Do you remember the time we tried...

This one goes out to my good buddy JM:
...to show a class of first graders a garbled up film (the kind from the olden days with reels and everything)?  I am not even sure what the film was supposed to be about - more than likely safety or something.... anyway, we had both had trying days in our respective first grade classrooms and thought a "movie" was surely the ticket to augment our study of whatever it was we were studying.  When we turned on the film projector - we couldn't seem to get the sound right - so we fiddled with it a bit more.  It sounded like the teacher on Charlie Brown - at best.  We both gave it our best shot - meanwhile, many little beanies were getting very anxious and squirrel-like - and at last, we decided to go with: (In our very serious first grade teacher voices) "First Grade Friends, today we are showing a movie about what it would be like if you had partial hearing loss.  We want you to be very quiet and see if you can figure out what the people are saying and what this movie is about."
After about 10 minutes of that rigamaro - we calmed ourselves down from some serious laughter and proceeded to field several responses regarding the very serious question, and then very stoically returned to our classrooms.

Silver Lining: I think I am finally ready to turn 40 this year - I colored my own hair - all by myself.