School's Out

Over the summer
my name    
and my class-generated nicknames  
won't be called one thousand times a day  
   
"Ms G, I wrote a song I want people to sing at my funeral"  
"Ms G, Darius took my pencil"  
"Ms G, can I move seats?"  
"Ms G, Marco said my hair smells like pickles and baloney!"  
   
"Ms G, I need a pad"  
"Ms G, I need a pad"  
"Ms G, I need a pad"  
(every girl in my 6th grade class has her period every single day)  
   
"Ms G, look! If you turn this stencil of a jellyfish upside down, it looks like a bowl of hot soup!" (why yes, it does)  
"Ms G! If you turn this stencil of a sheep upside down, it looks like a cloud" (right again!)  
"Ms G! If you turn this stencil of a horse upside down, it looks like...a horse" (yep)  
   
"Ms G, I did a survey during recess: Eleven kids in our class are straight, six are bisexual, five are asexual, and the rest aren't sure."  
"Ms G, in Brown vs. Board of Education, the browns won, and that's why brown kids can go to school with white kids, right?"  
"Ms G, don't you think Jeff Bezos should use his billions of dollars to help people? (yes)  
"Ms G, my favorite quote is 'A real woman is whatever the hell she wants to be' (when asked why mentions that we need to switch from being a society of body shaming to a culture of inclusion, and that we need to celebrate uniqueness, and rid the world of toxic masculinity. Five minutes later she proudly shows me an animal she sculpted with Play-Do: "Ms G, it's a doggoat- half dog and half goat!")  
   
"Ms G, Nick and Chris put their bare butts on their desks when you weren't looking!" (sigh exhaustedly and  then silently hand Nick and Chris the bottle of disinfecting spray and a roll of paper towels. It's the last day of school and it's been a very, very long year)  
   
now it's summer  
my name won't be called 1,000 times a day  
i won't miss it  
but what i will miss    
is the crazy, amusing, and amazing things    
sixth graders say