Marching On

We are nearly one-twelfth of the way to Christmas! Hope you're making a list of what to get your loved ones.

Time marches on. Not in a goosesteppy way. Nor in an award-winning, knee-lifting, toe-pointing, marching band kind of way. More like kids playing army, chanting, "Hup, twop, threep, fourp!" In an ungraceful, stomping kind of gait. Time.

Last week, we passed our one-hundredth day of school. Meaning only seventy-four left. Teachers do that, you know. Wish their lives away. Counting down to the last day every year, like they can only live fully during their summer break. Still, it's a better deal than regular working people get. I found that out during my five years of employment with the state of Missouri, handling unemployment claims. The trade-off, though, was that from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m., I did not think about work. It was my own time. No homework. No worries. No planning. Quite liberating, actually. No stress. I could go to the store and not be recognized. I didn't have to live up to some antiquated saintly standard. But the lure of time, time stretching out lazily across June, July, and half of August, drew me back to teaching. That, and the elimination of my job, due to the advent of telephone claim-filing.

Time is a warn piece of Turkish Taffy when you're a kid, stretching on and on. Christmas takes forever to roll around again. Summer vacation is endless. One day you're running through the sprinkler while your grandpa waters the young trees surrounded by tiny metal fences, and the next day you're getting up early, watching The Lone Ranger and Fury, and walking a mile to school with your neighborhood friends. And that's okay. It was time. You didn't even see the new school year looming on the horizon. One day it's still summer, and the next day it's school. No dreading. For everything there is a season.

College rolls on for four years. Or more. It's limbo before starting your real life. Then things speed up. Marriage. Kids. Hopefully in that order. Life is what happens when you're making plans, as Sheryl Crow says. And before you know it, those kids are nearly ready to graduate. Try as you might, you can't put the brakes on now.

And once the kids are out on their own, time slows down again. Days stretch out. Blending one into the next. Time.

The Lengths of Political Correctness

This morning, The Pony and I left home a tad early to arrive at school in time for my duty. But because this is Backroads, we ran abreast of a developing problem.

A bus pulled in front of us from a side street. It passed three houses, then put on its flashers and threw out the stop sign. I had time. But not a lot of it. I watched the small, pink-ensconced girl as her tiny feet pitter-patted down her sidewalk toward the school bus, in that joyous off-to-school gait known only to kindergarteners. Her parents stood on the front porch watching her, grinning from ear to ear.

"C'mon, little differently-abled girl! Let's hop on your differently-abled short bus so we can get rolling."

The Pony stopped reading in the seat behind me. I caught his glance in the rearview mirror. "Mom. You can't say that. It's not politically correct."

"What? I didn't say anything wrong."

"You can't call it a short bus, Mom. It's a length-challenged bus."

I stand corrected.

Life on the V-List: Ancient Student Archetypes

Welcome to a new feature here at Unbagging the Cats. It's all about lists. It's all about something easy for Val to post when her artesian well of creativity is beset with a low water table.

Today's list is not about ancient students. No septuagenarian college freshmen here. It's about ancient archetypes from Val's childhood school days. You know. Back in the days of transistor radios and polyester stirrup pants and plastic headbands and blue, cloth-covered three- ring binders and black Converse low-tops and duck-and-cover air raid drills.

Every classroom was required to have the following archetypes:

1. The Judy Hensler-that kid, usually a girl, who constantly informed the teacher of goings-on that the rest of the students would rather she remained ignorant of. "Billy pulled Susie's hair in the cloakroom when we were putting on our galoshes."

2. The Cool Dude-that boy every guy wanted to be, and every girl wanted a note from. In my class, it was Wes. He wasn't a genius, wasn't wealthy, wasn't particularly good-looking, wasn't a bad boy, and wasn't a goody-goody. But he had a certain je ne sais quoi that made him popular.

3. The Volunteer-"Can I go out and clap the erasers? I'll get some wet paper towels and clean the board for you. Don't worry about us while you're gone--I'll take the names of anybody who talks. Can I write them on the board? Do you need someone to pass out the workbooks? I'll go get the crate of milks for afternoon snack."

4. The Outcast-a quiet kid who never reacted to insults, or made any effort to befriend other quiet kids. Never made any waves at all, frankly. Not even to raise a hand to go to the bathroom, instead tinkling inconspicuously while seated at her wooden flip-top metal desk, until The Judy Hensler informed the teacher. The Outcast's name was most often followed by a chorus of, "Ew. I wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole."

5. The Outlaw, Male Version-a breaker of rules, most often sneaky in creating mayhem. Been finding crumbled balls of pink powdered soap on the floor? He's your man. Check inside his desk, in the pencil tray. There's whole row of future ammunition lined up next to his Ticonderoga #2. The kid who would grab his jockstrap out of his black vinyl zip-top gym bag and put it over a girl's head during indoor lunch recess on a rainy day, while the teacher stood just outside the door, chatting with the teacher across the hall.

6. The Outlaw, Female Version-a mouthy backtalker, not at all sneaky, who made her displeasure known to everyone within a six-classroom radius. We were fortunate enough to have two. Of course they were sworn mortal enemies, who entertained us with daily arguments and fistfights twice a year. Bev, the alpha outlaw, once made the teacher so mad that she stomped over to Bev's desk (front row, first desk, naturally) and grabbed her by the hair, at which time she attempted to drag Bev out of the desk to the principal's office, but Bev's knees kept bouncing up against the bottom of the desk when she was lifted by her hair. Our teachers didn't take no guff! That's a fact, Jack!

7. The Sweet Girl-loved by all, protected by all, friends with everyone, unaware of her inner beauty. And unaware of most other things as well.

8. The Boy Genius-good at math, good at science, sometimes seen using a magnifying glass to focus sunlight into a smoldering black spot on the front of his blue cloth three-ring binder. (He had the good sense to stop when The Judy Hensler asked, "Do I smell something burning?") Sometimes seen in a chair in the principal's office with his coat over his head, unable to face the cold, cruel world.

9. The Girl Genius-competitive, somewhat snippy, looked down her nose at the vast sea of immaturity that surrounded her daily, yet thrilled when Wes the Cool Dude called her at home to see if she wanted to go to a movie. Lived for Stanford-Binet Achievement Test season.

10. The Socially Inept-the giggly boy who brought his lunch in a brown bag and eschewed rough-and-tumble playground games. The spacey girl who came to school with the back of her dress completely unzipped. They were not disliked, but not included in classroom cliques. Their overtures of friendliness were well-received if they initiated them. Which did not happen often, because, well, they were socially inept.

C'mon. You know you had these student archetypes. Maybe you had more, depending on whether you attended elementary school somewhere besides Backroads, Missouri.

Backroads Miz Manners Soothes a Savage

Dear Backroads Miz Manners,


This afternoon I was enraged to find cars parked at the end of a row of parking slots, completely blocking the exit route. At the other end of the lot, the main entrance, cars were also creating new spaces at the end of the row. What is with these people? Do they think nobody notices that they are not within the lines? There is even a city police station in this plaza, right by the entrance. What can I do to stop this illegal practice?


Signed,
Hopping Mad in Suburbia

**************************************************
Dear Hoppy,

Are you sure this parking style is illegal in your burb? Would a police officer knowingly allow scofflaws to scoff at his laws? Would a cat let a mouse run across his paws? Would a sexist egotistical lying hypocritical bigot let Doralee Rhodes change him from a rooster to a hen with one shot? But enough questions from me.

What can you do? Well, Hopping Mad, you can slam on your brakes, jump out of your car, and start hopping and pointing at the offenders. Perhaps you could scream, until spittle sprang from the corners of your mouth, that parking in a non-parking space is just not fair! When you tire of hopping, you can stamp your dainty foot. But while this may be an intense aerobic workout, it is unlikely to garner the favorable results you so desire. Namely, strapping the driver to a Hannibal Lecter dolly, complete with straitjacket and hockey face mask, and wheeling her to the local maximum security prison three miles down the road, where, upon admittance, you will throw away the key.

Let's try to get inside the demented mind of a row-extender. She is special. No need to drive around seeking another space when plenty of room abounds right there at the end of the row. There's no No Parking sign. No handicapped logo. Nothing to give an inkling that her car might be towed for violating a parking rule. She would be daft, really, to let such an empty area go to waste. And if somebody should challenger her on her automobile placement, she can simply explain that she thought it was a space, because those parking lines are kind of faded.

Yes, dear Hoppy, the world is full of clingers. They will stick to the ends of parking rows like fuzzballs stick to a cheap sweater. Like the wrong toilet paper sticks to a cartoon commercial baby bear's butt. Like white cat hairs on black dress slacks. Like popped Bazooka bubbles in a young girl's bangs. Like fresh asphalt on a white car's rocker panels. And you cannot do anything about them.

Save your rage for something you can change, dear. Like tailgaters. I hear that brake-checking is surprisingly effective.

Signed,
Backroads Miz Manners

A Delicate Malfunction of Inhuman Proportions

There's a big robot competition tomorrow in Cape Girardeau. Not for large robots. The competition is what's big.

Genius and his fellow Robot Boys have been traveling the county, garnering donations and demonstrating their metal dude to elementary and middle school students. They ran into some trouble this morning at the middle school, when their creation would not animate.

In explaining the debacle to another teacher, one Robot Boy said, "We had a real problem. His nut fell off and rolled across the floor." Which sounds doubly horrifying when described in those terms.

I'm hoping they can rebuild him, like Steve Austin. They have the technology. But lack the six million dollars. In spite of the donations.

Val, Your Go-To Gal

It seems like only yesterday that I was gloating about my two whole snow days this year, while complaining about my lack of snow days. For those of you whose Old Mother Hubbard of a school calendar has gone to the cupboard and found it completely devoid of snow days, my apologies. I'm not doing the Eddie Murphy ice cream dance. Really.

Some of you may practice my tactic of sitting around moaning about your bad snow day luck. But one of our own has taken the initiative. A regular pro-active professional educator is she. Sioux is making the choice to go out and grab herself some snow day gusto. Because you only go round once in life. I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't also rubbing a hole in that National Enquirer Lucky Blue Dot.

But surer than even the Blue Dot is Val, Your Go-To Gal for Obscure Getting-Out-of School Tactics. Sioux has come to the right place. Namely, the comments of yesterday's post. She requested advice for a dance to bribe the snow gods. Because I could not do the topic justice in that cold, antiseptic vacuum of a pop-up comment forum, I'm putting it here for all to see.

The Snow Dance. You must remember that the snow gods are showered with a plethora of offerings every year at this time. Promises to catch up on work, catch up on sleep, finish that Great American Novel, be nicer to the students, be tougher on the students, never "forget" another duty, plan lessons more thoroughly, draw up some new seating charts, stop wasting plan time with gossipfests, bring a healthy lunch instead of eating cafeteria food, you name it, they've heard it. The snow gods take a back seat only to New Year's Day for hearing empty promises.

What do you give a snow god who has everything? I think an original interpretive dance is in order. I can't give concrete details. No Arthur Murray footprints on the floor. Each dance should be unique to the dancer. For Sioux, I recommend incorporating the following: full moon, broke-down Crocs, a string of Christmas lights, and her hair, freshly shampooed in a school bathroom sink. Nothing else. Don't upset the snow gods. And don't upset the neighbors. Early morning hours might be appropriate.

Look for other Getting-Out-of-School Tactics in the future. Maybe. As the mood strikes Val, Your Go-To Gal. And feel free to ask for her methods to solve other obscure problems.

Please do not confuse Val, Your Go-To Gal with Backroads Miz Manners. One gives instructions, the other gives questionable advice. If you don't know the difference, stay on the porch, out of the way of the big dogs.

Sunny Outlook Wearing Thin. Stop.

Since mid-November, hope has sprung eternal in my human breast. Hope for that high-demand teacher-catnip, the ever-elusive snow day.

Have I been rewarded? I think not. I sent my hope springing, like a hopped-up springbok across the sands of the Kalahari, seeking some respite from routine. But unlike the mighty pronking springbok, my hope has withered, unrequited. Two meager snow days. The sole reward for my fountain of hope.

We are rushing at the speed of fifty-degree January sunlight toward the midpoint of winter. And what could Mr. Punxsutawney Phil possibly have to tell us next week? That we will have six more weeks of winter? Ooh! Don't scare me now, Mr. Phil, with that threat of balmy, mild days. Perhaps he will predict an early spring. If so, perhaps he can delineate the difference between winter weather and spring weather.

Because I seem to have forgotten.

It's now or never, Winter. Poo or get off the poo receptacle.