Does spanking deserve jail time?

A foster mother in Connecticut is facing 100 days in jail after she admitted spanking a four year old with a wooden spoon according to a report.

The women told officials that she had spanked the child because the child had hit the woman’s granddaughter, spat at her, and used a racial slur toward her. The biological mother noticed bruises on her daughter during a supervised visit.

Let me tell you, if my mother had to spend 100 days in jail for every time she spanked me with a wooden spoon, she would have easily been serving 20 to life.

You see, the wooden spoon was my mother’s spanking instrument of choice. She brandished that kitchen utensil like a magician wields his wand. And it had the power to work its magic, too. The mere mention of the wooden spoon could stave off defiant acts such as deliberately disobeying, sassing back, “borrowing” your older brother’s pocket change, or singeing your own eyebrow off while playing with your father’s matches.

On more than one occasion, my mother would ask the utterly ridiculous rhetorical question: “Do I need to get the wooden spoon?”

She would even take the instrument of discipline and cookery on road trips. Even when concealed, its presence was felt. I remember one time we were on a day trip to place my father had to go for an hour’s worth of business. While my dad was in some office, my brother and I played in an adjacent field. At one point I found the wooden spoon tucked up near the front seat of the car. I pulled it out and starting pretending it was a sword. As I swashbuckled toward a patch of woods, the wooden spoon leapt out of my hand and flew deep into a patch of briers beyond reach.

Although I had repeatedly insisted that it was only an accident, but my mom wasn’t buying any of it. I had to spend the rest of the time in the backseat, perseverating over what would happen when my dad got back. When nothing did, I had to sweat it out the long ride home, wondering how bad my punishment would be, regretting I had ever touched something that wasn’t mine.

If I had done anything bad, I was lucky to only get the wooden spoon. For serious offences, it was Dad and the belt. Those castigatory moments happened after my mom would utter the oft cited albeit cliché phrase, “What ‘till your father gets home.”

After the arduous wait, the grip of fear as he walked in, the dead-man-walking moment hearing the mumbling that was mom telling dad all that I had done, Dad would call me into his room.

There he would ask me what I had done. I would tell him all. There was no point of lying at this point. He already knew. In fact, as I would later find out, he knew a lot more than I had realized. We lived in a pretty small town where no one person was separated by more than one or two degrees from each other. Dad would then talk to me, very calmly, about what I had done, why it was wrong and such. Then came the consequence out from around his waist punctuating a lesson that would be soon learned and long remembered.

Whether with a wooden spoon, belt, or bare hand, spanking was a part of my childhood, of my friends’ childhoods. It’s what our parents did. It’s how we learned. When we got it, we deserved it. We didn’t like it at the time, but, let me tell you something, we did learn.

While I would never think of using an object to spank my kids, I don’t hold it against my parents at all. They were good, dedicated parents. Perhaps if they had spared the wooden spoon, I might not be who I am today.

http://www.nj.com/parenting/index.ssf/2013/05/does_spanking_deserve_jail_tim.html

Even if you don't watch, second hand television can still get you

Still once again, it’s TV’s fault – and now you don’t even have to be watching it!

Recently the American Academy of Pediatrics warned that television is not only dangerous to early child development, but by merely having the TV turned on could result in problems.

Some experts are calling it “secondhand television.”  Likened to the hazards of secondhand cigarette smoke, when a TV is turned on when a child is playing nearby, his or her language development is affected, they say.  A child won’t develop a working vocabulary necessary for school because the television will keep children and parents from interacting.

But think about it.  Isn’t that the whole idea of putting the TV on in the first place?  Try getting anything done with a toddler nipping at your ankles!  You have to wonder if the members of the American Academy of Pediatrics have ever really spent an extended amount of time around the preschool set. Next time they want to release a study, let’s release Happy Hoppers Kiddie Care on them and see how much studying they get done.

And just try listening to the intricate, intellectual dialogue between sports casters with a toddler talking your ear off.  If I had a dime for every “Daddy can’t hear, darling,” I’ve uttered, I’d have me a 57 inch widescreen LCD digital TV in the bathroom.

Televisions, like computers, smart phones, hand-held video game devices – screen technology – have become essential childrearing tools.  Why else would Barney DVDs have the wonderful option of continuous play?  Or why are there these delightfully mesmerizing, parent soothing cable stations like PBSKids Sprout or Noggin-Nick Jr. that run nonstop kid fare?  And how else can a bone-weary mommy or debilitated dad tune their little prodigy into a Baby Einstein than the use of a DVD and the glorious TV? 

Let’s be honest, older generations, the only reason the TV was shut off when we were kids is that there was nothing really good on.  We had three major network channels and one blurry public service station.  If it wasn’t primetime or Saturday morning, it just wasn’t worth it.

Today television not only aids parents in raising their children, but it also plays an important role in the social, behavioral, and intellectual development of our kids.  A recent study by Common Sense Media found that kids under 8 spend twice as much time in front of screen media than they do books, either reading themselves or being read to.  The study further found that 40% or two to four year olds and over 50% or five to eight year olds use smart phones, iPads, and the like. 

If today’s technology is changing the way we process information they way experts contend it is, what parent would want his children still thumbing pages of antiquated books when they could be touching screens of tablets like the other kids?  What respectable parent says to a child, “If you have one good friend in your life, that’s a lot,” when they kid swinging next to him on the playground will have no less than 65,800 friends of social media sites?  What parent wants his kid to think of apples and blackberries and ice cream sandwiches as something to eat? 

Whether we like it or not, technological advances are going to change the way we process information, they way we parent, and it will mandate greater screen time for us and our kids.  We must remember, though, that technology is essentially neutral.  We are the ones who put it in gear.  Let’s focus on teaching and modeling constructive use of screen technology so.  Remember, if it wasn’t for TV, you would never remember where you were the moment Fonzie jumped the shark.

Happy Mother’s Day to a mom who never stopping mothering

I had spoken to my mother on the phone the morning of the day she died nearly 21 years ago.
She was in end-stage lung cancer and tumor fever had her back in the hospital for the umpteenth time in two years. Tumor fever is when the body says, “That’s it! I’m going to take on this insolent cancer myself,” and turns up the heat to fry the intruder while scorching the landscape along the way. They’ll treat the fever, the doctors said. Palliative measures.

When I had called Mom that morning, she picked up the phone and told me she had just taken a shower and was about to get back into bed. She sounded like she had just run from the shower to the phone to the shower to the phone about a hundred times before she picked up. She was out of breath. I told her my wife, my then four-month-old son, Zachary, and I would be there in about an hour.
Mom was in the same hospital where my dad had died of bladder cancer only seventeen months earlier, two doors down to be exact. She knew what tumor fever was. She knew what it meant. She had seen it as I had seen it before.

When we arrived at the hospital, Mom was in bed. Her breathing looked like a fish out of water. She had an oxygen tube that looped around the top of one ear, to her nostrils, and disappeared around the top of her other ear, but it didn’t seem to be doing much good.

“I -- breath -- breath -- breath – can’t -- breath -- breath -- seem -- breath -- breath -- breath -- to -- breath -- breath -- breath -- catch -- breath -- breath -- breath -- my -- breath -- breath -- breath -- breath.”

That’s alright, I told her in a forced nonplussed tone, we’d do all the talking. My wife and I made as much banal banter as we could to fill the quiet spaces to prevent too much thought while Zachary played in the walker we had brought with us.

“This is – breath – breath – breath – my grand – breath – breath – son,” Mom said proudly to the woman in the bed next to hers. My mom asked my wife to bring the baby closer to her. Then, although Mom struggled for breath, she began to sing.

“The itsy -- breath -- breath -- breath -- bitsy spider -- breath -- breath -- breath -- climbed up the -- breath -- breath -- water -- breath -- spout -- breath – breath – breath…”

She held her hand up high, raising up with it the tube that ran from the bruised bend in her arm up to the plastic sack half-filled with clear liquid. Zachary’s eyes were glued to her hand.

“Down came the -- breath -- breath -- rain and -- breath -- breath -- wash the spi -- breath -- breath -- der out…”

It was as breathless as it was breathtaking. The effort this newly crowned grandmother put into a simple song for her child’s first child was paramount to pyramids. Every note so delicate, so deliberate.
Soon after the song ended, a nurse appeared. My mother explained her breathing difficulty, and the nurse, smiling, asked if she was ready for the morphine shot now. It seemed she had held off the palliative measure so she could be awake and alert for our visit, putting her struggles aside. Yet another heroic act.

Mom said yes she was ready for the shot now. The nurse smiled at her and then left the room. Mom motioned that she wanted Zachary up on the bed. My wife propped him up between her feet. The nurse came in with the needle. She walked around to Mom’s IV and proceeded to inject the medicine in an opening high up on the tube.

“What will that do,” I asked the nurse.

“It will relax her so she doesn’t have to work so hard to breathe,” the nurse said. She finished then left the room.

I smiled at my mom; she smiled back and closed her eyes. Later that afternoon, as my son lay happily by her feet, my mother died. She was 56 years old.

That was my mom…being a mom…even to her last breath.

Thanks, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

 

from

http://www.nj.com/parenting/index.ssf/2013/05/happy_mothers_day_to_a_mom_who.html

 

When daughter's "Daddy" has a certain ring

“I love you, Daddy,” my five year old daughter said for no apparent reason. I smiled. It was nice to hear – genuine, heartfelt, and with no other intention than a spontaneous burst of love. But I knew from experience it wouldn’t be that way for long.

When my now 18 year old daughter was 14, she and I were sitting on the couch watching a sitcom where a man and a woman were whispering sweet innuendos to each other throughout the entire show. I sat there nervously hoping my daughter wasn’t getting half of it while fearing the other half she was.

In my peripheral vision, I could see her fiddling with her left hand. “What’s wrong with your hand,” I asked.
She held up her left hand. Her third finger was red and the swelling was overtaking a ring. “It’s stuck, Daddy,” she whined. Her use of the loaded word “Daddy” immediately disarmed me – a perfected signature move on her part – turning my readied reprimand into sympathetic understanding. No such buzzword works on my wife, however, who, from practically the other side of the house knew there was a problem.

“What did you do to your finger,” my wife yelled as she walked into the living room. “Why would you even try to put that thing on? It’s clearly too small for you.”

My daughter then regaled us with a tale of a ring given to her by a best friend in elementary school. She had always loved this ring, she continued. In fact, according to my daughter, this ring could be considered one of the greatest rings in the world.

“But it went on so easily,” she insisted.

My first instinct was to just forcefully yank the bugger off, but tears began to flow and that was that.
Now there are many homeopathic methods to get a stuck ring off of a finger: hold hand up high above heart; apply ice or soak in ice water; apply generous amounts of lubricants including, but certainly not limited to soap, hand lotion, petroleum jelly, olive oil. I’ve heard of people spraying the finger with window cleaner, wrapping the finger in masking tape, or even using hemorrhoid cream.

When the raised hand and ice did not work, we decided to move on to soaps and salves. So my daughter, her mother, and I made our way up to the bathroom where the light was better and where it is more fitting to deal with issues of health, wellness, and stuck things.

Unfortunately, no amount of unguents helped the ring give way. I began to rummage through the medicine cabinet hoping for an idea when I came across a pair of fingernail clippers. Sure, we could cut it off. I began snipping away at the metal. This would work, but it was going to take a long time.

“Wait here,” I said and jetted down the stairs to my little space underneath the basement steps where I keep my tools.

The first thing I reached for was my hacksaw. But I wasn’t sure exactly how I would be able to maneuver it without some collateral damage. I thought of carrying up my power circular saw, just as a joke of course, but I figured she was already experiencing enough stress, why add to it. I finally decided on a couple of pliers and a pair of sheet metal cutting shears.

As I was coming up the steps, I could hear my daughter begging my wife to hurry with the fingernail clippers before “Daddy gets back.” Now the word “Daddy” rang like a profanity.

By the time I made it back to the bathroom, my wife had clipped her way about three quarters of the way through the ring. “Just let Mommy finish,” my daughter pleaded. Oh, now it’s “Mommy,” is it?

I pulled out the sheet metal shears, took her trembling hand in mine, and quickly snipped thought the rest of the ring. I tossed my wife a pair of pliers and together with a second pair I had, we pried open the ring and it was off.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she said in the tone I had now become accustomed to hear mostly before the phrase, “can I have…”

I looked at my five year old daughter, appreciating the moment all the more because I know just how fleeting it will be. I then gave her a great big hug. “Daddy loves you, too.”

 

A mall's closing can mean more than just bottom-dollar bargains

A few weeks ago, I read that the Shore Mall in Egg Harbor Township, Atlantic County, was closing at the end of the month, and that the bulk of the building was slated for demolition. I realized that I couldn't just sit idly by; I was compelled to do something. So I loaded up the minivan with the family and took the hour or so drive for one last look.
The sense of place has a way of weaving itself into the fabric of one's being, and certainly, the Shore Mall is woven into mine like fine, majestic denim.
I took the “back way” to the mall, the same route my dad always took when I was a kid. My dad never like highways. He would go miles out of his way, along roads with no shoulders or curbs, just to avoid a little traffic. I was amazed by the many housing developments that now populated areas that were considered the middle of nowhere decades ago.
The vast back parking area of the mall looked pretty much the same except for the notable absence of parked cars. This was the place where for many years my parents would take my brothers and me to watch Santa Claus land in a helicopter.
We pulled up to my old go-to entrance. I was thrilled to get one of the best parking spaces I'd ever gotten there. Inside felt like Mad Max meets Mall Rats. Workers were carting out a Tetris of display fixtures. Many stores were dark, empty, and gated. Those that were still open appeared sparsely stocked and disheveled. There were a few people roaming about possibly looking for bargains or, like me, reminiscences.
I showed my kids where the old Sears catalog pick-up used to be. My mom did all our back-to-school shopping by catalog. Weeks later we'd go to the small catalog pick-up area, take a number, and wait an eternity.
“That's where I bought my first pair of Levi's,” I told my kids. Since all our back-to-school clothes were from the Sears catalog, all my jeans were Toughskins, a unique type of denim that did not resemble anything my friends were wearing, which they often reminded of.
I pointed out where the music store used to be. That was the place I bought the Grease soundtrack record that got me in so much trouble. My older brother and I had taken the bus to the mall. The last thing my dad had said to us was to make sure we keep enough money to get back on the bus. When I saw how much the Grease album was, I had a dilemma. Needless to say, my father was very angry and yelled at me through most of the back roads home.
There were so many places with their stories. Here was the shell of a department store I worked at when I was in high school. They assigned me to the linens department. It was very awkward at first. But, let me tell you, I can still fold a fitting sheet like nobody's business. There was the space where the t-shirt kiosk used to be where I once bought a Cheap Trick t-shirt that my aunt thought inappropriate for a boy to wear until I explained to her that they were a rock band. And where I got a John Lennon t-shirt a couple of days after he was killed.
While my wife took our five year old daughter to the bathroom, I stood with my two youngest boys, put my arms on their shoulders and told them that how this mall was one of the ruins of my life in progress, my Parthenon, a monument to what was that helped create in me what is, and in a few short months, it will be a flat empty space.
I told my kids to look around, but not just here. I told them to remember to look around in their own lives, to appreciate the places they go because it will all be woven into who they will be.
As we walked out the door by the old pizzeria, my daughter looked up to me thoughtfully and said, “You mean we're not even going to get anything!”http://www.nj.com/parenting/index.ssf/2013/01/a_malls_closing_can_mean_more.html

Summer Family Depression

I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed, but reruns of the 1970s family drama, “The Waltons” has been showing up on more than one cable channel.

The resurgence – albeit modest – of the Great Depression family throwback hit couldn’t come at a better time because my family is in the throes an economic depression of our own, so with the retro-runs I can show my kids just how fun a depression can be. 

While summer gives my kids more time to ride their bikes, play at the park, swim in the lake, hang out with their friends, it also affords them more time to ask for things.  I can’t imagine how they make it from breakfast to lunch during the school year without grazing a kitchen every half hour.

Just the other night my wife and I were sitting on our front porch swing when my daughter opened the front door and asked if she could have some leftover chili.  My wife said no because they would be having it for lunch the next day.  Two minutes later my son steps out and asks if he could have a few slices of cold cuts.  No, my wife said, the cold cuts are for lunches.  Not five minutes later, my daughter, who obviously lost the toss, opened the door, told us how much she loved us and asked if we could order a pizza.

It’s not as though we don’t feed our children, we do.  Only three hours earlier we were sitting at the table scoffing down bowls of chili and rice.  My son had three helpings to my one. 

And it’s not just food.  Apparently parental greetings now begin with Can I get...?  Can I have…?  Can we buy…? 

  

The problem is we can’t just spend money that way during the summer.  You see, I am a teacher and just about midsummer my family hits a depression.

Early in June we hit an economic slowdown and eventual recession where any fiscal growth slows, spending comes to a near halt, and employment opportunities are reduced greatly. 

Sure, we tuck some money under the mattress throughout the school year for the rainy day that is June, July and August, but that little cushion has a funny way of losing its stuffing every time we change the sheets.  Wouldn’t it be nice if…? begins the conversation.  We’ll just take a little…it continues.  We’ll make sure to replace it…we vow.  The cushion ends up being a flimsy sheet.

Once September hits we enter into a period of recovery when the demands for goods and services (new clothes, school supplies, activities, fundraisers, etc.) are able to be met with the supply of income (Dad working a couple of after school activities and teaching a couple of courses at the local university). 

However, the recovery is short lived and almost immediately falls into another recession with the onset of the holiday season.

About a month into the new year an economic boon occurs.  With summer impossible to imagine with all that snow and ice, spending becomes a remedy for cabin fever:  Some clothing for us or perhaps a new piece of furniture, a new video game for them because the poor little darlings are stuck inside.  Wouldn’t be nice if…we’ll just take a little…we’ll make sure to replace it. 

The household economy cycles back to the June slowdown followed by the summer depression where there is no room for eating leftovers as a snack, and no room for pizza.

There is room, however, for some fresh air-popped popcorn in front of penny-pinching, purse-string-tightening entertainment and a hopeful lesson for my kids that one does not need a lot of possessions to be happy episodes of “The Waltons,” and, though they may not believe it, they could be much worse off:  They could have even more brothers and sisters.

My Graduation Keynote Speech

Since it is now obvious to me that my invitations to speak at any graduation ceremony had been lost in the mail, I shall address the speech I had written in anticipation of said invitations to all graduates of the class of 2012.

Graduates:

Today you find yourself at the end of one seemingly long journey and at the beginning of an assuredly longer one.  Yet, these two journeys are far more alike than they appear.

Regardless of what you may think, regardless of low test scores, regardless of reports attacking the efficacy of public education, you, as successful graduates, now possess all the experience you ever will need to lead productive and satisfying lives.

Robert Fulcrum said that everything you ever really needed to know, you learned in kindergarten.  He was, however, only one thirteenth correct.

I know to some of you this may come off as rather depressing, but school and the rest of your life are pretty much the same; it is just we adults who change the verbiage so everything sounds much more complicated than it really is.  Take for example attendance.

Attendance is just as important in the real world as it is in school.  Poor attendance will wreak havoc with your professional as well as your social life.  Your boss never wants to see you saunter in even two minutes late.  If this by chance does occur, make sure you’re seen working at least twenty minutes past your usual time.  Much like detention, this does not serve much of a purpose aside from giving a pleasurable feeling of power to those in charge.  Never be truant from a reunion with old friends or a family wedding.  No matter how good you think your excuse is, even if you have a doctor’s note, it will never be good enough and you’ll be forevermore reminded of missing the time.

In school and life, art and music are the things that are most worthwhile, yet they are the least we tend to devote time to and they are usually the first to be cut when budget crises arise.

Life, like school, has homework.  Tons of homework.  Contrary to what anyone might lead you to believe, no one actually likes homework.  People would much rather play with their friends or their toys or their friends’ toys.  Mowing the lawn, weeding, raking, painting, unclogging toilets, fixing leaking faucets, scrapping the goo from the bottom of the trash can is home work that must be completed before there’s any recess time.  And if you neglect your homework, you will not get credit.

Credit is what you get when you do well.  Doing home improvement projects get you lots of credit that can manifest itself in many was such as a night out with your friends.  Of course earning extra credit never hurts any either, and it’s readily available.  Flowers, a non-coerced back-rub or picking up your socks always earns points.  Ladies, try sitting through an entire NASCAR race with him without nodding off.  Gentleman, bring home a copy of “The Vow” and watch the entire movie with her without nodding off.  Remember, the more credit attained, the better the grade.

Like it or not, we are all graded on a daily basis.  If it isn’t an evaluation at work, it’s the neighbors looking at your porch that needs painting or the polite smile from someone crunching your tuna casserole.  But it’s not only your grades that take you to the head of the class.  To be successful, you must always be prepared:  Never go to a meeting without a writing instrument even if you have nothing to write down, it looks impressive; always do your math in pencil, as any accountant will tell you 2+2 does not always equal 4; always check your answers, even when you are one hundred percent right, you still may be wrong; take good notes, there is always a test afterwards; memorize your facts, corporate America loves trivia; spelling counts, especially names; don’t eat or chew gum while working, you’ll eventually get called on in mid-chew; and to let everyone know just how hard you are working, it is important to always show all your work unless, of course, you’re a lawyer.

It is societies principles that lead you through your daily schedules and guide you in the right direction, and trouble may send you right to the vices.  It’s all very much like Salisbury steak.

Salisbury steak appears regularly on school lunch menus.  The meal sounds regal enough for a king:  Salisbury steak -- a generous portion of prime tender meat smothered in thick, rich gravy.  However, as every graduate of public school knows, Salisbury steak is nothing but a hamburger with an identity crisis.  You can make the ground meat of your life into anything you want:  a loaf, patty, sloppy Joe, meatball or a steak.

And that, my dear young friends, is the essence of life:  Salisbury steak.

Thank you.

What Education Reformers Tend to Overlook

I teach high school in Camden, New Jersey — cited, yet again, as the second most dangerous city in the nation.

"I could never work where you do," this guy said to me at a social gathering I attended not very long ago. It was a friend of a friend who had been teaching in a suburban school district for over twenty years and whom I had just met. There were several teachers at this party because we teachers, like fish, tend to travel in schools (I hear the groan from here!). "Why not?" I asked. He looked at me as though the answer was obvious. "It's Camden," he said chuckling.

"And...?" I said.

He looked around the five of us who were standing in the kitchen. He was looking for help and wasn't getting any. Then, in a more serious tone, he said, "Well, being white..."

"Being white?" I said as if I misheard.

"Yeah. Being white I couldn't tell the kids, you know, what to do," he said.

"Why not?" I said.

"They're not going to listen to some white guy," he said.

I looked at my own complexion and then back at my acquaintance. "That has never been an issue for me," I said.

"But I hear the pay is good," he said as if I hadn't just addressed his last point. He was a classic overtalker, someone who will keep yapping with little regard to anything anyone else says. "Combat pay, that's what you guys get, combat pay." Was this attitude why inner city schools are plagued with such teacher turnover problems? Do people really believe you need to be a certain race to be effective with a certain population? And if that's so, do they also believe the inverse is true? Was this irrational and ignorant fear, subtle racism or inherent guilt?

"The idea that inner city teachers make more money than teachers in the suburbs is ludicrous," I said.

"Look at test scores," he overtalked. "They're always lower in the inner city. You know why? Because the kids are so bad that these schools have to waste money on higher salaries, combat pay."

"Combat pay is a myth! And you want to talk test scores?" I said. "On a practice assessment test once supplied by the state, the writing prompt for the persuasive writing section begins with a scenario: After a soccer championship, the fans, in celebration, charge the field and many cut pieces of the goal nets to take as souvenirs leaving the nets as tattered threads. The principal, so it goes, says that the money for the repair of the goals will come from all the school's clubs. The task is to write a letter to the board of education agreeing or disagreeing with this decision," I said in a single breath.

"Yeah? So?" He said.

"Soccer isn't exactly a big sport in the inner city. But in the suburbs..." I let my voice trail off.

"Doesn't matter," he began. "A test is a test is a test. The state standardized tests are the only way to measure achievement across the board."

"It's only one way," I said.

"It's the only one that counts," he said. "And all kids have the same opportunity to pass. These kids just don't take the opportunities that come their way."

"I'll grant you that there are inner city kids who live up to the expectation society and the suburbs have put upon them, but in no way do these kids all have the same educational opportunities. There are kids who have to care for their siblings because a single parent is off working her second or even third job. Others aren't sure if there will be a meal when they get home. Many walk the streets in fear and live in houses with bars on the windows to protect what little they have. Many do not have a desk with ample light and parents who have gone to college, parents whose parents have gone to college standing close by to help them with their homework. The opportunities are as far apart as their economic status," I said.

"Aw, you're just rationalizing because your test scores aren't as good as the suburbs," he said.

"You know what real school reform would be? Maybe school districts shouldn't hire teachers. Maybe the state should. Then a teacher could work at one school for a few years and then be transferred to another for a few more years and so on. Then a teacher could work in both the more wealthy suburbs and the inner cities putting their real teaching skills to the test. If a teacher can get high test scores from their students in the most affluent districts, let's see those same teachers do it in the least," I said.

This friend of a friend sipped his drink and looked at me and chuckled, "A lot of teachers think like you when they first start teaching. Don't worry; you'll get like the rest of us. You'll grow out of it," he said.

"That's funny," I responded. "Teachers have been telling me that for years."

Odyssey of the Playground

In his famous journey, Homer’s Odysseus had to suffer and prevail over great challenges both mental and physical before he could finally return home.  With the help of his guardian from Mt. Olympus, the goddess Athena, Odysseus was able to escape the eye of Cyclops and the voices of the Sirens.  Of all the hardships, however, the hero of the Odyssey never had to endure anything as arduous as the elementary playground at recess. 

My son once came home from school complaining that one of his classmates had annoyed him during recess by constantly inflicting a “spider hold” on him.  A spider hold, I deducted by his description and rather annoying demonstration, is sort of like that Vulcan knock-out pinch to the neck that Mr. Spock did on Star Trek to those who annoyed him.  My son told me that all the kids were constantly giving each other the “spider hold,” but he found it ridiculous and, frankly, somewhat uncomfortable.

My heart went out to him.  I remember those seemingly innocent albeit slightly injurious rites of passage in the schoolyard.

“Hey, Chester!”  Wham!  A full force blow to the upper body.  “It’s good to see you back.”  Whomp!  A breath-taking slug to the back.  There were others.

I dreaded Tuesdays.  In my school it was referred to as “Toes-day.”  On this particular day, someone would walk up to you and stomp his foot down on yours as hard as he could.  I would wake up the next morning with mixed feelings.  Yes, I had survived another “Toes-day,” but now it was “Weddings-day,” a day wrought not only with physical pain, but emotionally scarring as well.  On “Weddings-day” the nuptials were performed by a blind-sided shove that made you go flying into the nearest girl, preferably one in need of a good emollient.  Any contact constituted marital bliss. 

Painful though these were, it was merely the light stuff, the work of the underlings. 

Those who perpetrated these little annoyances were the imbecilic henchmen to the archenemy that was Gunter; six feet forever to my four foot whatnot, Gunter was the bully’s bully.  Gunter had been left back so many times that he had his own parking spot.  Gunter was so mean that he’d step on your toes and push you into girls on any day of the week.

Gunter had it out for me.  Mostly everyday during sixth grade I was either tripped, noogied, Indian burned, Charlie horsed, ear flicked, or just plain punched by sasquatchian kid.  I had no idea why until one day when he was caught red handed, that is, he had me in a headlock grimacing in pain when a teacher walked up.  The teacher told Gunter to stop pummeling me.  “But he’s wearing Bo-bos,” he said about my sneakers with the tell tale “BB” on the sole.  “That’s stands for basketball,” I said from inside Gunter’s elbow, repeating the words of my mother.  Even the band kids laughed.

According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, approximately one-third of school children have been bullied or have participated in bullying by the time they are in high school.  Unfortunately, children learn to tolerate these unwarranted assaults as a means of self-preservation.  It’s the classic catch-22:  If a child complains, he is ridiculed by his peers or he may incite the bully to take even more violent actions.  Telling a teacher is completely out of the question.  The code of ethics among school children wading their way through playground politics is clear on this one.

In this age where schools are installing metal detectors, completing random locker checks, practicing lockdown drills where students stand in a darkened classroom against a wall so that the classroom will appear unoccupied to a gunman in the hallway, implementing and enforcing zero tolerance policies, and completing volumes of paperwork when bullying is reported, some abusive behaviors are still being over looked and even encouraged in schools by those who still believe in the antiquated adage that boys will be boys. 

A simple punch in the arm my look innocent enough; however, accepting even the slightest nudge could be a sign of something far worse.

Let's Blame TV...Again!

And once again, our beloved TV is under attack..

Health experts are stating that television influences what, where and how much children eat showing a direct correlation between television viewing and obesity. A California study said that a quarter of a child’s total food intake occurs in front of the TV, while another study claims a direct connection between the number of commercials advertising unhealthy foods a child views and the child’s weight.

Come on.  Obesity is now TV’s fault?  Weren’t there any fat little kids before television?  What about the Little Rascals character Spanky?  He certainly tilted the scales on the jolly side.

Haven’t we already blamed child violence, disrespectful attitudes, failing grades, illiteracy and a multitude of various domestic disturbances – especially during football season – on television? 

Is there nothing we can’t blame on good ol’ television?

Why not road rage?  Besides being inspired by examples of the violent highway phenomenon on the evening news, being stuck in traffic while hurrying home to see a specific show on TV will rile up the dander of the most passive driver.

All crime could be televisions fault as well.  What could be more rousing to the aspiring criminal than a slick bank robbery, a cool chase, and a mutual respect between robbers and cops as seen on TV?

Stupidity itself, if not wholly television’s fault, could easily be correlated to the amount of television viewing from the simplest, a dumbest, childish stunt on a skateboard to corporate abracadabra.  One interesting study could be how many hours big bank executives watched Dallas and Dynasty during the Eighties.  It’s surprising that greed was listed in the top seven most deadly sins before television.  How could everyone have known about it without seeing it on TV?

It is obvious to me that television, like lawyers in the Eighties and disco in the Seventies, has become the scapegoat of our time.

But where are her defenders?  Where are all those who were raised on television?  Have they abandoned her when she needs them the most?

Lest we forget that she has always been there for us.  When we were learning how to count and to say our ABC’s, who was there to sing them to us?  When we had nothing to do on Saturday mornings, who was there to animate our day?  When we were feeling sad, who made us laugh with the likes of Bill Cosby, Michael J. Fox, Tony Danza and Tom Hanks wearing a dress?  When we were feeling unloved, who gave us hope with the Love Boat?  When our lives seem dull, who gave us Fantasy Island?  When we needed good, wholesome fatherly advice, who gave us Mike Brady?  When we needed to learn how to be cool, who gave us the Fonz?  When we were never cool, who gave us Square Pegs to tell us it was okay?  When girls were supposed to live at home until marriage, who showed us the way with Laverne and Shirley?  When we would do something embarrassingly dumb, who gave us Seinfeld to show us how to laugh at ourselves?  When we would feel guilt for tinges of prejudice in our jokes, who was it that gave us Archie Bunker to show us just how funny bigotry is.

Who did all this for us?  Television, that’s who.

She needs us now more than ever.  We must rally to her defense.  We must show her support by taking responsibility for our own actions, for allowing our children to watch television unsupervised for hours upon hours.  You can’t blame the cigarette for emphysema, the drink for alcoholism, the gun for murder, right?  So you can’t blame television for anything but fine, loving companionship.

We don’t need anyone to tell us about our television.  Remember, how it felt when we were too sick to go to school but not to sick to watch TV.  Remember how we’d watch the Price Is Right and how we knew that a box of Rice-A-Roni (that San Francisco Treat) was less expensive than a box of Bisquick because we always had to go grocery shopping with our mothers on Saturday mornings.  Mmmm.  Rice-A-Roni. That reminds me, I am getting a little hungry.

I am Merging my Family

Company mergers are nothing new, but I have recently become convinced that merging must be more than a mere mercantile roll in the corporate hay.  There really must be something to this merger thing or industrial giants would never consider it.  So, I figure, if it’s good enough for corporate America, it must be good enough for me.  That’s why I’ve decided it’s time to follow their lead.  I’ve decided to merge my family with the family down the street.

Merging is nothing new to my family.  We’ve already managed to merge the dining room with the living room so breakfast, cartoons, kids and mom may coexist peacefully and the bathroom and the family room must have merged because every time I’m up there, a sudden family run on the plumbing arises.

Now, as to the merger -- first of all, the family down the street has a far larger house, that is, physical plant, than I have.  Their two and a half baths combined with my one will improve employee as well as customer satisfaction by a whopping 250%! 

As one large single-family unit, I can drop my health insurance coverage and accept a generous buy-out check (adding fuel to the tax-your-benefits debate) resulting in an increase of liquid assets while utilizing the family down the street’s insurance more efficiently.  Even though the family down the street’s insurance may not be as good, it’s cheaper.

We will file our taxes jointly giving us a total of seven children and two stay-at-home moms guaranteeing us virtually tax-free status for at least the next 21 years.  That’s better than any old tax moratorium or shelter.

Instead of being a two-car family, we will now boast a fleet of four vehicles which, even though we may never actually need them all, must be a good thing because we’re bigger and have more stuff and can buy car wax by the bulk. 

Of course, as in any merger, there is bound to be a duplication of services that, as difficult as it may be, must be dwelt with.  Although years of devoted, faithful, loyal, productive service have been provided, it is with sincere and deepest regret that, in order to maintain an even greater profit margin, certain family members’ positions must be dissolved.  The position of father will be named by the family with the most assets brought to the table.  A position will be created for the other father with the job title of great uncle visiting from a Midwestern state to be named at a later date.  The position of mother will be maintained by the mothers from both families.  The said mothers will create their own job descriptions.  At first, an early retirement option was proposed for one of the mothers, but after realizing both mothers wanted it, the offer was quickly withdrawn.  Some children may have to be let go.  If there weight as a tax deduction is less than their benefit to the family, they can and will be pink slipped.  Please note that it is not the responsibility of the family to place them elsewhere.  It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been with the family.  They’ve picked up skills.  They’ll land on their feet.  We’ll give them a right jolly letter of recommendation.  Besides, there are plenty of programs out there to retrain them as adorable orphans.

As for any family pets:  any and all will be stored in a warehouse in Piscataway, New Jersey for no longer than five years and, if no use is found for them, they can and will be sold at auction along with any unused furniture, fixture or appliance.  What is not sold at auction will be abandoned.

When we are one large, functioning family, we will begin to eye up other families on the block for hostile takeovers.  Since we can now buy higher, sell lower, work faster and more efficiently; other small families haven’t a chance at survival.  After we’ve acquired the block, we’ll market an aggressive expansion program into the next block and then the next until anti-trust laws stop us or our competition is merely a handful of other larger-than-life families who will work with us to keep everyone’s prices and wages even and “fair.”

As businesses begin to meld into larger and larger institutions, the smaller, middle-of-the-road businesses have less of a chance of success let alone survival.  If this trend continues, society will be split into two classes:  the laboring class and the executive class.  History tells us what happens next.

They Don't Call It a Number Two for Nothing

Every great society throughout history has had its vulnerabilities.  The Trojans had their horse.  The Romans had their hedonistic excesses.  The Russians had their inequality of classes and the French had all their heavy sauces and thick creamy pastries.  It seems that one of America's vulnerabilities has been under our noses all along, but no one seemed to notice:  the number 2 pencil.

The first writing implement handed to a child is generally the crayon -- that colorful extension of an unbridled imagination and that great waxy smell.  With the crayon the sky can be green, grass can be purple and smiles can be larger than the faces that hold them.  Maybe people would be a little happier if they colored at least once or twice a week.  It's fun.  And don't worry about staying within the lines.  Too many people get hung up on coloring within the lines.  A teacher once told my parents that I had trouble coloring in the lines, but my original artwork was brilliant.

The first pencil most kids use is that thick blue one that makes those wonderfully broad soft lines on green paper with the wide spaces between the lines for big capital letters and numbers.  Suddenly the child's work is grayed a little and the lines within which they colored have become rigid and taught and highly structured so the letter "E" will always and forever have only three lines sticking out of one and not four or five or eight.  This shift from creative openness to unbending lines will, to many, be associated with the pencil.

Without warning the thick blue pencil that felt like something of substance in your hand is ripped away.  The child is told that it is now pass to use big blue.  I have even teachers "actively ignore" kids ridiculing their peers for holding onto the big blue pencil.  Now it is the thin, mousy yellow number two that is introduced.  And like a virus, it grows into the consciousness of society that this by which you will be tried, assessed, judged, measured, quantified, discriminated, condemned.

Thanks to the “No Child Left Behind” act, by third grade the number two pencil is used for the standardized test that will assess little more than the ability of an eight or nine year old to take a test.  It begins the conditioning process that fools our society into believing that standardized tests actually reflect knowledge and predict future academic success.

If it wasn't for the number two pencil, our school curriculums wouldn't be destroyed by being "aligned" to state and national tests.  By changing curriculums to what is being tested sends the message that anything taught that is not covered on the state tests is irrelevant and unimportant. 

If it wasn't for the number two pencil, kids who have vision and drive, but were not lucky enough to live in an affluent area where schools could afford to give them enrichment classes on the tricks to taking standardized tests, could get into better colleges.

If it wasn't for the number two pencil, people could be judged on ability and authentic knowledge and aptitude and not word games and numbers play.

The day I see a standard child is the day I will agree that standardized tests are good for more than just keeping testing services in business, school administrators in excuses and the less fortunate in repression.

The more we rely on the number two, the less likely we will be to find number one.

Another Ruin of a Life in Progress

A few weeks ago, as I was taking my family to a corn maze, hayride, and pumpkin picking, we drove past Kessler Memorial Hospital, a small country hospital in Hammonton, NJ, that was closed down a couple of years ago. Seeing this remnant of my childhood jogged loose a memory that had been left crinkled in the bottom of a file tagged “childhood.” 

I was a patient there twice between 1971 and 1972 when I was in second grade. 

I had been experiencing chronic sore throats and ear infections.  So, in the fall of 1971, like many others my age during that era, I had my tonsils taken out.  I also had my adenoids scrapped which back then I likened to falling off my bike and scrapping my knees.  That summer I had tubes put in my ears to help open up the ear canal.  I wished that those two procedures could have been flip-flopped because I wasn’t allowed to go swimming while the tubes were still in my ears.  I remember the doctor telling my mom that I could use ear plugs, but Mom was way too cautious for that, and so I dryly sat on the sandy sideline of summer fun.

Though I know I was at Kessler twice, the experiences have blended themselves into one recollection.  Memory has a way of condensing time.  It’s like having one file drawer that will only fit so many manila folders.  At some point your folders labeled gas and electric are pulled and filed together under utilities.

Days before being admitted, I remember telling people at school about my impending dilemma.  I received encouragement from my teacher, Miss Lalama, who touted the ice cream benefit of the tonsillectomy.  Then there were the condolences from my friends and the “better-you-than-me” looks. 

In the hospital I had a roommate named Tommy who is probably a composite of the two roommates I had with a little bit of the playground set thrown in, and his name may not have even been Tommy, but that’s how I remember him. 

Tommy was having the same procedure I was having.  I remember watching our parents talking to each other at the foot of our beds during most of the time they were there.  There was a large window at the end of the hallway that looked over a lake and further out toward the White Horse Pike.  I stood at that window after my parents left that first night, trying to see their car on the highway.  After watching for a long while, I picked a set of red rear lights that looked like what I thought might be on our car and decided that was Mom and Dad on their way home.  Knowing how my father hated highway driving, they probably took some back road home.

As I stood at the window, a nurse asked me if I wanted to take a ride in a wheelchair.  Sure, I said.  Tommy was also taking this joyride with us, and we both climbed into one wheelchair anticipating the fun.  After rolling through several corridors that all looked alike, we ended in a large room where we were given chest x-rays and had vials of blood taken from us.  This wasn’t a joyride at all.  Tommy and I both felt a little duped.  Later on the nurse asked us again if we wanted to take a ride.  We both declined afraid that she was planning on taking us to some diabolical experiments that would leave us looking like the sons of Frankenstein.

The morning of our surgery, I was awakened when it was still dark outside and given a shot.  The nurse said it was to relax me before I was taken to the operating room.  She gave one to Tommy, too.  Tommy and I didn’t talk much that morning.  I guess we were both lying in our beds that resembled oversized cribs, deep in our own thoughts about the meaning of it all or, more important, what flavor ice cream would be waiting for us in the end.

The shot was making me feel a different kind of drowsy I was used to feeling lying on the floor watching TV.  I asked Tommy if he felt it, too, but he was sound asleep.  I considered surrendering to the feeling, but decided to fight it because I wanted to see what was going to happen.

Soon an orderly came in the room to roll me to the operating room.  He seemed surprised I was still awake.

Once in the operating room I was scooted onto the table.  There was a lot of commotion around me, doctors, nurses, talking in what seemed another language, and certainly not the English I was used to.

A man held what looked to me like an athletic cup up to my face and asked me to count backwards from one hundred.  Not much past ninety-eight, I woke up with a sore throat.  And Mom and Dad were there.

While Kessler Hospital becomes another ruin of a life in progress, like the old neighborhoods and open fields, it’s the remembered stories, true to the teller, simple or severe, that will keep its doors open for generations to come.

Small World, Small House

We live in a small world; I live in a small house.

The recent earthing of a bus-sized satellite has me thinking about just how to clean up the orbiting rummage in the space around our small world.  This celestial scrap problem has me engrossed because the rummage from the little satellites around my small house has become exorbitant, too.

It wasn’t always that way, though.  Clutter has a way of appearing seemingly out of nowhere.  When it does, it spreads, and tolerance for muddle has a way of creeping up on you like middle age or the Jonas Brothers.

Shortly after we were married, my wife and I were invited to a coworker of hers for dinner.  I was taken by all the kid stuff scattered about their living room. 

Growing up my brothers and I rarely played in the living room.  Our indoor play was relegated to our bedroom, and when it became untidy, my mother would make us clean it under the threat of the wooden spoon.  As a teenager with a proclivity to disarray, she would simply keep my bedroom door shut.

If I recall correctly, my wife’s coworker referred to the mess as a medley child-dom or some such rubbish.  I called it chaos.  On the way home, my wife and I both vowed if we ever had kids – and after that visit with the screeching, yelping, slobbering, and biting we were a bit doubtful – we would never, ever let our living room become a playroom.

Today, five children later, I expertly slalom the living room like an Olympian.

Since we’ve been outnumbered, and our once pristine territory conquered by our satellites, my wife and I realized the only option was retreat.  So we decided to turn part of the basement into a wine cellar. 

I took some lattice, a few two by fours, and some molding and, along with my meager carpentering skills, crafted a wall where we could store our wine.  I illuminated it with track lighting and hung some vines and plastic bunches of grapes I got at a craft shop.  We rehabbed an old workbench we found left out on someone’s curb to store three different types of corkscrews.  I installed hangers for glassware.  We set up a couple of café style tables, hung poster sized reproductions of paintings, and wired up the room for sound. 

It was such a lovely space that my wife and I would eat late night dinners down there, just the two of us, after the little ones were tucked in bed and the older ones were transfixed to the television.

One day, while sitting in the living room, I heard a crash.  When I reached the bottom step to the basement, I saw shattered glass.  Apparently a glass had fallen from the ceiling rack.  I constantly tell the kids not to run and jump in the house, but, I resolve myself, it’s only one little glass.  Then I looked up and noticed that there were boxes on the floor:  hand-me-downs in waiting.  There were plastic tubs in which we keep holiday decorations piled three high in front of my wall.  Boots.  Piles of boots.  There had to be at least 23 pair.  There were crates overflowing with toys.  Old toys, new toys, toys I don’t remember ever seeing before. 

What had happened?  Had it been that long since I’d been down there?  No, of course not.  I am regularly down there.  I keep my tools under the basement stairs, and I recently had to snake out the toilet – again.

Perplexed, I came up from the basement and into the dining room.  There on the table were – what was that? – Transformers?  I looked over at the bookshelf:  Cars?  Action figures?  A baseball mitt?

Do we become so acclimated to the gradual derangement of our surroundings that it takes a collision to recognize the problem?

Calling my wife, I ran up to our bedroom, the final refuge, only to be greeted by R2D2 sitting on my desk, mocking me.

Not here as well, I said to my wife who was folding clothes.  Our eight year old was at the computer earlier and must have left it there, she told me.  She picked up the synthetic cyborg, placed it on top of one of the several piles of clothes, and left the room.

If the experts at NASA ever figure out how to clean up the space junk orbiting our small planet, I’d like them to let me know exactly how they did it because I’d like to get a little bit of my own space back, too.