Gender

The Unknown Baby:
Janie...or Johnny?

Last month we worked on biographies.  We read them.  We did book reports on them.  We made posters of them.  We wrote them.

Rather than do long, boring, (horrendous to grade) biographies, I decided we would do classmate interviews and then write newspaper articles on each other.  Much shorter.  And February WAS a short month.

When the students finished, I was sharing the articles with the class.  There were so many funny things from students with fears of chairs, teachers, and snakes to secret desires to own Trafalga, own cars I've never even heard of, shape shift, and to meet/ask Jimmer, "How do you make those threes?"  But I must admit, the strangest (by far) was this article.  It certainly took the cake as far as its...unusual content is concerned.

The article went something like this:
When "Johnny" was born, his parents thought he was a girl.  He had so much hair!  And so, they named him "Janie."  They called him Janie for a whole month--until they finally figured out he was a boy!  Then they named him "Johnny."  Wow!  That's a lot of hair! 


Most of the class laughed and thought it was a terrific story.

Only one boy in the front said,
"Hey.....wait a minute.....
Can't you tell by......"

At which point I quickly said,
"Well!  That was a fun newspaper.  Who's next?!"

Bewildered, I pulled little "Johnny" aside later and said,
"Johnny, that was a funny article.  But your parents knew you were a boy.  I'm sure they were just joking about it."

"NO!"  he said adamantly.  "They really thought I was a girl!  I had a LOT of hair!"
Really?  I thought.  Were you a chimp?  And even still.....


And so, there you have it.  Maybe we should all just stick with "safe" names like Taylor, Alex, Pat, and Jordan.

After all, you wouldn't want to have to switch it after a month, when one little haircut could change everything.