It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time…

08/31/2005

clowns.jpg
[The following is Steph’s fictional write up that was imagined when she saw this picture:]
One of my friends is a science teacher. She went to a yard sale and saw all of these empty clown planters with accompanying unidentified seeds. She thought, “What a great idea! I get these for really cheap and I can teach my students about growing plants and plant identification.”
She brought them back to the class and the kids happily planted their mystery seeds, eager to see what would grow.
And then they grew. And grew. And grew.
One day she looked up at her windowsill and saw the colorful, but sad porcelain clowns, and realized that, well, they were now a little more explicit than they were before. Some of the 6th grade boys pointed and snickered, while the others just enjoyed their cacti, too naive to understand what was happening.
Distraught, my fellow teacher came to the teacher’s lounge and slumped onto the lumpy couch. “I have to end my plant identification unit,” she said. We remembered how excited she was to get the cheap clown planters earlier and could not figure out why she was suddenly so down on the assignment. She turned red, “The seeds…they… they grew into cactuses.”
We all ran down to her room to get the visual on why she had to end her unit. Oh…laughter until the tears poured down my face and I felt like I had done nine-kajillion situps! Talk about a science experiment gone bad!