The Average Blogger

Just Because I Don't Care Doesn't Mean I Don't Understand

I was talking with a friend yesterday while our kids were in drama class. She's one of these health and fitness types; very foreign to me.  Her kid gets fruit for his sugar intake, no white processed stuff. They eat all organic, they exercise every day, she spends hours at the gym.  So she was talking about how her PTO asked her to head up a doughnut-sale fundraiser, and how she told them that she absolutely would not because it flew in the face of everything she believes -- and then she went and organized a tulip bulb sale instead and raised thousands of dollars.

This is why she is so cool. She doesn't particularly care if the PTO shops an unhealthy idea; she just doesn't climb aboard with it.  And even better, she will then go the extra mile and find an alternative -- and execute it.

I, of course, cheered her for the tulips, and then laughed at her about the doughnuts. "You know the kid and I go to McDonald's for dinner after every drama class, right?"

And she laughed right back and said, "Yeah, I know."

This is the great thing about her and me.  We don't care.

The art of Not Caring is apparently dying out. Someone tells me how they voted, who they slept with, what they bought with their last paycheck -- and honestly, I would say 80 percent of the time I do not care.

But I can't just tell them that. I have to engage. I have to enthuse. I have to endorse. Anything less and I'm a meanie sister. Anything less means I disapprove.

Why is this the case? Frankly, I'm starting to resent it. Why can't I just say, "Huh. OK." and go on my way? Why do I have to gush and ask questions and feign interest?

Obviously, this isn't ALWAYS the case. If I ask about your weekend, I want to hear about it. That goes double if you went skydiving with the president and chief justice. But even if you just spent your time sitting around watching movies, I asked and that means I want to know. If you've got a big fat problem and need help, yeah, I'll try to offer it. If you've got something tremendously exciting going on and just need a release valve, I'll offer myself up.

But I might not hang around for long as that valve, since your tremendous excitement might strike me as tremendously dull. And even more, when it comes to the day-in-day-out general existence blather, I should be allowed a way to bow out.

And if I'm reading a book and minding my own business, I can tell you right now that unless you are a member of my extremely small circle of Actual Friends, I am not interested in you barging in and spewing your family issues all over the area so I'll have to wade through them just to reach the door. Unless your personal probs are going to affect me in some way, (you're my employee and need HR help, you perform a service for me and won't be available, you live next door and I need to be on alert to call the cops -- or not, depending,) I'd just as soon not know your business. 
 
The social contract goes both ways. You approach, I engage, all is well.  But if you approach and I politely smile and nod and start looking at the door or my desk, you need to disengage. And you need to NOT take it personally.

The idea that the personal is political carries some weight, but jeezopete.  You want to paint yourself blue and dance naked under the moon? Go ahead. I. Don't. Care. This doesn't mean I reject your notion of communing with nature, it just means I don't give a shit that you're doing it. As long as you stay off my lawn.

I don't care.  This doesn't mean I actively disapprove. Words have meaning, and these different words have different meanings. Actions have meaning. If I actively disagreed or disapproved, I would give some indication, like, 'Wow, I think that is a terrifically bad idea and you should not do that,' or I would wave my arms wildy and shriek "STOP STOP STOP!" I wouldn't shrug and say, 'Huh. Whatevs.'

Yet somehow, that shrug, by virtue of not being a big bearhug and broad smile, has come to mean I'm a hater and I'm insensitive and I don't know what all. 

Nope. Not a hater. Just too busy doing my thing to give a damn about yours.

And frankly? I'd be eternally grateful if you'd get up and be too busy doing your thing to be bothered about my reactions.

So Many Straw Men, So Little Time

I think I have been in my current job too long.  I used to love debating politics and political issues. I used to think it was possible to have rational, reasoned -- if heated -- discussions about such things where both sides had a valid and well-supported point to make. I never really believed either party would be swayed in the end, but the hashing out of issues used to be a satisfying way to kill an hour or two.

Now, just about any time someone on the Interwebz starts nattering on about just about anything remotely related to Washington, I wince and click away.

Federal spending is bad. Federal spending is good. Well, it might be either, depending on what you're talking about and where you fall on the issue. How much money are we talking about? Is federal funding the ONLY way your program will get paid for? Or are there state/local/foundation funds to be had? Have you done your research and studied up on your program's rates of waste/fraud/abuse? (Real research, not propaganda the program's various blogmachines give you to regurgitate.)

Tell you what. You got a pet program? Write a letter to your congressman about it, then write a check to the program.  See which gets a faster reaction and serves a better purpose.

Gas prices are too high, boo. Gas prices are so high we'll start respecting the environment more, yay.  Gas prices are ... rarely affected very much by anything the government does to affect them.

Don't even start on foreign policy.  People who couldn't find Libya on a map two weeks ago now fancy themselves right up there with Gene Cretz.  Never heard of Cretz? Maybe you need to read a bit more before you break out your Libya pundit credentials, and you might want to brush up on your Wikileaks gossip, too.

It isn't that I am so much smarter or better informed than the people doing the talking. I'm not, most of the time. But I know enough to realize that there's almost always more to the story than the headline, and that decisions almost never really boil down to a choice like soldiers vs. space travel, or health care vs. environmental protection. Really? Those are the ONLY flexible budget items? Of course not. But people buy into that argument because they don't stop to think about it.

I know enough to realize there's a lot I don't know, and that I should find out more before I go shooting my mouth off.

Now you'll have to excuse me. I have to go find out what my county's school board is up to.

Blah, Blah, It's Been Said Better Elsewhere

But that doesn't stop me.

I may have mentioned before that I run a department at my place of employ.  One of the perquisites of this vaunted position is that when stuff happens on a weekend, I get to fill in as muscle and tissue on our otherwise skeleton crew. This basically means that from about 5 p.m. Saturday until 5 p.m. Sunday, I was immersed in the news out of Arizona, reading file after file about what it meant for various pieces of legislation, what it meant for Congress, what it meant for ... well, just about everyone except, you know, the people who actually suffered in the event.

 And the theme that kept coming back, over and over -- we should not be surprised that this wackjob opened fire in a grocery store parking lot. Why not? Well, because of the inflamed level of political rhetoric.

 Of course. How foolish of me not to realize.

 Because, see, to me that's about as silly as blaming his parents for bad genetics. Or blaming Giffords for not voting the way he thought she should. Or blaming that 9-year-old girl for being in a bad place at a bad time.

 Don't get me wrong, I do think political discourse has reached some ridiculous extremes. I think the anonymity of the Internet isn't always a good thing. Second only to religion, politics is a case where it is really sickening to read what people will post when they aren't worried about the consequences.

 And I suppose if there is a way to make some good come of this horrific event, this is as acceptable an avenue as any. I'm a big fan of anything that goads our generally savage natures into being a little more civilized and polite. I think we all -- and I do mean all: politicians, my colleagues in the media, and most of all the Great Unwashed Commenting Public -- would get a lot farther in getting things done if we could just say, "Hm. You know, from where I'm sitting that argument doesn't really hang together, and here is why, let's figure out how to fix it," than when we do things like, say, compare our opponents to Hitler, or throw bricks through their windows, or start talking about how such and such a policy is the worst thing since forever and we are all going to die.

 But that's sort of the point. Most people don't throw bricks. Most people don't buy a Glock and rip into a crowd of bystanders. In a face-to-face exchange, only those brimming with vitriol who have zero interest in results bother to bring up Hitler.

 My husband is fond of saying that we don't write highway laws based solely on the way Gary Busey rides a motorcycle. I'm pretty sure we should not rewrite our mores based solely on the way Jared Loughner might have interpreted something someone said some time.

 Everything I've read about Loughner pretty much tells me that he was every bit as likely to have looked at his bowl of Cheerios that morning and seen dozens of cross hair symbols floating in the milk. 

 Or, you know, maybe the neighbor's dog gave him a gentle nudge toward the Safeway.

 So if you are one of those people who thinks that this shooting never would have happened if Sarah Palin had just left those dang cross hairs off her campaign site, I'm sorry, you are simply part of the problem, looking for a way to advance your own agenda on the back of a terrible situation.

 If you are one of the people who thinks this is what Giffords gets for voting against Pelosi as minority leader, I find you genuinely disturbing.

But if you are someone who thinks this was a terrible thing and that perhaps the blame lies somewhere other than Mean Words, that perhaps we should be trying to figure out how this looly got himself a gun and that we should maybe be a little more cognizent of the general mental state of those around us, well, you're the person I want next to me on the bus.

If you are a rational human being, one of the Rest of Us, someone who thinks the Internet is awesome as long as you don't read any of the comments under the news stories, who always -- always, no matter what is going on -- wants to see this country trying harder to do better than it already is, who chooses to believe that most people in public office aren't in it as some kind of malicious plot to bring down the other side, who cares about your family and who aches when things like this happen, you are the person I want to know. You are the person I want to vote for.  

Do Your *&@$% Job!

Last night I watched one of the worst calls ever made in baseball.

It would be an interesting side note to explore the "bad news travels fast" angle -- and how much faster bad news travels in the era of Facebook and Twitter. Ten, fifteen years ago, you might have found some instant company and commiseration in chat rooms or on the phone, but you wouldn't have seen an extended network of bloggers and tweeters and duffers instantly weighing in.

But that isn't the story.

The story also isn't about the instant replay and whether it should be introduced as an aspect of baseball.

And no matter what the media would have you believe, the story DEFINITELY isn't about some guy making a mistake and then admitting it and telling everyone, "gee, I feel really bad about it, folks."

"Nobody feels worse about this than Jim Joyce."  How many times did that sentence get repeated last night?

Know what? That's good. That's right. That's how it's supposed to be. Nobody SHOULD feel worse about it than Jim Joyce.

And frankly, doing the right thing when you finally realize you've done something wrong does not balance out the original infraction. It just means you aren't a total fuckup.

Because that's what this story IS about. This is about a guy who fucked up. Big time. A guy who didn't do his job when his job mattered most. And then, then! After he didn't do his job, he continued to not do his job by arguing about it with Miguel Cabrera. If Joyce had done his job right in the first place, he wouldn't have had to argue. If Joyce had done his job right in the second place, he would have shut Cabrera down with, "I'm not discussing this with you," and then shut his trap no matter what else Cabrera said. I'm surprised Joyce had time to call the next guy out, with all the time he spent not doing his job.

He did. Not. Do. His. Job. And if you ask me, he shouldn't be allowed to keep doing this job having botched it this badly. If you run a company and the company goes bust, you are out of a job. If you are a priest and you get caught boning the altar boys, you're out of the club. If you are an umpire and you blow a call that matters this much, you ought to be forced to consider a job that doesn't require keen focus and keener vision.

Bad calls are part of baseball. I get that. But integrity should be a part of the game, too. And while admitting wrongdoing and apologizing is a start, I'd call it a pale reflection against the error committed. (Not least of all because there's no real way to determine how Joyce would have reacted if there weren't photographic evidence proving him wrong.) 

But, of course, he is sorry, and everyone feels bad for him, and nothing truly damaging will happen to him, and this whole argument will redirect into Instant Replay Land and "why not use the technology available" and blah, blah. And the MLB will continue to fight instant replay while also continuing to allow sloppy umpiring without moving to rectify the problem on either side. And the players will continue to suffer for it.

At least the fans will have something to blog about. 

If It's Too Whiny, You're Too Old

A few weeks ago, my friend Owl and I were talking about music, and he brought up Tracy Chapman.  I was a little surprised by this, given that I know Owl is not by any stretch what you'd call a touchy-feely PC Socially Conscious type, and said as much. He admitted he didn't remember much of her music, but that a couple of her songs had really grabbed him.

Personally, I've intentionally avoided listening to a lot of that stuff as my patience and tolerance dwindled for passionate yet muddled thinking, abdication of responsibility, insistence that the System, Government or Man should do something, etc.

Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, 10,000 Maniacs -- I must have driven my parents up a fricking tree.

And it's a bit insidious, how the folkies play it. Some songs are flat-out fantastic. Some of the messages are fairly hard to argue with.  Unrequited love? Yeah, been there.  Man done ya wrong? Come wallow in my slough of despond.  Child Abuse Is Bad! So Is Illiteracy! No kiddin'!

But even when I was 17 I remember listening to the line "why are the missiles called peacekeepers when they're aimed to kill" and thinking, "Well, that's marginally clever wordplay, but does anyone really not understand the concept of Enforcing the Peace? Do people really listen to this and turn activist? How 'bout we just call the missiles 'death dispatchers', will that make you happy? Of course not. Now stop it," and hitting the fast forward button.

You can see that at 17 my snark was unrefined and unrestrained -- and that I have not changed much.

But at 17, I also liked some of those songs. And while I knew they were more manipulative than a John Irving novel, I kind of enjoyed the soaring melodies and overwrought lyrics contrived to get people fired up and inspired. I wasn't about to run off and hoist a picket sign, but I was OK with singing along with some of the tunes while driving on the interstate.

I hadn't really listened to the album since then. So I wondered if, at my advanced age, the same things would still make me cringe or sing along.

Turns out I haven't changed VERY much in 22 years.

The album basically breaks down as an almost perfect bell curve: Three great songs, two I find jaw-clenchingly irritating cos of the lyrics and six that fall in the general "well, I probably wouldn't change the station but they range from Eh to Ew."

Unsurprisingly, the ones that hold up are the love songs. "Baby Can I Hold You," "If Not Now..." and "For You" are soulful evocative pieces that get you Right There.

And then there are the baddies. Le sigh.

The first time I heard the first chords of "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" I thought it had promise.  Then she hit the chorus:

Don't you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
Oh I said you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run

And I just burst out laughing. Oh, Tracy. I hope you paid that word time and a half for all the overtime you made it work. Then I listened to the rest of the lyrics and while I suppose my white guilt was supposed to kick in, my white hostility did and I hit the fast forward button every time after that.

It's only gotten worse as I got older.

Don't you know you're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don't you know they're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

This song came out in 1988. I'm not really sure what revolution she was talking about -- it's not like there was a big change in the political structure; George Bush won the presidency, the Democrats were already in charge of Congress, so whatever she was talking about didn't get much louder than a whisper.

While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

See, it's lines like these that piss me off.  What the fuck good would a revolution do someone who's getting welfare? What do you think that revolution is gonna do to your gravy train? Ditto unemployment benefits. And hey, maybe if you were busting your ass instead of sitting on it, you'd actually get that promotion.

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs

Well, poor people don't have much, taking what's theirs shouldn't be too much of a hassle. But we all know what this really means is they're not going to take what's THEIRS, they're going to take what's MINE and say it's theirs.  Good luck with that, kids.

Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talking about a revolution

I can't figure out what sociopolitical/cultural uprising she was referencing here. Again, nothing "turned" the year she wrote that song. But I bet she was really disappointed with those turning tables in 1994.

"Why?" is the second-worst song on the album, with the aforementioned Peacekeeper lyrics.

Why do the babies starve
When there's enough food to feed the world

Hi. Try the class down the hall, Macroeconomics 101.

Why when there're so many of us
Are there people still alone

Choice, man!

Why are the missiles called peace keepers
When they're aimed to kill

Yeeeah, covered this one already.

Why is a woman still not safe
When she's in her home

Cos she doesn't own a gun?

Love is hate
War is peace
No is yes
And we're all free

And this is where I turn the song off, lest my head explode and make a big mess inside my car or on my couch.

The rest of the songs are the big fat middle of the bell curve. "Fast Car" is the song everyone knows by her and it's interesting to me that this would be the next track after the commie Revolution screed, because this one totally halted my knee-jerk "Oh, Shut. Up." reaction. I mean, "Fast Car" is all about busting your ass to do better and get farther, and figuring out -- perhaps belatedly -- that you've got to kick that draggy no-'count man to the curb -- or I guess, to his car, while you wave from the curb -- if you want to get anywhere. Now, I'm probably ignoring the deeper meaning here, which seems to be that attempting improvement is pointless, because even if you do drag yourself up, something will always drag you down. Yeah, fuck that noise.  Let me persist in my delusion.

"Across the Lines" and "Behind the Wall" are the kinds of obvious causehead songs I was talking about above. Racial strife is bad!  Plenty of blame for both sides! Domestic abuse is bad! Police who won't help are baaaaad! Well, duh.

Frankly, if the little black girl and the screaming Wife had scrounged up guns somewhere, these songs would have very different endings. Of course, they'd also probably be sung by Miranda Lambert.

"Mountains o' Things" starts out as a universally sympathetic middle-class song.

The life I've always wanted
I guess I'll never have
I'll be working for somebody else
Until I'm in my grave
I'll be dreaming of a live of ease
And mountains
Oh mountains o' things

Hey! I'll never own my own business either! And I want stuff!

Sweet lazy life
Champagne and caviar
I hope you'll come and find me
Cause you know who we are
Those who deserve the best in life
And know what money's worth
And those whose sole misfortune
Was having mountains o' nothing at birth

Whoops, I guess you weren't singing the suburban middle-class white chick blues after all, were you?

Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings

Soooo ... does this mean all those poor people I see shopping at WalMart have to return those flip-flops and beach towels and whatnot? Or is it only people like me who should be shopping elsewhere?

Consume more than you need
This is the dream
Make you pauper
Or make you queen
I won't die lonely
I'll have it all prearranged
A grave that's deep and wide enough
For me and all my mountains o' things

Well, that's just silly.  You should put it in a trust. You never know when you might get resurrected or zombified.

Mostly I feel lonely
Good good people are
Good people are only
My stepping stones
It's gonna take all my mountains o' things
To surround me
Keep all my enemies away
Keep my sadness and loneliness at bay

Hmf. Seems to me if they're amenable to being stepping stones, they can't be THAT good. Unless it is working out OK for them too, in which case, hey! What's the big loss? Faulty argument, Chapman. And if you want to keep enemies at bay, well, again -- guess what! WalMart sells guns!

Finally, "She's Got Her Ticket" and "For My Lover" are the ones that just don't hold up with time. "Ticket" is a nice little anthem encouraging and espousing the idea of dropping out of one's existence in search of a better one.  I think I was OK with this at one point -- before I realized that many of the folks who do that end up like the ones hollering for a revolution. 

As for "For My Lover" -- assuming I understand this song correctly -- it's basically some chick doing time so her man could get off scot-free. (There isn't really any indication of his guilt or innocence that I could divine.) At 17, yes, yes, I knew that depth of feeling and strength of character and anything-for-you passion. Now? Yeah, not so much.  First off, jail? Moi? Srsly? Secondly ... I don't think even my husband is worth taking a fall for -- and the point there is, my husband would never let me take the fall for him.  Any guy who would? DEFINITELY not worth it. "Hey, honey, I killed six people, and I'm sure to go to jail. Why don't you tell them YOU did it??"  Mmmm, naaah.

I guess this comes off as old and angry and out of touch.  Which is fine. Oftentimes I am old and angry and out of touch.  But most of the time I like to think of it as smarter, less enabling and ... well, actually, I'm OK with being out of touch. That part suits me fine.

One. More. Month.

(Way, way long. And way ranty. Just skip past this on your reader and only come back when you're waiting for some paint to dry. No, really. This is more for my own outrage and the kid's future therapy sessions.)

I feel for teachers. Really, I do. Next to "health care professional" and maybe "bus driver", I think "teacher" ranks right up there among the most awful and thankless jobs on earth. Exhausting, exasperating, some other ex word I can't think of.

I am pretty sure I got more than my fair share of good ones, and I had a pretty large sample group. Private school, public school, 3 states. It wasn't even like the ratio of great teachers to sucky ones was better at private schools -- the one bonus to private school was the classes were smaller so the suckjob teachers had an easier time not losing complete control of the asylum.

The good: I had a math teacher who refused to back down and resulted in my mom kicking me out of a drama production when I made a 79 instead of an 80 on a quiz. I wound up with an A in the class, because he kicked my ass around the block and made me work harder.  I had a grudging respect for him while taking the class, and wound up really liking him after my fate was out of his hands.

Conversely, I had a history teacher who pronounced "Hammurabi" as "Hamambari," and who one day made my entire sophomore class write essays on "why I will not talk in class." I wrote the snarkiest, rudest, most insulting essay imaginable -- as I recall, part of it said: "Talking in class shows disrespect. I'm not sure that rule applies here, as I'm not sure a teacher deserves my respect if she can't make the class shut up."  (Yes, I wrote this.  I guess I stupidly assumed she would just throw them out and not read them. It hadn't occurred to me that there might be a humor factor in reading them. Hey, I was a sophomore. I only THOUGHT that I knew everything.) Next day, she handed it back to me, and I was sure I was expelled. But no, at the bottom was a note from her all about how she was very sorry and she hoped to earn my respect and blah blah.  OMFG. Yeah, she pretty much tanked in the pantheon of teachers for that wuss move. 

So as I've said before, I am resigned to the fact that most of the Young Prince's academic rigor will probably come from home.  Right now he is reading Roald Dahl's stuff at bedtime.  I think that's pretty good for kindergarten. We're on top of the math and science stuff.

I am still disappointed that he hasn't learned a damn thing in kindergarten. Every handout he brings home is a repeat of something he did last year because he had a great, fantastic, over-the-moon pair of preschool teachers who didn't take any guff and who pushed him because they knew he'd respond.  

So, yes. Disappointed, but resigned. I had sighed and shrugged and decided to defer expectations until first grade. And in recent months, I have even slacked off on pushing him at home.

Well, this week burst that little bubble. Dear lord.

There are two "co-teachers" who run the class. There is a "Lead Teacher" and she has what I think they call an "assistant."  Well, Assistant is way more on the ball than Lead.  I knew this, and I sort of hoped Assistant did most of the dealing with kids while Lead dealt with paperwork and so on.

So far this year, Lead has:
-- Told the kid that "your mommy is wrong, Band-Aids do so make boo-boos stop hurting."  (God love him, he came home and told me this, and asked me, "What's a ... boo?boo?" When I said, "She means your cut finger," he said, "Well, that's wrong. It still hurts.")
-- Told the kid that caterpillars are ugly, and butterflies are beautiful.  (I told him he should go back and tell her that All God's Creatures Are Beautiful, which led NYAB to snark, "well, except her. Have you SEEN her?" I'm pretty sure the YP did not do as I suggested.)
-- Sent home repeated nigh-incomprehensible e-mail about his various bad behaviors to the point where I was close to hysterical about his delinquency. Finally I decided that if he acted like that around her, it was going to have to be her problem, since he rarely does anything at home like she was describing.

This week, the YP brought home these two pieces of schoolwork:

Now, I looked at these.  On the first one, I was all, "Well, duh, F = football helmet. And on the second, I admit that I'm a complete ditz, because I looked at it for 0.4 seconds and thought, "huh? H is for heel, isn't it? So E is for ... enkle?"

Well, yes, if you look more closely, E is clearly for elbow. And A is for ass, which I am.

But then I asked the YP, "So, what were you doing here?"

On the first one, "F is for facemask." (NYAB kvelled.)

On the second one, "E is for eggs, and H is for .... heel? No, no, no. H is for hem."

I realize, all this really demonstrates is a little bit of inflexibility on the teacher's part. I'm OK with that, I guess, though I think it is a little unfair.  I can already tell this kid will overthink and suck air on standardized tests.Woe, gloom.

(OK. If you're still reading, this is where it gets really good. Or bad, I guess.)

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a room mother. Here it is, in full:

Teacher appreciation week is May 4 – 8th.  I thought it would be nice to do something “special” for Lead and Assistant so I asked them some questions about things they like.  Their responses are below. 

I am going to send in a little gift basket w/some of the items they mentioned.  If you have any ideas, let me know! 

I do not have the email addresses for all of the students so please forward to anyone you know that is not on the list.

1. What is your favorite food?
2. What is your favorite beverage at Starbucks?
3. What is your favorite soft drink?
4. What is your favorite snack?
5. What is your favorite candy?
6. What is your favorite color?
7. What type of music do you listen to?
8. What are your hobbies?
9. What do you like to do in your free time?
10. Any other facts we should know about you?

Assistant:
1: If it's food I love it ;)
2: coffee or tea
3:I don't drink sodas, but love flavored sparkling water
4: Natural almonds
5: Anything chocolate :)
6: green
7: When I'm not listening to a kids sound track CD, I love Oldies but goodies :)
8: Beading, reading, and music
9: Going out to dinner, going to movies with friends, gardening, and shopping :)
10: Nothing that I can think of off hand.  Thanks for asking. :)

(So far, so good, right? Appropriate, friendly, logical. Read on.)

Lead:
That's a lot of question.  I am diabetic but I can some small portion of stuff.  Drinks are usually decaffeinated, diet, no caffeine drinks. Food can be anything, I am not picky. Color is burgundy or red. Candy is chocolates but I am not suppose to have them. I wish I had some free time, but I like shopping, or listening to music such as R&B, reggae, oldies '80s & '90s. I am having a baby boy on June 2nd.  Just got the confirmation yesterday at Fair Oaks Hospital at 6 in the morning.  I am still asleep at that time.  I guess these question are pertaining to teacher appreciation week.  I am registered at Target or Baby'r'us to make it easier for you.  I am really not suppose to eat junk, but I would love some fruits.

Ooookaaaaay. This is raw copy, y'all. I didn't do a thing to it to make it worse or better.

This is a teacher, y'all. Molding young minds for America's future.

I am sure you can imagine how violently my head exploded. I'm sure you can also guess just how on board I am with "appreciating" Lead. I've already sniffed to several friends that perhaps my token of appreciation should be some farkin' grammar lessons, FFS.

I'm really hoping that baby doesn't come late, because the sooner that woman is out of the picture, the happier I am. 

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that "I would love some fruits" is going to become a family code phrase that will endure for years.

What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?

 Once upon a time, it was OK -- nay, insisted upon -- that as a group, kids should not spend a lot of time playing with the creepy freak who spent all his time mutilating animals and throwing glass bottles off rooftops.  It was commonly accepted that it was OK to assess people and then proceed based on those assessments. People could be "good" or "bad" or " barking insane and dangerous" or "dumb as a sack of hammers" or "smart, but totally fucking lazy and useless." 

I don't think this is quite as true as it used to be. There have always been good/bad/lazy people around and probably in the same proportion, but I am fairly well convinced that shame as I understood it in grade school is no more.  We aren't supposed to point and comment that Susie is a total spaz who can't walk without falling over and we aren't supposed to  roll our eyes when Jimmy c-c-c-c-caaaaaannnnnnnnn't ruh-reeee-re-ad-read a simple sentence in under five minutes.

Public shame was a great motivator in my day. It taught me that my strengths did not lie in kickball, but in spelling. It taught me that if I wanted to be chosen for teams rather than simply being the person left over at the end that nobody wanted, I'd better start figuring out how to play kickball better, or how to make enough money to pay someone else to play for me.

What has taken the place of this public shame? A flattening out of the bell curve for across-the-board mediocrity? All kids get medals regardless of where they place. All punishments are uniform, whether someone is a willful jackass or just having a bad day. People who work their 8 hours and bolt rather than sticking around that extra hour to finish their work are astonished when they get reviews that are less than glowing. All this focus on self-esteem has left little room for self-appraisal. Honestly, I see people who have spent their whole lives hearing how they are special! And wonderful! And ... nope, they're pretty stinking average.

Now, see, this is where things fall down. There's absolutely nothing wrong with average, it's just not special. The world needs ditch diggers too.... and frankly, the world would be better if those ditch diggers had some kind of ethic and incentive to be the best damn ditch diggers that ever lived, rather than rending their garments and howling about how they are special! and deserve better than ditch digger wages! etc. etc.

The best people I've ever worked with are the ones who love their work, who enjoy their lives, who don't stomp around with a whining sense of entitlement and overestimation of their worth as a human being, or conversely, la-de-da-ing around wondering why their life is sooooo harrrrrd and notttt fairrrrr and won't someone anyone please please hellllp meeee because I triiiiiiied and I just caaaaaaaan't. 

How do we get more of the former and less of the latter?  I'm pretty sure we wont' get it if we keep saying Everyone Is Special, and oh, it's OK if you're stupid, we'll just take care of it for you, it's not your fault! 

And how sad is it that if 99 percent of the whiners out there were to read this, they wouldn't have the slightest clue that they were the ones I'm talking about??

I'm A Mid-Afternooner, Myself.

So, I read Twilight yesterday, on the recommendation of NeighborGirl. And I have to say, I don't really get it.

It was an OK book. I would go so far as to say it was pretty good insofar as teenage goth chick-lit goes.  And it did a very good job of capturing the overwhelming preoccupation and mindset of First Hormonal Lovey Lusty Surge and the extremes that one goes to when the object of one's preoccupation doesn't show up for class, etc.

So I can totally understand the appeal to that 13-24 group of girls, believe me.  It is exactly how girls not yet in high school probably envision their future First True Loves: dashing and chivalrous but not at all sexually threatening.  And it caters exactly to the deeply secret fears and fantasies of high school girls -- average girl plucked from obscurity and self-loathing by amazing heroic prince who spends every waking second looking out for her. (And he's a sparkle pony! Bonus! What girl wouldn't want a boy made of diamonds?)   And again -- sexually non-threatening, but in a different way.  If the deed ever did wind up being done, it's not like she could get fatally diseased or knocked up, or even caught by her dad barging into her room unannounced. What's not to like about that fantasy?

But .... that's where my understanding stops. 

Do any men like this book? If so, why?

And why would any woman over 30 like it as anything more than a throwback to their teen angst? Why would any woman in her right mind go all gooey in the middle at the prospect of some guy sneaking into her bedroom to watch her sleep? I don't care how much you dig the dude, seems to me that is the kind of action sets a relationship back several notches on the trust front.

A friend of mine who shall remain anonymous unless she would like to step forward was emailing with me about this before I read the book, and she had pretty much the same reaction.  And after reading the book, I have pretty much decided that the name Edward Sparklefangs is going down as my new favorite insult.

Maybe I'm just too practical.  Not Your Average Blogger likes to tell me that I have a male sensibility, that I am a problem solver and not a romantic.  That I am a "shut up and do it" type rather than a "let's talk this out and explore our feelings" type.  I suppose he is right. I mean, I have my moments of needing a lot of space (and long-suffering girlfriends) to vent and sort through my emotions and opinions, but overall I'm pretty quick to make decisions and move on. My hangups tend to occur when the rest of the world somehow falls out of compliance with my decision and I am powerless to force it back.

So when I read a book with a narrator who feels alienated and average and confused and bewildered, my first reaction is not, "Oh, you poor thing," my first reaction is, "Oh, for god's sake. Suck it up. You're in high school. That's how you're supposed to feel." 

And when I hear about women with teenage daughers kvelling over this book, well, I throw up in my mouth a little.  Get over it, ladies. Cowgirl up. I understand the desire to go back and find that part of yourself that could surrender completely to some unattainable ideal, but think back a little harder. Remember how that guy you spent all that time obsessing about turned out to be kind of a dork? It's only in books and movies where that doesn't happen. Find some happiness here on Planet Real World, and set a better example for your daughters about how to thrive in a flawed existence.  Really, there's nothing wrong with them reading and daydreaming about a sparkly vampire who will save them from getting raped in an alley. But having their mom serve as an accessory to unreality rather than as a voice of reason is just setting them up to actually get raped in an alley and hate all men for all time. 

And to all those daughters out there -- Get real. Being in love is a lot more fun when you aren't being rescued all the time, and that adrenaline rush of goosebumps and tummy butterflies lasts a lot longer when you get them for someone in spite of the fact that he's not this graven image of perfection. If you can get that rush for someone sprawled out flat sick and feverish and clammy on your sofa with an entire box's worth of crumpled used kleenex balled and discarded around them on the floor, that is love. Ideals are easy. Reality is hard. Hard is way more worth it.

Open question: Do more relationships fail because women can't get over the obscene ideal of Danger As Hero leading man? Or do they fail because men can't get over the obscene ideal of Perfect Body as leading woman? Or do they fail when both sexes refuse to even take a flier at trying to at least a little bit live up to the other's ideal? 

They Don't Deserve My Effin' Speech

Well, the kid didn't get into the gifted program. I think I offended the administrator, because when she told me, I was all, "Oh, that half-hour a week thing? Yeah, big loss. That 1.5 percent of his classtime a week was going to make alllll the difference. I guess this just means we'll keep working out of his first- and second-grade books at home, thanks."

That said, I'm moderately annoyed. I rather got the impression from all her bureaucratese that this "thoughtful and exhaustive matrix" that they use for assessment tends to emphasize kids who sit and ponder over kids who act and chatter. (How else to interpret this: "Part of the process is to make sure the kids who get good grades and perform well in class but who don't test well get a fair shake." I mean, my kid tests well and gets good grades but he apparently won't sit still and focus on coloring books for love or money in a classroom. If the criteria is sheep-not-lions, they ought to say so, not bury it in blather about matrices and "fair shakes." Oy.)

I don't know. I'm feeling bitter and resentful. I think it is partly because I try very hard NOT to brag about him too much, and not to blogvomit all over you guys about his successes, about the good things he does, about how good he looks in photos and how nicely he cleans up, about the hilariously creative stories he makes up and the thousand and one ways he makes me smile and laugh. And then I get some woman who tells me that he tests well, that BY THEIR ASSESSMENT he can do work at grade levels beyond his own, but he doesn't qualify for some stupid government program.  And all I want to do is tell them where they can stuff that pointless government program.

Instead, he practiced his violin, I wrapped Christmas presents for family we are visiting over Thanksgiving, and then the two of us decorated another room of the house for the holidays and played a rousing game of "how many ornaments can you get on one fake tree branch anyway?"

Tomorrow, we leave for the Midwest for a week. We get back the 6th, in time to head back to work.  Our holiday party is the 14th. (Hence the early decorating.) Christmas break is the 22nd.  I imagine all of this will keep all of us happy and busy and none of us will particularly care about schoolwork or performance standards. 

Gifted, shmifted.  He'll see them all again on their long journey to the middle.

Happy Thanksgiving!  See y'all in a week.

Don't Wanna Be Taught to Be No Fool

So, last week, the YP’s teacher sent me an e-mail.  We had a fairly lengthy discourse on e-mail, with her bringing me up to speed on my son’s many shortcomings. And then yesterday were parent-teacher conferences.

By her accounts, the YP is very bright and accomplished -- and utterly wayward and unfocused. 

It also turns out that I have a very strong and wide streak of “Yeah, my kid is a jerk, but he is my jerk and only I am allowed to beat up on him, so step off, beeyotch” -itis.  Surprise!!

The good: He scored 101 out of 102 on his reading assessment, and the one point off was because he was told to spell a consanant-noun-consanant word and he chose "lep" instead of "lip." (Why lip? I don't know.) He is best in his class on reading, and they are apparently taking some stabs at perpetuating this by boosting his comprehension and giving him harder stuff to look at. He is also pretty good on math and understands addition and subtraction, though he apparently resists math in the form it is being taught. Since nothing was said about him beating up kids on the playground or crying incessantly, I have to assume that socially he's reasonably well adjusted.

And you know I'm just over the moon about the objective assessments, as they validate everything I suspected -- while, like my purported ancestor Abigail Adams did of her darlingest son, I would expect nothing less.

And then we come to the teacher’s issues:

-- He hums when he is working and this “upsets” the other kids. Upsets??? Really? Like, crying? If they are upset, why don’t they tell him to stop? And if they do, and he doesn’t, why wouldn’t the teacher institute some kind of penalty for him? No, no, instead she moves the class around so the other kids don’t get annoyed, and she won’t send him to the principal’s office or put him in solitary and make him ashamed of it or kick him out of recess because … I don’t even know why. It would bruise his ego or something. Shees. I mean, yes, it is annoying, and no, he shouldn’t do it, but if you aren’t going to establish consequences for the behavior and you won’t let his peers do so, why on earth should he stop? Especially if it is, as I suspect, completely unconscious on his part?

-- He doesn’t finish his work. On the one hand, yes, this is a problem, it shows lack of focus and dedication. On the other hand, he pretty much always finishes the work I give him. And factoring into this may be the fact that they do a godawful lot of drawing in this damn class, whereas my kid hates crayons, hates drawing, hates coloring, and would much rather take photos or use a video camera or write words or eat glass or spork out his own eyeballs than sit coloring in the lines of some random picture of summer squash so he can learn what the color yellow is and would probably rather rip off six of his own fingernails than draw six balloons to indicate he knows how many six is.

But, yes, he needs to finish the work. I recognize this, and I am trying to figure out a way to drive it home into his brain that he must do this. But here is where the teacher lost me on this one: She said if other kids finish their work early, she sends them around to help the kids who aren't done (which, sweet mother of Jesus, I just hate this classroom tactic. “Hi! You’re smart and focused and a good student! Want a reward? Go show the morons what to do! Yeehaw!” Eff that. Hey, teacher: Give the smart kid more books to read and YOU go help the morons. It’s YOUR job, not the smart kid’s.)  Anyway, since Thomas hadn’t finished, he got one of these “helpers.”  If you can see where this is going, congratulations, you are smarter than the teacher. Of COURSE Thomas just got the other kid to do the work while he kicked back. DUH. Has this woman never read Tom Sawyer? I have to think she just had this one coming.

-- He draws on the table. Why? She had no answer. In any event, she told him that he had to clean the scribbles she had seen because Parents Day was coming up. When she went back she found him cleaning scribbles he had made under the table as well, and when she asked what made him decide to clean that he said, "Because my mom is coming and she'll be mad if I made a mess."  Well. I couldn't really figure out a nice way to tell her, "Hey, that pretty much tells me that he knows I'm in charge but he doesn't think you are. And, yes, **I** know he should do what you say because you are the teacher, and, sure, I can tell him that when he's sitting in front of me at the kitchen table, but I'm not sitting in the classroom with him every day where this behavior occurs, so maybe you should be the one dropping a hammer on him and letting him know who's boss? Maybe??" 

-- He gets upset when he gets things wrong. Even more upset, I have to add, when he is NOT wrong and the teacher is so oblivious she can’t figure out that she is walking into a huge family minefield and needs to shut her cakehole RIGHT THAT EFFING SECOND, but no, she brought it up at least three more times with us and who knows how many times with him. I can’t even go into this one without seriously losing my shit in a variety of ways on a variety of levels, so we’ll just let that one slip by and maybe someday years from now I will explain it.

What this does tell me is that apparently I need to implement my own mother’s best tactic – if he doesn’t care what the teacher says, and if the teacher refuses to make him view her as a voice of authority, then it is up to NYAB and me to be the enforcers and we have to make him so afraid of what will happen at home that it doesn’t matter what kind of mushball the teacher is at school.

It is odd how clearly I remember this working. I was always far more terrified of my mother than of anything a teacher could do. I mean, hell: The worst a teacher could do was make me stay after school. Who cared? Well, I had to, because if I was late getting home and had to explain to my mother why ... woe betide me, there was no telling what she’d do.

So, yes.  This boy tests well and is too smart for his own good, and doesn’t buckle down without a big fat fist on his neck.  Part of me thinks, “Huh. So he’s a five-year-old boy.”  But part of me is freaked out and horrified.

I just finished Haven Kimmel’s memoir of growing up Hoosier called A Girl Named Zippy, and in it she wrote, “On my end-of-the-year report card all [the kindergarten teacher] wrote was ‘Is disruptive in class. Colors outside the lines. Talks out of turn.’ When I showed it to my parents, they read it out loud to me, and my mom said, ‘Good for you, sweetheart.’ And my dad gave me a little pat on the back.”

Perhaps I should take hope from this that the YP will grow up to be a successful writer.  Right now, I just feel like a failure of a parent – I failed him in that I can’t get him to understand why it’s important to focus and get one’s work done. I failed him in that there is no way I’m going to fight this ridiculous cookie cutter education system and get anything out of it for him.  And I failed him in that I can’t get my own head around why I’m so upset by the whole mess. All I can hope is that he just keeps on keeping on and that I can keep him smart and engaged and we will keep reading and writing and rithmetic-ing at home until he can get a teacher who actually does Get Him.