Fakers

If you haven't stepped foot in a high school recently, you would be amazed at the things teenagers are thinking up and trying to get away with.

For example, I confiscated not one, but two, cell phones from the same person today. She was sneakily going into her pencil case during class and, as I happened to walk by, I could see her animal print phone inside. Being that there is a strictly and stringently-enforced rule about having cell phones in class (they are absolutely not tolerated), I held out my hand in a very teacher-like gesture and silently waited.

This brought out a string of babbled excuses ...

"I was just checking the time!"

"It's not even on!"

"Let me explain what's going on here ..."

"I need to have the phone," I said, very simply and calmly (you never know what is going to set a teenager off). "It wouldn't be fair to all the other students' whose phones I've had to take."

Instead of just handing over the phone that I had, quite obviously already looked at, she produced a second, different phone from the pencil case and placed it in my hand. This one was silver ... Definitely not the same phone that I had seen initially.

"I need the other phone, the animal print one," I prodded.

Then the waterworks came on.

As it turns out, the students at my school carry what they refer to as "fake" cell phones. These are the phones that they no longer use, yet carry around in hopes that an unsuspecting teacher won't know the difference between the phone that they see and the phone that they are given.

Clever, huh?

Too bad I have eyes ... That work!

And this is not the first time this has happened!

During a previous cell phone debacle, a student gave me his iPod in hopes that I could be "tricked" into believing that's what I really had seen.

Nice try, but sorry.

If only these kids would dedicate this same amount of time and energy preparing for their tests and completing their homework ...