And as an apology for my absence, I offer you this:

http://xkcd.com/175/

Tonka Trucks and the M&M Guys

So, obviously my little experiment fell by the wayside. This is not to say that I haven't been attempting to follow it, but rather that I got lazy about updating about it. So I'm going to try again. Hrumph. Today's gratitude can on so strongly that I found myself logging to the blogger before I could finish my laugh completely.

I'm teaching my creative writing students about satire while using Diana Wynne Jones' book "Howl's Moving Castle" as my guide. (Is anybody really and truly surprised by this? I think not.) Today we were talking about one of the facets of satire, which is role reversal. I assigned each student a fairy tale and told them to reverse the role of one of the characters. My youngest student, Jacob, was assigned the story of Snow White.

Now the great thing about having a class full of boys is that I never know what's going to come out of their pencils. It can either be chauvinistic crap (which I promptly squash out of their systems with great delight), boring nonsense, or sarcasm so sharp or so utterly absurd that I can't keep my teacherly composure. The last is what happened today. Jacob told of Snow White going through many trials and tribulations. She lost all her beauty and so no man wanted her. (I held my tongue through great strength of character alone, when all I wanted to do was hit the kid with a battering ram of modern thought -- women have to be MORE than beautiful to land a guy and sometimes *gasp!* even plain girls can find love! Perish the thought! But I digress.) Finally, our poor beleagured Snow White ended up at the Toys 'R Us so that she could flirt with the boy dolls since no real man would have her. There she was approached by the M&M guys, who wanted her to be a new mascot since her flat face would look well covered in candy. Snow White eagerly agreed and led them to her conveyance. No coach and six was this, however! It was a Tonka truck. According to Jacob, she said, "Hop on!" The M&M guys backed and said, "Never mind. Your ride is too pimped for words."

I proceeded to die of laughter. This kid is eleven freaking years old and he caused my hardened twenty-two year old self to melt in a puddle of glee. Go forth and do thou likewise, preferably in your own too-pimped-for-words-mobile.