressed, I discovered the toe was not broken. Sore and swollen with an infection, but not broken.

As of this writing, it's already been an interesting week, and it's not even over yet! One of our twins mouthed off at me in the hallway.

Now, don't get me wrong, she wasn't 'mouthing off' at me in a bad way. To the contrary, she was silently enunciating each word carefully, as if to quietly warn me there was a guy with a hockey puck mask and machete right behind me. There wasn't, obviously, but she was clearly trying to tell me something. 

And then there was the kindergartner. I don't usually deal with kindergartners, unless they're in my car rider line at the end of the day.

I won't say who won, but we went about three rounds. He cheated. When the bell sounded to end the rounds, he did NOT go to his corner! And he hit below the belt, figuratively speaking, of course.

There is to be no solace in the cafeteria line for this little ole' teachers assistant. That was where one of my girls looked at my name tag and asked me who was in the picture on my name tag. Then she scrutinized it a bit longer, noting every detail and looked up at me again.

"Hey," she said, finally. "Is that YOU in that picture, Mr. Haworth?!"

I wasn't sure how to interpret the incredulity that I noted in her voice.

I either look a lot better than I do in that ID, or else I look a lot worse. Could I have aged that much in three years? Don't tell me. I don't want to know.

Technical Genius Turns Teacher Assistant

As a kid, I was a technological wonder and a genius.

Allow me to explain. I wrote a program that featured a little green space ship. The ship lifted off from the bottom of the screen and disappeared out the top. It even had a puff of smoke. I also designed and programmed a video game that I called 'chaos.' It involved a green dot. The dot moved in a seemingly random path around the screen for an infinite amount of time. In hindsight, I should have named it "screensaver" and made millions.

Somewhere between that programming child prodigy and the current 44 year-old teacher's assistant, something changed.

Sure I know how to navigate my school and personal email. I even have a rudimentary knowledge of MS PowerPoint and MS Excel and can utilize them, too. There's no word processing package that I can't handle. But this whole Twitter thing has thrown me for a loop!

In an attempt to tap my inner nerd, I researched Twitter. After some exhaustive research, here are my findings.

Twitter is a proper noun and the name of a popular social networking site. Tweet can be used as a noun or a verb, as well as the occasional adjective. The verb 'Tweet' can be conjugated. I will tweet. I am tweeting. I have tweeted.

And the past tense of tweet is tweeted, not twit. While it is not a 'bad word,' per se, you still don't want to be called or considered one.

Interestingly enough, I now have a Twitter account (@phillip_haworth for those interested). While I am slowly struggling and learning, I seem to be stuck on the wrong side of the learning curve!

My family has gone a little overboard with the new, improved tech-savvy me. They keep making suggestions of other online advertising avenues for my blog, but they sound like nonsense!

Pinterest, for example, sounds like the bad guy's name out of a horror movie. Also, MySpace doesn't have a space. I'm an English major. There should be a space between the 'y' and the 'S.' I couldn't begin to tell you how heavy an Instagram is. And I've finally gotten the hang of Google, so what's this Google Plus mess they're telling me about?!