this morning in the middle of lion class, natalie came bursting into my room laughing hysterically and telling me i need to come see something in her class. she was teaching deer class (five and six year olds) right across the hall, so not knowing what was so funny, i walked over there.

as i arrived, the other three kids in the class where laughing uncontrollably, and danny was pulling up his pants. for a little background information, danny has given natalie the most problems behaviorally since she's been here. he's not a bad kid, but he seems to always be seeking attention. he's also the proud owner of a freshly cut mullet.

so i'm trying to figure out exactly what's going on, when danny decides to give me a reprise of the show he's apparently been putting on for the class. it's your basic pull-your-pants-and-underwear-down-to-your-ankles-and-shake-it-all-about routine. the bottomless hokey-pokey, if you will.

now you're really put to the test. first you're in shock, but then everyone's laughing, and it is very funny. one of my first thoughts was amazement at how he wasn't in the least bit embarrassed about it, he was having a great time. then of course i started thinking, this is gonna be the moment when a parent or my supervisor decides to stroll by for a visit. i pictured myself on the next plane home or maybe spending the foreseeable future in a jail cell.

somehow i managed to tell him to pull up his pants, which luckily he did without me having to intervene further. then, holding back the laughter as best i could, and with as much seriousness as i could muster, i told him not to do that or he'd get sent to the bad boy room. of course now he'll probably forever associate nudity with fear of the bad boy room, but what else could i do?

by this point natalie was crying with laughter, and i couldn't hold it in anymore either, but at least he got the point and hopefully won't be doing that anymore.

later we told gemma, our supervisor about it, just as a funny story. she thought it was funny, but said that it was good we put a stop to it quickly since there's always one kid who's liable to go home and tell their parents about it, and then she'll have to deal with the freaked out parents. she did relate to us something funny, apparently korean grandmothers, more so in the past than now, have been known to take pride in the …ahem…size… of their grandsons and egg them on into whipping it out and showing what they've got. now that's a korean cultural tidbit i never thought i'd hear.