Subbing helps shave off cost of entertainment

With the cost of movie tickets these days, sometimes entertainment just gets cut
from the budget. But here’ s where I get a break. I’ m a substitute teacher. I get free entertainment just by showing up for work.

Like the time a middle school class was studying the Russian Revolution. The
lesson plans were to show Disney’ s Anastasia, about the Grand Duchess of Russia. But the DVD wasn’ t where it was supposed to be and I couldn’ t find it anywhere. Another teacher gave me a stack of worksheets called “ Alpha blocks” for which the kids were to to find a relevant fact for each letter of the alphabet in their textbooks. I altered the plan just a little bit. On the chalk ledge – or more specifically the dry erase marker ledge – the teacher had displayed a variety of books. I picked up a book titled “ Anastasia’ s Album.”

“ Let’ s do this as a group,” I suggested. “ With all our different backgrounds,
maybe we can learn a little more from each other.”

I held the book up high so everyone could see the pictures as I read. They filled in their boxes with names, places and events. Then I turned to a picture of Anastasia and her three sisters in their bathing suits, which had bloomers with ruffles below their knees.

“ I have a question, Mrs. Larson,” a young lady said. I was sure it had something to do with the style of the bathing suits.

“ Did women just shave their legs up to their knees back then?” she asked.

“ Women didn’ t shave at all back them,” I told her. They all gasped in disbelief.

“ My mother never shaved her legs,” I told them. “ In fact, she was horrified when she found out I was shaving my legs in high school. She told me only prostitutes shaved their legs, which was pretty much true when she was growing up. She just couldn’t accept that times had changed.”

“ I relate to that, Mrs. Larson,” a young man piped in. “ My mother really lost it
when she found out I was shaving my legs. She just couldn’t understand that if you want to make serious time on swim team, you have to shave your legs.”
With that, all the male swimmers started volunteering stories about their families’
reactions to their shaving habits.

“ OK, back to the book,” I said, figuring we’ d all learned all we needed to know about the evolution of shaving in America. I turned the page to a photograph of Anastasia’ s mother in her Victorian wedding gown.

“ All wedding dresses must have had long sleeves back then,” a young man
observed.

“ Why’ s that?” I asked.

“ Just think. If Nicholas saw her coming down the aisle with hair coming out of her armpits, he never would have married her and we wouldn’ t be sitting here taking about Anastasia.”

If we’ d found that DVD, could it have possibly been any more entertaining?

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