Silly Names for Invisible Griffins

As I've said before, I work as a school nurse. I’m sure you can envision the kind of silliness I see. (For instance, I had one girl come in the other day with a bug bite, clutching at it and wailing that she was dying, and someone should call poison control, or maybe her grandmother. Truthfully, I’m not sure what she expected her grandmother to do.) Ironically, the part of my job that most taxes my ability to hold in my giggles is the names I see.

You get your usual myriad of misspelled nouns and adjectives, of course – I’ve seen every misspelling in the book of Jewel, Precious, Dove, Special, and Sky – but then I get some like Devon’cling Darknyss McSmee the 11^th (whose mother and father, of course, are named John and Rachel) or some such silliness, and you think I’m joking, but I’m not.

Of course, the above is not the name of one of my students, because that wouldn’t be nice, and I wouldn’t do that, Mom, but it is similar in many ways to the name of a student I sent to archiving today. That is to say, it was an ordinary name, apostrophe, verb, followed by a noun, and that was just the first name.

I’m actually a little worried, because I’m giggling a little less at stuff like this now than when I started. What if I’m becoming immune to the ridiculous? After all, familiarity breeds indifference. Isn’t that the theory behind vaccines and allergy shots and griffins?

A friend informs me that I have to explain what griffins have to do with familiarity and indifference. See, when I was a kid I was encouraged by a student in my class to introduce her to my pet griffin. Of course, I didn’t know I had a griffin at the time, and I suppose he was probably imaginary, but I did anyway, because what if he was real and I was the only one who couldn’t see him? So I named him Jaunita, speaking of silly names, and my imaginary griffin and my friend (whose name, I confess, I have forgotten) became good buddies. She spent so much time interacting with Jaunita that I convinced myself I could see him, too.

By the time I got to second grade, I realized, of course, that there wasn’t actually a pet griffin, and that was why all of the fruit I left out for him rotted and we had fruit flies. Please don’t tell my parents.  You know what, forget it, I don’t think that would actually surprise them.

I suspect, though, that Juanita was real, and familiarity just, you know, bred indifference. So eventually I became immune and stopped being able to see her. That’s why kids know that unicorns and fairies and dolphins exist, and adults insist they’re made-up. We can’t see them anymore because we were exposed so much we became indifferent. Hush. That is totally a correct way to use that word.

This is why I have to find work outside of the school system. I’m already immune to griffins. What if I stop giggling at silly names and then stop giggling at silly students and then stop being silly myself? How would I survive?

My cat would probably be happy, though.

PS: Not all of my students are silly-named alarmists. In fact, most of them either have perfectly ordinary names, or they have really epic unusual names. Yes, I do totally get to judge what’s epic and what’s just silly. This is my blog, thank you very much. As for being alarmists… Let’s just say I had a student come limping in last week with a massively swollen and bruised foot, asking for ice.

Some of my students should be more alarmable.

PPS: Don’t assume your students are fine just because they wail that they’re dying. I had a student do that once, and I made the mistake of figuring they were being melodramatic, and while I was going through my routine assessment (heart/lungs/pulse/PO2/BP) for chest pain, she started going gray, which is impressive for a particularly dark African American girl. This was right around when I noticed that her heart beat was doing some scary things, and called 911 and then the principal (which is only polite if you’re bringing an ambulance to their schools. They tend to get a little grumpy if EMTs show up and they weren’t informed) and tried to help her keep calm until they got there. I don’t know if I succeeded, or if she was just making good progress towards passing out. I’m leaning more towards passing out, personally.

PPPS: That student is fine.

PPPPS: Probably.

PPPPPS: I’ll be honest, I just wanted to see how many p’s I could get away with.

PPPPPPS: Six. The answer is six.

Much Ado About Mind Control

Every now and again, I go off on little tangents. The funny thing is that there’s rarely a logical reason for me to be having these tangents at all, and there’s almost never any logic to continuing them. For instance, I just finished Jenny Lawson’s, “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.” There’s a moment in the book where she’s gleefully realizing that she’s controlling your mind as you read what she’s written.

Or maybe that was in her blog. Whatever.

So I’m sitting there trying to figure out how I would word that realization if I was writing it, because I had a very awesome moment when I thought, wait a minute. I can do that now. I totally have a blog of my own now. Then I realized that unless I’m significantly funnier than I think I am, I’m probably only going to be briefly controlling the mind of Shane, who I recently started dating, and that made me sad for a minute.

But I’m pretty sure at some point the word, “actively” was in that little rewrite in my head. Does it count as active mind control if you’re doing it at one point and then the minds are actually being controlled later? Or is that passive mind control? How do you passively control someone’s mind?

This is all working off of the assumption that I’m not in a coma and you aren’t a figment of my imagination. Goodness, my imagination is complicated. Stop being so complicated, brain.

This was the point at which I started coming up with random scenarios and sorting them into active mind control, passive mind control, and unsure. Most of the scenarios wound up in the unsure bin, because I don’t actually know how passive mind control would work.

Someone should write a book about this...and I should really get a grip on my brain.

Alpha Goose

A few years ago, I was dating someone named Michael. I swear I didn't trap him in carbonite. I wouldn't do that. Probably. Except maybe to Andy Warhol. I can't stand that guy. You are not an artist if someone else does the work. You're a concept guy. Jeesh. No, we broke up peacefully after three years together. Anyway. He went to a college in Jacksonville called UNF that has an impressive array of wildlife. It even has a nature walk.

It also sported quite a large herd of geese. 

I'm not sure how much experience you have with geese. You may be under the misapprehension that they waddle around cutely eating bread and wearing bonnets, quaking sweetly at passers-by. Let me assure you that that is not an accurate image of geese. These things are violent. 

You see? These things do not mess around. They have murder eyes. Seriously. Hide your children. 

So from time to time I would come visit him on his campus. Gorgeous scenery, fresh air, the bustle of the big city, not my parents' house, what's not to love? Geese, that's what. They strutted around the campus, knowing that the sight of their lowered heads could make proud D20 wielders and clever artisans alike run for cover. 

Or else, my boyfriend informed me, these things might charge you down and bite your knees. 

Well, this could not stand! I hatched a daring plan. In my head, I envisioned myself standing triumphant in the center of a circle of docile geese, tamed by my fearless wrath. 

So when, walking from lunch to his dorm, we passed a herd of geese, I could not resist. I picked out the nearest one, clearly the dominant goose, the alpha goose, if you please, and eyed him haughtily. With eyes and demeanor, I dared him to challenge me. Turning in his direction, my chin lifted and stance both menacing and masterful, I waited, bravely battling off my boyfriend's attempts to save me from the devil-geese. 

As I stared him down imperiously (the goose, not my boyfriend) he turned. And charged! 

The goose, used to people running away when he lowered his head and ran at them, stopped dead in his tracks as I charged forward, waving my arms and yelling. I was unstoppable! As he scrambled to run away, and the entire herd started edging away nervously, I was the kamikaze! 

Charged with power and energy, I screamed out my battle cry! I am ALPHA GOOSE! 

I ignored the sounds of alarm from the students around us. They were just jealous.