Christmas, teacher style

Last night, we had our school Christmas party.

Imagine a group of teachers (anywhere from 3-7 of us) who regularly go out for after-school "meetings" to vent and decompress.

Now take those same teachers--and add about 40 more, some significant others and a variety of drinks.

Yeah.

Some highlights:

As some of you know, earlier in the day, I'd had a bit of a run-in with a verbally abusive parent who'd been berating a sub. By the time I showed up at the party about an hour later, that story had spread like wildfire, and I had to repeat it--including my "Well, perhaps your child was acting up in class because THIS is the behavior they're learning at home" punchline--no less than 15 times. Once we'd had some drinks in us, some of the teachers decided it would be fun to reenact the confrontation. One volunteered to play the role of the parent, and another one said, "Okay, and I'll do Jen."

At which point, A., one of the hottest male teachers--no, one of the hottest men ANYWHERE--and a member of the "after school club," shouted out from the back of the room, "Why not? Everyone else has!!"

As the room just fell apart, I tried to put on a shocked and indignant face. But come on--that zinger was WAY too good.

Another highlight was the raffle drawings--I won a gift certificate for a $100 tattoo!! I was initially pretty geeked, because this was the prize that I had thrown all of my raffle tickets in for. Surprisingly, so had a LOT of other teachers. Next to the day of pampering at a spa, this was the most sought-after prize of the evening. L., a tiny, curly-haired 65-year-old teacher (who, by the way, is actually a regular attendee of our "meetings," as well) even threw a ticket into the tattoo drawing (granted, there was a lot of peer-pressure and goading from us). And she made the solemn vow that if she won, she'd follow through with the tattoo. (She was also on her second scotch at the time, but whatever.)

By the time the various drawings were held, L. had had to leave. However, she was there in spirit as we all started chanting her name as they drew the winning ticket. They announced that I was the winner, and everyone still hooted and hollared for me. As the clapping died down, though, I stood up and made an announcement:

"Listen up! Shut up, A. [He was shouting random comments.] Dude, I said SHUT UP. L. promised me that if she won, she'd get a tattoo. SO, I need your help here. As far as we're concerned, L. won the drawing tonight. Okay?"

Heheheh.

(Side note: I called L. today to give her the good news that she'd "won" the tattoo. Her response? "Awww, fuck." LOLOL.)

The official party was over around 7:30--a nice, respectable time. Some of us, though, hung around for a bit longer. ;) There may have been some shots involved, too. Okay, there may have been a LOT of shots. (Don't worry, Mom: I waited for a loooonnng time before I drove home. We didn't leave until almost midnight.) And the coolest part is that I bonded with some people that I don't normally associate with outside of work. (For example, I discovered that both the office manager and the registrar are both dirty, dirty people.)

And the FUNNIEST part of the evening: apparently, the place had planned to surprise us with a cake (the mother of a student runs this restuarant and had arranged it). So while the group of 10 of us were sitting in the bar doing shots, the owner came out and said, "We completely forgot about this, but we have a HUGE cake back there waiting for you. If you want, we can drop it off at the school for you on Monday. Or we can bring it out now."

Hmmm. Now we were in quite the pickle. I mean, this cake was meant for the whole school to enjoy. And there were only like 10 of us left.

So we did the only reasonable thing, of course.

We told them to bring out the motherf*cking cake. (Hey. We were HUNGRY.)

I know you can't tell here, because it turned out kind of blurry (which is appropriate, as it looked pretty damn blurry that night, too, LOL), but this cake was ginormous. Here's the before pic.

And here's what it looked like after we had hacked into it.

Never in my life has a cake tasted so good.