T’was a happy birthday.

First I want to thank everyone who wasn’t at my school and still took the time to wish me a happy birthday.  I got bunch of texts, emails and phone calls from family and friends.
I love ya all tons!

In 18 years of teaching I think my birthday has fallen on a school day 5 or 6 times.  It being close to Easter and spring break it normally falls on a day we have off.   My 40^th fell on a school day, as did today.  On my 40^th the vice principal and a few students took my lunch period to decorate my classroom in black, with drawings of me as a decrepit old man, tombstones and other “over the hill” epitaphs on the black butcher paper.  Certainly a memorable one.

This year will be too.  It actually started yesterday when the teacher who shares Stage Crew with me brought this cake to class:

We shared it with the whole class, so we had very small pieces, but I still was taken totally by surprise on this one.

Then today I opened my door up to this:

And this:

A little later, before school started, the three students involved in the decorating, (while I was in a meeting right after school yesterday, they got another teacher to open the door and keep watch for them) came in with a cupcake and a card for me.  They had planned on smearing the cupcake in my face, but since I was wearing a nice shirt that they were afraid would stain, they said they wouldn’t.   I, wanting to relieve their disappointment, told them to come back at the end of school, I’d take off the good shirt (I had a T shirt under it) and then they could smear it all over my face without worry.   Gotta reward the fact that they thought enough to cancel their plans so as not to ruin a nice shirt.

The P.E. teacher had to sing “Happy Birthday" to me during the announcements, so after them a couple students came in from another class with paper and tape in hand and decided to wrap me up.  Here I am trying to “Hulk” my way out of it.

The three students who brought the cupcake were all in my last class of the day.  They brought a cake to class, since they had planned on smearing the cupcake in my face and didn’t want me to miss out on cake.  <sarcastic font>I can’t imagine why they thought of getting a cake with a car on it, but somehow they knew.<end sarcastic font>   It came with a little VW Bug on top, a real metal one with doors that open.

During the last few minutes of the period I got the cupcake smeared in my face.  You may recognize the student holding my arms behind my back as the one who got cake smeared in his face in an earlier post.  I guess it was poetic justice that he got to be involved in this.

So, that was my day, a pretty great one.  And as Alexia said in a comment on my last post; “You can ignore 'em, but you can't escape 'em”.  All in all, I guess I’m glad I couldn’t.