Stupid is as Stupid Does

Item 1:
I was asked to forward this missive to all parents of students in Youngest's fourth grade class. I did so, noting that I was doing so without editorial comment. But my comment would have been something along the lines of, "Here's hoping you all have time to run out and buy costumes by tomorrow!"

Hi Parents - we are very excited to support the first-ever Student Council sponsored "Spring Fling Spirit Day" this Friday May 18. Please help your students show their school spirit by wearing clothing/costume reflecting this year's Chinese New Year theme "Year of the Dragon."   Students who dress up can stop by the Student Council table in the traffic circle at morning drop off for a chance to win free raffle tickets - open up a fortune cookie to see if you're a WINNER!  Thanks for supporting our students and good luck! 

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Item 2:
I receive many missives from all of the schools because I write a feature each week for an online news site that touts the various fundraisers going on at the schools. How's this for great role modeling? This is an auction item for a K-8 school's fundraiser.


Item Description

Do you long for your college days? Wish you could relive them for just one night?
Wear your Alma Mater colors and bring your party attitude, this shin-dig is sureto bring back that Ol' College Spirit!

Complete with all the fixin's from back in the day - better beer, same old munchies.

Reserve your spot at the College Kegger today for only $35 per person.

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Item 3:
Was it not obvious to every bank teller in the place as soon as he walked in that this dude was going to rob the place?

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Item 4:
This is what the Census Bureau decides to show as an example when touting what can be discovered in the newly released census information from 1940? "Why, I remember when we lived just down the road from 2-7."

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Item 5:
You just never know when you need to accessorize the perfect wedding dress with the perfect cell phone.

What a Dishonor

Along with other PTA Reflections local winners, Daughter has been invited to a school board meeting Tuesday for special recognition. At dinner the other night, I suggested it would be hilarious if she went to the meeting wearing a spaghetti-strap top, short shorts and flip flops. This attire is, of course, in direct violation of the dress code for school. But she wouldn't be going to school, would she?


Heh.


Pete did me one better, and suggested that she instead wear that T-shirt we gave all students at her now-shuttered school at the end of the year. That's the one that says, "They closed my middle school and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."


Heh. Heh.


She was all over that. In fact, she even created her own design on a T-shirt along the lines of how her old school was the best and the new one sucks.


Heh. Heh. Heh.


The gist of her dance and the accompanying write-up notes, "Diversity means everyone. I dance for everyone. And no matter how hard your life is, like mine is at my new middle school, everyone can break through."


I don't know what she'll wear Tuesday night. I've explained to her how those people might take great offense if she politicizes it by what she wears. I also told her they'll believe she's just doing what I want or that I'm using her as a pawn.


She has no time for any of those people. In her mind, they ruined 8th grade not only for her but for all of her former classmates as well, and they did it for no reason other than they could.


So I don't know what she'll wear Tuesday night on the outside. But on the inside, I know she'll be wearing sadness and disappointment.


It's been a long year for her. Those people think it's been over for a very long time. Daughter and I know it's still going on.

Keep Moving Forward

It's hard to keep moving forward after a post like the last one. How do you segue? How does the inanity happening all around me get thrown up after something like that?


I have gone every morning to school, early, to try to find her. He has dropped the children off. Ever hopeful at pick-up yesterday, it was him again. Parked, as he often is, in a handicapped space. No, he is not physically disabled. By the time he arrived yesterday and claimed that spot, it was too late to reach the police to call to report him. I think I shall call in advance tomorrow, pointing out how it is a consistent occurrence.


Consider this my moving forward post.


Because whenever there is something horrific near me, I have had the supreme good luck to be able to just move forward. Dead husband? That's the client. Chronic illness? That's the co-worker. Domestic violence? That's all those other seemingly normal people.


I move forward. I shake off guilt. I am such first world.

An Inkling of an Understanding

It doesn't really make sense to me, these rolling waves of domestic violence touching people I know. First, I discovered a few weeks ago that someone I (formerly) greatly admire was arrested for it. And then, yesterday, I read of the clearly tortured father of a classmate of Daughter's who took his estranged wife hostage and threatened to kill himself. But the final wave came yesterday afternoon, brought even frighteningly more to the forefront when such an act of violence against a wife and children was witnessed by someone very close to me.


I had already been dwelling in the past given the morning's report on the classmate's dad taking his wife prisoner and finally surrendering after close to six hours.


I remember so clearly fearing that my dad would go off the deep end and kill my mom. Worse than that -- yeah, worse, selfish me -- was the very real fear I had as a teenager that he would one day kill me as well. I remember.


Here I sit, then, feeling relieved that this one father had the presence of mind to make sure his kids were not a witness to his hostage-taking. And feeling so afraid for that other family still out there. To react so violently against your wife and son in a public place, where anyone could -- and someone did -- witness it makes me feel that, however well they might have managed to hide their dirty little secret before, they won't be able to hide it much longer.


What do you do? It so clearly isn't the first time it's happened. No one who observes the father on the soccer sidelines can doubt he is a brute. But a brute who beats up women and kids? Is that so clear to the other parents? Do the parents who engage in conversation with him suspect he's a wife beater? If they do, how can they talk to him? What power does he wield over them that makes them complicit or, if I am to be generous, submissive? How can anyone sit idly by?


We can't, can we? Do we say, "It's her choice. She has to stop it"? Do we say that about the beating of children? If we say nothing and do nothing and try nothing, we are complicit. We share his shame and their shame.


My fears of my dad coming to kill my mother and me were amplified when my own classmate's father managed to kill his ex-wife and then hang himself in jail. I wonder if her fears of what's next are amplified given what just happened in this same small town. I wonder if her boys' fears are. Maybe she'll do it for them now, if not for herself.


Maybe, just maybe, now that there's a witness, she can see a way out. We can be your way out. We all can be.

Delusional Publicity

Oh, man, I remember those days. Someone within the bowels of the newspaper's operations would come up with a grand idea worthy of a PRESS RELEASE. (Yeah, caps were added by me for emphasis, hoping to stir in you the great import with which these folks viewed the grand idea. And thus having that stirred within you, you would shake with the realization that the caps also indicate my mocking tone.)


The idea, of course, would not be worthy of a press release. Hell, even our own newspaper wouldn't print that chum. But off I'd go, writing the damn thing and posting it on the wire at some rate hovering between just-about-chump-change and a budget item. And no one would publish it or link to it or read it. But, hey, you choose your battles when you're battling nitwits.


I've been kind of busy, so I've not had the pleasure of spending too much time looking at what the school district is up to. I had some time just now. Just now. (Italics for emphasis. Yo.) And I click the link under press releases because I'd heard nothing about the subject at all, and it seemed pretty impressive because a local high school "Welcomes Japanese Exchange Students."


That seems worthy of a press release to me. Until I read it. Those exchange students? Spent a grand total of one morning at the high school. Yes, someone somewhere forced someone else to write this PRESS RELEASE.

Green With Envy

I envy them their freedom during school hours to volunteer to do this or that, either helping their child specifically or helping children globally.


I envy them their ability to shepherd children from this activity to that activity to this activity and back again without having to rely on the kindness of friends.


I envy them their well kept homes and hair and children and pets and cars and their constant tending to said homes, hair, children, pets and cars.


I envy them their clashes with surly teens throughout the after school hours and I envy them their quality time with the younger kids.


I am typically home a few days each week, which makes me one of the fortunate working parents. Working from home those days, though, means I'm not really home.


So, no, I can't do that field trip. (Unless I luck out like last month and had to be in Sacramento for a meeting on the same day as the fourth grade trip there.)


And, no, I can't go have Lunch on the Lawn with my middle schooler. (Like most 8th grade girls, she'd be mortified if I did show up, so while there's no loss to her there's an incredible missed opportunity on my part to mortify her.)


And, no, I can't take part in yet another effin' staff appreciation event at the frickin' high school. (Which isn't to say I don't appreciate the staff, necessarily, just that I think we're spending entirely too much time and effort cherishing the teachers when, let's face it, they'd probably just want more money for supplies than another catered breakfast or lunch.)


I'm tired. Really tired. Tired of being tired. Tired of feeling guilty. Tired of being envious. But too tired to do anything about it except take 8.2 minutes to note I'm tired.


Now, off to make the lunches, take the dog, take Youngest to school, set up graham crackers and orange juice for the 4th grade STAR test takers, shower, and head into Oakland, where I may (or may not) encounter black-clad occupiers. My advice to them? Get a freakin' job. Come be miserable like the rest of us.

BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!

We've got General Admission seats for tonight's Springsteen concert in San Jose. Since that won't be enough Springsteen for me, I'll be driving down to L.A. Thursday to catch him there. Alas, we only have tickets for the Thursday show, not the added Friday one. Double alas, even if I had tickets for Friday's show, I couldn't go because I'll be camping with the Girl Scouts starting Friday evening. So I'll essentially drive down beginning at about 7 a.m. Thursday and then drive back up beginning at about 6 a.m. Friday.


I know what you're thinking. "You're too freakin' old to put that much time and effort into an aging rock star."


And you know what I'm thinking, right? "BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!"


And what's more? "BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!"


Because, hello? "BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!"


I'll stop now.


BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!


No, really. I mean it. I'll stop now.


It has been more than 30 years since I've forsaken all others in my pursuit of Springsteen. And by "pursuit," I definitely don't mean in a sexual way (although that isn't to say I didn't daydream during the first decade or so). And by "others," I mean other musicians. And by "forsaken," I mean I only have eyes and ears and soul for Springsteen.


As I was nodding off to sleep last night, I was thinking about various ways the Springsteen camp could choose the people to be included in the pit -- the very lively and very crowded standing-room-only space in front of the stage. How about go with a "Let's Make a Deal" concept? People bring the craziest stuff with them in hopes that people with colored toothpicks or tiger-striped guitar picks or even pink hair picks get to be up front. Those dressed in vintage Springsteen concert shirts are chosen, but the shirts have to have been bought in the day; none of this re-released crap allowed.


Or maybe the person who is chosen to pick the starting lottery number -- typically a kid whose family gets in first along with him -- can be a clean-cut, 15-year-old boy in a JROTC shirt who is attempting for the first time to get into the pit along with his crazy-ass mother, his sane father and her BFF from college.


I can dream, yeah?


BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!