Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Classic

Student: "Ms. L., have you ever read Of Mice and Men?" [the freshmen English classes just started it]
Me: "Yeah, I read it when I was in ninth grade too."
Student: "Really? When you were in ninth grade?"
Me: "Yup"
Student: "Wow, that book is really old."

(Note: I used the moniker "student" in this exchange because it played out approximately three times today, all with different students.)

4 comments:

Linda said...

On my birthday (or the day after to be more specific) the kids were guessing my age. A few girls guessed 30. When I have a daughter who will be 31 in August, they altered their guess to 35. Kids have no sense of age. You are so close to the age of your students that one would think they could do better, but you have slipped across the line into adult. To them, all adults are OLD. Hence the book is old, too.

Roni said...

As it turns out, I'm "old", too, according to my students. Their judgement had something to do my admission of reading books at the beach.

So this is what the other side of the hill looks like...

Jen said...

When I taught you, one of your classmates asked if I'd voted for Eisenhower. ;-)

SWE said...

I first knew I was "old" when I was a sophomore in high school and suggested to the kids I was babysitting that we play Star Wars. I even let the bratty one be Luke Skywalker. "Who's that?" I was asked with a sneer. Sigh.

The good news is that there will always be someone out there who thinks you're a whippersnapper, so it all balances out to something near your actual age. ;-)