Lesson Plan

School's OUT. For us drivers, it means less traffic for work and errands during the morning and afternoon 'rush'. Malls filled with obnoxious teens without a care, conscience or filter. Fun times those were. During sunny summer days I like to trek down to the south end of the city and spend time on our relatively clean, quiet beaches. Every so often the remnants of unruly younger folk can be found by way of empty booze bottles, graffiti painted boulders or barely doused out campfires that I can't help but think were intended for attempts at mini forest fires. This week when hiking past one of these leftover scenes it was rather appropriate that outside the circle of still smouldering embers was a three ring binder. The sign of a term ended. Never wanting to revisit or reference the study material found within. Poof. Up in smoke. I didn't mind school. And didn't do too badly. Even if I graciously 'failed' both biology and math in the same third year of secondary school. With an end grade of 25% in each course; a sort of bonus up from zero cause I showed up regularly, I was able to just narrowly miss the honour role, something I achieved status of for 3 out of my 5 years in high school. Pretty impressive I thought? Ironic that while I've been meaning to get some thoughts down into a post about this school business, a previous co-worker of mine who is now a writer for a small town newspaper posed a query online asking for feedback about the government's intent to remove junk food for purchase within educational institutions. While I'm truly not an opinionated person or preachy at all, my thoughts sorta leaned toward the whole 'lead a horse to water' scenario; but the opposite angle. While we can't force the children to stop eating the terrible food; by taking out the easy accessibility, it can't hurt. Educating them with lessons on real life consequences is most effective. We have always been and forever will be told by our mentors...we may call them parents, Oprah, industry experts, etc that continuing education and achieving degrees opens doors to a wider range of possibilities. Whether we're talking garage doors, beautiful double hung french or even mouse cutouts in the wall, I'm not certain, but know it's true. 'Stay In School'! While I have yet to take any of this advise and despite the 'impressive' results I thought had been achieved in school, without a real education I'm destined to be stuck in the loop of retail, factory or call centre work I'm only really qualified to do. The verdict at the end of it all...School's IN.

Toodles

Planned Parenthood?

Modern Family, Reba, 8 Simple Rules and Roseanne. What I realized recently that all of these television programs have in common is that they all feature the same sibling dynamic. Although one would target the set-up of writing as tired, done, cliche...it has clearly been used over and over again because there is either a certain relatability, or good for laughs. All have two older girls and one youngest son. The eldest sister is popular, ditsy, perhaps even a wee bit slutty and not so stellar at reaching anywhere close to honour role mention at school. Enter the middle child; who, while perhaps has some underwritten jealousy to aforementioned older, prettier, perkier female in the line of offspring, she has an abrasive and sarcastic edge with brains to help her survive and requires a bit of guidance in her granola-esque existence to be socially accepted. Lastly the misunderstood baby of the family. He's on his own, he gets teased and tormented by the pro-estrogenic gang and is just an annoying dirty little brother. I was that little brother. I had more curse words, decorative household objets and kitchen necessities thrown at me by my older sister than I can count. Or at least could in my single digit age's existence. Growing up in my neighbourhood for a few years I had three good friends with whom we did everything together. Pool, tag, mall, bikes...kid stuff. Living on two cross streets, going to the same school, and yet we had another striking similarity like the sitcoms as written. We were all the youngest children with one older sibling living at home of the opposite sex. What many coin the 'million-dollar-family' is still common today as has been for the last couple of decades, but of course times change. Single unemployed mother of 6 or 7 with just as many baby-fadda's...do we call that the new 'hundred-dollar-family'. Isn't that how much the government gives her per month per child for allowance? While this is not intended to sound as though coming from an angle of judgement, I'll have you know my own father is the middle of five children with whom his mother in the 1930's produced them with three different father's. Just yesterday a co-worker of mine who does volunteer work for a crisis hotline was relaying a story of a woman from a troubled and unsafe marriage who refused to stay at a shelter because she did not like the riff-raff of the likes such as young women with multiple children from as many different sperm donor's that she might have to share space with. Oy for judging. In a time of 'Whatever will be will be', 'Everything happens for a reason' and 'It is what it is', we just have to try to love wholly, fully support and laugh hard with, our scripted or not; modern family.

Toodles