Math Time Fillers?

The girl took way too long to sharpen her pencil. I shooed her back to her seat, but she didn't go there. She found two of her friends and joined them.

It was a geometry class. Normally, the talking in the room wouldn't have bothered me, but first period had worked silently, and all the classes were way too happy to see a sub. Happy or not, I still wanted to see them do their work.

I meandered over to the trio of girls to gently chide them to get on task. I found them painting their nails.

I've seen girls put on makeup in class (I've never understood the point of this, not even when I was a teenage girl). But nail polish? Really?

They explained that they never do their work, yet they all have As. Really? Tell me another one. Are you three on the honor roll, too?

I couldn't let that pass without letting their teacher in on the joke.

The algebra readiness (they no longer call it pre-algebra in high school) class had a quiz. After they finished, they got free time for the remaining few minutes of class. Most of them sat and talked. Two boys decided that it would be fun to hit each other on the knuckles over and over again.

Um, no.

The boys couldn't understand my problem with their game. No amount of explanation swayed them, so I resorted to I-asked-you-not-to as a reason.

One boy declared himself the winner, as he was the last one to get a hit in. I reminded him that the game had been stopped, so there was no winner. The boy showed off his red knuckles as if they were a prize. (They only got a chance to knock each other twice before I got to them and stopped it. If they get that hurt in that short a time, I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't stopped them.)

My suggestions for ways to pass the time didn't interest them. They attempted to find other ways to hit each other.

What passes for fun...