Shhh, I Hear Freedom Ringing!
Mamacita says: Happy Independence Day. And if you do not believe in that, then, Happy Fourth of July.
Everyone has a fourth of July. It’s right there between the third and the fifth, so none of your lip now. . . .
I was looking at all the black burn marks on the deck today and wishing the kids were still little and out there making more. Our deck is covered with many years’ worth of black burned Fourth of July spots. Isn’t everybody’s?
Please tell me your deck is covered with black spots too? From bottle rockets and snakes and all kinds of fun noisy things?
Well, mine is, and I love the memories.
I’m afraid to ask about your sidewalk, because, well, mine has a lot of black spots on it from those “snakes” the kids used to burn when they were little. I like the spots, because they make me remember those giggling little kids, watching the coiling black snakes with big laughing eyes. The kids, not the snakes.
I’d rather have the spots, and the memories, than a life full of pristine “things.”
Have a wonderful holiday, everyone. Please be safe, and happy. Don’t step on the hot sparkler wires on the ground. Watch out for the tiny kids; sometimes they bite and keep them out of harm’s way.
I love you all. Happy Independence Day!
Shhh, listen! Do you hear freedom ringing? I do.
Let’s all work hard to keep it so. Let’s not wait until we’re at the funeral home and it’s too late to say “I love you” to someone until another horrendous crisis to rally together and love our country in public.
P.S. Loud pops, bangs, smoke, and cool colors aren’t necessarily dangerous. Here are some great ways your kids (and you – who are we kidding?) can have a great time making loud noises and playing with smoke and cool stuff! You’re welcome.
Potty Mouth, Wiggly Little Boys, Recess, and Reading
“No two people are alike, and both of them are damn glad of it.”
Mamacita says: That’s a quotation; that’s not me saying “damn,” although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with “potty mouth,” and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny, it’s back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.
But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.
Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled “special education” and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.
Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of “environment” is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading “Gone with the Wind,” the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can’t do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own “epiphany” in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn’t that these little boys didn’t TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren’t THERE yet.
I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. “I had that boy in third grade and I’m telling you, Jane, that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can’t do it.”
And I’m telling you, Madeline, that I don’t give a rat’s ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn’t, and the next week, he could. And he’s ecstatic.
My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:
Hold off on the IEP’s and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don’t do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don’t fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.
Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn’t feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.
Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn’t even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!
Let’s give our little boys a break, what say, people?
And by the way, taking away a child’s recess because he couldn’t finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his ‘outlet’ was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn’t been in a classroom since 1972 teacher, politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the ‘nimrod’ category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don’t know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that’s what secretaries are for.
I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.
And by the way, this guv’ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.
*Dammit **, there I go again.
** Crap.
Speeders, Texters, and Other Potential Highway Murderers
Mamacita says: All right, already, I’ll drive a little faster. Sheesh.
But I know good and well who’s going to get pulled over, even with all the other drivers in the world going around me at a hundred miles an hour.
Everybody I know has a leadfoot except for me.
Sometimes I think the anecdotes are right, and the only people who get tickets are the ones who actually pull over when the flashing lights start up behind them. The police see a big batch of speeders, turn on the lights and the siren, and take a chance. Some timid law-abiding soul will always pull over, the rest speed on out of sight, and the one intimidated driver will get a ticket. And he deserves a ticket, for he was SPEEDING.
Oh, were you looking for sympathy? Wrong blog, Ignatz.
Item: I have never gotten a traffic ticket.
Unless you count the one I got about 25 years ago for having an expired inspection sticker, which I never paid because when I went to the courthouse and stood in line for over an hour to pay it, I couldn’t pay it because the courthouse wouldn’t accept a check, so I went to the bank and stood in line for a long time and got some cash, and came back to the courthouse and stood in line for another hour, and when I got to the desk I STILL couldn’t pay it because the policeman hadn’t turned it in yet, so I wrote a letter of protest which was never acknowledged, and I still haven’t paid the fine and so far so good. . . . .
And it cost me ten bucks for a sitter for my two babies so I could stand in lines and still not pay my fine. Not that I remember details like that or anything.
I do tend to be a very cautious driver, though. School buses pass me all the time.
SPEEDING school buses.
Which by all laws of logic and safety should have seat belts, but which by all laws of money-saving and convenience-of-school-system never will.
I go 55, when that’s the limit, and I’ll go 60, if that’s the limit. Whatever the posted limit is, that’s what I’ll go. No faster. I won’t go faster than the posted limit, because there’s a reason for that limit. My kids think I’m a poky driver, but I don’t think going the posted speed limit is being poky. I think going faster than the posted speed limit is breaking the law and purposefully endangering every innocent person within sight of your blurry fast-moving vehicle.
Therefore, I go the limit. If you’re trapped behind me, read the speed limit sign and stop tailing me. And stop honking, you ignorant, lead-footed goose.
Also? If you get pulled over for going 65 in a 55, too bad. You broke the law, and I really don’t care how late you are or how badly you want to get home.
If your personal driving habits harm my children in ANY way, I will find you.
I’m talking to you, speeders, and to you, driving texters and cell phone users.
Oh, and if you get pulled over for exceeding the posted speed limit, shut up about it. You, of your own free will and choice, broke the law. Let the natural consequences of your chosen actions wreak havoc on your head. That’s a darn sight better than your choices wreaking havoc on anybody else’s head.
(If a posted speed limit seems poky to you, too bad. Read the signs and don’t whine if you’re caught.)
Are you a speeder? I hope you all get caught and fined. Yes, I really do. My children’s safety is far more important than any personal convenience or habit you might have.
And if you’re going really fast on the curvy meandering roads around here, I hope you don’t have any innocent children in your car. Because if you do, you’re a potential murderer.
I’m not kidding.
