I admit it: I was a pretty unsuccessful class sponsor last year. I had great ideas, but somehow I just couldn't get the sophomores off of their asses. I don't feel too bad about i t; my replacement seems to be having even less success. But I still feel like the kids I taught for two years--as freshmen and again as sophomores--deserved a better prom than the measly five hundred dollars we raised could buy.

Recall that I am rolling in dough, and it just keeps getting better. I went to get my prescription yesterday, and it was only ten dollars instead of fifty. Evidently it's available as a generic now. that's another extra forty dollars a month. Who better to spend it on than the now Junior class at Sierra High School in Colorado Springs?

Always the teacher, I decided to make it a matching grant. I wrote them a check for 250 dollars, but they don't get it until they raise $250 of their own. I met with Cale Szysomething,whom you might remember, and who is now their class sponsor, and is now evidently shtupping Megan McDaniel, whom you also may remember. I had to walk by Megan's room to see him, and there was instant hullabaloo when the kids in her room saw me. "Mr. Payne!", came the chorus of instant disruption. The odd part? Megan looked like she was about to cry. She missed me that much, I guess. I gave her a hug, at which the kids of course went "Oooooh! I knew it!". Little did they know she was putting the bloom on the rose of the guy in the room next door.

As I left, I ran into Jodi, who evidently has my students as juniors. "I've been meaning to talk to you!" she yelled, startling me a bit. "What did you do to those kids?"

"errrr . . ."

"They are the most well prepared kids in the whole class! They know more than my seniors! 'Mr. Payne taught us this already,' they say, and they're right. Sentence structure, grammar, the whole shit. They know it already. And what's more, they add 'I don't know how we know it either. all we did was play games in his class . . .'"

grin.