Yes, I Fear I've Definitely Said Too Much
Mamacita says: Several years ago, we cleaned out the garage because it was so full of “stuff,” we couldn’t even park a car in there.
For a while, all was well. When the weather got cold, I parked the car in the garage and never had to scrape the windshield; it was great. We lived like. . . other people!
Then, our son moved from his large apartment into a studio apartment.
I can no longer park my car in the garage because it’s full of tables, chairs, lamps. . . . things that don’t fit in a studio apartment, but that are still nice furniture that he wants to keep for when he finishes school and moves back into a real apartment or house. Added to all of his stuff is more of his father’s; my husband is a pack rat and tends to accumulate things. He will try to tell you that a lot of it is mine but that just isn’t true.
Besides enough furniture to start a store, we have most of the usual garage-type things in our garage: cans of oil and gasoline, shovels, hoes, picks, garden hoses, file cabinets we haven’t looked into for years, tools, a freezer, did I mention our son’s stored furniture and boxes, and comic books.
One wall is solid comic books.
Some of them – the Marvels – are Tim’s. The DC’s are mine.
I especially loved the Legion of Super-Heroes, and I bet most of you have never heard of that.
As you know, I’m no spring chicken, and by this stage even my dreams should have calmed down and become mature and stuff, but I’m still waiting. If I see that stage coming at me ahead of time, I’ll try to jump on it, but I’m making no promises. I’ve seen some of the people riding on that stage and I want no part of it; they look pretty boring to me.
I loved my DC comic books, and I still love them. I don’t love DC comic books NOW – I haven’t loved or bought any since they fired all the good artists (I loved you, Curt Swan) and hired a lot of guys who can’t color inside the lines or write a coherent story line – that would be since the early seventies, I’m guessing – but back when the artists were good and the writers were great, I never missed an issue. The squiggly-line stuff, not so much. Actually, not at all.
And what do I sometimes dream about at night? On the good nights, that is?
I dream about Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy and Triplicate Girl and Braniac 5 and Mon-el and Phantom Girl and Shrinking Violet and Light Lass and Invisible Kid and Colossal Boy and Star Boy and Sun Boy and Ultra Boy and Dream Girl and Element Lad and Chameleon Boy and – dumbest hero ever – Bouncing Boy. And all the others.
And when I dream about them, I’m one of them. I’d tell you my name and describe my costume, but I fear I’ve already said too much.
I’m just an old lady woman, after all.
P.S. A few months ago we had to rent a storage unit. Sigh. Does anybody have the phone number for Hoarders handy?
P.P.S. Come on over and see for yourself. Watch your step.
Center of the Universe, You Say? I Think Not.
Mamacita says: All my life I have loathed the expression, “Act your age.” Even as a child I wondered how a person could ‘act’ an age; the best I could ever do was to ‘be’ an age. “Act” always connoted phoniness to me.
I totally agree with the little girl in this joke. How can a child know how a certain age is supposed to act, when the child has never BEEN that age before? We need to be guided into each age, not tossed.
Remember in the movie “Hook” when Robin Williams turns on his young son in anger and tells him to stop acting like a kid? And the child’s response was, ‘But Dad, I AM a kid!”
Often in schools, teachers mark students down for being “immature.” This is indeed a deficiency after a certain point, say, sixth grade or so. But to mark down a small child for being ‘immature?’ If a child is not allowed to be immature when he’s seven years old, just when IS he allowed to be immature? Aren’t all small children immature? Doesn’t that go with the territory? Why do we expect small children to behave maturely, yet smile when grown men and women behave like small children? Why is one cute and endearing, and the other annoying? And which did you find annoying, may I ask?
BEING one’s age is something we should all strive to do. ACTING it won’t fool anybody.
And with the BEING comes the responsibility. Proper behavior should not be limited to certain ages; after only a few years, children know what’s proper and what’s not, unless they’ve been living in a vacuum, or unless they’ve been allowed to run the household. And none of us know anyone who lets THAT happen, right?
So. As parents and citizens of the universe, we owe it to our children and to each other and to ourselves to lighten up on some things AND tighten the screws on others, both at once, so our children will truly grow up, not just get bigger with the same poor impulse control and with the feeling that the galaxy revolves around them. And how do we do this? With whatever it takes, my friends. Some children evolve naturally into delightful mature adults, and others must be wrestled to the ground with every new concept.
Do not allow your child to walk out your door and become the neighborhood monster, the school bully, the local knock-up artist, and an incorrigible bum. At least, not without some serious battles and opposition on your part. (some things we just can’t control, not even with the best parental intentions, dedication, and arsenal known to mankind, sigh.) And if teachers, neighbors, friends, and total strangers try to tell you that your child’s behavior is in need of serious control, believe them. Don’t make excuses, because there ARE no excuses. Seek help and seek it till you get it. No matter what the problem might be, a person with no self control is a danger to the other people in this world, and that person must be stopped and forced to change, and if change is not possible, then that person must be corralled, lest innocent others be hurt if they get in the way of his baby tantrums ‘anger management problems’ and childish selfishness ‘poor impulse control problems.’ I’m sorry as I can be, but the safety and well-being of the majority should count for something, too.
So. Let your children BE their age. And make bloody sure they know what’s expected of them at that age, and give them time and opportunity to DO what’s expected of them, and make the expectations bigger and more complicated as their age increases. Make sure the consequences for NOT BEING their age are severe and memorable. Very memorable. Allowing a child to remain a child forever, with no responsibilities and with excuses for tantrums and selfishness and laziness and with no manners and no understanding of public behavior, is as much ‘abuse’ as is beating him with a stick. Maybe worse, because others will suffer because of this parental laziness as well.
As a teacher, I called CPS more times than I could ever count. But not as many times as I WISH I could have. Whiny spoiled lazy hormonal monsters with helpless babyish doting excuse-making parents are a bane to the existence of us all.
BEING one’s age often means behaving as a child behaves. BEING one’s age also means behaving as polite society requires all persons in public to behave. There are times and places for childish shouts and spontaneous delight, and there are times and places for silence and respect. People of all ages need to know which is which.
I feel ranty today.
And no, I am not referring to special needs people.
<——Not good, no.
There Are All Kinds of Enslavement
Mamacita says: I posted this in 2006, but I’ve been thinking about this same thing all day so here it is again.
My blog, my rules.
Here’s the post:
Is anyone else out there lucky enough to have a job that makes you so happy that all you have to do is walk into the building and you feel the positive vibes? My days seem so short now; most days I feel as though I’ve just begun, and bingo, it’s time to go to bed again.
I get tired, yes. I am exhausted, usually, by the end of the day. But even so, I love this teaching gig with a passion I didn’t even know I was still capable of after enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous public school dealings for so long.
I think that after so long in the school systems of our country, the teachers who stay evolve a mindset that is almost enslavement. We endure schedules and treatment that no other professional would dream of enduring. We allow ourselves to be used and misused and overworked, all in the name of love for our students. What other professionals have a clientele that pretty much expects to be supported, fed, dressed, taught, and catered to in every possible way, without showing the least bit of gratitude? What other profession works so hard and gets so little support? What other job books a professional so thoroughly during the course of the day that there isn’t even time to go to the bathroom or grab a sandwich? Is there another profession so vulnerable that it is forced to endure all kinds of abuse without any recourse and often very little, if any, in-house support?
We get so used to it, we don’t even realize that there is another world out there, where people show each other respect.
We really do love the students, don’t get me wrong. But year after year in a public school kind of makes a teacher numb to any other possibility that might be out there for a person with these talents. Every year it gets worse and worse, even while we are thinking and saying things like “Next year it will be better.”
But it never is.
Next year, the classrooms are more overcrowded, there are fewer books, there are more dysfunctional families who seem to be in charge of the system, there are more duties, there are more responsibilities, there are more problems, there are more “incidents,” and there is less and less support. There is no respite. There is no discipline. The teacher’s union here stands idly by and allows a principal to schedule a teacher to the point that there isn’t even time in the course of the day to blow her nose. I am not exaggerating, either. The contract guarantees some prep time daily? We’ll count walking down the hall to fetch yet another class as break-time. We’ll count your driving time, from building to building, as your lunch. Ask any music teacher if I’m stretching the truth.
Yes, every year it’s worse. And a teacher doesn’t really know how bad it is, until that teacher walks out and tries something new.
Me, for instance.
And now, I teach every day in a building full of wonderful hardworking students and smiling administrators and friendly janitors and awesome bosses who TALK TO US AS THOUGH WE WERE EQUALS (instead of slaves) and the building resounds with humor and happiness and dedication.
Heck, even the restrooms here are superior. And there is ALWAYS toilet paper!!!!! The halls and classrooms are clean and well-maintained. Everyone behaves properly.
Always toilet paper. This amazes me.
The sad and odd thing is, I did not know how bad it actually was until I left the public schools. While I was there, I was the most loyal and hardworking and dedicated person in the building. Sure, the days seems awfully long, and sometimes the despair and frustration were so thick one could cut it with a knife, but it was my obsession, to somehow be a positive force in this not-very-positive place. I came to school at 7:00; I got home around 6:00. I was determined to make a difference, a positive difference.
But, but, there was no appreciation. There was only the expectation that if I could do that, I should be doing even more.
I couldn’t keep on.
But now? I feel positive every day. I love coming to school. All I have to do is walk into this building and I am instantly wide-awake and happy.
Sure, there are some, um, “interesting” students here, but MOST of them are pure quality. They are really students, and they mean business about learning.
I still work the long hours. But I am appreciated, and treated like the professional I’d forgotten I was, all those years.
And now, I truly believe I am helping to make a positive difference. I can see it. I can hear it.
I love my job.
The really ironic thing is that in spite of all the negative things about the public schools, I still believe that this nation’s schools are the hope of our future. There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.
It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.
Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .
What happened to us as a people, as a culture, as a nation, that our idea of ‘school’ has sunk to the level of equating success with a number on a piece of paper?
I do tend to rant, don’t I. My apologies. I’m just so sorry and sad that our genuine students have to put up with the distractions and disruptions and dangers caused by others who come to school because the law makes them and who have chosen not to put any effort whatsoever in bettering themselves or fitting themselves for any kind of work and seem obsessed with not permitting anybody else to do so, either. And, that such students people are allowed to stay and continue to hinder learning and soaring in others. Sigh. So unfair.
Teachers and parents, please rise up in protest. Our precious children, our STUDENTS, are too valuable to be wasted. They have a right to be truly educated, to learn, to sing, to dance, to think, to SOAR, unhampered, and a lot of other infinitives as well. Our children’s teachers, likewise, are too valuable to be treated like indentured servants, or like anything but the educated and trained professionals that they are.
We desperately need to take back our public schools.
I miss what my former job might have been, in a perfect world.
P.S. Thank you, current students, for being awesome and serious about learning. I appreciate you more than you could ever realize.
