Addendum to Teens are dumb

I have decided, in light of other videos coming out showing more of what happened in DC with the Covington teens and the indigenous man, that I will go through what I wrote earlier and see how I feel now.

1. Teens are dumb

This still holds true. A group of teen boys is, in my opinion, way too immature to take to a Right to Life rally. Boys' brains mature even slower than girls, and when there are a bunch of teen boys, that is just a vat of hormones and poor judgment.

Some people have said the boys were chanting in solidarity, but if you have spent any time around teens, you might have paid attention to the sidelong looks some of them gave each other. Those sidelong glances say a lot. To me, they say, "I feel stupid, and I don't know how to act." They did not say, "I stand in solidarity with this indigenous man because I have a respect for his age and his experience."

2. Students who do not attend school with a diverse population often have "ideas" about their superiority.

This holds true, which I say from personal experience. I cannot guarantee that it applies to the Covington kids, and I'm not a betting person, but I'm gonna go with my hunch.

3. If you're wearing a MAGA hat, chances are you subscribe to some of the beliefs about how things used to be (read as "When white people had all the power, all the time").

I do not like to or want to blame the victim, but anyone with an ounce of sense should be aware that wearing a hat to a rally in DC that concerns a hotly debated constitutional right and happens during a tense government shutdown, is going to be putting oneself in a potentially tense situation. If you do not understand this, you should not attend such a rally at all (hat or no).

You have a right to wear whatever you want wherever you want, but people also have the right to think certain things of you if you wear such apparel. Women deal with this garbage all the time. Welcome to our world, boys.

4. If you're an adult who is taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC, you may want to discuss these things IN ADVANCE and urge them not to wear such accessories that will make them targets in a politically-charged atmosphere.

I stand by this. I put this squarely on the chaperones. I would have instructed students to not wear those hats. Wear them on the bus. Wear them in the hotel. Do not wear them on the Mall.

5. If you're an adult taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC that is supposed to be about respecting LIFE, you may want to consider all forms of life in the respect equation. Not just white, fetal life.

And this includes the asshats who are voicing their own loud sentiments that you might find abhorrent. Just because a person is yelling crazy sh*t at you doesn't mean you have to respond in kind. Ignore them.

6. If you're an adult taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC, you may want to think about and discuss how much recording of events happens at these events and that there is this the possibility that acting foolish will get you a lifetime of notoriety on social media.

No one could have foreseen this happening, but in all these videos floating around I do not see any adults blowing a whistle and yelling for the boys to move. I do not see any adults trying to intervene and perhaps get the boy to back up from the indigenous man, to say to the man, "Could you give this boy some space." I do not see any adults intervene when the other indigenous man says something inappropriate back to the Covington boy.

And so I still stand by this, too. The boy who "stood his ground" looked smug to me. That smugness may have truly been fear or confusion, but he was in a weird situation and none of his chaperones appear to have stepped in.

7. If you're an adult taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC and you see something going down, you may want to intervene and GET THE KIDS OUT OF THAT SITUATION so that they don't have notoriety on social media and get crucified by people who think they are smug little shitheads (which they may very well be, but they are teenagers and don't understand the fallout from their actions).

Teens are dumb, but adults shouldn't be

I have ALL kinds of thoughts about the march in DC and the Covington Catholic kids.

1. Teens are dumb

The pre-frontal cortex doesn't fully form until a person is 24 years old or so, which means teenagers are primed to make stupid decisions. That is just what they do.

2. Students who do not attend school with a diverse population often have "ideas" about their superiority.

I say this as a person who attended private school my entire life. I was under the assumption that public school was "bad." I thought private Catholic school was "the best." It wasn't until I was getting my master's degree in education that I got to see that public schools often offer more opportunities for students. Private schools might be good for some children and families, but they aren't necessarily "the best."

3. If you're wearing a MAGA hat, chances are you subscribe to some of the beliefs about how things used to be (read as "When white people had all the power, all the time").

I do not own a MAGA hat because I will not financially support Donald Trump in any way. I personally think he's a charlatan. If you think he's wonderful, you are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to my opinion that you are easily duped.

America has, historically, been great for one group of people: white men. Not women, not blacks, not Asians, not gays or lesbians, not indigenous populations. To make America great again means to make it suck again for all those other people who are not white men.

If you leave the confines of your little bubble and go to DC for a march, you should probably be aware that your hat will provoke sentiments in others, and many of those will not be positive. You may be yelled at or ridiculed. That comes with attending public marches (which is why I never attend such marches).

Knowing that these sentiments will not be positive, you should be aware that if you do things like tomahawk chops (and you're not at a Braves game) while a Native American man is near you, it will probably be considered insulting.

If you yell things like "Build a Wall" in the midst of a government shutdown that is contentious at best (look, it's understatement), that might be ridiculed, too.

4. If you're an adult who is taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC, you may want to discuss these things IN ADVANCE and urge them not to wear such accessories that will make them targets in a politically-charged atmosphere.

5. If you're an adult taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC that is supposed to be about respecting LIFE, you may want to consider all forms of life in the respect equation. Not just white, fetal life.

All life is all life.
Indigenous lives.
Black lives.
Gay lives.
Latino lives.
Addicted lives.

6. If you're an adult taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC, you may want to think about and discuss how much recording of events happens at these events and that there is this the possibility that acting foolish will get you a lifetime of notoriety on social media.

7. . If you're an adult taking teens with unformed pre-frontal cortexes to a march in DC and you see something going down, you may want to intervene and GET THE KIDS OUT OF THAT SITUATION so that they don't have notoriety on social media and get crucified by people who think they are smug little shitheads (which they may very well be, but they are teenagers and don't understand the fallout from their actions).

So while I think the kids were idiotic, I am left wondering why the heck the adults who were there didn't put their allegedly fully formed pre-frontal cortexes to better use.

Operation "Make My Hutch Useful"

When D and I married, my parents gave us either $3,000 or $5,000 to cover expenses.

We were very frugal and ended up having enough left over to purchase a hutch/base, table, six chairs, and a washer/dryer.

I have always liked my hutch....until recently.

We have a very large dining room that we rarely use for eating.
I use the space for planning lessons or writing articles.
The boys use the space as a catch-all for their random toys and whatnot.

The walls of the room are travel pictures and paintings. I have always called it my travel room, and it gives me joy to look at the places we've been and to see things friends and family have brought to us from places I may never visit.

I decided that I want to make this room more of a sitting room/office space.

D has his office in the basement, but if he's working in there, I don't feel like I can use it to do my stuff (whether that be scrapbooking or writing or whatever).

So I've been thinking about what purpose I want my dining room to serve.

I managed to find a $15 Bassett chair that I'm going to have recovered in a few weeks, which gives us a place to read if kids are in the basement or living room, and we want to make ourselves scarce.

I have been looking for bookcases with drawer storage for the dining room, but I haven't found anything I really like.

Last night, it finally hit me: Get rid of all the unused pretty stuff in the hutch and use it for your books, binders, and crafting stuff. 

So at 8 pm, I began the purge.

I pulled out a set of dishes my mom made 30+ years ago in ceramics that I have used maybe once in the past 21 years.

(Dishes on the table; dishes on the floor, 

none of which ever get used.)

I told myself, "I love my mom, but I never use these dishes. The dishes are not my mom; they do not represent love or relationship or anything. They are plates; I can donate them and not feel guilty."

I am donating a ton of pretty things D and I got as wedding presents that have been sitting in that hutch used for 21 years. There is one item I am keeping because I remember exactly who gave it to me.

I threw away all the random wine corks we had been saving in a bowl (For what purpose? I have no idea.)

I am moving the kids' Santa banks and handprint plates to the Christmas stuff because I always forgot to put these out as decor at Christmas because they are in the hutch and not in with the Christmas stuff.

I have to wait until the kids go back to school before I can purge some of their stuff.
(I move junk to the basement, and when they don't say anything for 6 months/1-year, I know that I can get rid of it, but if they catch me moving it, they remember how valuable and precious it is.)



This is my 2019 project--a work in progress. 

We've got all the misheard lyrics

My kids probably have some talents, but the one I appreciate most is their ability to totally botch song lyrics.

I keep a journal for each kid of cute/funny things they've said or done over the years, dating back to birth, and I think 90 percent of the entries in the past five years are misheard and mis-sung lyrics.

The king of the mis-sung lyrics is G.

He is heavy right now into Queen, which has produced this:

Rushot!
Pushing down on me,
Pushing down on you,
I said don't stop.

We won't even discuss what Rushot is.
At first, we thought he was singing Russia, which might have actually made sense.
And I guess if you don't know what Rushot is (and we don't) you might actually want it pushing down on you and say "don't stop" when someone is pushing it on you.

G's misheard lyrics dates back many years.

A few years ago, before Papaw died, we visited his sisters in the country.
When we stopped for lunch, we heard Beyonce's All the Single Ladies.
Later, when we returned to the car, G started singing, "I'm a cigarette. I'm a cigarette."

As G gets into more and more music, I'm certain I'll have many more entries into his book.
Music lyrics and their bastardizations have become a bit of a tradition and source of wonderful memories for our family.