Tonight's Assigment

Today was the kid's first day of school with us in her new school district and living in her new house.  That would be the one that values an education, encourages achievement and insists on academic discipline.
Yep, over the summer, we've perfected Camp LeJeune North.

So tonight she was assigned three short, paragraph length essays to write which she's been crabbing about since her elders got home from another adventure laden day in Corporate America.  I did point out that in the time she's been bitching, she could have had the assignment done already which was the same object lesson I imparted on my graduate study group when they exhibited similar behavior.  I got pretty much the same response too, minus the booger of course.

So I'm trying a different tack.  I'm going to share the pain and commit to completing a similar assignment before the evening is through.  I'm going to write three paragraph length essays on the same subjects she's been assigned, though, this being the Bunny I have the academic freedom to both season them up just a little and use the word "booger" in and out of context.

I'm hoping to provide a good example, get her off to a good start, all the while dissuading her from asking me things about calculus and geometry where she'd be better off asking the cat.

1) Write a change of time essay briefly describing your academic career.

My career did no lasting harm to any of the poor academic souls who came in contact with me and at times even provided brief respites of amusement to them that tried to teach me at just how wholly incompetent I was at one particular subject.  As an example, refer to algebra and calculus in the introduction.  My academic career is far from over as I am a believer in life long learning which is often reinforced by my realizing how much certain things hurt when you do them.  If I had to graphically summarize my career, I'd say it started off promising but hit a significant slump about the same time as I discovered mouth breathing was a perfectly acceptable aspirable alternative to looking like you had a clue.  Fortunately it was rescued by my sudden realization that these kind of grades would doom me to working for the old man for the rest of my life.  I believe I made Dean's list that next semester.

2)  Compare and Contrast your favorite with your least favorite teacher.

Life is my favorite teacher and the best one I've ever come across by far.  Life doesn't care if you sleep in, life is seldom concerned if you shave or put on a clean shirt and life doesn't hand out letter grades.  Life, unlike Mr. Reyes, is not interested in groping Janet as much as I might be.  As a matter of fact, life had a large part in making Janet the gropable object of desire that she was at the time.  On the other hand, life also had a large part in making me about as desirable as warmed over tuna casserole to Janet at the time (and let's face it, not much has changed over the years) and life had a large part in casting groping as a very, very bad thing to do, then as now.  I'm pretty sure that while Mr. Reyes was undoubtedly the spawn of Satan, he neither affected my cosmetic development nor had any problem rationalizing copping a feel.

3)  Write a document based essay, consulting the course syllabus, describing the teacher's likes and dislikes.

Having carefully studied the materials at hand, I would say that nothing hits it off with the teacher like Times Roman with 12/16 leading on a good white bond.  Standard eight and a half by eleven, none of this namby-pamby international A4 here, by golly this is America!  Good, substantial prose in a starched three ring binder, crisp, clean and with all the articles in the right place any never dangling a participle.  That's right, good writing, right away, on time.  Oh, and three essays on the first day tells me clearly, you've got an issue with free time.  Not sure if you like boogers, though.

Bunny on.

A Crazy Quilt

Its August, the time when in my childhood, the old man would suggest, after howling "back to school" sing song at the top of his lungs, that I ready myself for the next academic year.

With four weeks until school began, he thought it would be wise that I study one hour a day in the first week, two the second, three the third, four the final.

I always smiled at this suggestion, said nothing out loud but silently wondered what fucking planet he thought we were living on.

This year, at this time in my life, in my fiftieth year of trying to figure out what its all about, I have a fifteen year old female teenager in the house, readying herself for a new academic year to be spent here full time.  Huh??  How did it get to this?  I'm 50, have never procreated and yet now I have someone sailing into the hormonal straits of teenage, girlism, under my roof and I have no idea what's going to hit next. 
Most days around here, once the dust has settled, I find myself standing alone in the kitchen repeating out loud:

"Ok, so what just happened here?"

Tomorrow, its been announced, we role play some critical service scenarios in order to sharpen our "think on the fly skills."  I'm hoping to get Richard the third as the irate call center customer.

"Hello, and how may I help you today?"

"Richard here.  I ordered a horse from you people a fortnight ago and it has yet to be delivered.  Must I ransom my kingdom?"

"I'm so sorry, but it seems your nephews put a stop payment on the check."

There's a race in a month I'm training for, so tonight it was off to the park on the bike.  An oasis of peace and tranquility until the freaking ice cream truck shows up with its inane repeating tinkle that would put the pied piper out of business.

One day I'm going to slip some Cialis into his vanilla and Mr. Softee will become Messr's Hardee and Stiffee and we'll replace the music with the theme from "Shaft."

Thanks for listening, bunny on.