Today, I was going through a cloze passage on mummies, the Egyptian kind. Since they all looked bored and sleepy, I decided to give them a little insight into the process of mummification. It was at this point that one of them asked.

"'Cher, why are mummies wrapped up in toilet paper?"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"No... that's linen. They wrap up the bodies in strips of linen after removing the internal organs, drying the body and preserving it with chemicals. They didn't have toilet paper back then."

"Then what they use to wipe?"

At this point, another boy answered the first boy's questions.

"Leaves la..."

A girl asked.

"Eeee... wait got caterpillar how? Then..."

I decided to bring this off-tangent conversation to an end.

"Then it's a horrible way for the caterpillar to die..." and then muttered under my breath."... stuck up someone's a-"

I continued on.

"Ok then let's get back to mummification.

"So anyway they took out all the organs... even the brain."

"How? How? They cut the head?" The class was intrigued.

"No," I replied in a slightly sinister voice. "First, they took a hook. Then, they inserted it up the nose and sort of pulled the brain out through the nostril."

"Eeeee...." There was a small uproar. The class was definitely awake now.

This has thus made me realise something... It's not enough just to tell kids additional facts to keep them interested, it's got to be something especially shocking.

Ooooh... I'm gonna have a lot of fun with them this term.

Hehehe...