outta body. back to yuhself

2 things
sunday night would have been a nicer experience if several things had/had not happened.
1. i was underdressed. the oval is paved so people dress to the 9s. i opted not to wear the slinkier top because it barely passed the jump test. as it turned out, not much jumping actually happened because this was such a big people's socializing fete/lime.

2. i got carded. wha di ass? the lady asked if i had ID (which they never do here). i responded with an incredulous no. she then asked if i was 18. my jaw dropped, then i said i'm 26 and i work with those 4 women you just let in. feel free to call them back and ask them.

3. one of the 4 women was thoroughly unimpressed with machel and was conserving her energy for work on monday and so i was just bored and drained by the surroundings. i know i tell the kids that you should not look for happiness outside yourself/in other people, but i could only get motivated for a few songs to break out of the staid shell around me.

4. one of the other women was adversely affected by the free booze and disappeared. so for 30 mins after the fete ended and people were leaving, we circled and circled and harassed cops, security guards, organizers and woke up people at home to get numbers to call for people who might have seen her. fortunately she was found unharmed... or rather, she found us. so happy ending for all.

second thing

today my grade 10s made me feel like a hypocrite. i like them. they ask some good questions. there was an incident on the way back from a trip to the military museum in november that resulted in me having to figure out a way to force the truth from the offenders. because they refused to tell me who had been pressing the buzzer, i said i would detain all the boys the next day after class. i assumed that the girls hadn't done it. wrong of me, perhaps, but i had a very good idea of who the guilty parties were...and all my ideas were male.

they argued, today, that i had detained them all indiscriminately without any evidence of their actions on the suspicion that some of them were guilty. i had acted like the canadian government in their internment of japanese during world war 2.

i said that i didn't take away their shoes or sell their ipods, i simply detained them because they insisted on maintaining a code of silence.
they pointed out that i might have gone to similar repressive lengths if they had refused to fess up after the first detention.
they even remembered to point out one of the themes i've been trying to hammer home all semester: maintenance of national unity is paramount and it functioned as an excuse for any illogical violation of human rights.

i wasn't looking for secret spies... just wanted to catch some liars.

gotta love it when my instruction turns around to give me a swift kick.