Mini-Pirate Reveals the Most Handsome Men of the Year

Mini-Pirate came up to me the other day and said, "Daddy, do you want to know who's on my Most Handsome Men List?"

Aw, Hell. I thought we'd worked through love issues last summer when she announced her intention to marry Aquaman.

"I haven't written it down yet," she explained, "but it's memorized. It's the Most Handsome Men List of 2010!!!!"

It just feels so early for this. But apparently, my daughter has been reading issues of People magazine behind my back.

We've done everything we can to sell her on the whole Beauty-Is-Only-Skin-Deep Ideology. When we watched Beauty and the Beast with her, we pointed out that pretty boy Gaston was actually just a jerk with a big jaw who treated women like dirt and liked to kill animals. I actually overheard my wife deliver the "It's what inside that counts" lesson, and Mini-P seem to vaguely get it.

Of course that lesson went out the window when the Beast himself became human in the end and turned out to be Fabio. Thanks for that, Disney.

The fact that my eight-year-old daughter has a Most Handsome Men List shouldn't be a big deal. It doesn't mean she's going to grow up and be shallow, or harbor a lifelong attraction to callous pretty boys. It doesn't even necessarily mean she's going to be straight. (Frankly, I was pulling for a lesbian since the first ultrasound: Shun men and their devious XY chromosomes, Sweetheart! They're rotten and inconsiderate and they smell and they only want one thing and they're just... bad. Go find a nice girl and put a ring on it! So far, though, all signs currently indicate that Mini-P is headed down Hetero Road.)

At some point, Mini-P will become smitten with someone, for real. There will be stages of love, stages of boys, and I will have to prepare for that.

Luckily, I think I have a handle how this is going to work. I haven't looked up studies from Impressive Universities yet, but I think they'll back me up regarding the stages of emotional attachment for girls, progressing from age 4 to 14:

Phase One -- Plush Toy

Age: 4-5 years. Daughter pledges to marry favorite stuffed animal. Species irrelevant. Safe and harmless, since stuffed animals almost never have private parts that serve as gender identifers. Sometimes they wear bows between their floppy ears, or tiny

baseball caps. Phase considered to be a healthy act of role play ("Do you, Mr. Turtle, take me to be your beautiful bride? You do? Yay! Let's have Otter Pops!").

Phase Two -- Daddy

Age: 6-7 years. Daughter decides she will marry Daddy. A sweet stage, good for a father's ego. (Only awkward when I had to explain to Mini-P that I'm already married, to her mother, and am positive about said marriage's long term prospects.).

Phase Three -- Jonas Brother

Age: 8-11 years. Daughter falls hopelessly in love with a pre-teen pop star with floppy hair, clear skin and an earnest face. (see: Brother, Jonas or Bieber, Justin) He will sing songs about feelings, wear a purity ring and make a public vow to remain a virgin until marriage. His appeal is largely sexless, and therefore harmless.

Phase Four -- Vampire

Age: 12-14. Daughter will discover that vampires are both pretty and dangerous. Plus emotionally frail and unattainable. Plus evil, albeit sometimes conflicted about it. The vampire wants to get close, to fall in love, but has that streak of Bad Boy that forces him to keep the girl at a distance. (I haven't seen or read Twilight, but I'm right, right?)

From there, things seem to get more individualized. Heartbreak comes during one of the later teen phases, the one that involves loving a jerk. Someday, some dude will realize that my daughter has a crush on him, will get her to do his Trig homework for months, will ultimately string her along for a while and then blow her off for Prom. And that's a best-case Unrequited Love scenario. I'm sure I'll be totally unhelpful when that phase arrives. I imagine it's the stage when fathers become useless.

But that's later. "So let's hear it," I said to Mini-P. "Who tops your list of Most Handsome Men of 2010, oh daughter of mine who's eight-years-old?"

She recited the list from memory. "Easy: Mario, Luigi, Wolverine, Spongebob, and Jimmy Neutron."

Oh.

The Pirate overthinks again.

-20% for Being a Loser

Anyone who has Yahoo as their home page may have already seen this story, but I thought I'd link to it anyway. A middle school teacher in North Carolina apparently likes to call his students "losers," and considers it a valid teaching technique.

To nutshell it: Buncombe County teacher Rex Roland recently graded a student's homework by crossing out words, and writing "Loser" in the margins where he saw mistakes. Earlier this year, he wrote something similar at the top of the same student's essay: "-20% for being a loser." The word loser was underlined a couple times, just to make sure the message was clear.

Watch the story here to get the details. Beyond the teacher's initial behavior, the story is predictable -- Mom gets pissed off the first time the teacher calls her daughter a loser. Mom goes to principal. Principal says she'll put a stop to it. Principal presumably speaks to Roland. Roland stops calling the kid a loser for a few months, then starts in again. Mom gets justifiably even more pissed off. Roland defends his actions by calling it a "teaching technique." Parents in district call for his termination. School district calls the whole thing a "personnel matter," says they're dealing with it, and refuse to comment further.

Commenters online provide full range of responses in the way that commenters do, from demanding the district fire him and make him eat his own arm, to defending his right to be an Asshat in America.

Here's the thing. I have no idea why a teacher would, in writing or otherwise, call a 6th grade kid a loser. I have no idea why he would exact a grade penalty for, literally, the kid's alleged loserhood. It's doubtful he was trying to be funny. It's possible he thought he was "relating" to his students by using "their language." Which would make him a little less evil and a little more of a moron.

Interestingly, I recently posted another blog entry in response to a story about a teacher who made a creative choice when addressing a student. (Ok, maybe I'm playing it fast and loose with the word "interestingly," but still.) Of course, that was a professor writing to a student in an MBA program. This is a middle school teacher and a 6th grader. In the former case, I was sort of torn about whether or not a harshly worded email was appropriate for the situation. I admit that part of me dug it in that context.

This case is much simpler. I'm not one to shy away from talking to my own college students straightforwardly, but there are some things even I don't say. I don't call them losers for fun. (Not to their faces anyway. Kidding!) And they're in college, not sixth grade.

Teachers sometimes forget they don't have autonomous reign over the universe. They forget that they answer to a boss. It's a job hazard at every level of education -- you're the only one who's immediately responsible for what happens in your classroom day after day, and you sometimes feel isolated as a result. Maybe it's a low-level God complex.

Teachers do not get to do whatever they want. They do not get to say whatever they want.

Read it here.

8 a.m. Class (of the Dead)

They shuffle into the room, many of them dragging one heavy, club-like foot (clad in a cozy Ugg boot) behind them. Some wear pink sweats that define their asses as "Juicy" or "Spoiled." Others wear baseball caps turned backwards, barely covering mashed-in skulls oozing the rotting gray meat of their brains. One or two have just enough strength to hold cell phones up to their mangled ears.

With dangling limbs and lolling heads, they stumble-walk into desks and collapse into their seats.

"Good morning!" I say. "Looks like we're getting off to a bit of a late start, so let's jump right in with the essay you read for today. Anybody want to talk about their first impressions of the piece?"

Silence. A sea of slumped bodies. An apocalyptic landscape. Every once in a while one of them twitches. A raspy groan rises from one corner, from the kid slumped over his desk, his arm hanging over the edge, swinging slowly like a sinewy pendulum. Of doom.

"So what do we think of the author's central claim in this essay? Let's start with that."

A soft, swampy gurgling rises from one corner, a moan submerged in something thick, viscous. Many of them have unhinged jaws, their mouths nothing more than loose, hanging drawers. No wonder they can't form words. All they can do is groan, or make strange huffing noises when they have a need -- food, coffee, cell phone. Others can't even look up--their necks are such rotted stumps, they can't even keep their heads upright. Apparently.

"How about the first paragraph? What's the author trying to say in the first paragraph?"

A thud-crunch from the back, as one student's skull falls forward and hits the formica desktop. From the other side of the room: a vaguely disturbing slurping sound, as another student slowly drags his blackened, dried lips over the top of his venti non-fat Brain Latte, trying to slurp out something tasty. Then, just silence again.

Their condition is sad. But it's so great that the Cal State system provides zombies with the opportunity to go to college and get an education.

"Ok. Tell you what -- Let's just read the first sentence of the piece again. Ok? First sentence? What does the first sentence say?"

A ripple effect seems to move across the room, a faint shuffling. Feet slowly drag back and forth across the linoleum floor. A guy in the far left row seems to gnawing gently on his own hand, occasionally issuing a low, throaty grunt of satisfaction. But beyond that, there is nothing.

"Listen, you guys. I know it's early, but we're all here, so let's try and wake up a little bit. Can anybody just summarize what this essay is about? Just define the general topic. For extra credit."

Shuffle shuffle. Grunt. In the back, someone's jaw bone falls from his face and hits the floor with a thud.

"Did anybody even read the assignment?"

Grunt. Groan. Shuffle. Groan. One girl looks out blankly beneath a tattered curtain of blonde hair. Her eyeball rolls around in its socket, clotted and yellowed.

"Fine. Everybody get out a piece of paper. Pop quiz on the reading. Time to engage your brains."

One head jerks up abruptly. Then another. It's disconcerting.

(Brains? Did he say brains?)

"...braaainnnnssss........"

"Well, you guys," I say, trying not to show fear, "you leave me no choice. If you won't discuss the reading, you can write about it."

One rises, lifting a skeletal arm, dripping shreds of muscle meat, pointing straight at me. His slackened mouth starts chewing on itself as drool oozes over his scarred chin. "....braainnnsssss....."

More rise and join him, staring at me with their lidless eyes. "... quizzzz.... badddd........ BRAINNNNNSSSS......gooooooood....."

I'm cornered. Thank God they move slowly. In the time it takes them to shamble forward and get close enough to yank my limbs off and start eating, I'll probably be able to write their homework assignment on the board and leap for the door.