"Donkey" Means What?!?

Well, I guess I really do learn something new every day...

As I was coming home from Jerusalem today with a friend {who also teaches at the school with me}, I was talking about how I wished that I had a cord to hook up my computer to my phone so as to retrieve photos taken on the latter. I then proceeded to whip out my phone to do a little "show-and-tell" of my wonderful documenting skills so she could sympathize with my inability to share my phone's photos with the rest of the world {aka, Facebook}.

Upon looking at a picture with a few students and myself as the subject, I let out a gasp which was shortly followed with: "Oh my goodness! I cannot believe that Layaar is giving me donkey ears!! {You see, here... "bunny ears" that you often see in comedic pictures are not really bunny ears at all. They are "donkey ears"-- and the word "donkey" has a very negative connotation, or so I was told.} "...How could she do such a thing?!?"

I then followed these statements with a long-drawn out story on how I was trying to nip the name calling {especially, calling one another "donkeys"} in my classroom. I told my friend that every time I heard that word used, I would have the student sit down, write their parents a note stating the phrase they said in class--"donkey", and have the note returned bearing a signature from a parent.

A fine, fine act to increase awareness in the home, and I was quite proud of myself.

Until, of course, I heard the next few lines from my friend...

"What does it mean, anyways?" I ask to refresh my mind. {For up until this point, I had thought it was the equivalent to the F bomb or something...}

"Oh, it's just a phrase that means, 'You're stupid.'"

"Wait, that's it?? That's all it means??"

"Yah, I'm positive."

"Sooo, I've been sending these notes home to parents that say their child called another stupid, and that's it??! ...man."

At this, we just laugh.

So, the parents may think I'm traditional. Or, perhaps conservative. Or, maybe just strange. Either way, my students definitely think twice before they call each other donkeys.

I'm changing Palestine, one day at a time...