My heart is breaking.

Be it hereby resolved that I will never again proctor one of my own exams. Why is it that students think I can answer the question, "Is this the right answer?"

Here are the words I was asked to define during today's exam:

ambiguous

depth

darkness

dissemination

anecdotal

effective

marginalization

commercial

continuity

light

God how I hate multiple-choice exams.

Go figure.

I asked my students to send me exam questions, and told them that if I liked them I would put them on the test.

Not a single person sent me anything. I guess writing a test really is harder than taking one.

Gah.

Q: I will be missing class today and I was wondering what we will be covering and what information I will need to know for our midterm.

A: Please read your syllabus and the course outline on WebCT.

Angry Toddler's costume is a poodle.

This weekend the Angry Family went to the zoo. It was cold and drizzly -- a perfect zoo day, because the weather kept almost everyone else away. To combat the weather, the zoo was holding its annual Hallowe'en party. Unfortunately, this drew some people out that we would have preferred stayed away.

The Angry Family, as misanthropic as we are, has often been chased through such public venues by groups of people we find abhorrent, and this was the case even on this dreary day. One threesome consisted of a mother and her son, and a second woman who had apparently taken on the role of educator. Because this woman insisted on wearing a huge handsfree earloop with microphone, we thought (briefly) she was a docent.

This illusion was shattered at the gorilla habitat, in which she spoke loudly and incorrectly about the taxonomy of the family Hominidea. Apparently, humans are descended from Homo Sapiens, now extinct, and we are Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Bzzt! Thank you for playing!

Ms. Never-Actually-Went-To-Anthropology-Lecture-But-Showed-For-The-Exams was irritating enough on her own that we would have left the park to escape her. But it was the rest of her group that held our attention, particularly the young man. In the spirit of the season, he was costumed, not as the Incredible Hulk or Frankenstein's Monster, but as a pimp. His costume was not unlike this one: a fake zebra coat with matching walking stick, purple velvet hat with a feather, and lots of plastic bling. His mother was also wearing a big hat with a feather, but it wasn't quite as obvious what effect she intended to achieve.

So I have some questions:

How does someone explain to an 8-year-old boy what a pimp is, and then encourage him to wear a pimp costume for Hallowe'en?

How is dressing an 8-year-old White kid up as a Black stereotype anything but incredibly offensive? How is this different from slapping on some blackface and tucking a watermelon under one arm?

Am I being too sensitive? I googled "pimp costume," and got 25,600 hits. Most of the links I examined had their pimp costumes modeled by White men and kids.

So much for Wednesday.

Wednesday is my no appointments/no teaching/all research day. But, Angry Toddler has croup, and I had to drop everything and go get her. Right as I was seeing light at the end of a nasty long tunnel of a problem, too.

Poor little monkey.