Nothing Like a Captive Audience (When You're Feeling Your Oats)

My first period creative writing class is comprised of eleven girls and one boy (and me) and this one boy wrote a wonderful personification piece (inspired by Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and this gem from the New Yorker) from the perspective of a diamond engagement ring that was rejected once, stored away for a few years, and then got a second chance and found success . . . after the author read it aloud, I heard a few grumbles from the ladies, so I asked them-- knowing it was a loaded question-- if anyone had a problem with a recycled diamond ring, and then the festivities began . . . because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned with a secondhand ring; apparently, you should buy a "new" diamond specifically for the new person you have in mind (despite the fact that this "new" diamond is already 1 to 3.5 billion years old) and this led to a lot of good-natured early morning debate, and the ladies had to endure my various rants about strip-mining, the DeBeers conspiracy, the overhang, blood diamonds, rampant materialism, and the influence of the media on a saturated, overpriced market . . . in the end, we all agreed that it was a fun way to start the day, though I had little or no success convincing any of these women to forego engagement rings (and then, as an added bonus, a senior in my comp class said that people were getting sick because the weather dropped forty degrees in two days, so I got to call her "grandma" and lecture the class about why we actually get sick more when it's cold (it's mainly because viruses survive better in low humidity . . . although I also found some reasons that contradict my lecture-- perhaps when our feet are cold then our immune system doesn't work as well . . . so I'll have to apologize tomorrow for calling her "grandma," as perhaps the whole old-time "don't go outside with your hair wet" faction is right).