Remembering Elliana: Shopping for School Clothes

Thinking back, I don't recall ever shopping for school clothes, except for taking the girls to the store and picking them up. By the time my ex departed for the east coast, the girls were able to get what they needed with me only needing to provide money and transportation. 

Taking Elliana out to get school clothes, then, had to be my first effort at buying school clothes. 

It was also my last!

THE PUNCH!

Erin would never back down from a fight, which meant that she was suspended for fighting periodically throughout her school years. I would have to go to the school to get her, and I was able to talk the principal out of suspension a time or two because she was defending herself.

For a time in middle school, I suspected that she was getting suspended on purpose to get a few days off. I warned her that I would take swift action if I felt she was doing that. 

If Schools Taught Life Skills in 1980

Many people have suggested that schools should teach children life skills rather than wild math and humanities concepts they will rarely use in life. I wonder how differently my life might have been had the schools emphasized teaching us how to deal with the problems our parents were facing, rather than teaching us how to convert problems stated in sentence form into mathematical equations.

I was personally cast into adulthood in the mid-'70s. I have never had an occasion to try to figure out how far apart two trains traveling in opposite directions would be after a certain amount of time. Instead, I had to deal with the same adult matters that my parents had been dealing with all along.

Back to School

Though I have thought often about going back to school myself so I could finish up my Associate’s degree, or just take some classes that might interest me, I have not yet done that. However, now that I have switched from being a driver with highly irregular hours to being a dispatcher with a set schedule that begins in the afternoon, I may do it soon.

The Pains of Learning ( Newsletter - Issue 296 in June 2000)

When I was in the third grade, a couple of buddies and I were goofing around during math. Mrs. Olson called the three of us up to get hacks. Joe got the first one as Blaine and I awaited our turns. The whack of the paddle across Joe's posterior didn't catch our attention quite as much as her breaking the paddle. When she replaced her paddle two days later, it would have been unjust to spank me. I did my work and kept my mouth shut. By today's standards, this would be considered abusive. It did affect my psyche. All the way into college, I did math during math courses -- all because of the hack that Mrs. Olson didn't give me.