Having a little Facebook conversation with TaQuesha, a former student of mine.  She said I always told the most interesting stories in class, plus I had the best band-aids.  Students always needed bandaids during the year.  So I always had a box on hand.  At some point in time I figured that a teenager isn’t too far removed from childhood, so on a whim I bought a box of Hello Kitty band-aids. It got to a point where I started demanding to see a cut before I handed out a band-aid. The kids just wanted to wear them.  I eventually branched out to Batman, Spiderman, Spongebob and other popular cartoon characters.  All were popular, but Hello Kitty had a pretty good fan base with my female students.  They had shirts, purses, shoes, notebooks and other Hello Kitty merchandise that they wore or brought to school.  Out of curiosity, I did a little research on Hello Kitty.  Hello Kitty was introduced in Japan in 1974 and came over to the United States in 1976.  I was not aware the cute kitty with the red bow had been around that long.  Whenever I see a  Hello Kitty product, I am always reminded of those former students who were really into Hello Kitty paraphernalia.  In fact, there is a Halloween Hello Kitty beanie baby that if I was still teaching I would buy it and sit it on my desk with all my other Halloween decorations.

I never went overboard with decorations.  I usually just had a themed bowl with the appropriate candy for Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter.  And no cheap candy for my classes.  It was Hershey’s, Mar’s, or the 6 lb bag of Tootsie Roll products.  I was always amazed how many kids liked Dots.  Those things stick to the teeth.  I guess somebody has to like them.

TaQuesha was also right about the stories.  I did like telling stories in class.  I think Q is being more than kind in saying they were interesting.  The important thing is I thought they were interesting.  My students were just a captive audience.  I sometimes see myself standing in front of the class like Maximus and shouting “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!!”

I miss many things about teaching.  Buying bandaids and telling stories is on the list.  I and the wife are a bit to sophisticated to wear Hello Kitty band-aids.  And the cats totally rebel against the idea of wearing band-aids.  Same thing withe telling stories.  Every year I would have a 150 new students to share my stories with.  My wife has heard them all, and the cats just get up and leave the room.  I think this blog may be a substitute for my story telling.  I hope the few people that read this find them as interesting as TaQuesha did.

On a negative note, I am a bit disappointed that TaQuesha did not include my many showings of William Shatner singing  Rocket Man as one of her favorite things in class.  Normally one can’t go wrong showing  the classics.

One may have noticed that I have changed my heading photograph.  The previous picture I had posted is one of my favorites, but I figured that if this is a blog designed to help attract and inspire potential brides to hire me to shoot their wedding, I should have a photograph that I have actually taken at a wedding as a lead photograph.

Closing thought for the day. This was my semi-cheat day on my diet.  Ate a pepperoni and pineapple pizza this evening.  I bet I will have some amazing dreams tonight.  I will be entertained!