a/k/a Well How Do You Spend May?

A freshman collapsed motionless outside my door. Then he got up, laughed, and flashed a signal at a friend who groaned and fell down likewise. They both ran to class.

Gawah?

My freshmen came into first period flashing the same signals and I asked them, “Gawah?” They told me this:

Instructions

1. You flash the birdman at anyone sworn into the game. If the flashee makes unblocked eye contact with the flasher, he has to [insert penalty here, which penalty, for my boys, was falling down].
   
2. You can make eye contact with the flasher so long as you throw up a block first.
   

I couldn’t help it. I asked them to swear me in.

Tactics, Takeaways, and Assorted Combat Notes

• As a general rule, if someone calls out “Hey, Meyer!” from across the classroom/lawn/courtyard/whatever, it’s best to throw up a block before you look.
• If you want someone to look at you from across the classroom/lawn/courtyard/whatever, don’t holler out the person’s name. Holler out, “POPSICLES!” or something equally nonsensical insteadLike “FIRE!” Wait. Not that..
• These kids are smart. They cameraphoned themselves flashing the birdman and then sent media messages to their targets. Digital natives!
• I flashed the birdman into PhotoBooth and loaded the picture into our math slides. Later I pressed a button on my remote and flashed ’em all at once!Okay, yeah, I know this is pedagogically terrible. This won’t become a habit, I promise.
• Word got out to the freshman class that I was sworn in. This created a tricky imbalance since a lot more of them know of me than I know of them. This imbalance became most evident as I planned lessons that afternoon in a coffee shop seven miles away where a kid I’d never seen before walked by my window seat, stared at me oddly, and then flashed the birdman!I blocked.

The Tally

Yeah, I guess I did okay.