Unsafe Expressions

During computer class yesterday, my friend's computer threw up one of those warnings that computers are sometimes prone to give you when you try to do something new. The ones like "you are about to send information over an unsecured connection." But her warning was one I've never seen before. It said, "Warning: unsafe expressions are not blocked." It's not too often that I see a computer warning and start to desire nothing but that in my life. To be honest, it has never happened to me before, but as soon as she called my attention to her warning, all I could think was, "Ohhhh. I want that!"

Seriously. Think of how amazing it would be if you could get a feature that blocked unsafe expressions. I'm a pretty expressive person; people can generally tell how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking by looking at me. An unsafe expression blocker would be wonderful--especially in the classroom.

I teach middle schoolers. Occasionally they ask incredibly stupid questions (I know...since I'm a teacher I'm supposed to say that there are no stupid questions. But since I love Jesus, I'm not supposed to lie. Jesus trumps teacher.)--for example, I recently had one student ask, "Burma is in France, right?" and another ask, "Are elephants man-eaters?" My friend had a student ask, "Is Mexico in the United States?" I don't care how mean it is; these are stupid questions. I try my best, but sometimes when a student asks a question such as these, I look at him or her like he or she is stupid.

I teach middle schoolers. Occasionally they laugh at incredibly stupid things. By incredibly stupid things I mainly mean things related to bodily functions. And by occasionally I mean pretty much all the time. My friend just told me this happened to her today whenever she said Vladimir Putin. I lived in Russia for a year while Putin was president. Never did I ever laugh at his name. But because she was telling me the story in the context of a middle school class, I laughed. I don't get it--I always laugh at this kind of stuff during class. Then, my students think it is ok to laugh at it and I feel incredibly immature. If I had an Unsafe Expression Blocker, I would be able to block the smirk and the laugh. I would look like a grown-up. It would be fantastic.


Someone needs to make this happen. The only downside to the Unsafe Expression Blocker would be that the show Lie to Me would not have been possible, and I like that show. I find it remarkably interesting.