Tuesday, March 16, 2010

They were born under wand'ring stars

The mind of a junior high schooler is a curious place. I'm serious. It's full of random roadblocks, suddenly strong opinions, and whole marshes of exaggeration where a fact or story could get lost and never find its way back out. For example, a week or two ago, I told the story to my students of Dr. Mengele shooting a woman and her child when the woman protested being separated when entering Auschwitz.

When this story showed up in one of my student's papers, it contained some entertaining conclusions and embellisments. I don't have the exact wording with me, so I will do my best to recreate it. The original topic was "Should the Jews have fought back against the Nazis?"

Plus, there were like 20 Nazis for every 10 Jews. I heard this story once where a woman tried to hold on to her baby, and the Nazi pulled out a pistol sized shotgun and blew them both away.

If this how a straightforward story emerges from the maze of their brains, you can only imagine the entertaining political analysis I hear; part I-heard-it-on-the-news-in-passing, part my-parents-said-that-somebody-said-something-sorta-like-this, and part I-just-thought-of-it-but-am-suddenly-willing-to-swear-its-truthfulness.

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