Lumberpick

I said goodnight to the boys on the phone. Owen just told me he didn't want to go to school anymore. It seems little boys are more prone to not wanting to go than girls are. I remember coming to the realization myself in the first grade that there were 12 grades and I was only 6 years old and I had 11 more grades to go through. The horror struck me immediately.

What could I tell Owen really? "Yeah school sucks but you'll get used to it. Eventually you'll get used to turning your brain off and getting in line with the rest of the cattle and all will get better once you accept it....?" Alright, so I'm being a little dramatic... maybe not though. One of the naive realizations I came to when I grew up is that teachers were people too. As a kid I had some weird belief that the teacher knew everything and they were moral and right and a force to be feared. And why wouldn't one think that? That's what they want you to think. Not because they're mean but because they need to control the classroom. I was one of those kids who was incredibly well behaved and did everything I could to appease my needy teachers because I thought they were worth impressing. I actually didn't enjoy school until senior high and I still get a little angry at the fact that it ended up like that for me . To tell you the truth, I have to be careful raising my own kids. There's part of me that wants to tell Owen to go to school and cause trouble, draw outside of the lines, speak out of turn, tell the teacher that they don't know anything, and don't bother listening because anything you don't learn now you'll be able to catch up on in like 10 day when you're in the fourth grade because your mind will be more developed then and it'll just come naturally and by then you'll find it interesting. "And don't worry about the teachers because I've got your back." Now that I think about it I actually did enjoy 3rd and 4th grade, but I think for many boys when they hit 6th or 7th grade all hell breaks loose and they just want to bust sh*t up because they have hormones raging and feel awkward and they're frustrated and I swear most middle school teachers are clueless or heartless to not see what's going on. Donald Miller actually writes about how viciously hyena-like middle school boys are towards one another in one of his books and it's pretty dead-on to the way middle school is for many kids that age. If you don't remember that then you've blocked it out or you were actually one of the bastards who was making someone's life miserable. Either that or you grew up in some era or alternate universe where kids that age were nice to each other all the time(?).... Going back to the whole 'putting the teachers on the pedestal' thing ... I think what made me realize their fallibility was realizing some of the guys I hung out with in college were going to graduate and be TEACHERS!?!? I actually knew a guy who now teaches that said he liked being a teacher because he's the boss and gets to tell kids what to do... like a god (and he said this after he became a teacher). It's kinda like those guys who go to school to be cops because they like being jerks.

Anyway, totally unrelated, here's a good article about why we should have socialized health care. After reading the article you can read some good and maybe some not so good arguments on why we shouldn't.

http://www.burnsidewriterscollective.com/social/2008/01/they_didnt_know_what_else.php

And now... I'm going to go chew some cud and then wander around my pasture. Have a good night.