Monday, December 15, 2008

The bane of my existance

I hope that there's a special place in hell reserved for the evil bastard who invented THESE:



















They're called Bakugans, and my classroom is INFESTED with them.

They start out in the closed position, so they look like a small, harmless ball. As soon as you attach them to a magnetic object, however (like, oh, I don't know, a DESK OR DESK CHAIR), they shoot open (see above). If you're old school, they're kind of like magnetic Transformers.

I thought they were pretty cool at first--for about 5 seconds. Now, they're just a giant pain in my teaching ass. The above picture show just ONE DAY'S worth of intercepted Bakugans. And I plan to keep them in my Toy Drawer (not THAT one, you freaks) until the last day of school. If I'm lucky, the owners will forget I have them and I can sell them on eBay.

And while we're on the subject, the Second Most Annoying Thing to a Fifth Grade Teacher are THESE:



They're called Tech Decks and apparently, they are infinitely more interesting than Lowest Common Denominators (that's LCDs to you).
4 more days, 4 more days....

(FYI: I've tried for 20 minutes now to fix the spacing on this post and it's still screwed up...I give up.)

6 comments:

Renee said...

Hahahahahahaha. Brent has many of both of your most-hated items. I also hate the Bakugans, but he plays with the Tech Decks a LOT. He has mini ramps and stuff and he gets lost in his own little skateboarding world, doing "sick tricks" and shit :-)

But yeah, he's not allowed to bring them to school. Sneaky little bastards, those 5th graders. I wonder how long Brent will actually listen to me...

Jen said...

Yeah. In a 5-minute class bathroom break, you'd be surprised at the elaborate skate-boarding parks or whatever that can be constructed. (They TOTALLY take advantage of the fact that I can't go in there unless someone is shot or shanked or something.) But luckily, 5th graders are--believe it or not--still TOTALLY in the tattling stage, so as soon as the offenders come out, I'm standing there with my hand out. "Tech deck, please," I say calmly, and they claim innocence. I continue to stand there with my hand out, wordless, until they take them out of their pockets and, sighing heavily, place it in my hand. And it's cool, because they're always mystified as to HOW I KNOW they have them. Half the time, they really are convinced that I know all and see all. =-)

Anonymous said...

The bakugans are new to me but Tim was super excited (he turned into an adorable 10 year old boy) when he saw the mini finger skateboards at Target. I got him one for Christmas but I Promise he won't bring it to school to bug his teachers ;)

Nik said...

Steph's kids are obsessed w/ both toys and Donovan has alot of the Tech Deck stuff, but he doesn't play with them too much anymore. I don't frickin get either toy. They're both lame! Whatever happened to real,cool toys? Jen, if you think it's hell now, just wait til they come back from Christmas break with even more of the danm things.

Jen said...

I'm gonna hire a security guy to frisk them before they come into the classroom after Christmas. I may have to pay him in BJs but TOTALLY worth it.

Renee said...

Isn't that how you pay for everything?