I'm not saying don't give me a gun. I'm just saying I would like to have a couple other essential items before I get the gun.

I'm looking down the barrel of a decade of teaching—shoot, poor phrasing sorry—what I mean is, I have been teaching for nearly a decade, and I've seen some serious stuff. I one time had a kid barf on his test on purpose so he didn't have to take it. I had a kid exchange all the expo markers with permanent markers and I messed up my boards real good. One time all the kids in class hid in the closet together to surprise me when I came in but I arrived super late and several of them had claustrophobia panic attacks. Anyway, what I'm trying to express here is that teachers go through a lot. Sort of. So when you talk about giving me a gun for class, like, that's cool and all, but I would also like for you to consider hooking me up with a few other things before you give me the very expensive murder weapons and spend a lot of money to train me how to use them please. Here are 5 (five) of those things I would like first.

1. Windows

These are windows. I like them.

I have a door in my classroom, but no windows. The space was originally designed as a maintenance shed, but they turned it into a classroom a few years back to accommodate for a larger student body. They painted the cinderblock walls blue and got rid of all of the rakes, but sometimes the maintenance guys still come in there and charge their golf carts. My kids call the room "Hagrid's Hut," which is funny to them but not to me because Hagrid got fired from his job. Nonetheless, I have tried to make it home. You know, if home was a jail cell without windows. Windows would be nice.

2. A bulletin board

I'll show you Hagrid's Hut you pieces of shit.

This is kind of related to the first one. It is just impossible to post things on those cinderblock painted walls. You can't push thumbtacks through it (I've tried), and the tape just doesn't stick. So we just have these four blue walls to look at all day long. Like, the kids don't even have anything good to look at when they are not listening to me, which is a lot of the time. One time, the kids did these nice comic strips about significant moments in their lives and I tried to tape them up to the front of the room over the weekend and when we all came in on Monday morning they had all fallen to the ground and a few of them landed in the trash barrel and the kids thought I had tried to throw them all away. One of the kids with the trash comic still doesn't talk to me, which kind of sucks because she is failing the class.

3. Desks

Janky image of bored students in chairs.

You would think this one's a no-brainer for classrooms, but nope—we have chairs, but no desks! Well, there's one table in the back, but that's where the charger for the maintenance carts goes. Sometimes the kids all stand around that table when they need to take a test and it's funny because so many of them are cheating off of each other and I laugh and laugh because I am just going to give them all B plusses anyway. Some of my kids have brought in tv trays from home but I had to ban those because it made the other kids that only had chairs feel bad and I really strive for an equitable classroom. Even I don't have a desk. I keep most of my things on the "liquid waste" barrel that they keep in there in case someone shits themselves or if there's a lot of blood on the floor. Fits my laptop pretty nice.

4. A hand grenade

I'll fuckin' do it!

Okay, this one's a stretch, but really, if I am going to defend my classroom from an invader, I would much prefer to have a hand grenade. Easy to use, more exciting explosion, more fun to throw. I also just feel like I would be better at using a hand grenade than a gun. I could be wrong though. Oh and also, also, I can imagine a scenario where my kids are all mad about something, like that time I forgot to tell them all the day of our final exam and what was on it and they showed up and tried to mutineer me, and if I had a hand grenade in that scenario I could just pull the pin on it and hold it and yell "Everybody shut up! I have this grenade!" And they would all shut up and get their B plusses. Then I would gently put the pin back in the grenade and put it back on the "Grenade Table" I would have which is mostly just a podium where I keep the grenade on. Top notch classroom management.

5. This sweet Daffy Duck poster

Daffy.jpg

Here is the link for it on Amazon. Only $16.58. Thank you. Now I will have my guns please.