While student teaching, I had a second grade boy who gave me the most hilarious answer I have yet to hear. I was standing at the board, and I had asked someone in the class to tell me what we had done in the previous class. Several students put their hands in the air hoping to answer the question.
“Yes, Curtis,” I said to a boy in the back of the room.
Before I knew what hit me, I heard in a high pitched voice, “Witha withay thuh wee thay uh though weeth ow ith thee oh with thee oh they uh though witha woothee thow uh tho….”
It went on like that for over a minute. I tried my hardest to understand what he was saying, to get anything intelligible. There was nothing. Not one word.
I had forgotten when I picked him that he had a lisp. A horrible one. After about eight seconds of the speech, I just about laughed in his face. I almost excused myself, but instead put my hand over my mouth as he continued to cover my smile. At one point I thought it was a joke. Then I remembered that second graders aren’t clever enough for this kind of trick, and none of the other students were laughing. Perhaps they understood him.
I caught my cooperating teacher’s eye during this onslaught of words, and she immediately looked away because she too was about to lose it. If our eyes were to have locked for longer than that, we both would have been done.
After his speech, I swallowed the laughter and said to him, “Not exactly” because I had no clue what he had said. That was rough.
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I laughed for about 5 minutes after reading this! There is a little boy in Kindergarten at my school who has such a terrible speech impediment that it's very difficult to understand what he says at all. I too, find myself regretting calling on him after I do, because I have NO idea what he has just said to me!
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