I really have to stop being sarcastic

with kids who actually understand me. So the kid who renamed himself Ichiro's classmate Greg is our class clown. I referred to him once as "Mr. Happy" which he found so hilarious that he now insists on being referred to only as Mr. Happy. So now of the boys in my class, I have Ichiro, Mr. Happy, and the new boy Greg in his infinite wisdom has renamed Michael Jordan. (Originally his name was Jordan.)

Furthermore, during the summer vacation, I've been teaching a lot of reading classes. Although I don't really have any funny stories anymore (the like of Ken and Jerry will probably never come again), this one kind of amused me.

So I've been reading a bunch of simplified fairy tales with my classes. I've now read some of them so many times because different classes are reading them that not only do I lose track of which class is where, but I also rock Hangman because I've memorized practically every word in the book.

With the more advanced class I've been reading The Gingerbread Man. Which honestly is a pretty inane story. In an attempt to make 12 sentences stretch for 2 hours, we were discussing what the Gingerbread man has. I.e. eyes, a nose, a mouth, arms and legs. And what he doesn't have, fingers, toes, hands etc. Also, in the book we have the perspective is kind of fucked up so the gingerbread man sometimes appears to be small and then sometimes looks pretty gigantic.

At some point, Paul, one of the kids in the class said, "The gingerbread man is a monster." and then laughed in an indescribably crazy kind of way. It makes sense though, I mean here's this giant cookie that can walk and talk and apparently run freakishly fast.

So because Paul is kind of goofy, I used to (affectionately) call him Silly Paul. And then after the monster comment, I've been calling him Little Monster. However, his classmates have also started calling him Little Monster. I'm getting a little too good at this naming business.