Get A Clue

November is a pretty busy month in the education business. Standardized tests must be administered, parent-teacher conferences are held, (usually minus the parents), and the kids are starting to hit their stride with whatever path they’ve chosen to go down, (educationally or behaviorally). So, with it being the end of the month, and Thanksgiving Break merely an hour away, I decided I would play a board game with the small group of seventh hour students to pass the time until they would be released from my tutelage and can commence with their family-planned road trips, hunting expeditions and culturally sanctioned gluttony that we all try to enjoy to the fullest each year at this time.

“Waaaaait a minute! Is that really good use of educational time,” you ask?

“Yes, yes it is!” I heartily reply!

First of all, let me tell you that these post-millennial children were completely perplexed when I busted out this long, slender, rectangular box. If not for the images of the beloved cast of The Simpson characters on the lid, I think I would have been met with complete indifference or even mutiny.

Secondly, the participation in a board game, requiring the exchange of words, etiquette and turn-taking is also something that these students were currently functioning at the “minimal” level, to use the educational parlance of our time. Can you blame them, what with the solitary bubble of technology we’ve encouraged them to envelope themselves into?

And thirdly, there is the practice of problem solving, logic and delayed gratification that a game like “Clue” requires. All are novel and unpracticed concepts for these kiddos. No laser guns to be shot or video mazes to navigate through or records of points earned at the bottom of a screen.

I was going to expose these children to some non-electronic, old-school good times! With that, I feel I’ve actually gone above and beyond the call of duty, and I think you’ll agree with me when I tell you how the whole hour played out.

As I mentioned earlier, this last class of the day is small, and the students that attend the class are ones that have been selected to have additional literacy coaching from me. There are four boys and one girl. (I’m going to go ahead and give them fake names so that it will be easier to follow this story). There is one young man who is new to this country named Oscar, another named Jacob who is in a family that tends to move around a lot and never allows him to remain more than a semester in one school building, and a set of twins that remind me of the Hanson brothers from the movie “Slap Shot,” so I’m going to call them Matt and Mark Hanson.

The girl, I’ll name Kathy, I still don’t really know how she wound up in my class. She is pretty, well-mannered and academically doing relatively OK. She must have drawn the short straw during scheduling.

So, I explained to my cozy little group that we’re going to play “Clue” for the rest of the hour. Kathy was the only student vaguely familiar with the game and mentioned her brother had a video edition of the game. The rest of the guys instinctively began to whine about my not allowing them to simply sit their collective asses in front of a computer screen. “Hold on! I think you’ll like this game!” I implored, “I played this all the time when I was little and I bet your parents did too! Let’s just give it a try!”

Immediately after I opened the box and started the process of assembling the game board, a fight ensued over who would get to play using the Bart Simpson figure. The boys avoided the Lisa, Marge and Mr. Smithers playing piece because, “Those are for girl players.” I was relieved that Smithers didn’t bring about a barrage of comments related to his sexuality, being that his playing piece was wearing a dress.

(The kids must have been caught off-guard from their usual obsession with all things sex-related, probably due to the fact that they were in the throes of being dealt cards and explained the rules of a game they had no idea how to play, since it didn’t include a mouse or a keyboard)

After some negotiations, we were set to play the game.

Right.

The Hanson boys really started getting into it once they figured out that the whole plot revolved around a murder and the fingering of a suspected culprit. They were going to make that person pay! The only set-back was, the rest of the kids and I couldn’t get the twins to look at their cards when someone made an accusation, (“I think it was Krusty in the Androids’ Dungeon, using the poison doughnut!”) They just sat there, staring blankly. After telling the boys for the fourth time to check their cards, they would do so, but then simply shout out, “I got the doughnut card!” or “Hey, I’m the Krusty playing piece! I didn’t do it!” As if he surely would have remembered murdering someone and didn’t want to get blamed for something he didn’t do.

The boys did however, appear to be feverishly checking off clues on their score sheets as the game proceeded. When another player would make a proclamation, the twins would do a good job of shielding what they were checking off on their sheets, so at least it seemed like they were getting some of the gist of the game!

During a pause in the action, Matt looked across the table from Oscar and commented, “You look Chinese.” to which Oscar retorted, “Well, you look like a monkey!” Not really the verbal interaction I was hoping for, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet!

Mark kept trying to open the evidence envelope, wanting to cut to the chase and begin administering justice, and seemed to be taking it personally when Jacob would tell him he couldn’t do that at this point in the game.

After one round of turns from all the children, the murderer had not been caught yet, but it didn’t matter, because Matt and Mark began to lose interest in the process of the game and started taking note of the various details of the images on the game board — like the divot on the sofa featured in the picture of the Simpson’s house, which we were quickly informed was erosion caused by all the years of Homer sitting and farting on that particular cushion. I shot Matt the “teacher look” that was meant to be a non-verbal warning that he was being inappropriate. He didn’t get the hint, but his twin brother Mark did, and turned to his brother and admonished him, “Dude! Shut the fuck up! You’re pissing the teacher off!”

To which Matt replied loudly, “No, YOU shut up!”

Kathy, sitting still with the patience of a saint, turned to me and said proudly, “I’m in the babysitter’s class at the YMCA,” as though she thought she needed to explain to me how she was able to put up with this crap. Such a good girl!

“Ok! Ok! Come on, guys! Let’s just play the game! We’re having fun, right?!” I yelled, pleadingly, as if to try to convince myself.

The game continued, with Matt now adding sound effects to his Homer playing piece, making it fart with every hop along the game board. Mark began to play with the rest of the remaining game pieces on the board, staging little fights between the characters, using the pewter weapon pieces in all sorts of unseemly manners. Soon, no one could remember which player piece was on which part of the game board.

Oscar, obviously not having any fun, turned to me and asked, “Mees, I think I have a paper to write. Yes, I have a paper to write for Mees Ramirez class! Can I do instead?” He would actually rather do homework instead of play this game!

Jacob followed suit, saying, “It’s my last day here at this school, because we’re moving to Merrill this weekend. Can I just work on the computer too? Because it’s my last day?!” (Translated: Please don’t make me spend my last hour in your fine school building doing an activity that feels akin to training wild ferrets!)

I waved him off and let him settle on one of the classroom desktop computers.

Returning my attention to the game board, I found Kathy scooting her chair away from the table, while on the other side, Matt was now brandishing a sharpened pencil and trying to stab his brother Mark in the shin with it while he protested “Cut it out, faggot!”

After closing down the game and putting all the materials back in the box, I came across a forsaken score sheet, crumpled in a ball, left on the classroom floor. I had intended on re-using the score cards so I carefully tried to flatten the paper out with the tips of my fingers so the next player would be able to read the list of suspects and check off the clues when the next game was played. I noticed not much was checked off in the line of clues on this particular player’s card, but there was a cartoon t-rex drawn on the paper, featuring a giant lizard phallus. Maybe I’ve gotten really good at deductive reasoning, after playing “Clue” so much as a kid, but I’m going to go ahead and eliminate Kathy as a suspect.

Introduce the students to some old-school fun? Well, at least I tried.