"So, how's your morning going?"

"Well, my morning was crappy," I said.

That 'curse-adjacent' word and potty reference grabbed the class's attention. 

"And I'm being literal, not figurative."

Cue the the projector.

"That's about 40 pounds of horse hoop, peed on bedding, and hay."

Cue the groans.

"And there were 7 of them."

More groans and more "ew's."

"It was 18 degrees out. See the frost on the windshield? I had to look through the slit to see. And I had to go get the gator from the field"

"And that's when I discovered it was out of gas." 

"After going up to the garage to get the gas can, I loaded up all the buckets. I got to drive with one hand on my 'passenger' to keep them from falling out."

"I took the buckets off into the woods and made another discovery. The poop was part frozen. It stuck to the inside of the buckets."

"I had to beat it off with a stick."

"This is all before school!"

"And I found this weird thing in the woods. I don't know if it was a racoon tail or what."

Most of the kids have been laughing, groaning, or asking questions at the right points during my story. I answered questions about "Did you pick it up?" ("No, I didn't want to touch it! I used the poop stick), and "How many horses do you have?" etc.

I wrapped up my intro to class with this.

"Eventually, I got tired of dealing with frozen poop, so I left the rest of the buckets there. They're thawing and waiting for me when I get home!"

"And when I came inside to get ready to teach you all I found my kid left his cereal bowl on the table."

"If you don't like the cold, I recommend learning enough to get a job that's indoors! So how's your morning going?"

I used to do more intros to class with pictures from the barn and little stories. They got pushed aside for most of the year, but I figured "I had a crappy morning" would be a fun line and snag enough kids' interests. 

It worked well for most of my classes. I tried the same story the next day (on an A day) and had a kid get in a fight just before the bell. They'd asked for a bathroom pass not to be late (excellent) and then showed up with a principal escorting them as I started the discussion (not excellent!). My rough start was tongue-in-cheek, but the student was truly having a crappy afternoon!