"I'm not gonna be shooting them at anyone, silly."

There is nothing better than real dialogues with your former students, your friends, or your family members; I have one of each -- note what follows:

Sarah W told me: "You should really watch Sixteen and Pregnant on MTV."

Me: "Because it's...."

Sarah W: "Really funny. I watched it with my dad. He called it Knocked Up, but I told him -- noooo that's a movie and that's so different. This is real."

Me: "Wait. Wait. You watched it with your dad?"

Sarah W: "Not every time, just this once."

NSB told me: "That guy had many snakes, none of them legal."

Me: [this was after the news story of the python killing the two-year old in Florida -- NSB lives in Florida and they had much more coverage] "There are 140,000 Burmese pythons in Florida right now. I read that in a magazine. That's not counting the ones they don't know about. "

NSB: "And I needed to know this.....why?"

Me: "Cause you are my friend."

Nora told me: "I'm working for the government. I have an "issued" phone. No camera. They don't want me taking pictures of the submarines or the nuclear part of them and putting them on the Internet."

Me: [this was after I asked my newly graduated niece about her new job] "You're gonna be working with nukes?'

Nora: "I'm not gonna be shooting them at anyone, silly."

Real conversations are awesome.

Blog correction: Apparently on my blog titled "Former Students Only," I wrote that I had taught my most recent students 4 of the works listed in Newsweek's top 100. Jessica let me know that actually I only taught 3 of them. See, I told you Newsweek wasn't much of a magazine. I noted that they had left off Scarlet Letter and was letting them pass. Not any more -- what a crank list that was after all.

*shrugs*