Had a little problem with my springtime 8th graders today that I didn't anticipate. We were reading a poem called "the drum" by Nikki Giovanni. Here it is:

daddy says the world is
a drum tight and hard
and i told him
i’m gonna beat
out my own rhythm

That's the whole thing. And last year we read this poem in class with no problem.

This year, there was a problem. The problem stemmed from the words, "tight," "hard," and "beat."

You can likely see where this is going.

After several moments of tittering, I just put it out there. "So, you think Giovanni is comparing the world to masturbation?"

YES! the twelve boys proclaimed. YES WE DO.