Brandon.

I'm terrified of this kid here at the school where I work. His name is Brandon. I'd say he's about 8 or 9.

He smashed a door window to a classroom and he pointed this out to me proudly one day. "I broke that!" he said.

I just nodded.

Another day he came up to me and shouted, "What's your name? I SAID WHAT IS YOUR NAME!"

Another time he was karate chopping the classroom doors with is foot and my boss went out to ask him what was wrong and he shouted, "SHUT UP!!!"

He's often screaming in rage and smashing or kicking things. He's surrounded at all times by 2 special needs workers.

I went to the washroom today and saw him run into the girls washroom. I went into a stall and locked the door, praying that he wouldn't come in.

A work story about staples.

At work today I heard a large bang and my co-worker said, "Now you know why I need an industrial stapler."

The bang was the sound of the stapler. She showed me a thick stack of papers, now stapled together.

I nodded.

After a moment she excitedly said, "Look at this!" She came over to my desk and pointed to the stack of papers she had just stapled. "That's a damn near perfect staple."

I looked at the staple and it was perfectly straight and positioned in the corner of the stack. I congratulated her on her stapling.

Then I added: "And now I know how to mess you up. When I staple something for you I'll be sloppy with the staple."

"No!" she said.

Watch for these Christmas cliche stories. (part 2)

Hmmm looks like there are more Christmas cliche stories than I thought. Here are 5 more:

6) Christmas Retail Slump People aren't spending as much and the stores are losing money. We're in retail slump and sales are "slower than expected". Interview with sad-looking shop owner.

7) Silly Story About Santa Every year Santa does something silly. He does a dance poll strip tease or goes water skiing or steals from kids or something dumb. Picture included.

8) Dangerous Christmas Toys That Kill Children Every year China produces some awesome toys that unfortunately hurt kids. We'll hear about it. We'll hear about the recalls and the angry parents.

9) Food Bank Donations are Down No one is donating to the food banks this year! We need help from the public. Bring in your canned goods. Also: Homelessness is way up this winter. All the shelters are filled and people are forced to sleep in the cold street.

10) Dumb Toy Is Latest Craze This silly toy is the latest craze among the kids. You can buy one on ebay for a million dollars. Here's a clip of shoppers in a store fighting to buy this latest toy. Ho hum. Heard it before.

Watch for these Christmas cliche stories. (part 1)

Every Christmas season I've noticed the same stories in the media. See how many of these you come across this year.

1) The Heartless Thief Steals From Local Charity, Food Bank or Not For Profit.
This is the obligatory story of thieves stealing toys for kids or something. You hear about it every year.

2) Holiday Advice.
I'm sick of these pathetic stories. How to Survive Your Work Party. How to Keep off the Weight This Christmas. How to blah blah blah. They're all the same re-cycled, filler news stories from years past.

3) Latest Website for Tracking Santa
Guess what? There's a website that tracks Santa and you can watch his progress!! Give me a break. There are a ton of these websites and they're all hokey and fake. Every year I hear about a new way to track Santa.

4) Outrageous Story about Banning the Word "Christmas".
Every year we have the story raging about how you're not allowed to say Christmas anymore. Or something similar. This is so old. I was mad about this last year, the year before and the year before that. I don't want to hear about it again.

5) Lots of Snow / No Snow Expected
Because of this current El Nino-kind-of weather system, we're going to have a very very snowy Christmas. Or, in fact, we're going to have a dry, snowless Christmas.

3 Jake Stories

Bye bye butterfly
We have a toy butterfly that Jake loves. It sings a song and flaps it's wings and rolls around. Jake plays with it so much we get a headache. When we take it away from him, he whines. Yesterday Cindy discovered that if you tell Jake, "Say bye bye to the butterfly," and you wave, he doesn't whine when you take it away.

Toy train
Jake has a walker that looks like a train. He can walk it by himself but hasn't figured out how to steer yet. So you have to set it up so that he can go straight for a long time before he hits something. When he hits a wall the train makes a little beep. Jake laughs and pulls it back and drives it into the wall over and over again.

Kisses
If I'm close to Cindy and I bend toward Jake and ask him for a kiss, he grabs my head, then he grabs Cindy's head and he pushes us together so we kiss. Then he laughs and keeps pushing our heads together, making us kiss over and over.