Antagonize Me

I used to have a MySpace account.  I started my blog there.  But after I had a few too many technical difficulties, I moved the blog here.  I have since closed the MySpace account.  I hate to lose all of my blogs from that time, so from time to time I'm going to repost them here. 


I'm kind of going through the old posts randomly.  This one was originally posted on September 1, 2007. 

I mentioned that I worked on Thursday.  I was at the continuation high school.  At the end of July I was also there for the government class.  This time I was there for English, but again I had seniors. 

I mention that I had seniors because I had some of the same students in the English class that I had had in the government class.  Two specifically.  Anthony and Sarah.  (I am changing their names for my purposes here.)  Anthony is black, Sarah is white.  (I mentioned this pair before in my July 28th post.)

Anthony is a very entertaining individual.  But he gets on Sarah's last nerve.  This happened the last time I had the two.  Anthony was going on and on about various conspiracy theories (which I enjoyed), and Sarah was after him to shut up and sit down and do his work.  Eventually he settled.  I felt it was my duty to get Anthony working since that's what Sarah wanted to do.  If Anthony was talking, then Sarah didn't have a quiet classroom in which to do her work.

So, when Anthony and Sarah were in my 6th period class on Thursday, I knew there'd be trouble.  Sure enough, Anthony started talking, and it bothered Sarah.  Then he found another girl to bother as well.  So, I felt it my duty to intervene.  I told Anthony to go and do something else and to not bother the girls.  (The girls could take care of themselves, but as the teacher in the room, I needed to act like the authority figure and stop the harassment.) 

I got Anthony to move to another part of the room.  For about two minutes.  Then he went back to antagonize Sarah.  Sarah told him to stop antagonizing her.  So I chimed in with, "Anthony, come over here and antagonize me."  Probably not the best idea, but it was something.

The idea of being invited to antagonize the teacher stirred Anthony's imagination.  He actually pulled a chair up to the front of the teacher's desk.  I figured that I could probably take whatever he dished out.  But he didn't do anything.  He didn't say anything.  He quickly lost interest and went back to his other seat. 

Shortly after that I had to pass out their quiz (they were supposed to have 25 minutes to study for the thing).

I suppose I should not allow myself to be entertained by such antics.  But I am.  I admit it, I am.