Remember Show and Tell in grade school? I think it existed because of all of the “adorable” stories parents could tell at cocktail parties about what their children had revealed. My sister regaled her classmates about the martinis her Daddy got in his thermos. True and true. He worked late and sometimes my mother would take him something special with his dinner. It may have only happened once, but the oh-so-cute story had a very long shelf life.

By middle school, we were upgraded to what was called current events. We’d scan the newspaper for something significant and cut out the article for sharing. The events tended to be local, but occasionally national. Crime was still a rare headline and there was no news yet about the “environment”. Pretty tame stuff.

The news today – in all of its forms –  cable TV, radio, Internet, social media and newspaper seems obscene, violent, disturbing and usually negative. I wondered what it would be like to have that same assignment today? So I decided to search out some subjects any student would be pleased to report on.

I found a story from the BBC about a man who lost and then recovered his cell phone. He checked the photos hoping for a picture of the thief. He did. It was a monkey. See the monkey selfies here.

I am a vegetarian, but I am also a southerner. We take our fried chicken very seriously. Guess who is adding pimento cheese to everyone’s favorite chicken sandwich?

If you need to provide lots of visuals for your presentation, consider sharing the YouTube channel of Einstein the Parrot. This bird does animal imitations, orders breakfast and does a spot on imitation of Matthew McCounaughey doing his signature “alright, alright, alright”. Being a former teacher, I was happy to sacrifice the time I spent providing these gems for students. But seriously? The minutes I spent watching Einstein play with his stuffed squirrels was the most fun I had today.