Every teacher has a Noah Osborne: You know, one of those kids that, as a teacher, you’re supposed to discipline. But Noah Osbornes make you laugh so hard that you can’t even inhale enough air to support your laughter, let alone breathe out the word “Stop,” with any sort of conviction that that is what you would like them to do. Basically what I mean is that Noah Osborne was a class clown. 

  To paint a picture of Noah Osborne for you, I turn back to fifth grade. The Growing and Changing unit: The unit pre-adolescent girls dread with their whole hearts and souls, and the only science unit wherein pre-adolescent boys give their rapt attention. To this day, I’m not quite sure fifth grade boys, or even girls for that matter, can handle words like “ovulation.” Perhaps this story will illustrate my point.

I remember one particularly alarming video that was supposed to assuage the girls’ fears about their changing bodies. For some reason, they allowed the boys to watch it too. I still remember this unnerving narration (complete with ANIMATED VISUAL, to make everything worse):  “Therefore, girls, do not fear. It is perfectly normal for one breast to grow larger than the other.” I remember as a collective female, the girls hung their heads in shame. It’s not like we had them anyway, but now we had to worry about size differentiation in addition to ovulation. The Growing and Changing unit was shockingly unfair.

  Noah had been one such young male who had given this video rapt attention (and if he feels like I’m singling him out just now, I assure you, he was not the only one). That day, during recess, he decided to put his newfound knowledge into practice. Claiming, what I can only guess, that he had the bloody nose from hell, Noah pilfered an entire box of tissues. He stuffed one side of his generic boy t-shirt full to bursting with Kleenex. I can imagine that this involved a sculpting process.

The other side of his shirt, he left completely empty.

Then Noah pranced into the classroom after recess, right in front of Mrs. Covert, chest proudly jutting out and announced.

It allayed our fears better than any dang video, that’s for sure.  At least we would never look like that. We hoped.

Wanna hear the second Noah Osborne installment? Vote funny enough times and I will enlighten you with that one too.