The End of the World

Last week, I covered an art class on Tuesday and Wednesday.  The last two periods were high school classes.  The first three were middle school.

The first group of the day were 7th graders.  They were a loud group.  7th graders can't regulate their volume.  They're either silent or rock concert.  There is no in between.

I tried to keep circulating, but I found that most of the time I ended up at the front of the room.  I was trying to keep peace between two tables.  One table spent most of the time talking about horrible and gross things.  This bothered a girl at another table, but she's a whole post of her own.

The boys started talking about horror movies.  I told them that zombies, if real, wouldn't ever take over.  Then they moved on.  They ended up talking about the end of the world.  The whole 2012 thing has gotten way too much publicity, and the kiddos are scared.

As always, I attempted to talk them off the ledge.  I tried explaining that the end of the world has been predicted so many times that there's no need to believe in it now.

William wasn't buying it.  He had a dream where the moon blew up and...  Here's where my understanding gets foggy.  There was something about how the moon blowing up led to the Earth falling and an ice apocalypse or us being pushed into the sun.    It made no sense.

So, I attempted to explain some things about gravity.  I explained that the Earth was falling, right at this moment, through space.  Just as the sun is.  Just as the whole solar system is.  Just as the whole Milky Way galaxy is.  And gravity keeps us attached to the planet Earth.

William kept coming up with doomsday scenarios, and I kept explaining them away.  Maybe after 8th grade science, some of his fears will be dispelled.  I hope so.

Then again, it could have just been random talk to pass the time.