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Oh the things I've learned from the 8th grade boys this week...

Obsessed with Charmed sits at my lunch table. On Monday he told me with confidence that they were hiding Osama bin Laden in some local caverns, since no one would ever think to look there. I suppose that's one of the last places I would think to look if I were ever to play hide-and-go-seek with Osama.

Today, as I was introducing the video we were about to watch ("Great Black Innovators") FS asked some good questions. We were talking about how it was often hard for African American inventors to get recognition for their inventions because of the color of their skin. He wanted to know why: 1) Black men don't get paid as much as white men, and 2) Why when they have advertisements to help poor people they always show pictures of black kids. Valid questions which we didn't have time to discuss. But they did spur Cartoon Character Kid to pipe up:
"Yeah! And when they advertise for food stamps and stuff they always talk about agriculture. Does that mean black people?"

I honestly couldn't tell if he was serious or not. But as the whole class was correcting him, I wasn't even trying to keep a straight face...whoops. :-p

So Elijah McCoy was a black man who invented the automatic lubricating machine, which people didn't want to use when they found out that a black guy invented it, even though they needed it. They did a brief clip on him in the video, and afterwards Boy With Girl's Name asked what an automatice lubricating machine was, so I was explaining what it was used for. FS chose this opportunity to put in his two cents:
"You don't know where lubrication comes from? Condoms!"

Of course. Why didn't I think of that?