grumpy eyeball

I have a swollen eye, today. I'm very grumpy about it. It seems to correlate to the lawn-mowing I've been doing -- but this time it's really sore. I've been soaking it with essiac tea today. rrrrr. Grumpy.

Time to catch up. I recently had what I like to think of as the "sophomore slam" -- two days of back-to-back, 80 minute gigs for 15/16 year old students at the largest local high school. This year it was about 170 kids. I usually split the 80 minute blocks with a colleague from the sexual assault prevention program, but she was unavailable so I did ALL of our parts (meaning the boring, old-person parts -- say what you mean, mean what you say...break up doesn't mean break legs...don't incapacitiate your date with controlled substances and then call it "making love"....). If we didn't have peer educators (juniors and seniors who have learned how to lead some of the interactive activities with us), I'd probably be dead -- grumpy eyeball and all.

The fun part of those gigs is collecting the feedback. I ask them a lot of written questions -- partly because I work for a "non-profit" and we have to give feedback to our funders -- but mostly because I like to know what the youth thought about the programming. So here are some samples from the "sophomore slam":

The question the kids were answering for me (in writing) was "what is one respectful, healthy sentence that you could use to begin a conversation with your dating partner about something you would like to change about the relationship?" -- it is explained that a) this is hypothetical and b) it can be any kind of change -- stepping up, breaking up, etc.

May I have the envelopes, please? Or in this case, the shredded and spit upon bingo cards that I asked them to turn over and write on? Thanks.

For the award category of "I'm really going to freak this bitch out," the "shocky" award goes to:

"You fucking bitch, you better straighten your shit out."


For the award category of "For god's sake, please get hip to the twenty-first century," the "clingy" award goes to:

"Hey, babe. You sound cute. My IM handle is rocknrollbabigirl. Du u have a car?"


For the award category of "Fuck you for asking me this question," the "flippy" award goes to:

"You complete me."

Kids are fun, but I still have a grumpy eyeball.