Pointing out the Obvious [Reader Post]

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Pointing Out the Obvious

Preaching to the Choir

And Whistling in the Dark

I wish I could give my grandkids the childhood that I had.

As a kid I thought I was depressed, abused, mistreated (especially by my sister), overworked, exploited, deprived, ignored, etc…ad infinitum.

My grandkids should be so lucky.

I learned what makes things work. What it takes to catch a fish. What to do about the things that do not work. I learned about manners, morals, and how to be true to your self. I learned a work ethic kids today will never know.

I learned how to stand up for myself and be responsible for my actions.

When I was 12 life was a great adventure.

I had read a lot of books in school by then and I had started on Science Fiction the year before.

I remember the librarian reluctantly letting me have adult Science Fiction books at the age of eleven.

It was not easy, but I convinced her, and I read everything I could get my hands on. The thing about Science Fiction that I liked was that it was based on fact and did not violate the laws of physics. Yeah, at the age of eleven I was beginning to know about physics. Today what you get is Science Fiction blended with (corrupted by) Fantasy, it may be entertaining but you will not learn anything. There are still science based Science Fiction books, but you have to look hard for them.

I had gone to school in a very small rural town. The third, fourth, and fifth grades were in the same room. That means I had two thirds of the school day to read; so by the time I finished the fifth grade I had read every book in the school library. I suppose it also means that I went to the third, forth, and fifth grades three times. I was an avid reader and read whenever my grade was not in session. I recall once happily reading a book when a box of cough drops landed on my desk. My teacher had tossed the box on my desk because I was not paying attention and my grade was in session. Being quick witted, and astutely aware of my surroundings, I took a cough drop from the box, tossed the box back to my teacher’s desk and returned to my book reading. Turned out that was not one of my better choices of action.

Back then I walked to school (yeah, I know, uphill both ways barefoot in three foot of snow at minus 100 degrees in Oklahoma). School was only four blocks south of us, the town limits were just past the school. The town’s northern limit was one block north of our house. The town’s plat was only 88 acres and it never reached that size. At its most it had a blacksmith shop (my grandfather’s), a post office that was in one of the two grocery stores, a drug store, a bank, two filling stations (19 cents a gallon), a black and white movie theater (twelve by twenty feet), and a railroad station near the river about half a mile away.

I could ride my bicycle, an old one speed with balloon tires, ten miles to play with my cousin and my parents did not worry. They knew I had earned my bicycle by picking cotton and would be careful not to wreck it. They also knew I had built my own downhill death trap out of a pair of old skates and scrap wood. You see, what you do is make a frame that you can sit on with half of a pair of skates on either side in the back and a cross piece in the front that pivots in the middle with the remaining two halves of the skates on the left and right sides. You steer with your feet on the left and right sides of the cross piece. Then you find a road, or a street, that goes down hill. Then you sit back and enjoy the wind in your face. This works pretty good until you hit a pot-hole or other bad stretch of road, gravel is a real bummer, then you get what I later learned bikers call “road rash”. Road rash is not terminal, but you will learn to avoid it. (Thank God for turpentine) My parents knew if I had survived this contraption, nothing could hurt me and I would keep pushing and finding my limits no matter what they said. They gave me guidance, when I would let them, but they had the wisdom to let me make my own mistakes.

The school yard in this little town had swings, monkey bars, see-saws, and an old style merry-go-round. This one was supported from the top and would swing as well as rotate. Great fun; we boys could really get this thing going and scare the girls, made our whole day! (Little did we know when we grew up, the girls would get even, and then some)


(Click the image for a larger version)

These things are banned now; you might fall off and get your clothes dirty.

The nanny state government wants to protect kids from everything but the nanny state government.

If you get a scratch or bruise while playing, you might learn your physical limits, how to control yourself, and how to avoid injuries. God forbid you should play baseball, basketball, football, tag, hop-scotch, dodge-ball, basketball, or any other game that can teach you hand-eye coordination. You might grow up with confidence in yourself and not depend on the hand of nanny government to guide you.

But I rant.

My grandfather taught me how to use an acetylene torch and an arc welder while I was still a thirteen year old kid. He taught me how to look at a length of metal and tell if it was straight. I learned to use a coal burning forge, trip-hammer, grinder, drill press, hammer and anvil, block and tackle, come-a-long, axe, posthole digger, and every other tool that existed in the fifties, including fishing poles. He taught me about life, ladies, morals, honesty, and being a man.

Today’s kids are being cheated.

They will never learn about defeat and success in time for it to have any meaning.

They have not been given the training to think for themselves or even form their own opinions.

They are deep in debt, thanks to Obama and the democrats, and are very near bankruptcy from the day they were born and they stand very little chance of recovering.

They need a playground free of nannies. They need to experience the scraps and bangs of childhood. They need to stick their tongues on a frozen flagpole. They need to bleed a little and learn what causes pain. They need to understand cause and effect by personally experiencing cause and effect. You can not learn by someone else’s experience, you must have that experience. “Once burned, twice shy” means you have to be burned to understand heat. You will not know what a scorpion sting means until you have been stung by one. We do not help our children by protecting them from non-life threatening things.

Obamacare gives the government the power to control every aspect of your life, even how long that life will be.

Soon the nannies will give you a world where salt will not be allowed on your over-cooked steak and your “French Fries” will be cooked in boiling hot water. There will be no sour cream or butter, and your “organic” salad will cost far more than your steak; by then steak will be outlawed in 55 of the 57 states. God bless Texas and Oklahoma, we will refrain from this bull shit “nanny state”.

The trouble here is that I am saying things that rational people already know.

I do not know how to reach the irrational.

I want to grab these idiots by the shirt/blouse, shake them, and as my grandmother would say “slap some sense in their heads”, and make them understand that they are destroying their children’s future with their idiotic over-protection.

If I had never been stung by a red ant, I would not know that the red ant could hurt me.

Luckily I have been stung by scorpions, bees, wasps, hornets, bumblebees, red ants, fire ants, black ants, governments, wives, banks, politicians, and even friends.

I have learned to pay attention, and I bite back.

Approach me with caution.

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I seldom comment at any site but I had to let you know how much I enjoyed and agreed with this post!

Not only do you aptly describe the atmosphere in which so many children are now growing up, but you are absolutely on point as to what they are missing due to all the PC nonsense we are all subjected to in recent years.

Thanks again for not only a reminder of what was but a look at what we should hope to correct in the future.

As a young boy growing up in suburban NJ, I walked to school and played pick up baseball after school until it was dark. To make a few bucks, I mowed lawns in the summer, raked leaves in the Autumn and got up at 4 am to shovel snow from sidewalks and driveways in the winter. I had a jar in the kitchen where I put my earnings. My dad gave me the idea that I should take that money and buy Bristol-Meyers stock. Each time I got enough for five shares, about $50, I would take the money to the down town where my Dad had set up a brokerage account for me and turn it over in cash to the broker. I went by myself with the money in my pocket – ones and fives and change. A short time later, the parcel post man would deliver a box of Bristol-Meyers products including Ipana toothpaste. As a kid I sure liked getting packages. I also liked getting the dividend checks which went into my college account. I learned a whole lot from that experience and it carries through today. Once my grandfather gave me $50 for my birthday. That was a fortune and he wanted me to buy a new bike. I bought more Bristol-Meyers stock instead. Later, my grandfather said he was proud of me. I loved him dearly.

On weekends, my buddy Victor and I would hop on our bikes (Schwinn fat tires) and strap our fishing poles onto the center bar and ride about 10 miles to a lake where we could catch some perch and bluegills with worms. The idea of artificial bait never entered our minds. We would get our shoes muddy and wet in the process, but that was part of the fun. We had only one pair and had to clean them up for school the next Monday. If we were lucky, mom would give me a quarter which was enough for a slice of pizza and a coke at a stand at the lake. Once I got into a fight with an Italian kid who wanted my bike. I got the best of him and a black eye as well. Mom didn’t know where we went and didn’t much care as long as we were back for dinner. We had lots of other places for adventure. There was an abandoned quarry, a few deserted houses, lots of parks with swings and slides, and just lots of places to ride and ride.

One time we took another route and we stumbled on an army tank perched on a little triangle shaped park in the middle of an intersection in a neighboring town. It was a Sherman and was a monument to WWII. How could a kid not like that. We leaned our bikes against the tank and crawled all over it. We shimmed out to the end of the barrel and peaked in the hole. The lid to the interior was welded shut and we got to thinking that if we worked hard enough, we could probably file off the welds and get inside. Actually, we didn’t know what a weld was, but we were mechanical enough to understand that if we could get through that metal, the trap door would probably open.

The next weekend we left the fishing poles home and took files when we hoped on our bikes. My dad had every tool ever made and he would never miss a couple of files. Victor got on one side and me on the other and we filed away at those welds all day. We made enough progress to realize that if we spent enough time we could open the hatch. It took about three more weekends and as an adult, I have always wondered what the drivers who were passing by thought these two kids were doing on that tank for hours at a time. Probably nothing, for what is a tank like that for but for kids to crawl all over it. It was ok to do such things then. Tanks were ok too and we were all proud of the army.

After a few weekends we got through the welds and just as we had figured, the lid opened up. It was heavy and we were afraid it would drop on our fingers. The inside was just as it had been when the war ended. This tank had never been decommissioned. They just welded the hatch shut. I suppose that whomever did the welding never thought that anybody would ever get inside. Besides, the war had exhausted the country and decommissioning the tank was one of many details that were overlooked. We were able to open the hatch for the gun and could look out of the barrel. That was sure neat.

There were all sorts of interesting handles and switches and electrical connections inside. It was dark and the next weekend we brought flashlights and extra batteries since they didn’t last all that long. The big prize was the tank shell casings and the big bullet casings. We had pouches that attached to the back of the seats on our bikes and filled them up with this treasure. We filled our pockets as well. The shell casings were too big to put in the pouch and we figured out how to tie them to our bikes using our belts. We each took one.

Then Victor found what we had been looking for all along, live ammunition. In several of the many corners and crevices inside that tank were the biggest bullets that I had ever imagined. They seemed as big as rockets and were quite heavy. We snagged those as well as that was the kind of contraband that ordinarily a kid could only dream about and here it was right in front of us. The perfect reward for all of our hard work. We even hid a bunch of them in the park and got them when we returned the next weekend with rucksacks that we had from boy scouts. We went back a few more times after that until we grew tired of the tank and besides, someone had peed in the turret and the smell was a bummer. I was back in NJ last year for a high school reunion and visited that very park. The tank is still there, a bit worse for the wear. I noticed that the lid had been again welded and the barrel had been plugged.

I showed my dad the shell casings and the empty bullet shells and told him where I got them. I was a little scared that he would be mad at me for filing open the tank, but he wasn’t. I kind of think he was proud of me in a way but didn’t want to let on that my adventure tickled his own sense of adventure. He was always teaching me how to use tools. He did ask presciently whether there were any live shells in the tank and warned me that they could explode at any time. I denied finding any, but he got me thinking that we should show those bullets to Victor’s step-dad Arnold.

According to Victor, Arnold had been with Patton in the 3rd Army and had fought all the way across Europe. He had a few German lugers and a bunch of Nazi uniform pins and stuff that Victor once showed me. If there was anyone who could advise us on our contraband, it would be Arnold. He knew about this kind of stuff.

I advised Victor of my dad’s warning and suggested that we consult with Arnold. At first Victor was hesitant mainly because he really liked to handle those giant bullets and he probably knew that Arnold would be a spoil sport. I also thought that Arnold, being a military man, might not be so happy with the idea that we had filed our way into the tank.

A few days later, we were playing in Victor’s room with the bullets when his mother barged in as mothers are want to do. There was no hiding the bullets and while she was generally a well composed lady, she immediately went slightly nuts and grabbed the bullets. We probably were lucky one didn’t go off. I was sent home immediately and I feared Victor was about to get his fanny toasted.

Later that evening there was a call to my house from Victor who told me in no uncertain terms that I had better get over to his house fast, because Arnold was home and there was hell to pay. Victor probably thought that Arnold wouldn’t beat the hell out of him if I were there also. He lived across the street and up the block so it was only a few minutes until I arrived to calm things down.

To my surprise, Arnold was calm, but a little scared. He told us how dangerous these shells were. He told us that when fired by the tank they could tear through ten men in a line and could shoot down airplanes. He told us that when they were shot the noise was so loud that you could be deaf for a week or maybe your whole life. He told us that the bullet could stop a truck dead in its tracks. He had a look on his face as if these bullets somehow brought back the terrible memories of what he had experienced during the war. He really wasn’t mad, but he scared the daylights out of us and him and of course, confiscated the bullets. I never learned what he did with them.

Arnold had never talked about the war or his experiences in my presence and the only war stories that Victor relayed to me were probably made up anyway. But his stories about the bullets got me real interested and later, Victor and I went through his trunk and looked more carefully at all his war souvenirs. He had a photo album that showed burned out tanks and dead bodies. We were fascinated. We also went to the library and looked at Life magazines from the war years and we thought we found Arnold in a picture taken in Europe during that time. The pictures were of a world and a time that we could only imagine as our notion of war was what we had seen in some movies. We were both born in 1942.

I had kids when I was 47. We lived in a California suburban community in the East Bay. There were no sidewalks and there were so many rules about riding bikes and where you could ride them and how you could ride them that my kids never had any adventures like mine. Besides, their mother was so scared they would be kidnapped that she needed to know where they were in fifteen minute intervals. They got driven to school. The only sports they played were the organized sports after school. They learned to use the computers when they were about three and insofar as mechanical things go, it was down hill from there. I don’t think either one could drive a nail or saw a straight line in a board. They weren’t interested in such things and their mother thought that fooling around with tools was a bit dangerous. When I put a family room addition on the house and did much of the work myself, they weren’t really interested in the process. Of course, as soon as it was finished, they plugged in the TV and fired up the Nintendo, loving a place somewhat away from the adults.

My kids are young adults now and are doing quite well. They are confident and thank God, I was able to instill a little curiosity in them and a little sense of adventure notwithstanding their mother’s endless fears and warnings. I frequently wonder what kind of world I am handing off to them. It certainly isn’t as freewheeling as was mine. They would probably have been criminally prosecuted if they filed their way into a tank monument. And, had they been found biking ten miles from home they probably would have been rewarded with a police escort. and we would have been prosecuted for child neglect. As adults, they are competing in a world with what seem like fewer opportunities and much less freedom. They were exhilarated with Obama although my son is disenchanted and started reading the Wall Street Journal. I think he is starting to get it.

Is their world better or worse that mine was. I really don’t know. It seems like things were more honest and straightforward when I was a boy. You learned the hard way. If you got into a fight you licked your wounds and moved on. It was fists only, and the first punch landed usually ended the matter. You did skin your knee and did get all sorts of bug bites and were scared of the rattlesnakes that were in the woods even if you never saw one. I really don’t know the answer, and whatever it is, there is little more I can do about it except connect with like minded people who share my belief that this country needs to be invigorated and soon and that the current administration and their lefty supporters haven’t a clue how that can be achieved.

Disturber

AL Cooper, hi, WOW, I just love your POST, super interesting,
thank you, and I hope the young boys and their parents read it, and dream of those freedom days,
for a child to grow up as it should,

Maybe America can be the little kid in your story and learn from her bumps and scrapes brought on by the 2008 election and, lesson being learned, make the necessary corrections in 2012.

Great article, by the way!
.
.

Al and Disturber, thanks for sharing your childhoods.

It has been a gradual progression, this absorption within the Nanny State, our people have willingly taken on the false security of the Nanny Blanket and adopted an attitude of ineptness and stupidity as a result.

Years ago, I used to ride one of the kids’ horses to the show grounds and lead one or two others to avoid the hassle of parking a truck and trailer. The distance was five miles. I never considered the trip to be dangerous, just a sort ride next to the roads.

Now my girlfriend, who is an accomplished rider, has asked me about riding her jumping horse to lessons a mile down the road. It’s not my personality to be overbearing, but I had to say absolutely “no”. People who drive these roads, now have no concept of what a horse can do and of the catastrophe that will result from radical behavior with cars. Fifteen years has made all the difference. The Nanny State tell these witless people they are safe and have no responsibilities, since the state watches for them, and they begin to act dumber and dumber.

Great Reads -Al /Disturber -Great!! Thanks for sharing and bringing back some memories of the “really good old days”….Makes me wonder what adventure “stories” kids growing up now will tell their kids, if any….seems sad when you think about it… But, then again it’s a whole new mindset unfortunately instilled by… you guessed it the “Nanny State”…

Come on, all those who discovered Sci-Fi at the tender age of 12.
The story is “With Folded Hands”, by Jack Williamson.
Originally in Astounding, 1954.
Anthologized in “The Science Fiction Hall of Fame”, volume IIA, 1974.
And doubtless in many other places.
Surely you remember this one?
Rhodomagnetics?
The Perfect Robot?
I will not give the story away, but it does not end well.

So many things are gone- and the simple times are no more. Where I grew up, you could lay down on the ground and watch a horned toad eat big red “fire” ants- no more now that the fire ants from South America moved into the territory and killed all the other ants. Now, if you want to have any hope of seeing a horned toad, you have to go way past Austin, into the Texas Hill Country, and even then, they are not what they used to be- this was not the fault of humans, but an unholy accident of chance- still.
I used to roam the bayous near my house, and would catch and sell snakes- the poisonous ones I could sell for $.50 a lb. to the Houston Toxicological labs. The non-poisonous ones I would sell at church charity bazaars.
There are many varieties of reptiles I would have a hard time finding today, simply due to human infestation of the wild places- what a shame.
Still, when I was growing up and going to school, we had pickup trucks, and gun racks in the pickups, and rifles and shotguns in the racks, AT THE SCHOOL, and noone died- heck- noone was even shot.
Because we knew how to use these guns- our fathers taught us, and taught us well- something these little out of control kids should learn instead of Grand Theft Auto-
We had reality to play with, and i will swear to this day that reality beats ANY game you have.

@Sue:
Thank you Sue.
I think I had a wonderful childhood.
I really miss the values people had them.
Pardon the late reply; been gone for a while.

@ilovebeeswarzone:
Hi BEES!
Thank you!
I always enjoy your comments.
Pardon the delay, been gone for a while.

@anticsrocks:
Thank you!
I certainly hope so, but she has a lot to learn, and 2012 is close.

@Skookum:
Back in the days I wrote about, there were a lot of kids in our extended family; when we went on a trip to Turner Falls, (southern Oklahoma) some of us rode in the trunk of my aunt’s 56 Cadiliac with the trunk lid up. Today she would be sent to prison for “reckless endangerment”; things change, and we lose freedoms.

@FAITH7:
Thank you!
Today’s kids will talk about how they beat a video game in record time.
What a waste of potential.

@mathman:
I read that.
Made me think of the “Nanny State” even then.

@Blake:
I rember the horned toad, we had them in south central Oklahoma.
Oklahoma was kind of dry in the fifteies, we only mowed the grass after June 1 becaused we were bored, not because it had grown. Laying on the ground watching horned toads eat bugs was major entainment for kids then, we did not have TV. Talk about luck!

@Disturber:
Thank you for sharing, I enjoyed your story!

Welcome back, AC!

AL Cooper, funny, today I was thinking of your POST, while I went outside, after we had such strong winds and rain here for many days, now subsided , letting the sun show the feel good afternoon,
I have some metal brown tiles under the roof that had flown away and never been replace, that gave entry to a speechy of mediun small black bird with a checker coat on, coming every early spring, so I ‘m walking and one of the young bird must have fell in the wind so he is dragging himself on the tall grass where I pretend not to see him and walk away, I found an empty dark color broken shell around and always marvel at the multiple different kind
of grass that has grown from lots of rain past, the colors of the same green palette is intoxicating at this time on the farmer’s pasture where he brought his cows with their calves in that place from his barn where they are
spending each winter; my old now roses trees are full of buds miraculously, this year,
after being burryed under twelve feets of snow for the winter that broke a lot of branches, but they survive for the last 14 years giving the beautifull and scented exquisite roses in the 3rd week of june
I will eventualy cut my grass but no hurry, that is the pleasure of being in COUNTRY,
you do it when you want, not for the neighbords
bye

I always find these articles amusing. I (as a 27 year old young person) envy your story and life of simple hard work and physical education. I must ask, whom do you blame for this nanny state? Certainly you can’t blame kids for being such wusses…

Al Cooper and the others of you who commented in this article it really did me good read your responses. I grew up under much the same and also gave my children the same discipline and education. Today my daughters and sons have their own families and are giving their children the same education and discipline in Israel (they could not do it here). They thank me for the discipline they received, all of them testify that is what enables them to push forward in life.
There are still children who manage to get what it takes to survive. However sad enough if you live in some city area the chances are very slim today. Even among the country boys you will see them every once in a while riding bicycles or walking on the side of the road. But nothing like it was when I was small. We actually worked as men by the age of 12. No chance of that anymore! Here in the States you do not hear the children answer Yes sir or No sir much at all anymore. That is the product of the socialistic educational system we have today!
Beautiful article you wrote Al Cooper and thank you again! God help America for us to regain this nation and turn it back to what it once was because if we do not we will lose both our Nation and our Families!

@Steve:
Steve, kids learn form their parents, at least they should. The nanny state started long ago. Parents were chastised for spanking their kids, thanks to Dr. Spock (not the character in Star Trek). The bible says “spare the rod and spoil the child” which means if you do not discipline your child it will grow up to be worthless and uncontrolled and will not be able to deal with society and will have a major problem with the world. If a child is not punished for bad behavior, it will continue that behavior into adulthood and will be effectively dysfunctional. When kids were not allowed to learn about pain and failure they were deprived of fundamental lessons that are vital to growing up and being real people. When a parent can not impress upon a child the things it needs to know abut life the child will not be able to deal with life. Parents can now be fined or jailed for child abuse if they dare to discipline their child. The kids are not to blame; government has interfered and is to blame. Government is now telling you what to eat, when to eat, what to drive…and it will go on from here; unless we stop it there will be no freedom in the future.
Our children will be controlled by the “nanny state” and our country will cease to exist.

@J V Hoffman:
Thank you! I am glad you liked it.

@Steve: Oh, this nanny state has been coming for a long time- since Social Security was formed. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and we can see this most clearly in the formation and continuance of SS. It might not have been so bad if the pols hadn’t kept taking the actual money and replacing that with IOUs- in addition, the contributing base has been shrinking, and will be unsustainable by about 2037, but actually broke well before then.
Al is correct- we cannot spare the child from the lessons of failure, for that is where a person’s true character is formed. Look at Obama- a privileged life- an entitled (through Affirmative Action) life, where he didn’t have to struggle or actually do anything that put actual demands on his mind or body, where he had to reach down deep to find that part of him that he could call on to help get him through the tough times. For him, there were no tough times.

I am gainfully underemployed as the director of a before & after school program (despite my Masters, thanks to the economy). These used to be called “latchkey kids” programs, but alas, that may be offensive to the offspring of the uppercrust elitists who dump their kids off at 7am, pick them up at 6pm, then ferry them off to extra-cirriculars until bed-time.

If you had to spend 5 hours a day with 40+ kids who are of the most privileged class, you would cringe at how understated your observations are. Some, not all, but too many, are frighteningly lacking in character. They are impulsive, selfish, greedy, wasteful, lack conscious and empathy, and could really care less about anyone or anything else in the world that doesn’t directly and immediately affect them.

Oh yes, our wonderful wealthy school district has been quick to instruct them that the world is going to explode because of my SUV; winded are the educators’ odes to multi-culturalism and sensitivity. And yet, on basic morality and character development, both the schools and the MIA parents have been silent. When a parent was told their kids were stealing art supplies and a resulting temper tantrum ensued because the loot was retrieved, the parental response was “I don’t understand what the big deal is, I mean, we’re paying for this program!” When the ubiquitous “time-out” (the absolute ONLY permissible punishment we can use, which is about as laughable to the kids as it is to the reader) was given for being disrespectful during a story about WWII vets for Veterans day (“Oh my God this is soooo boring! Nobody cares about stupid old people!”) the parent lambasting me for having the nerve to devote a weekly theme to veterans in the first place, citing that one, it wasn’t interesting enough, and two, it was too “political.” Really?!

Beyond my continuous state of flabbergastedness of how ridiculous the attitudes of these supposedly elite parents are, and their contributions to the lack of character of their children, equally disgusting is the ever-present Nanny State.

Incident forms for every issuance of a band-aid. Playground inspections to make sure S-hooks are closed within “the thickness of a dime” and slats between bars measured to the centimetre. Time outs must be limited to one minute per year of age of the child. Constant sanitation of every conceivable surface. Children as old as 5th graders may not walk 20-feet away unaccompanied by an adult who must verify there is no one else in the bathroom, then establish another student “bathroom monitor” and then monitor the monitor. I’m required to make sure there are ample examples of a-traditional sex-roles and minorities in all play areas (a lady construction worker, black & asian Barbies, etc.) but can’t remotely hint about anything being “right or wrong” because, of course, we can’t make judgements.

The examples abound, even in this tiny microcosm. The moral of the story: it’s far worse than you think!

Kefira M. I can agree that It must take you a lot of self control,
to not kick the butts of children and parents in that special place for the stupids
that can afford to pay, we can just imagine the future of those brats,
IT usualy take a big punch by life TO DISTURB their safe environment to wake up some
to reality, and tho show them their responsability they must learn from the beginning,
otherwise they vegetate as zombies of human race not dead yet, but not alive and useless in anything ,
they only have left their mouth and negative thinking to mess up everything ,instead of CREATE SOMETHING
OF VALUE FOR THEIR SOCIETY,
keep your spirit high because there are fewer like you, WITH THE MEDIA WHICH SUPPORT THAT BEHAVIOR,
CONTRARY TO WHAT AMERICA WAS MADE WITH THE BEST CONSTITUTION
OF THE SO ENVIOUS WORLD WHERE SOME ARE AIM TO TO DESTROY, EVEN RIGHT HERE
AMONG THIS NATION
BEST TO YOU

@Kefira M.: I agree with you that a LOT of children are spoiled, “entitled”, and lacking in depth of character, but that is because of the parents- but until enough teachers stand and say with one voice, “To hell with the unions- they and the coddling rules put into place by school boards that have never taught a day in their lives are making our children into wimps, afraid to succeed, because that carries with it the POSSIBILITY of failure.” Children have to be allowed to fail- how else will they know that they can pick themselves up off the ground, dust themselves off, and try again. That is the only way people learn.
Thomas Edison failed more than two thousand times to make a useable carbon filament for his lightbulb- but he said, No, he hadn’t failed- rather, he had discovered two thousand ways NOT to make a filament.
That is the kind of thinking we need to instill in people- have people need government LESS, not more.

Blake , you’re so right, It make me remember my smart oldest sister,
we had lost both parents, she had the responsibility as my mother told her,before she died, to take care of us four,
we where on our own, I the youngest of the rebels,
but she manage to find the best in us and push for it to rise, and make us use our judgement into every thing we where afraid to try,. one day I was winning for her to braid my long hair, at 7 years old ,she decide i would do it from then on, and I work hard and did it better every day, just little things
to help me, but, never do for me,
she would put a map of the world on the floor and make us mentaly travel all over the world. and so on until we got on our own, proud and sure of our judgement,and proud to ask GOD FOR HELP, THAT CAME , BECAUSE OUR MINDS WAS TURN ON POSITIVE THINKING, AND THE GUTTS FEELING THAT WE WHERE NEVER ALONE,
I USE TO LOOK AT HER IN WONDER FOR WHAT SHE AT 15 YEARS OLD BEGAN THE TASK TO MAKE US BETTER PERSON, EVEN IF WE WHERE NOT PERFECT,

SKOOKUM , HI,
ON you’re 5, it came to me how right you are,
and the difference of what attitude from then, as oppose as today:in those days people felt,
the right of way was for people crossing the roads, and also would let the horses go in front further away,
even if they had to slowdown to avoid panicking the horse. as oppose to now, where so many people get hurt for fataly presume the driver will stop for them to have their right of way.
bye