Liar liar pants on fire

We share kids for science.  I teach weather (because I love weather) and I am teaching weather to Miriam's class right now.

We talked about extreme weather.  We talked about tornadoes, hurricanes and dust storms.  We talked about where those things are likely to happen.  I showed them maps of tornado alley and talked about how hurricanes happen on the coasts.  I explained that they get their power from warm water.

I asked if they had ever experienced extreme weather like this.

Every hand shot up.

One girl stood in front of the class and used to hands to dramatically explain a time when she and her mom had seen a tornado.  "My mom screamed!  I screamed! But then we realized it was a dust devil."

The rest of the students must have decided they had to do better than that.

"I was in a hurricane once."

"Where?"

"Um.  On the beach.  In Oregon?"

"I don't think so."

They all switched their stories to having happened while they were "on vacation" and they "didn't remember where."

Note to self, never go on vacation with these unlucky kids.  Every vacation it seemed had ended in either a tornado or hurricane.

The pièce de résistance was the student who had been on vacation and the first day was a tornado, the next day was a hurricane and then next day was a wind storm.  It happened long ago, when he was "like 5 years old" and at a forgotten location.

OK, so what you're all saying is that you have never experienced extreme weather like this, but have active imaginations.  Moving on.

Speaking of weather, I had recess duty yesterday.  The longest 15 minutes of my life is recess duty when the temperature is in the 20s.  Brrrrrrr.

We had fresh snow on the ground and no snowballs thrown is a BIG rule.  A second grader, who has gotten in trouble at recess before, was tossing a snowball.  I started toward him and he picked up several more snowballs and tossed them.

"Hey," I called.  (I had forgotten my trusty Fox40 whistle inside.) "Stop throwing snowballs."

"I wasn't!" he said. 

"You were," I said.  "And if you do it again, you'll have to go sit on the bench for the rest of recess."

His friend piped up, "He wasn't throwing snowballs!"

"I saw him," I said.

"I wasn't!" he said again.

"I saw you," I said again. (So much of my life is arguing with recalcitrant children!) "Don't do it again."

"He wasn't throwing snowballs," said the friend again.  "It was a toy."

"A toy?" I didn't believe them.  "Show me."

He pulled a small white round plastic windup toy out of his pocket.  It was the exact size as what I thought was snowballs.

At that point, I had to apologize.  

In my defense, trust issues are an occupational hazard.