Some Pig

Stop the Madness!

Dear Fellow Parents,

Come with me on a trip down memory lane.  I am four years old and it is my birthday.  My mom has the neighbor kids across the street over to mark the occasion.  The festivities consist of everyone singing the birthday song, consuming their weight in cake and ice cream, and leaving. I don't even remember if I got presents. 

Fast forward one year.  I'm five, and the celebration has become correspondingly more sophisticated:  The clientele includes more friends than just the kids across the street; we play "Mother, May I," and "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" and then have cake and ice cream. I open presents (mostly small plastic things from the local five and dime) while everyone (again) eats their weight in sugary treats and vamooses posthaste.

I tell you this not to reinforce the notion that I am ancient (Although when I was young, the Old Testament was just "the Testament" and Methuselah was often chided for his callow youth.  "He's so young, the tribal elders would say, clucking their tongues over his latest juvenile transgression - chariot joyriding, oxen tipping and the like - while the womenfolk tried to placate them.  "Remember when you were like that?  He'll mature over the next couple score of years.").  I realize you might get the impression that I'm superannuated, what with the reference to the "five and dime" and all (Okay, keeds, the five and dime was like an exceptionally small, locally-owned Wal-Mart, where'd you go with your allowance and ... oh never mind.).  No, I tell you this so you'll have some context to understand why I was so surprised to pick up my daughter at day care the other day and find a yo-yo in her cubby with a note purporting to be from the birthday girl, explaining that this little trinket was given in celebration of her birthday.  Oh, and, by the way, my daughter doesn't even know this little girl, and as far as I can figure, she's not even in the same class.

Um, exsqueeze me?  I must not have gotten the memo that says we now give random strangers gifts on our childrens' birthdays.  I can only guess that Mom must have bought a gross of the things from Oriental Trading and had no other way to get rid of them, because otherwise, why would you give favors to kids who don't even know your kid?  And whatever possesses someone to give a room full of three-and four-year-olds each a yoyo, fercrissake?  My daughter can't even yo!  That sure made for an enjoyable evening, listening to her screams of frustration as the yoyo spiraled out of her control and rolled around on the floor.  Maybe I can use future birthdays as an excuse to give everyone a Ninja throwing star or something of that ilk. 

So can we all agree to a period of detente in the birthday party arms race?  I know I'm guilty of birthday overachievement (India's third birthday extravaganza immediately comes to mind), but at least I've never fallen prey to the urge to up the ante on everyone else. I suggest that we all go back to the standards of the seventies, a time before themed birthday parties, mandatory favors for the attendees, destination events, and parents hanging around during the festivities.  We can lead the kiddos through a rousing game of "Button, Button, Who's Got the Button," let them loose on the swing, dole out too-large slices of cake (made from a mix! with no organic ingredients!) and then send them on home.  Gifts will be given from the attendees to the birthday child, and parents of those guests who protest will be remind the protesters of their own birthday that a) has just passed, or b) is coming up.  Thank-you notes will not purport to be from the (pre-literate) birthday celebrant, typed in a child-themed font, or written on stationery engraved with a four-year-old's name.  Best of all, the entire time required to plan, prepare for, hold, clean up after, and thank people in attendance at the event will be kept to a maximum of six hours (at least until said children are of an age where they want slumber parties, at which point you are on your own, folks).

So who's with me on this?

Vomitrocious

Sweet weeping Jeebus.  The NYTimes has an article up today asking why schools suck worse now than they did when "A Nation At Risk" comes out, and then Slate runs this article about a mom who does everything for her son up to and just short of wiping his bum when he gets off the potty.  Anyone out there want to connect the dots?

Somewhere along the line, middle class parents decided that their kids should never, ever, ever encounter any hardship, difficulty, or challenge because, hey, they're middle class kids from nice families!  Somewhere along the line, they came to the conclusion that anyone who tells their kid "no," or "that's not good enough," or "you can do better" is a big, bad meanie who needs to be stopped!  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents began infantilizing their kids, hovering and monitoring and second-guessing and overriding any situation in which a kid might make a bad choice and (gasp!) suffer the consequences.  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents decided that their kids would never be cut from the team, fail to make honor roll, get fired from a part-time job, or have anything happen to them that could be construed as unpleasant, and if that were to loom on the horizon, why, mommy and/or daddy will step in and fix it!  Somewhere along the line, middle class parents came to the conclusion that their particular child is unique and special and precious and fragile, so much so that they must be coddled and swaddled and held by the hand at all times, figuratively if not literally.  Somewhere along the line,  middle class parents arrived at the conclusion that it was their job to run interference and defend their child at all times no matter what the circumstances.  No way could their child lie, cheat, manipulate, shirk, or just plain fail - everyone knows [insert person or issue here] is unfair/mean/biased against their child/[insert justification here]. 

For the love of Mike, this woman filled out eleven college applications on her son's behalf!  No WONDER he washed out of his first try at adult life.  He didn't even have an IDENTITY OF HIS OWN that isn't somehow an extension of HER!  She paid for private school for a kid who RARELY DID HOMEWORK!  Then she marveled that, gee, he didn't want to live at home and go to a juco in his hometown!  Gee, I wonder why not??? [Insert eye roll here here, followed by supercilious snort.] 

I'm truly surprised.  I've had two kids of my own, and as far as I could tell, they CUT that umbilical cord before we left the HOSPITAL.

I'm With Stupid

Okay, I know I promised the last installment of my stupidity trilogy three or four seven or ten posts ago, but one nice thing about writing for myself is that if I get distracted by something else, my audience of multitudes dozens you and some pervert who Googled "marital relations with pigs" yesterday will just have to cool your jets 'til I get around to it.  I guess if that last sentence offended you, you're the one on Google, huh?  Get off my website, you livestock-violating asshat, you!

Ahem.

Okay, I was telling you about my low-level junior Economics class.  What does a low-level class look like?  I can't promise to be an impartial observer, but here are some of the general observations:  First of all, these kids aren't all dumb or learning disabled.  Some are, but some are just unmotivated, or permanently stoned, or they're juvenile delinquents who have to be in school by court decree, and it's far easier to stick them in a low-level class than it is to accommodate them in upper level classes. 

Also, these kids are quintessentially American in their habits. Their diet is horrendous.  They eat a lot of sweet or salty snacks and drink a lot of sugary, caffeinated drinks.  They leave many, many empty Dunkin' Donuts Coolatta cups and chip bags behind at the end of the day.  They chew a lot of gum, and from the smell of their clothing, they smoke a lot of cigarettes.  Also, their dress fits the norm, but is just different enough to be noticeable if you look. Sure, everyone between the ages of 11 and 25 wears jeans and sweats; what stands out is how these kids wear them.  The phrase that comes to mind is "too much".  The girls wear clothes that are way too tight or so loose as to be shapeless, excessive makeup or none at all. The boys tend to adopt some kind of informal uniform (such as NASCAR shirts, hip-hop clothing, or flannel shirts and work boots) that they wear every day or nearly every day.  Compared to my other classes, I don't see a lot of color when I walk into the room - it's a sea of dark and drab colors, blues and grays and browns.  And a lot of my low-level students of both genders wear the same piece of outerwear (a coat, a vest, a sweatshirt), every day, no matter how hot and stuffy the room gets. 

Overall, the word that comes to mind when I walk into my low-level class is "defensive".  Hunched over in their seats, hiding in their oversized sweatshirts and puffy jackets, these kids look like they're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Some days - when they're not annoying the crap out of me by texting, copying each other's work, or talking when I'm talking - I find myself stopping in midsentence and wondering, "What the hell has the world done to you guys?"  They're defensive in their interactions with each other, too.  I hear a lot of cries of "shut up," "none of your business," and "I wasn't talking to you" throughout the class period.  Almost all low-level classes I've taught have included a pair or small group of students who get along like gasoline and the lighted match - they can't be near each other without exploding into a conflagration.  And, because there are usually only one or two sections of each low-level class in any given subject, these kids spend all ... day ... long ... with ... each ... other.  Because it makes sense, you know, to take the kids with the weakest social skills and have them travel around in a pack for six hours nonstop so they can get really, really irritated with each other by the end of the day (which is when I see them, of course). 

So here's the crux of the matter - how do you teach a class like that?  It's basically like running a three-ring circus with one hand tied behind your back.  Cajoling, threatening, bribing, outright begging - all options are on the table with a group like this.  I do a lot of bargaining ("do this now and you get five minutes' free time at the end of class") and a lot of immediate consequences ("if you don't shut up right now and get to work, I'm going to collect this and count it as a quiz grade").  I show any popular movie I can get my hands on that has some kind of tangential connection to the curriculum (with questions!  lots and lots of questions!) and I give a LOT of class participation grades, where all they have to do is shut up, pay attention, say something on-topic occasionally and they'll earn at least a C for the day.  I try to have at least three more activities planned than I know we have time to do, so if one idea tanks, I can roll with the next one.  And I put up with a lot of ruckus.  I know if I ask them to read anything longer than two pages, the room's going to be noisy and chaotic because they hate reading.  I know if I give them an assignment that takes longer than fifteen minutes to complete, they'll stick it in their bookbags and claim, "I'll do it later," a later that never seems to arrive on their personal agendas.  I know if I don't review all the material on the quiz immediately before giving the quiz, they're going to bomb it big-time.  I kick out the kid who makes all the 4-20 comments on any pretext I can.  I make his friend, who's really too bright for the class and just wants an easy ride, go sit in my colleague's classroom so he won't distract the 4-20 kid and set off half the rest of the class.  I ask them not to yell, not to get in each other's business, not to put their feet on the furniture about fifty gazillion times a day, and then I ask them again because they just don't stop.  I have generous make-up and absentee policies because in the end, most of them don't make up the work anyway and it covers my butt.  I make a lot of phone calls and send a lot of emails to the various special education specialists and guidance counselors around the building who are involved.  I drag unmotivated seniors through their third attempt to earn their credit and remind idiot freshmen that they don't want to be seniors retaking a freshman class for the third time.  Some days I feel like I'm making at least some headway and some days I count the milliseconds til June.

Oh, and last and certainly least, I try to sneak some content in there somewhere along the way.

Stupidity, Cont'd

I swear, if they could bottle stupidity like that, it would become a dangerous, dangerous weapon. Can you imagine all that concentrated stupid being used to wipe out the intellect of an entire country? They could probably call it American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. But I digress.
-- Anonymous Coworker

In order to continue, we need some back story.  Well, actually, YOU might not need it - in fact, you might have stopped reading by now once you realized I'm still on a tear from the previous post, but *I* feel the need to give you some context.

Here in the World's Only Remaining Superpower, unlike other industrialized countries, we allow students to stay in school and apply for spots at postsecondary schools regardless of their ability, perceived or real. How do we provide education for people who cover the whole range of intellectual ability?  The bulk of our public schools still track students at the high school level, presumably according to ability.  However, any teacher with any marginal intelligence of his/her own can see within five-point-two seconds that the the general ed tracks (excluding that very bottom class that's reserved for the poor souls who function well below chronological age level) wind up pretty closely paralleling our socioeconomic structure.  Everywhere I've taught, the honors track is always chockablock with the kids of doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.  The middle track (college prep, academic, 200 level or what have you) tends to the lower middle class and upper working class.  And the bottom track becomes the de facto dumping ground.  Oh, sure, it's not cast in stone - there are honors kids whose families have not a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of, and there are kids in the bottom classes whose families are very well off, but the overall trend holds true. 

So what are you in for when you get a bottom track (general ed, standard, 300, etc.) class?  A typical class of low-level juniors includes a bunch of kids who are truly academically below average, mixed in with stoners, lazy jerks who don't want to do any work, the occasional middle-class kid with a learning disability and a lawyer, kids who are basically left to support themselves, vocational students who hate/don't think they can do anything that looks like school, chronic absentees who come only on days that fit the Fibonacci sequence, and the occasional sociopath.  Often, by any "hard" intellectual measure, these kids are stupid:  They can't read at grade level; they can't explain the reasoning behind the answers they give; their work lacks internal cohesion and logic; they have difficulty taking a larger task, breaking it into smaller components, and working through those components in order; they have a hard time thinking of creative or original ideas that don't refer to something they've already seen or heard; their awareness of what's going on in the world around them is vestigial at best.

The question is, why?

Let's go back to Lissa.  Why is she so eager to avoid letting anything we're doing in Economics class actually sink into her brain?  Is she stupid because she avoids learning, or does she avoid learning because she's stupid?  And is she lacking-in-ability stupid, lacking-in-effort stupid, or some combination of both?  I'm not so egocentric as to deny that it could very well be that I am just a bad teacher, and if I were actually any good at this I'd have a roomful of budding John Kenneth Galbraiths on my hands.  I'm sure my Ed professors, God bless their pointy little heads, all could point out a million and one ways in which I'm denying my students full expression of their copious abilities simply because I'm not doing my job very well.  But in my defense, I will say that I do care about whether or not they get this stuff.  I care because economics is about the consequences of the choices we make, and as people who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, these kids are often the victims of our competitive culture.  I don't give a damn if they understand the difference between GDP and per capita GDP, but I do want them to understand how the market works and what kind of economic system we have and why they have to have some kind of advanced skill or ability when they leave this place so they don't spend the rest of their lives fearing that they'll fall so far down the social ladder they can't ever get back up.  I try to make the concepts concrete and specific and relevant and immediate, since these kids tend to have the attention span of gnats and tune out as soon as ideas get too abstract or distant.  But then I look up and Lissa's twirling her hair around her finger, two kids are texting their friends in other classes, the juvenile delinquent pothead is making the "4:20" sign at the kid across the room from him and the pregnant girl in the corner is busily doodling potential names for the baby on her notebook, and I can't help but think,

"What are you guys - STUPID??"

Wait for the stunning conclusion!

Stupid Isn't Just a Personality Trait. It's a Way of Life.

First, in regards to the reaction to one of my recent posts - the one about the olives?  Oh my.  I don't know whether to feel a heartwarming sense that we're all in this parenting thing together, or if I should just turn my kids over to Youth and Family Services now and be done with it... If I'm willing to narcotize my kiddos even marginally and my reading public not only forgives my behavior but actually condones it???  Well. Words fail me.

I've been thinking a lot about stupidity recently, and not just because I'm sitting here watching unedited student videos.  My Government students just completed "Man on the Street" interviews, a la Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments on the Tonight Show, asking their brethren (and sistren) some basic facts about their government, and the results are alternately horrifying, terrifying, and just plain discouraging.  In a humorous kind of way, granted, but still... One of the videos features a student I have this semester who is so willfully ignorant, she is making me truly insane.  "Lissa" is in my low-level Economics class, where she spends the better part of fifty minutes each day (and 100 minutes on Wednesdays) doing some combination of the following:

1. Staring into space.
2. Surreptitiously checking her cell phone for text messages.
3. Staring out the window.
4. Copying enough work from her friends in class to look like she's actually completed something.
5. Twirling her hair around her finger.

How thick is she?  On the video, my students ask her to identify what a W-2 form is, AND SHE CAN'T DO IT.  After answering every single question with "I don't know," ("Name one Supreme Court Justice," being another example), she then looks off into space, twirls her hair, and says, "These questions are so..." and lets the thought trail off, because she can't be bothered to search her brain for a challenging vocabulary word like "difficult" or "hard." 

Behold the future, ladies and gentlemen.

One thing those of you outside the edjimicashun world don't understand is that stupidity is complicated.  Why are Lissa and others of her ilk so numb?  Well, most of us would say it's because she's unintelligent and leave it at that.  But there's more to this.  Lissa actually has to expend extra effort to remain as dumb as she is.  During the hundred-minute marathon of masochism that we call "block day" (and oh, is it painful having your most difficult class for a double period at the end of the day), I give the little scholars a five minute break midway through the period so I'm not fielding endless requests for potty passes.  Lissa quits doing whatever minimal work she's doing five minutes before break begins, just to make sure she doesn't miss a single second.  Then, as soon as break is announced, she hustles out of the room like her pants are on fire.  When break is over, I frequently have to go round her up to get her to come back for the remaining 45 minutes of class.  Curious, I decided to hang around in the hall one day during break to see what she was up to.  Talking to her friends?  No.  Making illegal cell-phone calls?  No.  Actually using the bathroom or getting a drink of water?  No and no. 

She was leaning against the wall and staring off into space.

Let me repeat that.  The girl was bolting out of my class at the speed of sound and nearly galloping down the hall so that she could spend as much time as humanly possible NOT thinking. 

Ooooooooo-kay.  Now what?

Clearly this is going to be a long post, so for the sake of everyone's attention span and interest level, this is ...

to be continued.

"Charity" Is NOT My Middle Name

WARNING:  What I have to say here will be offensive to some parents.  If you have extremely allergic children, you may be put out by my thoughts, in which case, please skip to a post you've previously read so you don't become permanently pissed off at me and delete me from your blog roll.

So I'm packing the baby's lunch to take to day care today and making lunches?  Is not my favorite activity.  Shoot, I hate packing lunches for myself, and having to think of TWO meals-to-go, one of which is intended for someone who isn't so good at the taking-small-bites-and-not-choking thing, well, it taxes a girl.  Add to that the fact that it's frigging Spring Ahead, and I HATE Spring Ahead because the kids sure don't care that the clock says 8:30 p.m. when their internal clock says it's only 7:30 p.m., so they stay up gamboling about until 9:00 ... 9:15 ... 9:30 ... and then they're all sleeping happy as babes in toyland when I have to pry my middle-aged tired self out of the sack at 6:30 a.m., which is actually 5:30 a.m., to get myself showered and dressed and then I have to make intelligent decisions about what to have for lunch?!?!  Is it any wonder why I have a sandwich and a piece of fruit every single day of my freaking life???  So I collect the foodstuffs in question and open Ceci's lunch sack, only to find her cereal bar left over from Friday.  I bought said cereal bars only last week in a desperate attempt to find something portable this kid could bring to eat that she can manage by herself and that isn't a banana.  Geez Louise, if I give this kid any more bananas, she's going to start swinging from the trees! "Huh," thinks I to myself, "she must not have been very hungry on Friday."  Then I pick up the cereal bar and I find a sticky note on it:

Sorry - we can't give this to Celeste because it may have been made with nut products.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

I look more closely, and there it is, in teeny weeny print on the wrapper: "Made on equipment that also manufactures products containing peanuts and tree nuts."

Again, AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

I'm telling you, this kid's classmates are allergic to everything.  One of these days I'm going to go in there and find out someone's allergic to AIR.  This one can't have dairy.  That one can't have soy.  This one has a nut allergy and is sensitive to wheat products.  The other one can only have food brought from home.  On Ceci's birthday, I wanted to bring in a treat for the class to have, but wound up in the day care dietary Catch-22 - the kids can only have food that comes with a content label, but all the food with content labels contains the warning about peanuts, so they can't have it.  They can't have ice cream because it's dairy, but they can't have tofutti because of the kid with the soy allergy.  I would have been HAPPY to make a special gluten-free, dairy-free cake or brownies with canola oil, but the day care center isn't allowed to serve foods made in a private home.  They can't even have frigging RAISINS because the state licensing poobahs consider them a CHOKING HAZARD.  So they celebrated Ceci's first birthday with GRAPES, cut up of course, and probably pre-chewed, and for all I know predigested and given to them in FEEDING TUBES.

Okay, okay, I'm a reasonable human being, and a mother, and if I had an insanely allergic kid who couldn't move five feet away from the Epipen without putting himself in mortal danger I know full well I'd be the first one there with the sani-wipes and the fluorescent orange warning labels.  Still, GEEZ.  I am happy to avoid peanut butter if it risks endangering your child.  I will avoid white flour and eschew tofu in the group snacks.  But when I can't give MY OWN KID a frigging CEREAL bar that I specifically checked doesn't contain nuts and nut products because it *might* have some cross contamination, that's when I get a little tetchy.  Can't my kid and the allergic kid sit at different tables?  Could they eat in shifts?  Isn't there some way we can negotiate a path between avoiding the allergens and providing a lunch that isn't the same damn thing every day without needing a PhD in food sciences?

I packed Celeste yet another banana.

For Every Silver Lining, There is a Cloud II

When I lived in The State Formerly Known As Home, my job was located two towns over from my place of residence.  When you're a teacher, a little geographical distance between you and your charges is a good thing.  It's hard to be anonymous when you're buying your OxyContin and porn ovulation predictors and red wine, only to have the kid behind the cash register yell, "Hi, Ms. S!" and announce to all and sundry that you flunked him last year, but he doesn't mind because hey, he didn't do his homework. 

This came to mind this evening as I was driving home and passed two rather familiar-looking little miscreants on my street.  I say "little," but they are both taller than I am.  Getting closer, I ascertained that I do, in fact, know the aforementioned miscreants as they are both members of my current crop of, ahem, scholars.  Anyhoo, I know as sure as God made little green apples that tomorrow, in class, they will both proclaim loudly to everyone who will listen exactly where they saw me, what car I was driving, and where I was going.  One of the two little blighters angels even knows what house I live in, because he's buddies with the kid who used to live there before we bought the place.

Oh, for a secret identity.

Good Thing I Have All the Answers

It is just before 8:00 am in the (already crowded) waiting room at the doctor's office.  The overly-made-up woman next to me picks up the phone and calls her son.  For the sake of protecting the innocent, we'll call him Trevor.  "Trevor, this is Mom," she says.  "You need to get up, it's time to get ready for school.  Make sure you get to school on time today, please, and don't forget to put the dog in the crate."  Okay, being a human alarm clock is a little weird, but it's not a terribly abnormal phenomenon in this day and age. 

Then Mom calls TREVOR'S FRIEND and asks him, in this sticky-sweet voice, "Dillon (another pseudonym), would you do me a huge favor?  On your way out to the bus today, would you just pound on the door and make sure Trevor's awake?  Go ahead inside and get him up if you have to.  Make sure he doesn't miss the bus, okay?  And remind him he needs to put the dog in the crate." 

But wait!  There's more!  Mom calls home again and hisses into the phone:  "Trevor. Trevor!  It's Mom. Pick up the phone, I know you're there.  Pick up the phone, Trevor. Don't miss the bus again today, Trevor!  Trevor!  Get up!  Don't be late for school!  I'll see you at the end of the day."

And then we all had to duck to avoid the wash from the rotor blades while Helicopter Mom hovered overhead. 

Here's the best (or worst) part: Trevor, as I overheard Mom say sometime after this conversation, is ... a junior in high school. 

What IS it with people, anyway?  Why are we so afraid to let kids feel the consequences of their crappy decisions?  If India had issues with getting up on time, it would be a cold day in h-e-double-toothpicks before I'd ask one of her friends to wake her up and make sure she got to the bus.  What a crappy thing to do to your kid's friend, making him responsible for your son's behavior.  If my kid had a poor track record of getting to school on time, after one or two incidences, I'd get on the phone to the school secretary and make damn sure everyone at the school knows that Junior is feeling just fine, thank you, and if he missed the bus, he'll be serving the in-school suspension he just earned.  Or, if the school resource officer feels like making a run to the house, nice Officer So-and-so should feel free to walk right in and roust Junior's butt out of bed, reading of Miranda rights purely optional. 

Not only that, but Overly Made-up Mom made an amateur's mistake - she let Trevor know that she cares more about whether or not he makes it to school than he does.  Here's a tip for all you current and future parents of adolescents:  They are experts in figuring out how to push your buttons.  What you have to do is push their buttons first - preemptive button-pushing, as it were.  If I were Mom, I would figure out whatever it is that makes Trevor tick (driving, cell phone, iPod, whatever) and sit down with Trevor at the beginning of the school year for a "discussion" along these lines:

Trevor, we've had some difficulty with you not getting up and making it to school on time.  If you choose to stay up so late that you can't wake up in the morning, that's your business, and there's nothing I can do about that.  But I will tell you that I expect you to get up in the morning, get ready for school, and take care of the dog without my needing to call you from work.  You're not in middle school and I'm not going to treat you that way anymore.  So here's the deal:  I want you to get up and go to school, and you want ________________________ (access to the car, whatever).  If the school calls me because you're not in school on a day when you're not sick, I am not going to cover for you and I will not excuse your absence.  I am also not going to leave work to take you to school.  You will get whatever punishment you get from the school, and you will also lose privileges here.  Everyone makes mistakes, so I'm going to give you one freebie.  But the second time you're late or absent from school because you didn't get up, I am going to call the insurance company and have you taken off our insurance policy, and then I am going to call the state department of motor vehicles and ask them to suspend your license.  You're almost eighteen now and smart enough to figure this out.  I know you can make good decisions and I trust you'll make the right choice.  To make this clear, I've written this statement so you can remember what we've just talked about. 

Then (and this is the tricky part) you have to do what you say you're going to do.

Now, I suspect Trevor isn't going to like this one little bit.  I would be willing to bet a significant portion of my rather measly paycheck that O.M.M. has been following Trevor around for the better part of the past sixteen years and wiping his ass for him picking up after him.  And I bet dollars to doughnuts (mmm...doughnuts) that, in best passive-aggressive fashion, he will immediately turn right around and do ... exactly what he's apparently been doing for the past however many years, which is drag his feet until Mom essentially does it for him.

With all the public angsting (Can I make angst a verb?  You bet I can.) over the state of our boy chilluns, I have to wonder if it's coincidence or not that this problem has arisen in tandem with the hover-copter parent phenomenon.  After all, what could be more emasculating than having your mommy calling you at home to make sure you've made it to school?  Is there something about boys that makes them react to hyper-vigilant parenting style by becoming scholastic slugs and perennial underachievers?  I know I'm grossly oversimplifying here, and the "boy crisis" isn't that simple an issue, but it does make for some interesting thinking ... my friend Pam has four boys (count 'em, one, two, three, four) and her child rearing philosophy is best described as, "pull your thumb out of your butt and figure it out."  As she has told me on more than one occasion, she refuses to do for them what they are perfectly capable of doing for themselves, and she made damn sure they knew that.  Aside from the fact that all four of the boys were living at home this summer, her approach seemed to have worked.  Just to double-check, I called Pam and asked, "Would you ever call your kid to wake him up for school?"  When she stopped laughing long enough to catch her breath, her response was, "I don't even wake up the one who lives here when I get up."  I wonder if I could get Overly Made-up Mom an intervention:  Pam 9-1-1.

I've decided I need a new category specifically for posts of this ilk.  Since we encourage audience participation here at Some Pig, this is going to be put to you, my loyal and occasional readership, to decide.  My thoughts are: Rantabulous, Rantastic, and Rantalicious. Given my predilection for going on verbal and/or written tears, this category title is going to get a lot of use, so vote early and often, people.  Rant on!

Pictures, Are Like, You Know, Worth a Thousand, Um, Whatevers

Dear seniors (by which I mean high school seniors, by the way, not driving-scarily-while-wearing-hats seniors),

Fall is here, and with it, the first few weeks of that pinnacle of your secondary career: Senior year.  I know you are basking in those first heady days of your superior status in the school community, as well as in those last warm rays of summer, but now it is time to buckle down and get serious.  You're seniors now, and that means you have weighty issues on your mind - issues like, "what am I going to wear for my senior picture?"  Well, fear not, dear souls, for Some Pig is here to enlighten you.  Even though I am (temporarily?) exiled from your realm, seniors, I see you out there, embracing trees, tilting your heads, trying to find that facial expression that says cute-but-intellectual, or ruggedly-handsome-chick-magnet, or whatever multiple messages it is you're trying to convey as some semipro part-time photographer the receptionist at your mom's work recommended sticks a 400x zoom lens in your face and clicks away.  And I am here to tell you to knock it off already, you are making a huge mistake.  Now listen and learn, kiddies.

First, let's talk about the function of your senior portrait.  This is meant to record one of the major milestones of your life, and it serves as the official marker of this milestone. Along with your baby picture and your wedding/commitment ceremony/pagan worship ritual photos, this photo is among the most important you will ever take.  Yeah, a copy goes in the yearbook, and you'll spend hours slaving over the inscriptions you cram onto the back of the little wallet-sized photos you give to your friends (Hey!  Remember all the good timez bcuz there gone b4 u know it.  6th per study hall ruled!  Stay real!  C U l8r.), but don't forget, a copy also goes to your grandma, as well as to people who have known and adored you since you were running around with a snotty upper lip and a diaper full of regrettable incidences.  So you need to give at least passing consideration to the sensibilities and opinions of the older folk as you choose your presentation.

Ladies, when I look at your pictures, I want to see you, not what we used to call in politer days your best assets, but which now are often coyly referred to as "the girls" or "the twins" (my dad calls them "hogans," but that dates from well before your time).  There's nothing more awkward than being handed a senior photo by a dewey-eyed protegee and feeling my eyes shoot out on stalks because it looks like a promo shot for a pole dancing workshop.  For heaven's sake, don't even think about trying the tank top/ripped jeans/barefoot on the beach setup too, please.  I know you want to convey the sense that, "hey, someone just happened to walk by as I was strolling along the beach with my perfectly blown-out hair swooping across my carefully made-up face and snap this incredibly amazing picture of me," but you know what?  You're not selling it.  You look like you have a bum full of sand and your hair is stuck on your teeth, not to mention the sunlight makes your cosmetics glaringly apparent. Also, keep in mind this is not going into your facebook to get gigs on the catwalk, it is going to your grammie's friend in Oswego who remembers you in pigtails and sundresses, so lose the sexy.  (Tangent: At my previous place of employment, the yearbook advisor was notorious for his tin ear when it cames to matters of appropriateness.  He put out a stack of leaflets from a photographer trolling for portrait work that included pictures of girls in a lot of very provocative poses as examples. One such shot featured a girl splayed out across the floor, arms and legs akimbo, in a position that can only be described as postorgasmic.  "What?" he said in astonishment when I pointed out how highly inappropriate these pictures would be in a high school yearbook.  "She looks relaxed."  Huh.)

Gentlemen, don't think you're not in for some sage advice, either.  Here is my central message to you:  Dress up, dammit.  I don't care how pristinely white your throwback jersey and shorts may be, put on some dang clothes.  Okay, you don't have to do the sportcoat-and-tie number if you don't happen to own said items anyway, but please, at least wear a shirt with a collar. Reference grammie's pal in Oswego above - this is a picture meant to show you at your best, looking all fresh-faced and ready for the world, not an advertisement for how badass you are.  That means ix-nay to the off-center baseball hat, thick neck chains, flexed arm muscles with tattoos, hand signals and glowering looks.  Oh yeah, this goes triple if you're white, and quadruple if you've never lived in an area that could be considered even remotely urban.  The mean streets of Compton did not birth you, son, so you are not in fact "keepin' it real."  And that doesn't let you non-posers off the hook, either, so wipe that smirk off your faces.  I see you out there dressed in your sweatshirts, NASCAR t-shirts, jeans, and what have you, and don't think I'm not keeping track.

Well, now that I've told you what not to do, what's left?  That's easy.  Pick out a nice, clean outfit you would wear someplace where you'd like them to think you're a class act - church, a restaurant that doesn't have a drive through, a new girl/boyfriend's parents' house, wherever you might go that you'd be willing to cover the muffin top and hide the tats.  Certainly wear your "signature" accessories, but keep them minimal.  Use a normal amount of grooming products, please, so your hair doesn't look like you styled it with Bondo and the skin on your face is the same hue as the skin on your neck.  Then hie yourselves to your seasoned, mature, carefully selected professional photographers and let them earn their keep.  Try not to mimic the "Blue Steel" facial expression worn by Derek Zoolander when the photog asks you to smile; you don't have to put on a cheesy grin if you're not naturally the smiley type.  If you're a bona-fide Manic Panic-wearing safety-pin-through-the-lip goth you don't have to smile at all, just lose the glower for a few moments and look marginally resigned to being alive, okay?  You can even take the picture outside if you like as long as you promise not to hold a flower, lean against a fence, sit hugging your knees, or prop yourself against a tree.

I realize this advice will be met by many a groan and eye roll, along with proclamations that you want a senior photo that's different, that stands out, that shows "who I really am."  Trust me, folks, you don't.  Take it from someone who had an asymmetrical hair style in the 80's, you will have plenty of opportunities to embarrass yourself as express your individuality over the coming years. Do you really want that captured forever, carefully framed, and on display over the fireplace for the next forty years of your life?  Yeah.  I thought not.

Sincerely,
Some Pig

Happiness (Is A Warm Gun)

Okay, okay, I know the song's about heroin ... but I just can't think of another song title about a gun, and it relates to my post, I pinky swear!

I used to belong to a mom's group in The City Formerly Known As Home, and because I am lazy and can't be arsed to unsubscribe to the email loop, I still hear about what's goin' down northward.  Being part of the group was a great help when I felt like I was stuck in toddler hell, but there are times when I am way, waaaay out of sync with the mores of modern momhood.  A lot of the emails consist of moms writing, "this happened to me and this was my reaction, was I right to react that way," which is really a not-very-subtle way of saying, "agree with me and tell me I did the right thing so I'll feel validated in my motherhood."  The first of these that I experienced was the mother of a seven-year-old who won't let her son use a public restroom by himself because of the risk of pervies and sickos.  Her son was starting to kick up about it, but she was forcing him to go in the ladies' regardless.  Most of the email responses (except mine) were of the "you go, girl!"ilk, composed by other mothers who are forcing their similarly-aged boys to make water in the sit-down position.  My (very mildly worded) reply that I, personally, don't feel comfortable being in a single-sex bathroom with a boy who is clearly old enough to know the birds from the bees met with ... silence.  Either no one agreed with me, or all the others who did weren't willing to say so, but clearly my response was just Not On.  So take that for what it's worth.

The most recent email loop contained a mom's tale of taking her two young boys to a school playground, whereupon she was shocked - shocked! - to be joined by a pair of older boys (10 and 13-ish) who were playing with a very, very dangerous toy, to wit:  Nerf popguns.  She was horrified that their mother not only allowed this but actively encouraged it on a school playground.  This was followed by a long explanation about how she doesn't allow her kids to play with any gun-type toy, even water guns are called "squirters" in her house, the kids aren't allowed to watch violent TV and so forth.

Huh.

Maybe I'm hopelessly tone-deaf to the subtleties of modern parenting, but I just don't see the issue here.  I'm old enough to remember when Nerfs first came out, and if I remember rightly (creak of rocking chair), the whole POINT of Nerf toys was that they allow kids to do things like shoot at each other in a way that's fun and exciting, but your mom doesn't have to stand on the porch and yell at you that it's only funny until someone loses an eye.  Lord love a duck, the little missile thingies are made of sponge, how much less violent-tendency-encouraging could they be? 

It's a modern cliche to compare the unstructured days of yore with modern hypervigilant parenting, but man, I just can't help but wonder if we're raising a generation of pantywaists here - and that goes for girls AND boys.  When I was ten, my mom wouldn't have known if I was playing with Nerf guns or shards of glass, fercryinoutloud, because I was off running around with my little hoyden friends and not playing under her watchful eye.  Not only did we pop sponges at each other, we walked around town by ourselves, played in the woods, went swimming without our parents, rode bikes in the street, and held (horrors!) fiercely competitive games of kickball, hide-and-seek, Clue, and Go Fish, any and all of which would automatically disqualify my mother from being considered a good parent these days. 

"Oh sure, Caroline," you say, rolling your eyes at my willful naivete, "but that was the seventies, before we knew about all the dangerous characters lurking out there, just waiting to sweep up our children in their nefarious clutches."  To which I say, Codswollop!  Sure, there are pervies and sickos and nut jobs galore, not to mention giant diaper-wearing weirdos, but I refuse to believe there are more of them as a percentage of the population, statistically speaking, than there ever used to be - it's just that we learn about them more readily, and hear about their actions over and over again when they're uncovered.  If you've seen "Bowling for Columbine," you saw Michael Moore compare news coverage between the US and Canada (a big Some Pig shout out to all my favorite Canucks hanging out north of the border, eh?).  On a day when nothing terribly untoward happened, the US news media ran a barrage of stories that made it sound as though death and dismemberment lurked around every corner ("The hidden dangers of can openers!  Film at eleven!"), while the Canadian news had a lead story on ... speed bumps.  I think the moose tripped on it, or something.  (Okay, cheap shot there, I admit.  I should feel shame, but I don't, eh?) The point is, we Amurricans have been indoctrinated to believe that the world is a bad, bad, scary bad place, and we pass that belief onto our kids when we insist on hovering over them 24-7 because we're so afraid of what might happen.  The moms who make their sons go weewee in the ladies' resurfaced on the email loop in force recently, after a wackadoodle was apprehended for trying something on in the men's room with a ten year boy ... in Florida.  The moms were all self-congratulatory, basically stating that this incident proved the rightness of their actions.  There was no discussion - none at all - about what we mothers could do to teach our kids how to handle themselves in these situations.  Instead, they all vowed that they were going to keep dragging their boys, kicking and screaming though they may be, into the ladies' room with them.  Do I need to point out that this was a single incident, one that took place a whole country away?  (I have to wonder what they consider the age of urinary independence - eight?  Ten?  Twenty-two?  Hey, twenty-two year olds can be abducted too, you know.)

Sure, things have changed a lot in ten twenty okay, thirty years.  We don't know our neighbors, we're all at the office til all hours, we aren't involved in community institutions like church or volunteer groups any more, so we can't give our kids the same kind of free rein that we had.  But we don't need to swaddle them in bubble wrap, either.  We've raised them in play groups under our watchful eyes, and now what do we have?  A generation that has to read The Dangerous Book for Boys to figure out how to mess around on their own, while their moms agonize over what people will think if their kids shoot sponges at each other in public and I wonder what the little bastards can see through the chinks in the stall doorways.