Of Pee and Gangs

Don't you just hate those blogs where the author only writes every so often, and every blog contains an apology for not having written in so long? Me, too.

I went to the local market today to get some toiletries because I coincidentally ran out of body wash, shampoo, and toilet paper all at the same time. They don't make just normal shampoo anymore. There's shampoo for oily hair, extra moisturizing shampoo for dry hair, dandruff shampoo, shampoo for fine hair that gives it more volume, shampoo for dyed hair, etc. I spent several minutes trying to find just your average, run of the mill shampoo. "Body wash" is a euphemism for soap, but I started using it a few couple of months ago because it was more convenient to use at our outdoor education science camp than a messy bar of soap. I've become a fan of washing my body with body wash. All of the body washes for men have very manly, powerful names.

All of which is just a long, somewhat tedious prologue to what I really wanted to write about. Last week, one of my students peed in her pants (for the second time this year). That same day, it was discovered that several fifth grade boys had started a gang and were actively recruiting members from the fifth grade, with a "jumping in" ceremony and everything. So these are the extremes of sophistication I'm dealing with this year. On the one hand, I have a student who is learning to write her name and who has peed in my classroom twice. On the other hand, I've got boys using their entrepreneurial and leadership skills to create their own gang.