It's Easter! Celebrate!
I have a piece over at Fathers For Good called "Give God the Glory."
Also, there's a piece today over at Aleteia called "A Faith Filled Life Without Catholic School.
Please link, like, share and leave a comment if you can. Thank you!
Showing posts with label Catholic school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic school. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Sunday, May 11, 2008
When Mom Was a Kid..
What it was like when I was a kid
On Sports and Games
Growing up, we strapped metal wheels to our shoes and fell on our knees on bumpy concrete until we learned to stop falling. Turns were tricky so you either held on, or in my brother's case, got down on your hands and knees and crawled through the turn, or you decided you knew what you were doing, tried to make the turn and fell at least 50 times before you got it.
When we played on swing sets, teeter totters and monkey bars, they were made of wood and steel and sometimes gave us splinters, particularly when we would ride with two or three at a time.
Tag and hide and seek, dodge ball and freeze tag had winners and losers. We played them often. In fact, we loved them. Even when we were mad about being picked last, it just meant we hoped next time, we’d be captains or picked first, or at least not last again.
Sports had b-teams and sometimes, you didn’t even make that one. You only got a trophy if you won, and sometimes, you got skunked. People kept score but the teams for grade school and the like, were not posted in the paper. It wasn’t important. These were kids’ games.
On School and Education…
There were three channels on television if you didn’t count the educational one, which we didn’t.
The library was a place to check out books, a week in advance of the science project that was mandatory.
The science project was a big deal, complete with a hand written four page report and five references, none from the web. Everyone had to make a poster and a project. People would know if your parents did the art work, and you wouldn’t win.
We’d get pop quizzes at school and worksheets that had been freshly run from the ditto machine, and smelled like ink. We loved those, and I think sometimes, the ink made us dizzy.
You got grades. You got grades every day. Most of the time, it was a number or a letter. The grades included C’s, D’s, F’s and the less common, C-, D+ and D-. Your parents got called if you got these grades. Every time. Forging your parent’s signature got you in bigger trouble.
If you didn’t do an assignment, you got to do it during recess while everyone else was outside playing, which stunk.
They made us memorize Kipling’s “If,” our multiplication tables and say the pledge. We often had to read aloud or do problems on the board for everyone else to watch.
They showed us videos of “The Red Balloon,” and “Chicken Soup with Rice” as treats. We saw each every year at least once.
At noon, We’d get kicked outside to play, we had recess. It was after lunch and lasted a decent amount of time. It didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, muggy or raining, we were on our own after lunch for that half hour. Recess lasted long enough to form cliques, to organize a kick ball game, to braid hair or play a no prisoners game of speed solitaire.
On Grown Ups…
People disagreed on politics, as they always have, but it wasn’t acceptable to insult someone just because they held a different political affiliation. No one was considered heartless or brainless for being a Republican or a Democrat; these were party denominations, not the solutions to every problem under the sun requiring absolute religious fealty.
Being kids, we didn’t even know what politics really were until Mom caught us one day having uprooted all the political signs and repositioned them in our front yard because we thought they were cool. These Vote for…posts seemed like some form of mushroom that had sprung up overnight. We were busy dismantling them to make swords when Mom found us.
Television had a family hour which was boring and grown-ups watched the news, which was boring to us, but then the alternative was bed.
There were uber parents out there who made their kids compete in every sport and activity, but most of the grown-ups knew that these people were wrong and encouraged all of us to pick what we loved and do that first.
Grown-ups drank things like beer and wine, ice tea, diet soda and coffee, all of which tasted terrible. They also had weird clothing rules like no shorts after Labor Day and no white in the winter. They ordered foods with dressings and sauces on them and used “Sweet and Low.” They would make us eat the crust on breads, the stumpy parts of broccoli and occasionally, liver.
For Fun…
Swimming lessons and camp took care of maybe two weeks. The rest of the time, we were on our own.
We’d troll the neighborhood to amass as many at home minors as possible. It didn’t matter who, if you were a kid and you were home, we were knocking on the door asking, “Can you come play?”
Then, we’d ride our bikes until dark, no helmets. We’d pin cards to our spokes with clothes pins to sound like motor cycles. On a dead end street, we’d hold races all afternoon until someone announced they were thirsty. There would be a run on the hose, with each person jockeying to be later in line, so as not to get the first swig of heated by the sun water that came out of the end.
Then the beep beep beep of the mosquito spraying truck would be heard and everyone would clear out to their homes as fast as possible. We didn’t know DEET was poisonous, but it sure smelled bad.
When it was too hot, we’d play monopoly in doors until someone won or was called home. We sometimes made card castles, trying to use all 52 cards before the thing fell. We loved fresh boxes of crayons and coloring books. The coloring books were almost always of animals and never had stickers.
Come fall, we’d gather pecans from every yard, filling up two trash cans. Then we’d offer to rake leaves for a dollar all over the block and try to sell the pecans.
Every Christmas, we’d have a Christmas program. They never had plots, just grade after grade, alternating between secular and religious music, with the grand finale, always, Silent Night. Then most parents would reconvene across the street at the Carnation Dairy restaurant to praise our performances and buy ice cream.
Why am I telling you this?
So my darlings, you will understand some of the why I tell you often to turn off the television and the DDS and the DVD’s and the IPods and the cell phones and the computers.
I will shrug sometimes when you are not 100% safe and even encourage you to jump off the high dive, draw until you run out of chalk and drink a soda outside while reading comics in a hammock.
I will not rush out to challenge other parents to a duel to the death because your feelings are hurt, though I will offer you a hug and say I love you.
Life is always unsafe and unfair but worth living. Sometimes, it is even unsafe and unfair in our favor.
Skinned knees and even bruised hearts heal. Memorization, pain from learning to learn is part of the process, and not what you will recall when you get to be nostalgic about childhood. Like giving birth, we don’t recall the labor pain itself, only that it hurt and then it was over, and we had this person, and everything was light and wonderful and still is.
Happy Thank You for Making me A Mother Day! And Happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there who has been so blessed.
On Sports and Games
Growing up, we strapped metal wheels to our shoes and fell on our knees on bumpy concrete until we learned to stop falling. Turns were tricky so you either held on, or in my brother's case, got down on your hands and knees and crawled through the turn, or you decided you knew what you were doing, tried to make the turn and fell at least 50 times before you got it.
When we played on swing sets, teeter totters and monkey bars, they were made of wood and steel and sometimes gave us splinters, particularly when we would ride with two or three at a time.
Tag and hide and seek, dodge ball and freeze tag had winners and losers. We played them often. In fact, we loved them. Even when we were mad about being picked last, it just meant we hoped next time, we’d be captains or picked first, or at least not last again.
Sports had b-teams and sometimes, you didn’t even make that one. You only got a trophy if you won, and sometimes, you got skunked. People kept score but the teams for grade school and the like, were not posted in the paper. It wasn’t important. These were kids’ games.
On School and Education…
There were three channels on television if you didn’t count the educational one, which we didn’t.
The library was a place to check out books, a week in advance of the science project that was mandatory.
The science project was a big deal, complete with a hand written four page report and five references, none from the web. Everyone had to make a poster and a project. People would know if your parents did the art work, and you wouldn’t win.
We’d get pop quizzes at school and worksheets that had been freshly run from the ditto machine, and smelled like ink. We loved those, and I think sometimes, the ink made us dizzy.
You got grades. You got grades every day. Most of the time, it was a number or a letter. The grades included C’s, D’s, F’s and the less common, C-, D+ and D-. Your parents got called if you got these grades. Every time. Forging your parent’s signature got you in bigger trouble.
If you didn’t do an assignment, you got to do it during recess while everyone else was outside playing, which stunk.
They made us memorize Kipling’s “If,” our multiplication tables and say the pledge. We often had to read aloud or do problems on the board for everyone else to watch.
They showed us videos of “The Red Balloon,” and “Chicken Soup with Rice” as treats. We saw each every year at least once.
At noon, We’d get kicked outside to play, we had recess. It was after lunch and lasted a decent amount of time. It didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, muggy or raining, we were on our own after lunch for that half hour. Recess lasted long enough to form cliques, to organize a kick ball game, to braid hair or play a no prisoners game of speed solitaire.
On Grown Ups…
People disagreed on politics, as they always have, but it wasn’t acceptable to insult someone just because they held a different political affiliation. No one was considered heartless or brainless for being a Republican or a Democrat; these were party denominations, not the solutions to every problem under the sun requiring absolute religious fealty.
Being kids, we didn’t even know what politics really were until Mom caught us one day having uprooted all the political signs and repositioned them in our front yard because we thought they were cool. These Vote for…posts seemed like some form of mushroom that had sprung up overnight. We were busy dismantling them to make swords when Mom found us.
Television had a family hour which was boring and grown-ups watched the news, which was boring to us, but then the alternative was bed.
There were uber parents out there who made their kids compete in every sport and activity, but most of the grown-ups knew that these people were wrong and encouraged all of us to pick what we loved and do that first.
Grown-ups drank things like beer and wine, ice tea, diet soda and coffee, all of which tasted terrible. They also had weird clothing rules like no shorts after Labor Day and no white in the winter. They ordered foods with dressings and sauces on them and used “Sweet and Low.” They would make us eat the crust on breads, the stumpy parts of broccoli and occasionally, liver.
For Fun…
Swimming lessons and camp took care of maybe two weeks. The rest of the time, we were on our own.
We’d troll the neighborhood to amass as many at home minors as possible. It didn’t matter who, if you were a kid and you were home, we were knocking on the door asking, “Can you come play?”
Then, we’d ride our bikes until dark, no helmets. We’d pin cards to our spokes with clothes pins to sound like motor cycles. On a dead end street, we’d hold races all afternoon until someone announced they were thirsty. There would be a run on the hose, with each person jockeying to be later in line, so as not to get the first swig of heated by the sun water that came out of the end.
Then the beep beep beep of the mosquito spraying truck would be heard and everyone would clear out to their homes as fast as possible. We didn’t know DEET was poisonous, but it sure smelled bad.
When it was too hot, we’d play monopoly in doors until someone won or was called home. We sometimes made card castles, trying to use all 52 cards before the thing fell. We loved fresh boxes of crayons and coloring books. The coloring books were almost always of animals and never had stickers.
Come fall, we’d gather pecans from every yard, filling up two trash cans. Then we’d offer to rake leaves for a dollar all over the block and try to sell the pecans.
Every Christmas, we’d have a Christmas program. They never had plots, just grade after grade, alternating between secular and religious music, with the grand finale, always, Silent Night. Then most parents would reconvene across the street at the Carnation Dairy restaurant to praise our performances and buy ice cream.
Why am I telling you this?
So my darlings, you will understand some of the why I tell you often to turn off the television and the DDS and the DVD’s and the IPods and the cell phones and the computers.
I will shrug sometimes when you are not 100% safe and even encourage you to jump off the high dive, draw until you run out of chalk and drink a soda outside while reading comics in a hammock.
I will not rush out to challenge other parents to a duel to the death because your feelings are hurt, though I will offer you a hug and say I love you.
Life is always unsafe and unfair but worth living. Sometimes, it is even unsafe and unfair in our favor.
Skinned knees and even bruised hearts heal. Memorization, pain from learning to learn is part of the process, and not what you will recall when you get to be nostalgic about childhood. Like giving birth, we don’t recall the labor pain itself, only that it hurt and then it was over, and we had this person, and everything was light and wonderful and still is.
Happy Thank You for Making me A Mother Day! And Happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there who has been so blessed.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Relative Math
God had proclaimed a snow day.
The County had declared a two hour delay.
The Jesuits apparently have a chronological system all unto themselves. A two hour delay means school starts at 9:20 a.m. So my son arrived via bus and Metro at school forty minutes late. He was assigned JUG. (Justice Under God, detention for all those non S.J. educated).
My argument that 2 hours+an 8 o’clock starting time equals ten could not defeat the emotionally indifferent “Did you read the parent’s handbook?”
I don't read instruction manuals either but usally, in English, 2 hour delays mean 2 hour delays.
My other kids got the day off in its entirety.
Why?
I lost my car keys.
Seven children fed, dressed, coated, mittened, scarfed and hatted even! Seven children loaded into the car with lunches packed for four. Seven children sitting waiting for Mom to drive them…and she can’t find her keys.
Even worse, Mom thinks she knows where the keys are…somewhere under the snow from shoveling the night before to clear the walk.
Now I could have just called and said, “Car trouble,” but with four children at the same school, odds were the truth would have come out anyway. I could just see my five year old brightly marching into her classroom to explain she got the day off because Mommy couldn’t find her car keys. So I ‘fessed up to the school. The secretary was still laughing when she hung up.
Exponents…
So the kids pile out of the car and explode into the home. By the time I unload my stuff and the baby, they have scattered to the four corners of the world, one on computer, two playing Nintendo, two are raiding the refrigerator for a second breakfast and one has buried herself back in the blankets with a book. Blowing my whistle (a’la Captain Von Trap), I summoned the horde.
Do any of you know what exponents are?
The two oldest raise their hands, eager to show off to the others what they know.
“Good.” I thrust a calculator in one child’s hands and a pencil and paper in the other’s.
“ You. Add this up. You. Check her math.”
You, all six of you come in the door. You drop your coats –those of you that can, (6), and gloves (12), scarves (6), hats (6), lunch boxes (4), backpacks (5), shoes (14), socks (13) how does that happen? and the baby comes in with her car seat, blanket, baby bag and then you add my purse and bag and coat and I have…seventy two things to put away. Add to that five beds to make…, the eight meals already served, the spoons, cups, plates and napkins, (32 items) and you’re lucky we even got in the car!
They are all looking at me blinking, waiting for the grande finale.
If you would like to eat before nine o’clock tonight…message received before she’s even finished pushing buttons to give me a grand total…they began scrambling.
Lessons learned…The Miracle of Compound Interest
I still haven’t found my keys. I've reshoveled the walk and walked the yard where I might have dropped them. I remember losing my student id and keys in the snow in Southbend Freshman year in early October. In April, I found them thawing by the sidewalk. At least it isn't as long a wait.
We’ll be able to drive tomorrow regardless, I’ll cannibalize my husband’s keys, but I have offered a ten dollar reward after offering a two dollar award and having no takers even for a cursory search. When I asked my son why he wasn’t interested in the new bounty being offered, he smiled, “Well, I have a lot of shopping to do for Birthday month.”
“And?”
“I figure if I wait a few more hours, you’ll raise the reward to $20.00.”
"Fink!" I'm thinking. "Fat chance." I say. "I could buy a whole new set of keys for that."
Birthday month is the season from March 8 to April 13th, when one cousin, two sons and two daughters have celebrations honoring the days they first started making their needs publically known. Usually Easter is sandwiched somewhere in there too, so it is a time overflowing with cake and celebration despite Lent.
We suffer our sack cloths and ashes in other ways…
Any parent who has ever accidentally won at Candy Land knows the game was designed by someone who either really hated kids or loved punishing grown-ups. Being a snow day and unable to go anywhere, I couldn’t weasel out of playing it by giving the adult excuse of “Have to run errands.”
So we played. It just doesn’t satisfy a three year old or a two to say “Good game.” So I go in planning to throw the game. On more than one occasion, I have deliberately miscounted to avoid the great slide of doom for my offspring, or self sacrificed and sent my own piece careening down so I could endure another 15 minutes of spinning the dial and moving the little happy people up the ladder.
It is a tedious experience, such that I have considered adding numbers to the number wheel like 20 and 15 to speed up the pace. Then it hit me. Those Jesuits used Candyland Math to get through the day.
So What Have I Learned?
Thinking of creating a Parent Manual with the option of an Evening two hour delay which would require that bed time be moved up 80 minutes in the event of a snow day or a mental emergency on the part of an adult.
I summoned the kids. "I'm setting the timer." I push 30 minutes. "The bounty for the keys is 10 dollars. If the keys are found in the next 30 minutes, you will get the ten bucks. After that, you get nothing but thanks."
Candyland toddler girl found the keys in five minutes. Wonder if I can swap the ten spot for another round of Candyland.
Moral: There is none, except don't lose your keys and try http://www.humor-blogs.com/!
The County had declared a two hour delay.
The Jesuits apparently have a chronological system all unto themselves. A two hour delay means school starts at 9:20 a.m. So my son arrived via bus and Metro at school forty minutes late. He was assigned JUG. (Justice Under God, detention for all those non S.J. educated).
My argument that 2 hours+an 8 o’clock starting time equals ten could not defeat the emotionally indifferent “Did you read the parent’s handbook?”
I don't read instruction manuals either but usally, in English, 2 hour delays mean 2 hour delays.
My other kids got the day off in its entirety.
Why?
I lost my car keys.
Seven children fed, dressed, coated, mittened, scarfed and hatted even! Seven children loaded into the car with lunches packed for four. Seven children sitting waiting for Mom to drive them…and she can’t find her keys.
Even worse, Mom thinks she knows where the keys are…somewhere under the snow from shoveling the night before to clear the walk.
Now I could have just called and said, “Car trouble,” but with four children at the same school, odds were the truth would have come out anyway. I could just see my five year old brightly marching into her classroom to explain she got the day off because Mommy couldn’t find her car keys. So I ‘fessed up to the school. The secretary was still laughing when she hung up.
Exponents…
So the kids pile out of the car and explode into the home. By the time I unload my stuff and the baby, they have scattered to the four corners of the world, one on computer, two playing Nintendo, two are raiding the refrigerator for a second breakfast and one has buried herself back in the blankets with a book. Blowing my whistle (a’la Captain Von Trap), I summoned the horde.
Do any of you know what exponents are?
The two oldest raise their hands, eager to show off to the others what they know.
“Good.” I thrust a calculator in one child’s hands and a pencil and paper in the other’s.
“ You. Add this up. You. Check her math.”
You, all six of you come in the door. You drop your coats –those of you that can, (6), and gloves (12), scarves (6), hats (6), lunch boxes (4), backpacks (5), shoes (14), socks (13) how does that happen? and the baby comes in with her car seat, blanket, baby bag and then you add my purse and bag and coat and I have…seventy two things to put away. Add to that five beds to make…, the eight meals already served, the spoons, cups, plates and napkins, (32 items) and you’re lucky we even got in the car!
They are all looking at me blinking, waiting for the grande finale.
If you would like to eat before nine o’clock tonight…message received before she’s even finished pushing buttons to give me a grand total…they began scrambling.
Lessons learned…The Miracle of Compound Interest
I still haven’t found my keys. I've reshoveled the walk and walked the yard where I might have dropped them. I remember losing my student id and keys in the snow in Southbend Freshman year in early October. In April, I found them thawing by the sidewalk. At least it isn't as long a wait.
We’ll be able to drive tomorrow regardless, I’ll cannibalize my husband’s keys, but I have offered a ten dollar reward after offering a two dollar award and having no takers even for a cursory search. When I asked my son why he wasn’t interested in the new bounty being offered, he smiled, “Well, I have a lot of shopping to do for Birthday month.”
“And?”
“I figure if I wait a few more hours, you’ll raise the reward to $20.00.”
"Fink!" I'm thinking. "Fat chance." I say. "I could buy a whole new set of keys for that."
Birthday month is the season from March 8 to April 13th, when one cousin, two sons and two daughters have celebrations honoring the days they first started making their needs publically known. Usually Easter is sandwiched somewhere in there too, so it is a time overflowing with cake and celebration despite Lent.
We suffer our sack cloths and ashes in other ways…
Any parent who has ever accidentally won at Candy Land knows the game was designed by someone who either really hated kids or loved punishing grown-ups. Being a snow day and unable to go anywhere, I couldn’t weasel out of playing it by giving the adult excuse of “Have to run errands.”
So we played. It just doesn’t satisfy a three year old or a two to say “Good game.” So I go in planning to throw the game. On more than one occasion, I have deliberately miscounted to avoid the great slide of doom for my offspring, or self sacrificed and sent my own piece careening down so I could endure another 15 minutes of spinning the dial and moving the little happy people up the ladder.
It is a tedious experience, such that I have considered adding numbers to the number wheel like 20 and 15 to speed up the pace. Then it hit me. Those Jesuits used Candyland Math to get through the day.
So What Have I Learned?
Thinking of creating a Parent Manual with the option of an Evening two hour delay which would require that bed time be moved up 80 minutes in the event of a snow day or a mental emergency on the part of an adult.
I summoned the kids. "I'm setting the timer." I push 30 minutes. "The bounty for the keys is 10 dollars. If the keys are found in the next 30 minutes, you will get the ten bucks. After that, you get nothing but thanks."
Candyland toddler girl found the keys in five minutes. Wonder if I can swap the ten spot for another round of Candyland.
Moral: There is none, except don't lose your keys and try http://www.humor-blogs.com/!
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