Sometimes cars cost you money.

So it was brought to my attention this weekend - during that glorious weekend of rest - that my driver's side headlight was out. I finally made it to Auto Zone on my way home from school yesterday and the nice people there sold me a headlight but were understaffed and couldn't come out and install it then. So I decided to come back today. After driving and walking all over Potomac Mills trying to find Books-A-Million in search of a specific book I need to use for a writing assignment for my students next week, discovering that Books-A-Million doesn't carry the book I want even though the website says it does, and driving back to Auto Zone...the guy came out to look at my car and informed me that he can't install that particular headlight because they would have to take parts out of my car in order to get to the right spot. They can't do that. But no problem, he says, because I can go to the mechanic that is literally next door and they'll do it for like ten bucks. So I drive next door and the [cute] mechanic tells me that he can do it, but it will be $40 and not $10. Kind of a leap, there, cute mechanic. He also offered to buy my car from me instead, if the $40 was too much, because he would love to drive that car. I said I'll think about it and did what any 20-something girl on her own for the first time would do: I called Daddy. And he thought about it for a minute but then told me I'll need to suck it up and pay the $40. Well crap on that.

In other news, we finished The Outsiders today in class and my students in one class applauded at the end. Applauded. I loved it. When we read about Dally dying yesterday one girl yelled at me "Why are you making us read this book?!" but all I heard was "I'm really emotionally invested in this novel and I'm not taking this sudden and tragic death very well." See it? I see it. Also - and this is just a funny 7th grade anecdote - my last class of the day is mostly boys. Tough, football playing, thug-like boys. And they are all so convinced that there's something not quite masculine going on with Ponyboy. They have spent the entire book dissecting every single thing the characters say looking for evidence of homosexuality that simply isn't there. Every time Ponyboy describes Soda as good looking, they flip out. Doesn't matter how many times you tell them that they're brothers and he's just describing Soda for us as the narrator. They've talked to me while standing in the lunch line about how "we're not too sure about Ponyboy, Miss Melchione." I love it. LOVE it. They're talking about a novel during lunch. Yesterday we were reading about Ponyboy being so sick he was basically comatose and when Darry called him "baby" one of those boys literally threw the book on the floor and told me he's not finishing it. I told him they're brothers and to suck it up. He picked it back up :)