Heaven Help Us!

Sometimes, the kids do things so sweet, you love them. Sometimes they tell you heart-breaking things, and you'd take them home with you to raise as your own in an instant. Sometimes they do things just to make you mad, and you have to practice your "counting to ten to keep your cool" philosophy.

And othertimes, they are so strange, you can't analyze your feelings for them.

One of these type kids was one of my boys. A very tall boy, he was sweet-natured, but also very wild in the halls. Even the 8th grade Dean knew him, which tells you a lot. He likes to run in the halls, get big mouths full of water, and spit them on the girls. Ahhhhh... young love.

But what was so strange was what he would do while he was sitting in class.

He wasn't a very bright child. He tried sometimes, but he could only read on a 2nd grade level, and he just didn't care about school much. When he had decided he had enough listening or working, he would take his pencil, and stare at it, turning it over and over in his hand.

For. The. Entire. Class. Period. Staring, all the while turning it over and over.

Other students would stare at him as if he were nuts. I wondered if I agreed with them or not... but mostly I laughed at the expressions on the watcher's faces'. There is nothing more amusing than students calling other students out for crazy behavior.

Sometimes, I wondered if it was simply that he was a simple person who could be happy just looking at the unique colors on his pencil.

But then I realized it was just a normal #2 yellow pencil.