For reasons that I can’t begin to explain, Iris and her cousin Kylie came to me and asked me to write a homework assignment with questions for someone studying to be a detective. The first question I came up with was:
**What is something red you would find at a crime scene?**
They took the worksheet down the hall and Kylie read the question. “Pepperoni!” said Iris.
“That’s my kind of crime scene,” said Iris’s uncle Scott.
Fortunately, the cousins discussed the matter and came up with a much more likely answer, which they scrawled on the sheet:
TOMATO.
I can also report that a detective’s favorite sandwich is PB&J, and that in a fight between a pirate and a detective, the pirate would win.
Schoolgirl shamuses!
The most debated question was probably the detective’s favorite sandwich. Initial response was “Tuna”, but they decided PB & J would be easier to spell!
Also, Iris said, “Yecch, tuna.”
And I thought it was weird that my fourth-grade classroom (thanks, Seattle Public Schools!) had “career profile” books, including the exciting career of a homicide detective.
I mean, I know that “CSI” is glam and all, but still — murder cophood being pitched to 9-year-olds? (And of course, I thought it sounded like a fascinating career …)
My fourth-grade classroom had a biography of Elton John, but we had a unit on guns wherein we were taught the difference between soft-nosed and hard-nosed bullets. This is not a joke.
Is there more to the difference between soft-nosed and hard-nosed bullets than one is soft, one is hard?
Mamster and I once worked with a Russian woman whose school lessons included learning how to assemble and disassemble a Kalashnikov.
How did this topic end up here?
Actually, now that I think about it, it was third grade. In terms of imparting information I would retain for life, it was about the best school lesson I ever had. However, I don’t know if any of the information is correct.
As we were taught, hard-nosed bullets are designed to pierce and go straight through a target. Soft-nosed bullets are designed to expand or ricochet within a target for maximum tissue disruption. If you have a choice of which bullet to be shot with, choose the hard-nose.
In answer to your next question, I went to a hippie elementary school where students could request topics to be added to the curriculum and teachers would comply even if they found the topic antithetical to the general crunchy ethos of the school.