Billy Goats, Mongeese, and Howling Giraffes

Hello friends. It's been a while since I posted a blog. Here's something I recently wrote for News-n-Views, our school's monthly newsletter:

It’s a beautiful Monday morning. The sun is streaming in the windows, the students are in Bible class, and the room is deliciously quiet. It's a good time for reminiscence. Truly, the school year has zipped by, and in about a week and a half we will be out of school.  

There is a three-way race for classroom mascot going on right now between a billy goat, flying mongeese, and howling giraffes. Let me give you the backstory to each one. Early in the year, I made it clear that the puerile jokes about “Your mom” would be unacceptable in the classroom. Every infraction would be met with a one-minute reduction of break time. The phrase was quickly eliminated from classroom conversation. But clearly this restriction suppresses some deep primordial urge for some of the guys, so they had to come up with an outlet, a substitute. One young man posited “Your billy goat” as a prime substitution, offering similar satisfaction as the “forbidden words.” So, if one lad says, “You should have brought in the wiffle ball bat,” he might be met with the rejoinder, “Your billy goat should have.” Aaah. Satisfaction. 

The legend of the flying mongeese originated at a lunch time when one young man was fascinated by the way the word “mongoose” rolls off the tongue. Perhaps connecting the first part “mon-” with the English word “mine,” he started joking about how a mongoose was “mongoose” and not “your goose.” Naturally, the “goose” was pluralized to “geese.” Hence, mongeese. He and another young man were so fascinated by this linguistic oddity that they bandied it about for nearly 10 minutes (the others were quickly tiring of the joke, and I was witnessing this as I munched my crackers and cheese, so I grabbed a timer and began timing it). Later, I punched in a couple of AI commands, and I soon had a stunning visual image of a majestic flock of flying mongeese, replete with mongoose bodies and goose wings. This image can be found as the desktop image of one of our classroom computers. 

Lastly, we have the inimitable howling giraffes. We’ve been reading through The Mad Scientists’ Club this year for story time. One story involved a plane crash and a missing pilot. The Mad Scientists’ Club was leading the charge to find the pilot, and our story time one day ended just as a pack of wolves was heard to be howling in the distance. The next day, to refresh everyone’s memories, I asked, “What did they hear howling in the distance?” A young man who had been absent the day before said, “Giraffes!” I’m not quite sure if it was the hard-boiled eggs I had just had for lunch, or perhaps the constant strain of everyday living, but I found this image hilarious. I had to pause reading several times after that to chuckle and gather myself again. A pack of howling giraffes, menacing the pilot and searchers. An AI-generated image of a pack of howling giraffes can be found on the second of our two classroom computers. 

These three ridiculous beasts offer a window into classroom life here. Sometimes hilarious and off-the-wall--hopefully we’re all learning at least a little bit along the way. 

Until next year, 

Mr. Beachy