I’ve become acquainted with a nice old custodian who works at the school at which I’m student teaching. It was quite a surprise to run into him a week or two ago and discover that his beard had turned a shocking shade of neon pink.

He told me he colored his beard because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and he wanted to show support. He hasn’t been the only person at the school to sport pink hair this month. A number of students have added pink highlights or extensions to their hair, and one of my MEC students colored his Mohawk pink.

It’s been touching to see the support for the fight against breast cancer. It’s also been a little jading. Dyeing hair pink or wearing I ♥ Boobies bracelets doesn’t do much to help cancer victims—at least not directly. Rocking the bracelets and pink hair does raise awareness of the problem, and awareness of the problem brings us a little closer to solving it.

Since I’m only a few days away from finishing student teaching—and consequently busy and exhausted—I’m going to wrap up this post with a short cartoon from JKR over at Fredthemonkey.com.

(For the record, Fred is no relation to any of my monkeys.)

The cartoon, aptly titled The Important Things, presents its protagonist with several dilemmas. How can he scrounge up the money for a new Nintendo DS game? (The game he mentions is awesome, by the way.) Can he get his true love to go on a date with him? And could there possibly be more important things than buying a new video game?

Enjoy the cartoon here!