Sleep; Strong Stuff

Last night I was not tired in the least but I fell asleep in all of my clothes around 7:30. I woke up at 6:30 this morning. Do I have an illness? Was I stung by Titsi flies? I suspect we will never know. Perhaps I am prolonging my lifespan. Yesterday at school something frustrating happened that opened a window onto the bad behavior here. Inoue sensei and I have been encouraging the 1st years to speak up when they see other students doing messed up stuff. I wouldn't normally encourage children to be rats, but at this school "doing bad things" is no joke. Yesterday to members of the softball club came to the teacher's room during the lunch break and said that lately bats and balls had been disappearing from the softball locker and that now a bunch of 3rd years were playing with a bat and ball on the grounds. Tsurutani Sensei and I went to check. We were followed by several other teachers. Of course, I knew already that it would be my buddies. Okada, Kuroda, Sakamoto, Nakamura..... They were joined by some good kids to. Koketsu and Nagami were there. Nakano Sensei started yelling at them very aggressively. They yelled back. They yelled back in the way that prompts me to fight them. Nakano laughed, at patted them on the head like little scamps. They claimed it was their bat from home, which is also against the rules. They refused to give it up and kept passing it around. I hung back as I am known to smack a bitch. Okada, as usual, threw the ball mid speech. The rest of the teachers headed back to the school Problem not even close to solved. "Aren't we going to take the bat?" I asked. "They say it is there, so there is really nothing we can do about it." Really? Really? You can take the bat until it is determined whose it is and ask one of their parents to come and get it as you can't bring a bat to school. Especially as we have no baseball team. You can also not allow them to play outside for the rest of the week for yelling at teachers. There are tons of things you can do. Any other school would make them sit seiza until they cried. Any other school would smack them until their noses bled for talking to teachers like that. Any other school.....oh, forget it. Inoue sensei had been away at a meeting so I told him about it today. He was incredulous as well. Today I have to teach 3-1 for the first time since the last Okada fight. I have no problem beating him down again. Now I see why they react badly to me. They are used to being talked to like they are funny little scamps. "Oh Alfalfa, why won't you let girls in your tree house." But they function and react like a gang or a mob ready to turn on whoever stands up to them. That is why I think it is important to react firmly and clearly. I am calling this one = teacher's fault.