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Health & Fitness

Teacher's Pet

With the Chicago teacher's strike in full swing, I thought it was time to pull out the big guns that will certainly have them racing back to their classrooms ... the pencil vase.

Do you think my project has ulterior motives?

Ulterior motives that would get me and my daughter  … but mostly me … in on good terms with her sixth grade teacher.

Can I share a little secret with you?

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I’m a teacher’s pet.

Please don’t hate me.  It’ not like I tried to be a teacher’s pet.  Well, at least not at first …

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I think it all started out of pity.  Up until high school I was tiny.  Teeny tiny.  Runt of the class tiny.

Oh, and I was blind.  As a bat.  So I wore glasses. Teeny tiny little runt Linda with her big old Coke-bottle-glass-plastic-framed glasses.

So, much like the runt of the litter, there was an underdog vibe enveloping elementary and junior high school me.

As I grew older … and bigger … I’d become accustomed to my teacher’s pet status. And I wasn’t too keen to give it up …

So I added in that straight A thing.  What teacher doesn’t like a straight A student? Especially a straight A student who could do a perfect cartwheel with straight legs and pointed toes?

And when I finally worked up the nerve to speak …

… I was painfully shy in my early years …

… it turned out I had a sense of humor too.

Straight A’s. Straight cartwheel legs. Straight man. Or would it be woman? Okay, more like girl …

I mean what teacher wouldn’t find me irresistible?

So now I’ll share a little secret with you …

… a seriously easy brown-nose-worthy teachers-pet-guaranteed pencil vase.

All you need are dollar store pencils.  A soup can.  And a glue gun.  Oh, and for step #4, I put a bead of glue around the pencils along the bottom of the can …

… just a little A+ tip from a straight A student to give those pencils a bit more staying power.

My daughter loved it and happily presented it to her teacher on the first day of school last Tuesday …

… she (and I) are so in …

My son, on the other hand, remarked “hey, that would come in handy if I had a large circle I needed to erase.”

Yeah, that kind of snark will not win him teacher’s pet status …

... though it did crack up his not-quite-so-straight-laced mom.

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