At my Title I, economically ravaged, at-risk public middle school I get to teach smart kids.  They are not as steeped in Cultural Literacy as we would all wish, but they respond to input - which makes me a racially insensitive white demon that can't be trusted around children - but they like me anyway.

The academic team for the school is a set of girls who are chronically overmatched in trivia games based on curriculum mostly because they don't casually entertain themselves with fast reaction mental recall games, and are out of practice against students whose parents gather around the table to play trivial pursuit or watch Jeopardy or somesuch.   They have the knowledge:  this same group placed 12th of 30 middle schools (public and private) and 3rd among their county's public schools in MathCounts, a UNLIKE Jeopardy competition.

I have no complaints - my kids are better looking, cleaner, better mannered and just nicer to be around than the other teams - and my kids are not snarky.

So, we were sitting after school in my classroom - just the 7th graders (12 yrs old) - when the topic of the Sphinx came up.  They are much too young to begin to impress on them the fun of Wrymouth's inspired tale of the Spinks he did when he was in high school, so we just talked about the actual legend:  Monster asks a riddle of passers-by and if you can't answer you die, blah, blah, blah.

So I posed the riddle to the kids (I learned later I got an important part wrong, but they are 12, so it doesn't count )  What they heard from me, "What is it that has four legs when it is young, two legs in middle life and three legs just before death?"  (I was supposed to use morning, midday and night).   All but one did the standard middle-school guessing while my shyest sat with "that stare" the one teachers recognize as a student is engaged and putting pieces together and testing responses before they talk...

Yes, the little lass piped up after about three actual minutes of thought (I AM the master of "wait time") with "Is it a human?" 

This is the good part:  as her teammates began to tease her about being silly, and BEFORE I could say "yes,"  she stands up with hands outstretched in a crowd-quieting gesture to say with true excitement, "Wait, wait, let me tell you how!"  And she proceeded to explain the three phases of a person's life WORD FOR WORD from the legend, including the "walks with a cane - which is the third leg!"  to a chorus of amazed and genuine "oh yeah!"s from her teammates.

I couldn't smile big enough...

...  and that's not all.   Just a little later we were talking about Grendel and I was coaching them for trivia ("when you hear the name "Grendel," buzz in and say "Beowulf") when I decided to tell them the gruesome end to Grendel to elicit the requisite "ewwwws" that mature 12 year old girls deliver so well.  So I describe how Beowulf rips Grendels arm completely OFF and then BEATS GRENDEL to DEATH WITH HIS OWN ARM...  lots of good "ewwwws" and smiles aplenty - and the same little brilliant senorita smiles the broad smile of someone who is going to deliver a perfectly crafted laugh line as she says with the perfect lilt and inflection...

"Why are you hitting yourself? Why're you hitting yourself? Why're you hitting yourself?"

Guffaws from everybody.    In 30 years of knowing that story around a lot of amazingly witty and funny people, I have never heard that take on Grendel's death.  At least three times a day since, many times more, I just remember this and laugh.  Spirit-uplifting laughter.

I'm a very lucky guy.