Your phone rings

Maybe I've been teaching English too long (I have, thank you), but apparently role-play cards are what pass for humour in my life these days. These ones (for a class on telephoning) made me laugh.

                A. Your friend just borrowed your car to go get some more beer.
                     Call him (on his cell phone) to remind him to get some chips and salsa.
                B. You borrowed your friend's car to get more beer. You have just driven
                     into a lamppost. Your cell phone rings.

                A. You are away on vacation in San Francisco. You have a lot of beautiful
                     plants. Call your son/daughter to find out how your plants are doing.
                B. You promised your mother that you would water her plants while she was
                     away on vacation. You forgot. The plants are dead. Your phone rings.

I think I'm going to start talking in ominously short sentences and ending every conversation with "your phone rings".

P.S. Credit where credit is due: the cards are from www.eslpartyland.com.

Pedo-cannibalism

A lot of my students come from different (sometimes very different) cultures, so I try to answer their questions pretty neutrally, even when they're weird or not super appropriate. But today a student asked me, "What do you call it when you eat your child? You know, when you eat him." Uhhhh...

Me: "We don't eat 'him' and 'her', we eat 'it'. He eats food. She eats food."

Student: "No, I mean when I eat him. My child."

Me: "Food is an 'it'. You don't eat a 'him'."

Student: "But it's a child."

Me: "Uhhhh..."

Student: "Or an old person."

Anywho, turns out she wanted to talk about feeding her children. Yikes.