Showing posts with label stupid people are the worst kind. how can I make more people think about things with their common-sense brain. Who else has a common sense brain. Hands up.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stupid people are the worst kind. how can I make more people think about things with their common-sense brain. Who else has a common sense brain. Hands up.. Show all posts
Those of you who know me will no doubt remember my horror sojourn at a particular private girls' school.
My life may finally be catching up with me, as (seemingly countless) of my students are trying for and receiving scholarships to said school. This has provoked a horrible (and irrational) fear that I may have to teach there. No such correspondence has been entered into... until today, when I arrived home to the following: (summarised for convenience)
Speech Night is coming up. We plan to play X. We want you to join us (translation: We have overreached the skill level of our students and are recruiting to make them look better than they really are) for MINIMUM two rehearsals and the concert.
Rehearsal times, contact details, yada yada yada.
Um.
Let's be clear. Not only do I NOT identify as a "past student", I left the school under openly hostile terms. There may have been threats to "set the education department onto [us]" and there was acrimony brewing for some time prior to my eventual exit. And frankly, if I'm one of the "few other musicians" you're inviting, this would be a JOB and you could OFFER to PAY me. NOT a community orchestra, effective casual employment to "augment certain sections of the orchestra" (read: instrumental tutor to violins).
Surprise, surprise, I've very nicely refused the opportunity to perform, since you know, I don't get enough of those with my own studio, and even resisted the furious outburst of "You goons ruined my adolescence and now you want me to give up hours of PAID work to sit in your substandard orchestra and make it sound better than it really is so hundreds of fleeced parents think they're getting value for money?" in my polite email reply.
The dance floor is for dancing. The bar is for drinking. So are all those tables.
There is a reason people with full glasses lurk at said tables and not upon the dance floor, let alone attempt any movement which may be construed as dancing.
The reason is in your hand, and is rapidly getting emptier. I am rapidly getting wetter.
Not in a good way.
The guy you are 'dancing' with (where dancing may be read as lunging back and forth toward each other in some vague attempt at rhythmic coordination) is correct. Put down the beer glass and then, sure, continue to endanger your own wellbeing by gyrating/lunging/mashing other people's toes in your determined pursuit of "I'm the cool girl who can drink a beer AND dance".
Flinging your hair around will not help. You will only scare off your potential boyfriend by lashing him violently across the face, first with your hair and then your spilt beer.
Oh.
Oh, well done.
No, really.
I mean, it takes skill to drop a glass of beer among enthusiastically dancing people in a pub, in FRANKSTON, and NOT get punched in the face. Did you have to drop the actual glass as well? Next time? Just the beer, thanks. At least that evaporates.
Today was meant to look like this:
9-12 teach.
drive madly in car to... (God. Seriously. Drive madly IN CAR? What ELSE would I DRIVE in? Gah.)
1-3 meet to discuss next year's Autumn festival
drive madly home to...
4-6.30 teach.
eat something (possibly after cooking madly)
7.30 - falling over: attend class to make up for missing weekend class due to Book Club and bloggeratti meetup.
Instead, my 11.00 student failed to turn up. They also failed to (a) call my home (b) call/text my mobile (c) email me. This would not ordinarily bother me, EXCEPT that they were attending an 11.00 lesson because they requested a time change. So I shoehorned my existing 11.00 student into 9.30, confirmed swap, well done, everyone happy, yes yes.... No show. FAIL.
So I run late with my 10.30 and head upstairs at 11.30, satisfied that I can grab a snack and head out to this meeting. I'll just grab directions from whereis. And while I do that, why don't I just check my email? Where there happens to be a message advising that the 1pm meeting has been moved... forward... to 12.00 midday. Bastards.
Ok. That's ok. I can at least call the teacher who I'm deputising and apologise (living an hour away from meeting location makes attendance pretty moot). Dial number (helpfully provided on email signature).
"Hello?"
Crap. This guy has a brick in each hand and thinks I'm a plumbing contractor (or SOMETHING, you get the picture).
"Sorry. Wrong number."
I rechecked, of course, but either I have a permanent glitch in my brain whereby I read all '8's as '6' which is only just manifesting NOW after twenty-seven years, or the contact number on the email signature is wrong.
Leave apologetic message at home number. Drum fingers maniacally. No mobile number on teacher listing either.
Ok. Call the office! That's where the meeting IS. Heck, I could probably attend via skype. Or teleconference! Excellent.
"Due to meetings at the office today, no-one is available to take your call..."
This is NOT my day.
Leave apologetic message no.2.
Randomly google teacher and scroll through several irrelevant mentions before hitting a community advertisement. With mobile number. Oh baby.
Apologise and explain trying to get onto... but... yeah. Fail on my part.
(Win: shhhh. Don't have to drive to meeting.)
Something about the concert post and how horribly it all went (the invasion more so than the actual concert) and my violent physical reaction to writing that post. Then it was school holidays, time to get my craft on and agonise over the quagmire that was our backyard (let me just stop here to thank my father for all his handyman wonderfulness).
Then I ran away to the ashram (Note: ran TO the ashram, because there is no running away from ANYTHING at the ashram) and that will take me another month to process. Or at least another bout of cathartic sickness, which seems to be what I'm currently enduring. Somewhere in there a baby was born (obviously not to me), a friend had a birthday, my husband cooked many dinners and term three began. Good grief.
Posting will return to normal. Just not today. Today I have to crawl away and mutter my ranting about incompetent doctors into my millionth cup of tea while I contemplate the horror of teaching tomorrow and getting enough brain cells together to participate meaningfully in a trivia night on Saturday. Yaarfgh.
Cool! I love ice-skating. And they're going to set up the rink in front of the AMC cinemas (I pause here briefly to consider the logistics of this entrerprise, but visions of ICE! sweep them out of the way. Of course, this being Frankston, it's more likely they would set up an ice cafe where discerning consumers might purchase the recreational corrosive and soul-destroying substance of choice, but sometimes I like my rose-tinted glasses.
A few weeks later, the boy and I are haphazardly wandering through a sunny Frankston afternoon in search of Star Wars lego and blue bias binding, when we see an enclosed space with the heads of several children jerking about in some disturbing marionette-ice-addicted fashion. Closer inspection reveals several grimacing parents wearing rictused grins while manipulating children across "ice".
Funny. It's not very cold. Or slippery, or shiny, or any of the other traits usually associated with ice of the gliding-across-variety.
And this is, in fact, because said surface is not ice.
It's plastic.
Sheets of opaque white plastic, laid under a small pavilioned roof and fenced off for bystander safety.
I scuff my foot experimentally on an exposed patch. "Be good for dancing on." (Well, better than the sheets of ply optimistically called a "Dance Floor!!!" laid unevenly and without the aid of levels for the recent "Latin Fiesta!!!"
The boy: "This is STUPID. It's not even slippery. And they're not even BLADES."
He's right. The "ice skates" have more plastic (what else?) wedged where metal should be. Plastic on plastic is creating an... interesting friction coefficient. If it was any stickier the attending parents could simply wedge their child in place and collect them after dinner and a movie.
I toy a little with the idea of purchasing several litres of vegetable oil and making the "Ice Rink!" a slipperier, happier place, but this is Frankston. Someone would be handing out bikinis and setting up a wrestling ring before you could say "Hey, where can I get some ice?"
Wow. That black keyhole-backed dress is fantastic. Tight, short, great opaques, nice boots, very attractive beige bra hanging out the back - HOLY CRAP WOMAN, DID NO-ONE TELL YOU THAT'S UNDERWEAR?
We're in the bar, birthday celebrations (not mine) well underway, when she strolls in with boy and promptly turns her back on me to embrace someone. If the bra was black and lacy, ok. Maybe. But it's a dingy beige that once pretended to be SOMEONE's skin color. Functional rather than attractive (the two have been known to meet in one garment, but not this one).
And the beauty of this keyhole dress, showcasing several vertebrae, is that it draws the observer's focus - BANG! - right onto the hooks-and-eyes mechanism that allows a bra to carry out it's function (usually lift and separate).
One glass of red drained and another on the go, my fingers are actually, perceptibly ITCHING to unsnap her bra. If I had suddenly found myself possessed of that boyish skill (unhooking with a it's practically single hand) I can't swear I would have abstained.
What would I have done in her position? Honestly, probably gone without. Or found something pretty and show-offy that screamed DER, of COURSE you're meant to see this, why else would I have worn a ruby-red lacy bra... or whatever.
Someone I know shaved her head.
Not because she's sick, or for a cause. Just because she could.
These are the little freedoms that we take for granted.
If I shaved my head (unlikely, but still) I would have to subterraneously (well, that's what hubs said, but I think he meant simultaneously) get a tattoo that explained
*I'm not sick
*I'm not gay
*I don't have alopecia
*I didn't do it for charity
*Yes, it's weird that I'm suddenly bald
*No, I probably won't do this again. (Unless I get addicted to the attention, so stop talking about this already.)
Given that I probably have a weird-shaped head with flat and bumpy bits and I work with children, I think (a) the shaving is a bad idea and (b) a tattoo is worse. Let's face it, the piercing is bad enough, and it's not conspicuous or well-advertised.
Rambling, I know, but bear with me.
One of my ballet students want me to friend her on facebook. I've denied the request, because she's ten. I don't want or need a ten-year-old who I teach every week seeing what I get up to. (Granted, I'm not living a particularly licentious lifestyle, but I vet photos carefully and keep my language nice KNOWING that I have a professional responsibility.) Is this just me? And where is the line? Is it ok to friend these kids when they're 14? 16? 18?
I don't really want to know that a fifteen-year-old is drinking till they pass out, or walking down highways at three in the morning... and this is not about what I did or did not do at that age, it's actually about what I wanted people to know about me. Would I be embarrassed if my teacher pulled up alongside me and said "What the HELL are you doing and do your parents know where you are?" Damn straight.
Why aren't these kids?
I think these things mattered less a couple years ago when I could laugh and say I was just pretending to be grown up. I think they matter more to me than they do to a lot of people. Maybe I'm an overthinker. Possibly we're all being swept along by this new interactivity and exposure and no-one is really thinking about the social and behavioural consequences for the next generation. Bring on the fire trucks.
It's been a week of high drama and we're up to... Wednesday. Awesome.
There's really nothing to make you question your life choices like dancing about in front of eight hundred people. Wearing a pink tutu. With a crying five-year-old on your hip. Who only stops crying when you keep dancing. I mentioned the pointe shoes, right?
Pointe shoes are bad enough when my own sixtyish kilos are sloshing about on top of them; add another twenty of lumpen child (also wearing spiky pink tulle) and they're instruments of torture.
But really, no concert would be complete without the class who can't seem to see the audience (and therefore perform half their dance facing the back, the wings, and (only by chance) the front.
Such are the joys of kinder-aged children cavorting about in front of their adoring parents. The more recent concerts, with school-age children, have been more successful.
Sure, there was the boy who announced (in the middle of a quick costume change between ballet and tap) "Oh, my tap shoes don't fit me any more." Mmhm. In the five days since dress rehearsal your feet have grown THAT much.
Thank goodness for the senior student who retrieved his shoes from the bottom of his bag and undertook to stuff his feet into them. Miraculously, they somehow fitted again.
Oh, there were also feather dramas. Idiot me undertook the manufacture of swan lake headpieces. This means feathers hot-glued onto a paper base in a wing shape, two per girl.
So, making eighty-odd of these took a fair amount of time and used up my 2010 quota of swear words, but that's fine, they'll look great. They did look great. Even better when pinned in with WHITE bobby pins (I know, I'm OCD). And I made six spares. SPARES!
They looked less great when, five minutes before the performance, four girls are telling me there aren't any left. Of COURSE there aren't any left. Some featherbrains have take them HOME after the dress rehearsal and failed to bring them back for the real concert. And so the spares have been used by stupid people and we're STILL short.
Seriously. Would you not check that you have, oh, your LEOTARD? Do me a MASSIVE favor and check on the status of your headgear as well. Thanks so much.
I have the distinct feeling that my lovely flowers post-concert were guilted out of the girls who faffed about in the following way: "We can't find the white castle headpiece!"
Addressing this crisis requires problem-solving abilities far beyond the reach of any normal human. Clearly.
"Have you checked in the chess headpieces box? Have you checked in the pawn hoods box? Have you checked in the box of black and white skirts? And what about looking on the list to see who wore it last and asking them?Hmmmm?"
Invariably, five minutes later: "Oh, it's ok. It was..."
UhHUH. Because it would have killed you to have looked in more than one place before you made it someone else's problem. Skilled. Is it just me, or are we failing to invest our teenagers with common sense?
You know those weeks where something catastrophic happens? But then the next day is ok, and you think Well, clearly I've dealt with the worst of it, now my week will be.... as it turns out, complete and utter shite. I shouldn't say that, there have been some bright spots, I'm just having trouble redirecting my focus.
Two of my families are moving in January; I've worked with them for 6 & 7 years respectively and they're well-established kids in Book 4. Both girls will start Year 7 and we've done quite a bit of the adolescent drama already... wish they could have moved at the end of LAST year! No, that's not it at all. It will be sad to see them go and I hope desperately that their music thrives in their new environments.
Today's gotten my goat a little; while it's IMPOSSIBLE that children should miss a minute of morning class time, and are under no circumstances to be absent from their clasroom for more than half an hour, Grade 5 & 6 have just swanned off (at the end of lunch) to Community Sport. (Oh, and they spent AN HOUR of morning class time IN THE POOL today) This is a weekly excursion in which they try out lawn bowls, tennis, etc and so forth. You are right! They should have no say in whether or not they want to try these things out, because playing lawn bowls six times is entirely more valuable than continuing to develop their ability to play a musical instrument. And the pool time this morning? Oh, it was free time. Because God forbid we should make constructive use of that alert morning period.
Can you tell I'm funimg? There may have been an exhange in the staff room today that went thusly:
"I felt really bad becasue this child had a hearing problem and I didn't find out till he was in Grade 2 when I brought up his naughtiness with his classroom teacher."
Let's just put the indignation I felt at THAT aside for a second.... as I hit a home run for homeschooling and pointed out how important inter-school communication is:
"Yeah, when I went to high school I had a sport teacher who didn't realise I was two or three years younger than everyone else in my class. It took her about two years to catch on."
The surprise that greeted this statement was only upstaged when I answered this:
"Oh, so that would have been boring, all those hours at home doing schoolwork by yourself."
"Mm? Oh, we only did two or three hours of academic work each day."
"But why were you so young when you went to high school? Why would they put you in Year 7?"
"I won a scholarship."
(Mum, I left out the part about yr 9 math, they were having enough trouble with the bare-bones basics.)
Yes. Watch those faces trying to add two or three hours PER DAY up to nine-year-old-getting-high-school-scholarship.
Frick.
I think last night's post suffered from a lack of time in which to think coherently, but since integrating a couple of other events that occurred yesterday... here goes.
At ballet, a mother brought in some car keys which she'd found in the parking lot sitting behind a particular make and model of car... which happens to be the same that my recently licensed cousin drives. Her assumption was that said cousin (who we shall call C for brevity's sake) had left/dropped the keys - oops, what a silly mistake! And that would be fine, but it's assumed that gee, knowing C, of course it's her car (of which there are billions) and her keys, and silly girl, never mind, we should be used to it.
I took the keys and pulled out my phone to call her before looking at the keys again. Uh, they're Ford keys. C's car is not a Ford. So, this silly mother had (well-intentionedly, and all) seen the keys, put 2+2+2 together to make 49, and called my attention to something crazy important.
How often have you formed assumptions about someone based on someone's version of their behavior? How often have you classed them after observing them a (very) few times?
How often have you been sucked into someone else's opinion without questioning their arrival at said opinion?
I'm guilty on all fronts. I know that a lack of grammatical mastery does not a stupid person make.
I know that being in the top 1% of academic results does not equate to emotional intelligence.
Hell, being in the top 5% doesn't even equate to common sense. I mean the type of common sense that goes: Remove keys from ignition, get out of car, depress door lock, check keys are in hand, close door, holding handle up to facilitate locking mechanism.
Yep, I famously failed step four and locked my car keys in my car three times in three months. A few times I may ever have failed step five, causing the door lock to unlock, whereupon I helpfully opened the door, relocked it, and carefully closed it (holding handle up) before swearing VERY loudly. Mom, if you're reading this, I didn't really swear. Yep. Truly. I shall be forever grateful for the coathanger-wielding expertise of burly men (well, it was insured, so if they HAD stolen it instead of returning my keys I wouldn't have been unduly devastated).
*** Mind you, this is not quite on a par with a good friend who locked his keys in his car... on a camping trip. Four hours from anywhere. When we'd exhausted all the available car key and coathanger gymnastics, he wound up taking the door off the car to recover the keys.
I digress. Last night my beloved and I went to the beach. For reasons known only to him, he wore regular shorts but took boardies. We did a little financial discussion in the car - "OK, I've got $20 for souvlakis," "Sweet! Here's $10."
"What's that for?"
"Der! Ice-cream." As if you have to ask.
Then he decided to change shorts. Good plan. Except... ten minutes later in the fish and chip place:
"Can I have a lamb souvlaki?"
"Um, yeah. About that... So I put the money in my shorts pocket, but then I changed my shorts..."
So I handed him the keys, laughing at the stunned mullet look on his doctorly face. Hmmm.
So, just because someone can do amazing things with lines of code they will not remember to put the money in the pants they're wearing. Just because you think someone is a ditz doesn't mean they will leave their car keys lying on the ground beside their car, and just because I can write amazing blog posts of stunning insight and clarity does not mean I ever actually will.
It goes like this: "Yew SAID yewer goin to the TORLET an yew just run off! Just run off! That's NORDY, real NORDY. Say yew just goin to to TORLET and then run off. Yew NEVA do that, that's real NORDY."
And then the boy says very quietly, "I wonder where this Torlet place is. Sounds exciting!"
"Yep. You know, I was just thinking about how to spell that in the interests of accurate pronunciation."
Or something along those lines, because it is a fine summer evening and we are basking in a glorious sunset, albeit on Frankston's finest particles of silicon.
I am constantly amazed by the multifarious ways people torture the English language. With us Aussies, it's not so much the devising of a new lexicon that bothers me as our enunciation. I understand that English grammar, in all its irregular glory (ah, not for nothing is it a pearl of a language) is a complex beast. However, that does not give us the right to genetically modify the poor creature at will, let alone call it all kinds of nasty names.
Yes, this is what I do instead of sleeping. I also teach in my sleep. I'm wondering whether there is a discernible difference between my awake-teaching and my asleep-teaching, and if I can maybe spin that into discount rates if you come for a lesson during my afternoon nap. This would give me the advantage of (a) an afternoon nap and (b) more teaching hours in the morning. (Surely I could get up earlier if there would be a nap. Oh, bliss indeed.)
Anyway, lucky hubs tells me I'm remarkably coherent. I don't know I could display the same level of physical co-ordination ... but I'm not all that graceful when awake, so maybe it's worth a shot. Seeing as my husband is now behaving like a two-year-old (waving hands between me and the screen, shoving one down my top... now THERE'S something you didn't need to know) I'm going to give up on blogging and go to bed. Ballet concert tomorrow and the curse of the leotards begins. How did summer arrive without me noticing?
O and I visit the playground today. This is nice. There's metal bars wrapped in soft padded rubbery stuff, a big slide and a little slide, some obstacle-course-y rubber foam blocks, and a small plastic car embedded in the ground. Logically. We should all be teaching our small children to climb into the driver's seat of random cars, dislodging extant occupant (or leaning on them until they fall out) and spin the whel joyfully and with abandon. Hm.
So we do the whole playground thing for a while. This is mostly children attempting to socialise by pushing each other off various piece of equipment before being intercepted by a helicopter parent who referees the debacle and then guiltily removes themselves and their shoes from the rubber-matted shoe-free area.
I am tempted to wonder how many of these kids see the World Wrestling Federation on their tv screens; they certainly seem to have the smothering lean, stiff arm-lock and full-body tackle well within their repertoire. Still, that's better than being the chubby, pasty-faced child sitting sandwiched between her (yep, insert the three-letter f-word here) mother and (remember that lovely five-letter word starting with o and ending in e?) grandmother staring myopically at the spawn of Satan Nintendo DS.
I giggle inappropriately, because while I respect that it's not great for small people to (inadvertently) harm or alarm others, I wonder if this is actually where kids 'catch' their behaviour. You know, rushing over to two other littlies and getting in between their faces before pushing one of them away, or attempting to shove some other kid down the slide because five seconds ago their predecessor was dilly-dallying and that's what their mom did to clear the backlog.
Same with the demanding of behaviour; you've heard it all before: "Give him a turn! Don't push! Come here!" Of course, it's not always practical to preface every request with a "Would you please..." or even "Please..." but we can't fault children who expect to achieve results with demands: we do it every day.
I'm not sure what level of 'helicoptering' takes place in a creche and suspect it's much less... so maybe more kids engage in solo play and learn to use their imaginations instead of relying on the nearest grownup to solve their problems. Anywho, it's a fascinating microcosm to observe.
Days like this I wonder if I really want the parenting gig; if I'll try too hard (damn all that theoretical knowledge!) and maybe if it'd all go pear-shaped just to prove me wrong.
So I'm driving down the road to work, gently stuck behind an old coot travelling ye olde five kilometers beneath ye speed limit, when a very angry man in a silver car begins to tailgate me. I'd like to tell you the model of the car, but he was far too intent on shoving the bonnet into my dinky little bumper, so I can't.
He wasn't a very happy man. He had a bald head and a big moustache, and some rather large sunglasses. Possibly he was still unhappy about the loss of his Harley (doubtless totalled into the back of some other law-abiding driver), because he felt the need to express his frustration in a myriad of ways.
At first I thought he was trying a game of rearview charades, but extending your middle finger heavenward and jerking it violently doesn't seem very PG. Or sportsmanlike.
Then he seemed to succumb to a violent gravitational force emanating from the centre of his steering wheel. Loudly. I'd like to tell you exactly what kind of car makes a noise like that, but the whole bonnet-bumper situation? Completely tailgated. So I decided it might be time for me to play a game. Like "Chelsea Stops!" It's a great way to test (a) just how lightning quick your reflexes are and (b) the health of your tyres.
Mine are fine, thank you for asking.
At the next set of lights, moron man overtook me on the left and drove in an imaginary lane for about a hundred metres, valiantly straining to overtake the old codger who was the source of all his fury. He failed. Massively. Because I now had the pleasure of staring directly at moron's license plate. Oops.
I'm not a naturally vindictive person, but if you REALLY want to tailgate me, scream abuse, wave your finger about and then very nearly run me off the road, expect retribution.
We have a very nice service called "The Hoon Hotline" - 1800-NO HOON. They liked receiving my telephone call very much. They especially liked the part where moron man cut through an intersection using a service road at twice the legal limit. I liked getting even.
Peroxide blonde gyrating furiously to sound of over-amplified band.
A little elaboration: the venue is TINY. About four square metres of dancing space tiny. The band, apparently attempting to rebel against or deny this unarguable fact, are growing larger every week. I kid you not, every fourteen days when they deafen us with their presence there is a new band member. And a new speaker. Possibly two new speakers. Now, given the size of the venue, they could feasibly play an ACOUSTIC gig and still be horribly, nastily, agonisingly loud. Tonight not only my toes (that's another story, see below) but my eardrums are bloodied.
Yes. So. The blonde. I have nothing against forty-something women having a good time. I would like to be one of them in twenty years. However, I hope my friends will tell me that (a) my dress does not stop my sagging cleavage from pogo-ing when I "dance" and (b) stepping from side to side swinging my hair, arms, spiky-ended fingers and the aforementioned cleavage does not qualify as "dancing".
It's particularly annoying when the rest of the floor not occupied by crazy inebriated woman is peopled by beer-swilling statues unwilling to concede their centre-of-the-floor space for, oh, gee, a comfortable chair?
Or that space over by the wall?
You know, where you'll still be able to see up my skirt when I turn but no-one will bump into you and the general quality of the dancing (your entertainment) will be better because the people dancing WON'T HAVE TO DANCE AROUND YOU ALL THE TIME, YOU MORONS!
Sorry. There are really only so many hours in the day I can be gracious and goodwill personified (hhhmmmm.... about 0.0001 realistically). Dammit.
Even my lovely hubs attempting to point out "But really it's a pub. I mean, people stand around drinking because it's a PUB" will not mollify me. Yes, it's a pub. But to stand in the way of the speedy trajectory of 150 kilos?
Well, how stupid are you currently feeling? And if you're not used to this whole people whirling around dancing business? ALL THE MORE REASON TO SIT DOWN, PEOPLE!!!
I'm sorry. Only avocado on toast can make this better. I have to go now.
That makes it sound so much more deep and philosophical than it actually is... I was actually applying eyeshadow and thinking sadly of the (now empty) bowl of caramel popcorn on the bench, and deciding that this is clearly why I cannot live in any other country, or indeed any other SUBURB to the amazing Suzukisinger, who not only popped the popcorn and coated it delicately in AMAZING caramel, but then amicably broke into my house (well, she has keys) and left a large bowl of it on the bench for my delectation. The note may have been addressed to Hubs AND I, but I choose to believe that the popcorn was clearly all for me. Oh, ok, I gave him some.
Yes. So I will clearly have to stalk her when she one day does decide to trade suburbs, because that caramel popcorn... well. Remember when I said a sister will give you her last piece of chocolate? I may have to amend that statement to include popcorn.
What was I blathering about?
OH! YES! Ok, so having decided that the optimal amount of caramel popcorn for me = quite a lot = happiness but ALSO = morbid obesity, I have stumbled across a new way to combat American obesity. I realise it won't catch on here, as we are an apathetically unpatriotic lot (although, if I could link it to football may do well, as football is basically our religion and people who hate it tend to be somewhat anarchic, paranoid and prone to eating disorders fast metabolisms).
Obesity is unpatriotic. Think of the incredible financial damage you are doing to your country by requiring all that extra healthcare. About the billions of dollars malls will be forced to spend importing JAPANESE technology like wider sliding doors and travelators that travel through the entire complex because the fatties can't walk through anymore.
Employ the boy next door as your personal trainer! Take out a megamart gym membership and drive your oil-guzzling hummer around more... because you'll be able to get through the door again! And when you're fit, you'll be able to participate in the most patriotic behaviour of all; dressing up for Halloween and going trick-or-treating. Oh, sorry. I meant, hooray! You'll be able to enlist in the army and fight for your country. Uncle Sam needs you... to lose weight.
Australians: you have it much simpler:
Girls: Fat chicks don't marry footy players. They're just booty calls for cricketeers.
Boys: You're never going to be a footy/cricket player weighing that much. There's a damn good reason they don't make microshorts in that size.
I give you a fragment of O’s vocabulary. He will be two in November. He climbs on phone books to paint or crayon at an easel, drags his high chair over to the kitchen bench to splash in the kitchen sink, and converses quite happily.
Suzukisinger and I have many discussions about the possibilities and pitfalls for parenting. She’s worried when she meets three-year-olds who identify garbage trucks, transporter trucks, big trucks, little trucks, cranes, bobcats and cement trucks as “truck”. Me too.
Clearly that’s all their parents think they’re capable of.
I worry that we live in a world that dumbs down because we think children are incapable of understanding complex concepts. They’re not. They might be currently unable to articulate them (and I am the first to admit that O’s exclamations occasionally confound me just as much as delight), but why limit their understanding by catering to their physical ability to articulate?
A good friend of mine was horrified when a father told his two-and-a-half year-old son “That’s a propeller. Oh no, that’s too hard for you. That’s a prop. A prop!”
Hmmm. Well done, dad. Baby talk is cute. It’s not so cute when you inflict it upon your child. I’ve decided this is effectively retarding your child’s development.
Who knows what a Galileo thermometer is?
How would you find out? Type it into Google? I’m currently offline, so can’t do this myself, but I hypothesise that among the top five sites will be a Wikipedia entry which will show me the thermometer, explain how it works, perhaps give me a hint to it’s origins and evolution… maybe even link to suggestions for it’s use.
It’s Wednesday. I’m at school. Lunchtime in the well-populated staffroom:
Grade 5/6 teacher to assembled cohorts: “So, does anyone know how a Galileo thermometer works?”
Principal: “What’s a Galileo thermometer?”
5/6: “You know, one of those glass tubes with all the little balls of colored water inside, and they change places when it gets hotter or cooler?”
Silence.
Me (because I have a habit of sticking my supersize oar into discussions WHENEVER possible and stirring vigorously): “Um, they’re not full of water. They’re actually different liquids; like, chemically different, with different viscosity.”
Someone else: “Ooh, you know that and you’re the violin teacher!”
(Now, that’s another rant all by itself - which I chose not to become distracted by at that point. I know. MIRACULOUS. I could probably get a week’s worth of blogs out of that, but then you’d all get very sick of me and no-one would ever read my ranting again. Very sad. )
Me (attempting to fill gaping pit of silence which has just opened with twelve teachers staring at me): “You could probably stick it into Wikipedia and get a fairly common-sense explanation that the kids could relate to, but I think the movement of the globes relates to molecular excitation and the way they vibrate at different amplitudes according to temperature… which makes the liquid more or less dense than water so they sink or rise.”
Principal (possibly a little peeved, hard to be sure): “And how do you know all that?”
(Note: she was smiling at this point, but I’m not sure if it was the canine-baring of an animal protecting it’s gaping intestines until it’s last breath or something more friendly.)
Me (remember that reference to vigorous stirring? Remember, I’m in a primary school.): “Oh, sorry, I was homeschooled. I guess I know all kind of weird, random stuff. But – you know, the internet - it’s so easy to find stuff out now.”
5/6: “No, it’s far to hard to explain all that molecule-y stuff to kinds. They’ve got no clue!”
And whose fault is that?
I didn’t say it. I nearly did.
Hilariously, last night when recounting this to my in-laws, between the three of us we immediately came up with accessible ideas:
Matching kids up with the liquids. Talk about how the liquid will change with temperature and then say “It’s getting hotter!” Who rises? Who falls? Who can jiggle about the fastest demonstrating molecular excitation? What happens when movement slows? This liquid is made up of smaller molecules and this is larger… what does that mean when THEY start to jiggle about? The possibilities are endless, and we haven’t even begun to think.
Oh my goodness… Some days I am so pleased and so proud of the kids that I teach for all that they achieve and all they understand, and other days I am devastated by the many ways we fail them every day.
How do we make our parents, teachers, schools sit up and realise that by continuing to expect mediocrity, we will barely achieve even that poor goal?
Yes, today was sunny, glorious, balmy - even warm - until about four o'clock. Enter the overcast. I find it hard to get stuff done in winter. I get up, it's cold. I shuffle about, it's cold. I shiver into multiple layers.... you get the picture. I know it's Australia and our winters are comparatively mild, but guess what? That just means we're really crap at heating space properly.
But today? I wore a skirt. As in, not jeans. I even accessorised. With a belt. I know, daring for a weekday and all. And I got stuff done. Washing, vacuuming, dishwashing, bench-wiping. People, I even scrubbed my shower. That's serious. I mean, that's where I just shrug and go "Whatever. Two people take showers in that space EVERY DAY. Of COURSE it's clean. I mean, I realise that mould enjoys warm damp environments just as much as the next parasitic life form, but it's a SHOWER. It's GOT to be clean."
Not today. Uh-uh. I cleaned that base and scrubbed that glass and even - EVEN - paid some attention to the grout. I know. And once again, since my status update of "Chelsea will never apologise for wanting bacon with mud cake." incited accusations of pregnancy, NO, I am not pregnant. I am merely stuffing my face with weird (and wonderful) combinations of food:
(a) out of boredom; the pug may be entertaining but isn't a great conversationalist, and paws are shite for card-playing,
(b) out of anxiety and the panic attacks induced by a certain silvery-pale pink gumblossom leotard that in three weeks will accentuate every lump and bump on my torso until I resemble a small spray-painted whale, and
(c) I REALLY like mud cake. And bacon. And when you can have TWO things you really like instead of one, why stop at one. (Hence the DOUBLE-shot latte. Oh no, I was just feeling dopey and in need of a wake-up call.)
So anyway, today I wore a skirt. It's photo-worthy, but I put my camera in a drawer and then shoved a large and heavy dining table in front of it this afternoon which clearing space for group lesson, so no photo. Think royal-blue and silk. And long. So much more glamorous than harem pants (WHO thought that was clever? Hands up so we can cut them off for stupidity) but just as floaty-bohemian-lala and comfortable. I think this skirt may be threadbare by the end of summer.
When you give in to the allure of harem pants, just remember the shape of your fleecy tracksuit pants WITH A CUFF that you thought were so fantastic when you were twelve or seven or thirty-two. Then put them back and walk away. Quickly. No-one looks good in harem pants unless simultaneously prepubescent and six feet tall... and then we nod and smile knowingly... "So exotic. So daring. Look at that stunning silhouette." Yes. LOOK. Don't WEAR. I have to stop now before I start listing all the clothes I really hate. What do you wish you'd never worn?
I overheard a woman in a health-feed store saying "But we're trying a gluten-free diet and it really seems to be working!" in relation to her autistic son. It got me thinking: there seem to be massive numbers of children with some condition or label. I'm sure this is a result of our increased ability to analyse, categorise, and define combinations of behaviour - and communicate globally so that trends or types of behaviour can be grouped and named - but is it related to what's going into our mouths?
Everyone is a little concerned about genetically modified food. We like to buy organic where possible, and are encouraged to think about food miles and processing. Should we instead (ok, ALSO) be considering the types of food that go into our mouth? Gluten (wheat) and casein (dairy) are not just obvious parts of our diets (think bread, pasta, cereal, milk, yoghurt, cheese, etc) but in more insidious and sneaky ways.
According to Carol Ann Brannon, a nutritionist who specializes in diets for children with autism, gluten is not only ubiquitous, but may also find its way into your child's system through the skin:
"Gluten is found in wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, and any derivatives of these grains, including, but not limited to malt grain-starches, malt wash, hydrolyzed vegetable/plant proteins, grain vinegar, soy sauce, and natural flavorings. Casein is found in milk and milk products from mammals....Gluten is in even in Play-Doh, adhesive on stamps and stickers, and many hygiene products. Soy, another common food allergen, is in many foods and hand lotions, make-up, etc."
The theory is basically that gluten and casein act as opiates upon the autistic brain. But I feel worse after eating bread for breakfast (toast), lunch (sandwiches) and dinner (ok, more likely to be pasta, but I LOVE eating toasties for dinner), and I'm not autistic. Are our nutritional choices possibly creating or exacerbating these "autistic" behaviours to the point that they're labelled as autistic?
I know, I'm rambling. I just can't help wondering how many issues we like to point fingers at are actually created. (Much like life, really.) I feel that socially we say "This happened." or "This child has..." without questioning what sequence of choices and events got us to this moment or diagnosis.
Not terribly entertaining, but I don't think I signed any papers saying I would only be funny, and I'm aware how much my own behaviour is influenced by food.
(Nice case in point: getting reasonably drunk on sugar last night. About eight lollies {fruit tingles, milk bottles, raspberries} and I was high as a kite. Ridiculously silly, giggly, and slightly appalled at how quickly I got to a sugar high. Hmmm. This is going to take more mulling over.
OOH! (gee, that was quick!) Interesting: blood sugar standards are remarkably different in European countries... so here in Australia we expect a higher blood sugar level than in Germany. I don't have enough time to research this properly, but it keeps striking me that we are not sensitive enough to what we ingest and the way it plays out. Someone out there must be able to sum this up for me intelligently... COME ON!
Stuffed up, hacking, snuffling... and I have to teach tomorrow.
Oh, the joys of a seven-day week. Frick. It's fair to say that interacting cheerfully on a daily basis with children and parents is challenging. When half out of brain on Codral it's VERY challenging. When not half out of brain on Codral and therefore unable to breath properly it's ridiculous.
When dancing around like an idiot at the ballet hall it's a certain recipe for collapse. I've been sitting in bed since about 8pm tonight surfing the interwebs and attempting to read Carpentaria.
Missed out on a party and a show... oh, the sadness. And just to rub it in, I can clearly hear someone down the street rocking on with their beats. Bastards.
Then watched the embarrassingly awful clip of Red Faces on Hey Hey's reincarnation, or whatever the network wants to call it. Stupid. I'm not linking to it here, either you saw it or you can go look for it on youtube, but please don't think all people residing in Australia found it funny, clever, or... anything. Can we just pretend it never happened? Please? My next half-hour was much more profitably spent on episodes of The Guild and now I'd like to attempt a little oblivion.
Our night formula in capsules,
codral be thy name,
your dosage come,
your effects be done,
in my sinuses as in the adverts.
Give me tonight sweet peaceful sleep.
Enable my respiratory function,
as I enable the learning of innocent children.
Lead me not into the depths of primetime "humor",
but deliver me from the auditory abuse of doof-doof from down the street
For thine is the phenylephrine hydrochloride, the codeine phosphate and the paracetamol
forever and ever
shoot me now.
And what a Friday it's been. Today I've realised that one of the seven-year-olds I teach is in fact no ordinary child, but my nemesis. This epiphany was compounded by her cheery "Look, Miss Chelsea, I have hair cut the same as you now!"
Yes, yes you do. I generally don't have issues with challenging kids. I have rules, there are consequences. I'm happy to be the responsible adult that doles out tough love and kicks them into some kind of understanding about group activity, cooperation, participation, personal space, respect, manners, grammar, grooming, musicality, deportment, and oh yeah, ballet. Nearly forgot that one. It's a little hard to get onto sometimes when it's October and eight months on parents haven't taken the hint about writing R and L inside school shoes so their child sees this information five days a week. I wrote R and L on the feet of three girls today.
It's not that they're slow kids, or "too young" (HA!), it's that their parents have failed to provide consistent opportunities for this information to be assimilated and integrated. This gets me a little tetchy, as you might have noticed.
Evidence of their capability to learn and retain information: over the last ten weeks my littlies (predominantly six and seven year-olds) have learnt two ballet routines. They have not only learned the dances and spatial information (where to start, order to line up in, direction to travel and formation/pattern changes) but can sing the music. Yeah. Forty-five minutes once per week.
So, what's wrong with their parents/teachers/every other adult in their world? Is it just that the kids live down to their (the adults') amazingly low expectations?
In other news, celebrated six years of coupledom with my lovely hubs tonight. Yep, six years ago he decided that perhaps I was actually the girl for him and proposed some kind of going out arrangement to my skeletal and pathetic post-glandular self. The rest is history. He's remarkably able to view the world with a child's perspective. While sometimes this kills me, I'm reassured by his idealism and sunny disposition.
He's certainly a much nicer and more deliberate person than I will ever be, and I'm quite sure he will be a parent who teaches shoe-tying with infinite, graceful patience. (From my earlier ranting, the attentive reader will deduce this to be a compliment of the highest order.) uhnm, yeh. He's awesome.
Now, if only I could sneak him into ballet to deal with my nemesis.
