Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

awed-frog:

Honestly, though, the best part of teaching Greek mythology is that soft ‘huh’ coming from behind you as you’re finishing up a diagram of the gods and the relationships they have between them.

“Is something wrong?” you ask, turning around while you try, and fail, to clean white chalk off your fingers.

“It’s just,” the boy says, and then he blushes a bit, because people taking Latin are usually good and shy and the last thing they want is to get into a fight with a teacher. “Those two characters here - aren’t they both men?”

And okay, at this point everybody’s paying attention except the resident class child - that one girl who still has to uses four different colours for everything she writes and will get upset if you point out she should only use black or blue when filling in exams. So, yeah, you look at the boy, and then at everybody else, and then you turn back, pretend to check.

“Yes, they are,” you say, frowning, as if you never had to answer that question before.

“So why is there a double line between them?”

“Because they were in a relationship at some point. Double lines are for sex, remember? Single lines are kids and parents, and double lines are lovers.”

Someone giggles. The two kids whose parents bring them along to weird art exhibitions - the ones who’ve grown up hearing frank political discussions and the occasional dirty joke - are now looking collected and a bit smug. The others are losing it, and fast - they look at the board, as if only just noticing the thing, and then at you.

“So, they were like, gay?” someone else asks, and it’s always a girl asking this question, because ‘gay’ is just something boys aged 14 and a half never use - a Voldemort word, something that’s on your lips today and on everybody else’s tomorrow.

And this, of course, is the moment you’ve been waiting for - what the lesson was actually about. You wouldn’t plan a lesson around that, but you will mention the subject if it comes up, and so you start talking, about all of it - about sexual orientation being a cultural construct, about the Greek language not even having a term for ‘gay’ and ‘straight’, about warriors falling in love with each other and neglecting their teenage wives, about the fact our society is still coming to terms with something people have known in their hearts for millennia - that there’s no choosing and no free will, not about this. About how the most important thing is to respect yourself and each other, and the rest doesn’t matter all that much.

Statistically, in every class there’s a kid who’s struggling with this. Maybe two. Here things are not as bad as they could be, but it’s still hard, especially when you’re fourteen and you think you may be the only one and you don’t want to be different and how the hell can you even have a conversation about these things, with anyone?

And sometimes when you talk about these things - and dedicated teachers will find a way to include this speech somehow, because you never know who might need an ally, and who might need to hear it said out loud - teachers who loves their kids will mention the issue when discussing Michelangelo and Leonardo and Shakespeare and the Iliad - sometimes you see exactly who these kids are. Sometimes you see them looking at you, wide-eyed and fearful and yet full to the brim with that Go on look that’s so endearing on any kind of student. And sometimes all you see is their floppy hair, because they will keep scribbling in their notebooks and pretending like this is uninteresting and embarrassing and Oh my God, but the tips of their ears are getting red, and you find yourself hoping they’ll get a hug today, because they really need it.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

hotmenandotherdistractions:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

tom-nippleston:

The people in the apartment below me are playing “Never Have I Ever” and I’m smoking on my porch creeping on their game

Guy 1: Never have I ever INTIONALLY walked in on my parents having sex
Gal 1: fuck you brandon! It wasn’t intentional! I didn’t know what they were doing!!!
Brandon (Guy 1): Shut up Katy no one is THAT oblivious take your drink

Katy: Never have I ever LOST a wet tshirt contest

(Good job Katy. You do you. Proud of you boo)

Gal 2: Never have I ever pierced my genitals
Brandon: IT WAS IN FOR LIKE A MONTH!
Katy: Whatever bitch, take a drink you Prince Albert having douche
Brandon: I’m being singled out I hate you all

Guy 2: Never have I ever had a threescore
[Pause]
Guy 2: WHAT THE FUCK KATY?!?!?!?!
Katy: Shut up Andrew it’s before we even knew each other this was years ago!!!
[Pause]
Andrew: And you won’t even watch porn with me…

(the family is disintegrating)

Brandon: Never have I ever been in such a confrontational game of Never Have I Ever….

[People saying ‘cheers’]

(stop fighting guys you’re tearing this family apart…..)

Andrew: Never have I ever had sex WITH a piece of food.
[Pause]
Andrew: Dude
Brandon: Dude
Katy: Dude omg
Gal 2: what? Omg EVERY girl has practiced giving head with a banana!
Katy: Um no Ester. SOME of us just practice on dicks.
Ester: what the fuck though. Whatever.

(Don’t let them kink shame you Ester I still love you)

#TeamEster
#BananaSplits

Andrew is testing a banana. Go for it andrew. Explore your wild side
#TeamEster #TeamKink

Brandon: Never have I ever been called a fuckboy
Katy and Andrew: TO YOUR FACE
Brandon: Go fuck a banana Andrew

#TeamBananaFucking

Ester: Never have I ever had a crush on a family member
Brandon: [random fumbling noises]
Katy: brandon omg ew
Andrew: yeah man come the fuck on wtf man its 2016
Brandon: SHE WAS MY COUSIN AND I WAS 13 IT’S NOT LIKE SHE WAS MY SISTER AND IT WAS JUST A CRUSH NOTHING HAPPENED
Ester: methinks thou dost protest too fucking much
Brandon: NEVER TELLING YOU SHIT AGAIN
Andrew: Chug your drink, Sir IncestsALot
Brandon: Chug a fucking banana Andrew

#TeamBananaFucking #TeamWhatTheFuckBrandon

Katy and Andrew have gone home in an Uber to apparently sex it up. Alway use a designated driver, kids. And always put protection on your Banana.

#BananaCreamPie
#GamesOverKids
#TeamEster

This is spectacular.

(via patroclvss)

roane72:

unfavorableinstigation:

habitatfordeanwinchester:

habitatfordeanwinchester:

alright folks, so for the first time in my life, something actually happened to me that would make a good au fanfic prompt, so here it is.

so basically a few months ago my roommates and i were talking about why boys draw dicks all over things. this discussion eventually deteriorated to the point where we were in hysterics laughing about dicks just popping up wherever you least expected them, and so the idea for Hide The Dick was born.

HTD is essentially one of the greatest games ever conceived, or at least it seems that way to us. the rules are simple: someone hides the dick (a cartoon, laminated creation of my virgin roommate who drew from imagination, in case you were wondering) and the others look for it. if you find it, you announce where you’ve found it and then it’s your turn to hide it. we keep a tally of points on the whiteboard in the kitchen. 

as you might imagine, it has been substantially easier just to hide this game from visitors, rather than explain it, so no one knows we’ve been doing this.

well today for some reason the freaking smoke detectors in our building start going off like crazy in all of the apartments. two of my roommates and i had already been waiting around for a plumber anyway, so we called the landlord and she said she’d send someone down.

and send someone she did. 

shortly after the smoke alarms commenced their hellish symphony, we hear a knock at the door, so my friend gets up to open it, and in walks what is possibly THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN ANY OF US HAD EVER SEEN. like, i shit you not, after he left the room one of my roommates looked me dead in the eye and said “i’d be in for a foursome with that, if you guys are down”, like that is how attractive this man was. 

so at this point he’s fixing our smoke alarm and he’s pretty and we’re being a bunch of heart-eyed children, but in fairness we were also almost certain he moonlights as a firefighter when he isn’t working for the smoke detector people, and firefighters can turn even the most reasonable people into goo. after a bit he tells us he thinks he knows what the problem is and he’s just going to replace all the smoke detectors. so he leaves for the hardware store down the road and he says he’ll only be gone for a few minutes.

we, of course, being rational twenty-somethings, used this time to gush about how attractive he was. but anyway, he comes back and swaps out the smoke detectors and suddenly makes his way into the kitchen and he just goes: “you know what, while i’m here, i should actually check the date on your fire extinguisher…” and about halfway through this sentence a few things start to happen simultaneously.

ash, one of my roommates, her eyes just fly open in abject horror. (this is the girl who drew the dick in the first place) and all she manages to get out is “i just want you to know we play this game and w-”

and kelsey (magic-not-realism), my other roommate, turns on her with this horrified expression, mixed with like utter defeat and she doesn’t have to say a word but we all know her brain is just going “you fucking didn’t!!!!”

so i turn around just in time to see this random, innocent firefighter hold up the fire extinguisher with the dick taped to the back. 

that’s it, that’s the prompt. (i mean more happened, but it feels more fun to leave it unspecific). if you ever turn this into something (particularly of the destiel variety) please send it to me!

hey again internet peeps! so, believe it or not, i actually got a handful of anons about this and, back by popular demand, is my HTD story. 

ok so, we’re standing there with this hot firefighter and all of us are pretty much just staring at him in shock at this point. this was truly a cosmic joke of epic proportions. 

what you have to understand is that that dick had only been on the fire extinguisher for like, maybbbbbeee 12 hours because ash had just hid it there before we went to bed, so no one fucking expected this, least of all shawn the firefighter.

for a moment he just kind of stared at it, literally unable to process what he held in his hand. i’m not sure how many of you actually referred to the visual aid in the original post, but for those who didn’t, this dick is as anatomically correct as you could possibly expect from a virgin. like, ash and i laid on the couch the day she drew it and i forced her to draw and shade veins and pubes, so like, clearly an effort was made. there was no coming back from that kind of detail.

this was a dick with a purpose.

so shawn finally regains his wits and he untapes the dick and stares at it some more and then he lifts it up towards us and points with the most confused expression on his face, and just goes in the most disbelieving tone: “A penis….??? On MY fire extinguisher?!”

and so again, all of us are flying into action at the same time. ash is alternating between this high keening noise of embarrassment and fighting off giggles in between breathless “i’m sorry’s”. kelsey is laughing nervously and kind of trying to explain the game a little bit and as for me, well, i’d completely lost my shit at that point.

i was practically in tears just from the shock on his face and so finally i’m like “you win! oh my god, you win!” and i got up from the couch and went into the kitchen and drew him a space on the scoreboard and gave him a point. now, my back is turned at this point but kelsey and ash are just laughing now and every few seconds you hear shawn’s disbelieving voice go “a penis?”

anyway, i should probably be wrapping this up so i’m just going to do the cliff-notes of the rest of this visit

• shawn complimented the dick before he left
• he confirmed that this was not the weirdest thing he’s ever stumbled across accidentally
• i asked him to hide the dick again, since that’s how we play and he said “i can’t be hiding penises in your rooms i’ll probably get in trouble for that” (ftr i didn’t say rooms, we always hide it in common areas jeez shawn get your mind out of the gutter)
• we apologized about a couple hundred times
• he went to our neighbors to install smoke detectors and it occured to us that he might tell them about the game
• we drafted a plan to move if that happens
• he came back and we explained the origin story of the dick and asked him why boys draw penises on things and he reported that he’d never had that particular urge
• he left us his business card on his way out the door and then we laid on the couch and laughed about this until we cried

kittensboysandbabies

This is a thing of beauty.

(Source: cineastette, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

claraccoon:

So a teacher in my friends’ class told them he had grounded his daughter for wearing make up at school, and turns out that the next day every single girl in class had slapped the brightest blood red lipstick they had and there was a line in the bathroom to apply knife sharp, enormous curves of winged eyeliner on everyone and they looked like a legion of warrior goddesses on their way to avenge their sister, so when the teacher came in the room his face just FELL and he kept avoiding the girls staring at him during class, so they started raising their hands and asking questions about the subject to force him to look at them, and if you don’t think girls are amazing when they get down to battle you are missing out on something glorious

(Source: deactivatedblognumber1, via clockwork-mockingbird)

linoondles:

harpyholidays:

harpyholidays:

i was babysitting a little boy and girl once and the boy asked me if i had a boyfriend and i said “no!! but i have a girlfriend!” and he said “like a friend thats a girl?” and i said “no like a boyfriend but they’re a girl instead of a boy! we still do couple things but we’re just both girls” and he said, without missing a beat, “oh ok! are you gonna marry her?”

like it’s literally that easy for kids to understand

the cutest part of this was when afterwards the kid said ‘so i could have a boyfriend if i wanted to?’ and i said yes, but to be careful because some people are mean to boys who have boyfriends and he pushes up his sleeves and goes ‘well then i’ll beat them up! if i wanna have a boyfriend i’m gonna have a boyfriend!!! i’ll even marry him if i wanna!’

oh hey it got more adorable

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

dukeofbookingham:

penfairy:

oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half - because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy - but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised - they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison - but BAM he died and they all cried out - and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre

Apparently something similar happened during a production of Much Ado at Rikers Island because a bunch of inmates wanted to beat the shit out of Claudio, which is more than fair tbh

falsedetective:

falsedetective:

i’m absolutely screaming my 6th graders had to write essays about their favorite celebrities and one girl wrote hers about abraham lincoln

please remember that i don’t live in america, this is a 12 year old korean girl and when asked about her favorite celebrity her mind automatically jumped to the 16th president of the united states

(via windbladess)

buckygreyjoy:

okay guys, story time

when I was in about - third, fourth grade or so, I decided to tell everyone there was a ghost in the auditorium. now, this wasn’t too hard to do - the auditorium back then was huge and a little bit creepy when empty, and I’d been backstage plenty of times for various school things that I knew the layout well enough. also, I was not a very popular person, and ghost stories were the easiest way to get popular in my school.

so I said I saw a ghost. no details, I just said I saw a girl covered in blood at the top of the stairs backstage and ran out like my ass was on fire.

over the next year, the entire thing mutated until everyone was claiming that they’d seen the ghost and that they’d FIGURED OUT HER IDENTITY AND HOW SHE GOT THERE, and I was like, “what.”

which just goes to show that you should prob never underestimate the power of a story bc it’s STILL GOING to this day and made it onto a Facebook post that just crossed my feed.

guys. I made up the auditorium ghost. it’s fine, you can all come out now.

(Source: skymurdock)