Are Showers Optional, Too?

Now here is an almost foolproof plan perpetrated by a middle school gym teacher in the southeast. His name is on the web as is the palce of residence, but I'm going to leave that out. CNN reports that this teacher allowed kids to sit out of class for a dollar. That's right...for one smackeroo, a kid could sit on the side while the rest of his/her classmates ran, sweated, competed and generally, one might suppose had to take a shower.
Imagine! No more, "I forgot my gym stuff" or "My Mom forgot to get it out of the wash machine" or "Uh...it's, you know, THAT time" or even my favorite, "My doctor says I have a sprained spleen and can't participate this year." Pull out a Washington, and we're both good for the day. Let's see...I have about 100 kids in gym a day...if a third come up with the cash...
My only problem is that I have, maybe, three kids a week who'd want to sit out. Maybe it's because I have clean clothes waiting for those forgetful ones or because I routinely reward with carrots or, perhaps, because gym is a rather fun place to be at our school. It might just be that high school kids are different than middle school kids. Of course, they might also want that dollar to get some juice, too. It's a win-win for both them and for me.
Still, you have to admit, it was a genius plan. Go figure that some mother would turn him in!
I have to give a shout out to my favorite mother of all time as far as written notes are concerned. Kelly Kelley (I hope I got the name right) is the mother of one of my freshmen this year. Anthony was sick for three days, and my rule is that time missed must equal time made up. Anthony's a good guy so when he missed three days in a row, I called home to see what was up. I knew right away when I asked for her and she said, "This is she" that this was a special Mom (i.e. not from around here). Anyway, we had a nice chat, and she assured me that he was planning to come back the next day. This week I got a note from her explaining what Anthony had done to make up the time missed. While I think the actual note got lost before I could frame it, it read something like this:
"Anthony spent an afternoon rollerblading this weekend. He spent the rest of the time walking on my last nerve, though I don't suppose that counts as real exercise." Au contraire!!! A note like that gets extra credit! I cannot wait to meet this person at parent-teacher conferences.