The Real Last Day of School - Repost

Son Number Two is graduating from high school tomorrow, and last Friday we got to go back to his elementary school so the seniors could visit all the kids in their caps and gowns. (The seniors were in the caps and gowns, not the kids.)

It was a fun reminder of the elementary days. Fun for us parents and the seniors. And probably for the kids. But I gotta tell you, those elementary teachers looked tired. They looked worn down. They looked ready to be done. That’s when I remembered what the last two weeks of elementary school are like – a complete waste of time.

It’s a slightly more productive two weeks now that they’re in high school, because at least they have a few finals, but it’s still a lot of wasted hours.

Here's what I had to say on the subject back in 2015 when we were in the thick of it:

 

We are down to the last two weeks of school, and frankly, everyone has quit trying. I say two weeks, but really it’s eight school days. Seven if you don’t count the last day, which is on Thursday next week. We can’t even make it all the way to Friday.

Next Thursday is officially the last day of school, but the real last day of school was the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend. That was when the last bit of actual learning took place for this school year. Homework has stopped. Spelling and math tests have stopped. Everything educational has stopped. This week and next are just movies and cupcakes and field trips.

And when I say field trips, I don’t mean a trip to a museum or a historical monument. I mean walking to the movie theater and walking to the park. Why walking? Because it takes up more time than riding the bus. They’re just looking for activities to fill the time at this point.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing. I’m not concerned about this at all. I don’t blame the teachers for un-educational time-fillers. I empathize. I feel their pain. And I totally understand the logic behind it.

You have to have the useless weeks at the end.

Here’s the real-world scenario they’re dealing with: Imagine the office where Bob has come down to his last week before retirement. The last five days at a job before he will never go there again. Now imagine you’re Bob’s manager or coworker.

“Hey Bob, can you handle the really annoying and overtime-filled Jenkins account for the last five days you’re here, until you’re gone forever?”

“Sure, I’ll handle it,” says Bob, with a smile on his face.

Bob is still smiling later that morning as he hands the Jenkins file to the janitor and heads out for lunch.

It’s just like that for the teachers, except they have twenty-five little Bobs.

Bob’s last week is filled with sleeping in, leaving early, extended lunches with his favorite clients, spider solitaire, and Facebook and Twitter updates (#FourDaysTillPermanentVacationEqualsFourMartiniLunch, #DontBeJealous, #ImOuttaHere, #9to5OnTheGolfCourse).

Ending a long-term endeavor like a job or a school year is a paradox. It goes like this:

What are we here to do?

Be productive.

Can we really be productive on the last day?

No.

Then should we have the last day?

No.

OK, we’ll get rid of the last day. Now the second to last day is the last day.

Can we really be productive on the last day?

No.

Then should we have the last day?

No.

You see the problem. If we eliminate the useless last two weeks of school, then we have a new end date, which will naturally be preceded by two weeks of uselessness. So, we get rid of those two weeks and move it back again.

You have to have the two useless last weeks or pretty soon we just show up for the first day of school and they say, “Great job. See you next year.”

So here we are. In the eight-day window of time-fillers.

Classroom pajama parties – Maybe if we tell them to wear their pajamas and bring pillows they’ll actually lay on the floor instead of climbing the walls. It’s worth a shot.

Walking trip to the water park – Sounded like a good idea, but in drought-stricken California at the moment, the water park consists of colored pipes sticking out of the ground with no water coming out of them. Whatever, let’s go anyway. It’ll burn a day.

The talent show – School-wide time-filler consisting of 473 acts. The acts have a 100% bravery ratio but, sadly, only a 9% talent ratio. Gets us out of the classroom, so let’s do it.

Walking trip to the movie theater – What’s playing? Who cares?

Day on the green – Put them all out on the soccer field. Activities? They’ll probably figure something out. Just lock the doors so they don’t come back in. Teachers can take turns rotating to their classrooms to sit in the quiet.

And finally…

The last day of school – It’s a minimum day. School ends at 12:20. Why do we even go through the charade of keeping them here for four hours? We’re not going to actually do anything. Shouldn’t we just show up in the morning, check them out on the clipboard, gather up the stuff from their desk and hand them off to the parents?

Come to think of it, why can’t we just check them out when they get picked up on Wednesday afternoon?

That’s a good idea. Next year we’ll just eliminate this useless last day.

Have a great summer, Bob.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

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A Light at the End of the Carpool, Part Three – The Finale

It was at the beginning of this school year, on September 20, 2023, that I posted a column entitled “Celebration Injury.” I had celebrated too early, and my feelings were hurt. Along with my gas budget and my will to live.

Seventeen months prior to that, I thought I was a free man. In a column in April of 2022, I was giddy with anticipation. Son Number Two was getting his license the next week and I was beside myself with joy because I was about to be liberated forever from the shackles and chains of carpool.

Damn the insane insurance costs, it was going to be worth it. I had been driving kids to and from school in one carpool or another for roughly two hundred years, and it had lost its luster fairly early on.

How much would it cost to add a second teenage boy to our insurance policy? I didn’t care, because money didn’t matter when balanced against carpool. I’ve never been freed from a long imprisonment in a POW camp, but I would imagine it’s a very similar feeling to being freed from carpool.

Well, it turned out that I had done the school day arithmetic, but not the school schedule calculus. I thought, foolishly, that since Number Two the senior and Number Three the sophomore would be at the same school playing the same sport, my carpool days were behind me.

I did not account for the fact that seniors take virtually no classes, and Number Two would be leaving school literally two and a half hours before his younger brother. By the time I needed him to drive his brother home, he’d already been home, eaten two meals, watched a movie, and was at the gym.

That left me and the other neighborhood parents still caged in the carpool POW camp, needing to pick up the sophomores. Damn you, schedule calculus! The one thin silver lining in my carpool cloud of despair was that we only had to pick them up from school. Son Number Two still takes them in the morning. But anyone who has ever done carpool knows that is small consolation. Pickup is waaaay worse than drop off.

So, I had to wait another seven months before I would be freed and get to celebrate for real. Well, my friends, today is the day! This afternoon is my last scheduled carpool pickup ever. Son Number Three goes for his behind-the-wheel test on Friday morning.

Now, granted, he still has to pass the test to get his license, but I’m confident. He’s the most cautious driver of the three so far, and he’s good. He should be just fine.

If you still think I might be counting my chickens before they hatch, think again. Nothing can derail this celebration now. You can Marc my words, if he doesn’t pass his driver’s test, he’ll be walking home from school for the rest of the year, starting this Friday afternoon.

Again, it's hard for me to express the joy I feel when I think of never driving carpool again, but to try to put it into monetary terms, it will be totally worth the cost of whatever bill is coming my way on Friday morning when I add a third teenage boy to our insurance plan.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

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Sort of Dumb

We live in Placer County, California. Placer rhymes with gasser, unless you are also pronouncing gasser wrong. Placer County is named after a gold mining technique – placer mining. That’s where you use water to sift through sand, silt, and gravel in order to not find enough gold to pay for the boots you ruined while placer mining.

I’m not sure if the roots of the county name, steeped in the practice of separating things, is the reason or not, but we have never had recycling bins. All the houses in Placer County get one big 96-gallon rolling green bin for the yard waste, and one big 96-gallon rolling gray bin for everything else. (Unless you’re my neighbor two doors down who pays to have a second gray bin and both of them are always overflowing and I still can’t figure out how one family could possibly produce that much trash each and every week unless they are importing it from other houses in some sort of weird money-making scheme but how would that work?… but I digress…)

The Western Regional Sanitary Landfill and Materials Recovery Facility, aka The Dump, employs a bunch of people to stand on either side of a huge conveyor belt and manually sort, Placer-style, all of our trash. #TopTenJobsIDon’tWant

I still don’t know why they do it that way, but it might have something to do with those sorting trashcans at the airport and in some fast-food places. You know – the ones with multiple small holes at the top labeled like this:

Paper | Cans | Plastic | Landfill

or

Mixed Recycling | Landfill | Compost

or

Bottles/Cans | Paper | Trash

Have you ever, since those came into existence, fully understood how to categorize every single thing you’re throwing away? The waxy paper under my cheese fries, for instance. Is it considered paper? You sure as heck can’t write on it. And if so, should it go in the paper section even though it’s soaked in oil and has cheese stuck to it? If not, is that now compost, landfill, trash, or recycle? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that I should probably lay off the cheese fries after looking at the paper.

And have you ever agreed with the categorization made by the person before you, whose paperboard drink holder is sticking out of the trash hole, or the paper hole, or the compost hole? No, you have not.

My guess is that Placer County decided if we can’t even use those right, how are we going to properly sort an entire week’s worth of household waste? I think they have a point.

Which is why I was a little shocked when I got the latest news from our school district. Seems that the California legislature passed a fun new bill requiring all schools to step up their recycling game, which leads me to believe that the California legislature does not understand that schools are full of kids. For whatever reason, the schools here in Placer County are going to break with Placer tradition and try something new.

 

Dear Rocklin Unified Students, Families and Staff,

Following the passage of California Senate Bill 1383, all school districts need to implement trash separation systems to recycle food waste. While Rocklin Unified has focused initial efforts within campus kitchens, the next round of implementation includes students separating organic/food waste into a green waste bin.

Elementary school students will participate in hands-on lessons to learn more about green waste recycling and then be asked to separate food scraps from non-food items when they finish eating snacks and lunch.  

Please contact your child’s school if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Rocklin Unified School District

 

Um, yes, I do have a few questions. My first one is, were you drunk or high when you wrote this?

You’re going to train the elementary school kids, but leave the middle- and high-schoolers to just figure it out? Have you met them? Although, the alternative idea of holding a “hands-on lesson” about food scraps with middle and high school kids is equally asinine. I can already see the airborne mozzarella sticks covered in marinara sauce.

And have you ever been to a school? The kids can’t get more than 60% of the trash all the way into the actual trash cans when there’s only one kind. 

I mean, best of luck with this plan, but I’m going to tell you right now, a lot of things are going to end up in those green waste bins, but fully separated organic/food waste is not one of them.

After the hands-on lessons, you can check the bin for Jimmy’s package of carrots, still in the package, Jimmy’s milk, still in the carton, and possibly Jimmy’s backpack, if he’s missing it.

And if he has any enemies, you may also want to check the bin for Jimmy himself.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Adventures in Substitute Teaching, Episode One

I am almost a full month into my new substitute teaching adventure, and I’m still trying to work out where I want to concentrate my time, grade-wise. I haven’t attempted it yet, but I’m almost positive I won’t be a good fit for kindergarten.

I love dogs, but I’m not a cat person. It seems like running a kindergarten class would be a lot like managing a room full of adult cats mixed with puppies. Cats and puppies with open markers and glue sticks tangled in their hair. And random emotions.

I believe there is a good reason that 126% of all kindergarten teachers in America are women. Women just naturally deal with random emotions and knotted, glued, emotionally-charged hair better than men.

I have subbed second and third grade, and that’s about as low on the age chart as I think I’ll get. I mean, let’s face it, first grade is basically just the second semester of kindergarten.

I subbed third grade the other day and the teacher was telling me about the class before school started. “It’s a great group of kids,” she said. “She’s a little squirrelly,” she told me, pointing to the desk closest to us, “but no big deal. They’re great.”

Turns out, “a little squirrelly” to a third-grade teacher means a girl who literally did not stop talking for the entire hour I was covering the class, never sat down in her actual chair once, and at one point, simply left the room without asking. I was informed by her peers that she had to use the restroom and apparently, I was not responding to her requests.

It seems my years of parenting Son Number Three have given me an above-average ability to tune out constant chatter. Probably not the best trait for a kindergarten substitute teacher.

Fifth and sixth grade were OK, but so far, I have drawn a line there, avoiding middle school. I drive a middle school carpool, and being in the car for fifteen minutes at a time with seventh- and eighth-graders is plenty for me. I’m not especially interested in an entire day of it. They’re like kindergartners, but with B.O. and an advanced slang/curse word vocabulary.

The line is lifted after eighth grade, however. I’m finding I enjoy subbing at the high school level. It’s far more humorous, on a tragically hip level, than elementary school. Meaning, there’s still the same amount of goofy issues with the students, but the high school issues are so varied and insanely self-centered, that I’d almost go for free just for the entertainment value. Almost.

An example of what I mean happened a couple weeks ago when I subbed for a high school English teacher. The English class was actually called LA-II on my paperwork, which stands for Lulling Asleep Individuals Instantaneously. The school system has finally adopted truth in advertising.

It was immediately obvious which desk cluster I was going to have problems with (and I’m using “cluster” in the truest sense of its slang meaning, here). Two of the three young ladies could not keep their attention off their cell phones. Why the teacher allowed them to have their phones at their desks is beyond me, but I am not suicidal enough to try to separate a teenage girl from her iPhone without body armor and a cattle prod.

The class was learning and writing about the Holocaust. They were supposed to be watching a movie about the Auschwitz concentration camp, and then answering questions and writing an essay. The entire class, minus the cluster at issue, was watching the movie on their Chromebooks. Most of them were using their own earbuds and a few had asked for the class headphones.

Over at the cluster, there was something hilarious on one of the phones. A short while after we managed that issue, it was selfie time. I looked over to see Girl Two leaning over to Girl One’s desk, with Girl One’s arms stretched high above her head. Heads together, looking up, duck lips deployed – snap. The perfect in-class dual selfie… wait, hang on, this stupid Chromebook was in the picture. Let’s do it over… Oh, crap, that lame old man sub is staring at us. Let’s pretend not to care about our phones for a while…

Girl Three of the cluster was clearly not friends with the other two. She was completely uninterested in selfie time. She was also wearing approximately six pounds more makeup than Girl One and Two combined. She was also doing absolutely nothing at all.

I walked over to ask if her Chromebook had stopped working, since it wasn’t even pulled up to the page that had the link to the movie, let alone the movie itself.

“Oh, yeah, so, like, my AirPods weren’t connecting to the computer and stuff, so I’m just going to watch it at home later.”

“Hmm,” I said, doing the mental calculation of the zero percent chance that she was planning to watch the movie at home. “No problem. I have a whole bin full of headphones over at my desk. Let me get you a pair.”

“Um, yeah, so, I have a cartilage piercing, and headphones really don’t feel good on it, and stuff, so I’m just going to watch it at home.”

“Oh, OK, no problem. Let me just get on the phone and call the last remaining Holocaust survivors and let them know you won’t be able to learn about their unimaginable ordeal today because it’s a little uncomfortable to wear headphones with your self-induced ear ornaments,” I said, inside my head.

“OK,” I said out loud, “do you have a book you can read instead?”

“No.”

“Of course you don’t. Best of luck with your future career as an Instagram model/part-time barista. I’ll bet your TikTok about your cartilage piercing gets like, a zillion views!” I said inside my head.

“Okey dokey,” I said out loud.

 

See what I mean? I’d almost do it for free, just for the laughs.

Almost.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Group Text Hell

“I’ve never been held hostage, but I have been on a group text.”

If you own a smartphone, I’m sure that rings true for you. And if it doesn’t, then I’m terribly sorry that you were held hostage at some point in your life. I hope that’s not still going on!

I, unfortunately, have found the fourth level of group text hell. I am currently on a GroupMe with the seventh- and eighth-grade flag football teams. Not the parents. The actual seventh- and eighth-graders.

Like his brothers before him, Son Number Three won’t get a cell phones until high school, but I’m pretty sure every other kid on both teams has a phone and is on the GroupMe. The coach is young enough that he just set up the GroupMe and added the kids. I’m not even sure he was planning to communicate at all with the parents. For the first week of practice, I had no actual written or verbal proof that my son was even on the team.

I guess the coach is too young to realize that it used to be just the parents on the group communication, because we’re the ones that actually need to know the practice and game schedule.

Now, since all the kids have phones, they’re on, too. Here’s the first reason why that’s dumb: the parents still need to be on, because the last person you can trust to relay information correctly is an eighth-grade boy. My son cannot accurately explain to me a single solitary event of his entire day.

The second reason it’s dumb is that now the coach and whatever parents are unfortunate enough to be on the chat are stuck there with forty middle schoolers.

Allow me to illustrate the situation with a recent text string:

 

Coach: Our game this Thursday the 2nd is an away game. Please arrive at Johnson Middle School by 3:30pm for our 4:00 game time. Remember to wear your red away jersey.

Player 1: cool who are we playing

Player 2: johnson idiot

Player 3: hahaha

Player 4: ok

Player 4: are we home or away?

Player 1: coach said red jersey so were home

Player 2: we are away dude  we are only home when we playat our field idiot

Player 4: So white jersey?

Player 3: white jersey is home coach said red for away

Player 2: ya

Player 5: yep

Player 4: ok what time is the game? i need to find a ride. my mom is working i think

Player 1: the game is at 3:30 idiot you have to read coachs text

Player 2: the game is at 4 idiot we have to be their at 330 you have to learn to read hahahaha

Player 5: cool

Player 6: ok

Player 7: coach I dont want to play center I want to play a catching position I can catch you just have to see me

Player 2: dude you cant catch

Player 7: shut up

Player 4: hahahaha

Player 8: coach am I allowed to play in the game if I haven’t been to practice because I was sick but im not sick anymore?

Player 1: ya you should come. you can play

Player 9: What time is the game? who we playin?

[And on and on for another 24 texts]

Parent who didn’t start at the top of the 48-text string: Hi Coach, can you let us know the location and arrival time for this Thursday’s game, please?

Me on the couch listening to my phone beep like it’s a bomb about to go off: *just shoot me*

 

I’m starting to think it might be less of a headache if I just gave Son Number Three a cell phone and the car keys. Being off this GroupMe would probably be worth it.

I mean, he’s already thirteen. What could go wrong?

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

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A Fourth Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

I am writing to make you aware of several issues.

For starters, I want to remind you that we are on day 194 of school at my house. I gotta tell you, I am starting to get a little annoyed at the blatant ignoring of my repeated requests to get the custodians in here to clean up this mess. My classroom has not been serviced even once in this entire 194-day semester.

You claim to be holding school at my house in the interest of public health, but let me tell you, there is nothing healthy about this pigsty of a living room after three teenage boys have been camped in here on Zoom calls for six and a half months. We’re wading through a sea of empty Cheetos bags and goldfish cracker dust and the whole place smells like someone farted on an old tennis shoe. I’m begging you, please get the custodians in here ASAP.

Besides being badly in need of a tidal wave and an industrial-size Febreze grenade, I also need some IT support. But I’m a little skeptical about your ability to actually help. I say that because on the magical two days a week that school is not at my house now, the boys return home from campus (where I assume you are hoarding the custodial staff) with stories of just playing games on their phones in class because the WiFi was down.

I must say, if you are going to require the use of computers that need WiFi when the kids are in an actual classroom with their actual teacher, maybe priority one from the IT department should be WiFi that works all the time. Just a thought, from a dad that also can’t understand why the teacher defaults to phone games instead of books…

Anyway, I need the IT department to look at Son Number Two’s Chromebook. He tried to log in this morning and had a little trouble typing anything the computer would accept. It seems that overnight his keyboard took a little vacation from convenient functionality.

Now, when you type the ‘e’ key, it writes ‘qrwetiuOP’, and the ‘r’ key gives you ‘<.rii.>’, both of which are entirely unhelpful when trying to spell words in English. The ‘y’ key just shuts the computer off.

Not optimal.

As the IT manager at this homeschool, I find myself slightly out of my depth with this problem, and could really use some more professional help. Maybe one of your IT guys could log onto a remote desktop help session with me? I assume he’ll need to drive over to a Starbucks to use their WiFi since yours never works…

Let me know what you can do for us, and please keep us informed about when you think real school might start back up so our kids can begin to learn things again.

They’re 194 days dumber and counting, and the phone games and qrwetiuOP<.rii.> aren’t helping a bit.

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite T-shirt is at SmidgeTees

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There's a Trick to Wearing a Mask

This is it, school-aged children of America. This is your time to shine! Halloween is upon us, but this year at school is like none other.

Every Halloween of your life has been the same thing at school. “Please wear your costumes to show your school spirit, but remember the safety rules – no masks allowed.”

Well, my young friends, this year is different. Due to all of our adult COVID concerns, you are being required to wear masks at school! If a surgical mask over your nose and mouth is good, then why wouldn’t a hairy rubber full-head werewolf mask be even better? The answer is simple. It is better, and no adult working at your school can argue that logic.

In years past, you have had fun activities filled with delicious candy at your school’s Halloween celebrations. The only thing you’ll get this year is an extra squirt of hand sanitizer. Does that seem fair? No, it does not, but you don’t know what to do about it.

That’s because you have grown up with the tame, watered down, Disney version of Halloween, so chances are, you never really even understood why you say “Trick or Treat” to get candy. You need to understand that Halloween wasn’t always a national month of cute costume-themed parties. Halloween used to be a night to be dreaded by upstanding, tax-paying adults.

The phrase “Trick or Treat” is actually a question, and it’s a time-honored threat that your forefathers and foremothers leveled at helpless homeowners. It means, quite simply, “Do you want to give us candy or do you want our masked, anonymous mob to trash your house?”

It’s time to get back to our roots, kids! The reason the school never wanted you to wear masks is the same reason that when the spinster tried to give out twist-tied baggies of granola as “healthy treats,”  your ancestors were able to egg her house and soap her front windows with impunity. Masks hide your identity.

It is time for the natural, historical consequence of people not providing you with your well-deserved candy. It’s time to don that storm trooper helmet and head to school. If they don’t have a treat for you, well, then it’s time for a trick, isn’t it?

Are you going to go to your own classes? Of course not. Find a friend of similar height and make the switch. Always wanted to throw that plastic cup of watery canned corn that came with your school lunch back toward the kitchen from whence it came? Warm up that arm! Not allowed to play full-contact dodge ball at recess? Well, click the safety off that red bouncy ball and light that annoying kid from third period up. Always wanted to release 5,000 crickets into the front office? Just walk on in and dump the box.

Whatever you want to do! Use your imagination.

“But, they’ll catch me. They’ll just walk right up and take off my mask,” you might say, shaking in your hairy rubber werewolf feet.

Of course they won’t, if you learn one simple sentence. Repeat after me.

“Excuse me, responsible adult in charge of my safety, kindly maintain a six-foot distance from me to prevent the spread of any infectious disease that I could inadvertently bring home to my lawyer parents.”

The world is your oyster this year.

Will it be a Trick or a Treat?

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

COVID-19 Shutdown Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 145

Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 145

We are a new color! Besides being green with envy at the other states where kids get to receive an education, us Californians are operating on a critical COVID color convention code criteria, or CCCCCCC, as it’s known locally.

Each color represents a new phase where kids still don’t get to go to regular school for any sort of organized learning, but the color changes, which is fun. The phases are a step-by-step “reopening” plan. We are currently on day 215 of reopening from our 14-day shutdown to “flatten the curve.” I wish I were making that up.

So, each color represents a new reopening phase, and each phase is defined in weekly briefings from Sacramento. Unfortunately, the weekly briefings are made up on the spot by a politician who is actively huffing metallic spray paint from one of his Ralph Lauren dress socks, and the characteristics of each phase, as well as the color spectrum, change as required based on what is happening with COVID in eastern Europe. Each California county has been assigned a fun Slavic country to get our new case rate numbers from.

I believe Placer County was a very dark purple for the past few weeks and we are now deep magenta. Shout out to Latvia! Thanks, fellas. These are exciting times.

Unfortunately for students and their parents alike, we need to get all the way to “golf pants lime green" before the kids can go to school five days a week. And even then, they are required to continuously squirt hand sanitizer out in a six-foot radius in all directions when on campus, as is Latvian tradition.

I'm not sure what the state has planned for an educational catch-up after we get to the final "fully back to normal" color of UPS brown, but I'm hoping it's something good. We just finished the first quarter of this school year with a tenth grader who never finished his freshman year, a ninth grader who never finished middle school, and a seventh grader who can't figure out how to make it to a daily Zoom check-in meeting that happens at the same damn time every damn day.

Pray for our next transition to the burnt cyan phase as soon as possible. These kids are getting dumber by the minute.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Hybrid Education

The sun is up and the house is quiet. The only thing I can hear is the dog breathing. This can only mean one thing… That’s right, I moved away from my family and took the dog!

Just kidding. It means THE KIDS ARE BACK IN SCHOOL!!!

Sorta. We are back to school part-time, two to three days a week. It’s not the normal full-time schedule I was hoping for, but I’ll take anything I can get. I haven’t had peace and quiet during school hours since March, which was fifty-six months ago.

On the days they are home, the boys are doing “asynchronous learning,” which is a fancy word for ten minutes of homework, one five-minute Zoom attendance check in, and seven hours of Minecraft.

It’s what the school is calling a “hybrid” schedule, and it should be interesting. In order to be able to teach the same amount of material on campus in half the time, classes are being combined to form a “hybrid education.”

For example, PE has been combined with Math. Students are asked to run at a full sprint around the track for forty-five minutes. At the end of the session, they formulate ratios between how many students threw up and how many students actually passed out. Later in the semester they correlate the data between the classes that take place before lunch and after lunch and look for trends.

Language Arts (English, for those of you over the age of thirty) has been combined with all the elective languages (Spanish, French, Profane, etc.) to form one universal language class. That’s right! We’re bringing back the one true world language, Esperanto! The people that were promoting it to me in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s will be thrilled. Assuming they are still alive. If not, they probably won’t be that thrilled at all.

Woodshop has been combined with Home Ec, which should be exciting. Students will learn how to build a kitchen table, at which they can sit and enjoy their culinary creations. Halfway through the table building unit, however, all the lumber will be destroyed in a massive grease fire during the hybrid turkey deep frying unit.

Theater has been combined with Chemistry and is actually being taught by the campus landscape crews to free up some teaching staff. This should really produce some explosive live performances this year, especially if they explore all the different reactions of fertilizer and lawnmower gasoline.

The extra teachers will be helping with a three-way hybridization of Computer Science, Sex Ed., and Aquatics. I can’t for the life of me see that going well, but I am just trusting that they have a plan.

And lastly, History has been combined with Creative Writing. But that’s nothing new.

Happy return to school, everybody!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Third Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

I am writing to urge you to reopen our schools as soon as possible. I mean like tomorrow. We need to avert a monumental tragedy, and opening schools across the nation is the only way to be sure we can avoid it.

Schools need to reopen now in order to save Lifetouch School Portraits from certain doom. I fear they will go out of business otherwise.

We need Lifetouch in our lives! Obviously not for good quality school pictures. They are incapable of that. We need them for the joy they spread through the sheer absurdity of the images of our children that they attempt to pass off as good quality school pictures.

Without the fall and spring comic relief that Lifetouch offers us as parents, raising our children would simply be overwhelming.

This matter is extremely urgent, as Lifetouch is already showing signs of desperation. They are clawing at the walls of their school-less prison, and they need our help. They have already gone as far as attempting to create a new “national day.”

Emails have been blasted to anyone who has ever had even the remotest contact with their little photography hobby shop, announcing the creation of “National School Picture Day” on September 10^th.

In addition to some “nominate a great teacher” thing, they are asking us to upload our previous school pictures that they took, so we can all create a national yearbook.

National School Picture Day, established by Lifetouch, is an opportunity to relive our school pictures. It’s a chance to bond over the fads and faces that make school pictures such wonderful artifacts. And, this year, we’re creating the ultimate yearbook.

As an example of how ludicrous they are as a company, and why this type of comedy is so valuable to the mental health and stability of us parents, one must look no further than this email, keeping in mind they sent it to us on purpose.

The email contains three examples of the amazing school portraits they have captured over the years. One shows a boy in giant reading glasses, with awful lighting resulting in his glasses casting shadows on his face, and his head casting a shadow on the time-honored swirly gray school picture background behind him. We can see that he is, at least, smiling, even though his chin is being partially obscured by his enormous shirt collar, which is also casting a shadow.

Another is a photo of a little girl not even looking at the camera. Instead, she is closing her eyes and turning her head. This unfortunate situation is offset, however, by more bad lighting, as per standard.

Think about this. These are the pictures that Lifetouch is purposely showing us in an attempt to keep their business relevant!

“Hey America, check out these crappy pictures we took and charged these families money for! Please engage with us online so we can stay alive and continue to be your go-to crappy school photography company for years to come.”

I mean, that is just gold, people. That is the kind of comic relief that you can’t put a price on. Humor like that can pull you out of even the darkest parenting funk. We need Lifetouch to stay in business, even if the business they are in is entirely undefinable.

We need schools back open so there will be long lines of kids with food stuck to their faces to shuffle into the seats in front of the inadequate and poorly placed lights.

Open up our schools and help keep this national treasure alive and well. It’s not a question of whether we want school pictures. We need our school pictures!!

We need the good ones we take ourselves and send to relatives, and we need the ridiculous ones from Lifetouch to keep us all going as a people, united in humor.

Open schools tomorrow, save Lifetouch, and save our nation.

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

COVID Positive

Let’s face facts – these are dark times in our nation’s history. My mask is starting to smell funky but I can’t wash it because it’s paper, there’s a national coin shortage of some sort that may or may not be affecting us in some way, and it’s an election year, so ridiculous politicians keep trying to get our attention. Add in the fact that the kids won’t leave the house and insist on staying home all day distance “learning,” and it’s easy to get discouraged.

But, my friends, we must not despair. We must look on the bright side of things. Sure, distance learning is just about the worst thing ever, but let’s try to find the good in it, shall we?

Here are fifteen positive things I can think of about the fact that our kids now go to school in our living rooms:

1) Teachers are probably saving hundreds of dollars on air freshener because the classrooms don’t smell like stinky teenagers anymore.

2) Teachers can now drink during school hours.

3) This is a great time for kids to improve their grades. It’s so much easier for them to cheat on tests now.

4) With the need to use so much technology now to even take role each day, teachers are unknowingly padding their resumes with IT skills. This will come in handy for the eventual career change after the nervous breakdown.

5) Kids’ eye-hand coordination will improve dramatically, since the absence of sports has freed up so much more video game time.

6) It’s never been an easier time to be a PE teacher or a librarian. Apply today.

7) The food service and janitorial folks are getting a much-needed break.

8) On-campus disciplinary actions are down a dramatic 100%. Vice Principals are now freed up to snack and nap.

9) Kids have no pesky opportunities for social-emotional growth, not having to deal with their peers in person, so they can happily stagnate at home in front of the computer in their pajamas. Yay!

10) Instances of lost retainers in lunchroom trash cans also down 100%. Retainers are now conveniently lost at home.

11) No tri-fold poster science projects this year! This completely frees up your night before it was due.

12) Back to school night now has a full bar.

13) Parents, no need to leave work early this year to get to the third-grade performance of Friendly Neighborhood Helpers in the multipurpose room. You can stay at work, in your pajamas, in your makeshift bedroom home office with the door securely locked.

14) Snow days are finally available nationwide, any time the internet goes out.

15) And now that they don’t get together in person, it’s a lot tougher for the high school girls to get pregnant!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

COVID-19 Shutdown Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 89

Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 89

The Summer of Bummer has officially ended with the lamest “start” of school since the middle ages when the illegitimate sons and daughters of royalty were forced to report to monasteries and nunneries to be hidden away forever.

Our seventh-grader started his exciting middle school run upstairs on a couch he made himself out of three chairs and a futon. Check the Woodshop and Home Ec. boxes simultaneously.

Our incoming freshman began his exciting high school years in our living room, on a regular swiveling office chair. Intro to Business credits!

Our sophomore was already sitting at his computer screen, so he just shrugged and said, “whatever.”

California just couldn’t figure out how to get everyone back to actual school. I’m not even going to pretend to understand the decision-making processes being used, but as a logic and numbers guy I still maintain that it would have been safer for the kids to be required to return to school as long as no one was allowed to drive there.

I can’t thank California enough for all the fun shopping and family IT manager opportunities this has provided me. Laptops, Chromebooks, monitors, Wi-Fi extenders, printer ink and paper, keyboards, mice, desk pads, swivel office chairs, protective floor mats for under the swivel office chairs, white boards and pens, and the list goes on. What ever would I do with my time and money if it wasn’t for school at home? Probably just waste it on stuff like food and retirement savings.

Also, without this opportunity, I never would have known if I could convert a single-family home into a working office. Turns out I can’t. It really ended up being a crappy excuse for an office inside a home that now looks like a crappy office. Sweet!

And the increase in screen time has been just what the doctor ordered for my teenagers! Their gooey developing brains are just soaking in all the goodness, and it shows any time we pry them away from their devices. What caring, cooperative, and patient personalities this is breeding!

And let’s not forget about my delightful screen time increase. What a nifty collection of emails I’ve received in the last few weeks. Just a quick count in my Gmail shows eighty-four emails in the past two weeks, many of them containing links to videos. That’s six a day, including weekends. A big shout out to the superintendent, principals, assistant principals, counselors, teachers, librarians, athletic departments, coaches, food service staff, front office personnel, custodians, yard duties, crossing guards, student body presidents, and activities directors for cranking those out! I’ve never been more informed about the unprecedented-ness of our unique and challenging situation.

Happily, the schools have also provided me with something to fill my downtime between emails and videos. Gone are the days of simply hearing at dinner about how class is going from your child, and talking quarterly with their teacher. We now have so many more options, digitally, to stay engaged in real-time while they are actually learning during each day, just down the hall.

I’ve had the pleasure of creating accounts with a number of different online learning platforms used in a wide variety between the fifteen different classes I am now invited to keep up with, through helpful reminder emails, each day.

It’s a darn good thing that all the California parents like myself were able to quit their jobs and stay home to manage all this learning!

Maybe I’ll enroll in online school while I’m at it. Perhaps some IT and education classes? That would probably help tremendously in my new role as home school office IT manager.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. The Wi-Fi is down. Everyone just got kicked out of class.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

A Second Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

When I last wrote you in April, I pleaded for you to refrain from having a “spring break” from COVID distance learning when we were all still required to be inside our homes, instead of outside at a beach the way our forefathers intended. You failed to heed my request and went ahead with a pointless week of kids in the house with nothing to do, leading to much of our furniture being broken by wrestling teenagers.

That was one example in a long line of decisions on your part that has left me underwhelmed by your educational stewardship of our youth, not to mention your regard for our home furnishings. And now, here we are at another pivotal decision point.

The California Department of Education has recently released its recommendations for how this coming school year might begin. This represents a massive opportunity for you to redeem yourselves in the eyes of the parents, teachers, coaches, and students, by wholeheartedly rejecting every single one of the asinine ideas they came up with when they weren’t over in the corner of the capitol building eating paste or sniffing their highlighters.

Apparently, the folks in Sacramento are aware that we have children living here in the state, but have never actually met one in person. That’s the only explanation for what they came up with.

I won’t bore you with all sixty-two pages of the recommendation, because, frankly, I didn’t bore myself with them. I stopped reading after the first one or two points in the summary. Just glancing at the summary was enough to surmise that the other sixty-one pages must consist largely of legislative crayon scribbles and drool stains.

Here’s where I stopped reading:

“The guidance asks schools to try to keep students six feet apart at all times — in class, in the hallways and at recess.”

Hmm…

So, in order to maintain the six-feet-apart requirement, they plan to limit classes to between ten and fifteen students at a time, or perhaps hold traditional sized classes in much larger auditorium-style classrooms they will build quickly for every elementary, middle, and high school in the state in the next seven weeks.

If they stick with the existing classrooms, I’m assuming all classroom doors will be widened to a minimum of ninety feet to accommodate all fifteen students at once, as per standard student classroom entry protocol. Class times will obviously need to be extended to account for the half hour it will take to open and close the massive door.

Individual learning and problem explanation will now take place between the teacher and student from six feet apart using a long stainless steel pointer that rests, when not in use, next to the teacher’s desk in a fifty-five-gallon drum of hand sanitizer. Teachers over the age of thirty will be issued binoculars as well to be able to read the student’s paper or computer screen from six feet away.

In order to keep the students six feet apart in the hallways and at recess, each student will be assigned an Individual Student Social Distance Monitor adult to follow them around all day (from six feet away) to make sure they stay properly socially distanced. Since this will double the amount of people on campus (all needing to stay six feet apart), all campuses will immediately be doubled in size and all classrooms will be moved twice as far apart.

Individual Student Social Distance Monitor applications are now being accepted. Background checks are being waived due to the sheer amount of adults required. Since all of this on-campus social distancing is obviously a moot point if the students don’t continue it off-campus once the final bell rings, the ISSDM is a full-time, 24/7 position including room and board at your assigned student’s residence.

Each campus will also be adding multiple “screamer” positions. Screamers will be placed high in trees, man lifts, balconies, etc. and are in charge of yelling at everyone when they forget to stay six feet apart.

Kindergarten through third grade will go to a one-to-one teacher/student ratio in order to give the ISSDM’s a break during class time but still maintain proper in-class separation. Class sizes will be reduced to a maximum of seven students to fit everyone in with proper spacing. Traditional teaching credential requirements are also being waived to accommodate the huge numbers of new teachers required.

Among the many other expansions required, elementary campuses will need to add four times as many K-3 classrooms. An alternative to this would be to maintain current campus facilities and elongate the K-3 curriculum to a sixteen-year program. This could be beneficial since the elementary students would also be qualified to act as ISSDM adults by the end of second grade.

Etc…

Listen, School District Folks, you have the opportunity to garner the love, affection, and possibly even respect of a vast majority of those involved here. Tell the State of California to kindly kiss your ass and send kids back to normal school in August.

For once, please think about this logically. Those parents that think returning to normal in August is a terrible idea are PARENTS. They have met kids before. They already logically know this idiotic plan won’t keep kids from being all over each other, and they’re already making other plans for their children’s education.

The rest of us are begging you. Please don’t waste more of our money. Please don’t make the teachers’ jobs harder than they already are. Please don’t continue to diminish our students’ education with distance learning or less days on campus. And, overall, please don’t punish our kids in the process. We want them to go to school, not jail.

In short, we need them out of the house!

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

An Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

It has come to my attention that you are still planning to have “spring break” next week. I am writing to ask that you seriously reconsider that plan, because frankly, it’s stupid.

Spring break is meant to be a time of joy – a time to “break away” from the harsh rigors of school and the grueling six whole weeks of continuous study we’ve had to endure since ski week in February.

That would be great and all, if we could leave the house, but there’s a little viral wrench in the works this year. I know you know about it, because you guys send me six or seven emails a day expressly telling me that you are aware of the situation, you are proud of how you’re handling it, and you care deeply about my family’s health and safety.

Well, Mr. and Mrs. School District, I’m not a hundred percent sure that last part is correct. Do you really care?

You see, the governor has told us that we’re not allowed to go anywhere or do anything. I’m not sure if you school district big wigs got special travel dispensation, but the rest of us are supposed to remain locked inside our houses for the foreseeable future, which most certainly includes your so-called “spring break” next week.

Even if we could leave the house and go somewhere, all the places we were planning to go have closed. Exactly what are we supposed to do with our children on this “spring break” of yours? Take them to the grocery store? Nope. I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed under state law anymore.

Field trip to the Chevron? “Hey, kids, let’s go get gas! Stay in the car, though. Maybe if you’re good we’ll go through the car wash.”

I don’t think so, and these scenarios are what make me skeptical about your claim that you care about the health and safety of my family. Health includes mental health, and the only thing keeping our mental health even remotely intact right now is the existence of some sort of school schedule for our three boys.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that homeschooling is going well. It’s not. It’s not even going remotely well. But at the very least, their online schoolwork is an activity they’re required to accomplish during the day. That means they stay busy for at least part of the day, and more importantly, out of our hair and off of each other. Some days it may only be for fifteen or twenty minutes, but it’s something.

And if you cared at all about their safety, you’d definitely cancel this whole spring break nonsense. Have you people even ever seen two testosterone-y teenage boys and their crazy twelve-year-old brother caged up inside a house with nothing to do? If not, have you ever seen footage of a prison riot? Same thing.

We, as their parents, genuinely fear for their safety, because if they don’t kill each other, my wife and I might just finish the job. Possibly as early as day two. They are that annoying.

And please don’t suggest to me that we should let them play more video games. Screen time is not the answer if you are truly concerned about their health. Screen time is the answer if we’re looking to have them rapidly oscillate between lobotomized drooling and hyperactive insanity, but that’s not exactly the picture of mental health now, is it?

And don’t try to give me any nonsense about the hard-working teachers needing a break. My wife is one of those hard-working teachers, and she is not looking for a break from her students – she’s looking for a break from her own kids. Spring “break” will be the exact opposite of that.

A vast majority of our district teachers are in the same boat. They have kids, too. It’s not an excessive burden on them to teach through what would have been the break. They are all helping keep each other’s kids busy during the day. It’s a circle of life kinda deal.

And the teachers in our district who don’t have kids at home need to keep working just as much, but for a different reason. They’ve had to quickly ramp up to online teaching the past few weeks, and they’re as stressed out as the rest of their colleagues. Normally, a break would do them a world of good, if they were actually able to travel. However, if you make them stay home with nothing to do, they are just going to develop severe drinking problems.

Restaurants are allowed to deliver alcohol now! That’s not good. These teachers are trapped inside like the rest of us, and the fact that they still have to go to work each day, albeit in their pajamas, is the only thing keeping them from slipping off the edge. If you take away the responsibility of needing to be coherent during the day, it’s going to be a nine A.M. margarita-fueled disaster zone.

So, I beg you, for the good of all mankind in our district, please stop the inevitable spring break madness before it even begins. You can even take full credit for the great idea of “pushing on with valuable learning during these unprecedented times to maintain fluid educational continuity,” or however you want to word it to make yourselves sound amazing. You guys are good at that.

Just please, please don’t make me have to buy a monthly pass at the Chevron drive-thru car wash for field trips. I fear we’ll scrub off the Suburban’s entire top coat of paint just trying to keep our sanity next week without a school schedule.

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

The Just a Smidge Homeschool Schedule

I don’t want to brag or anything, but we are handling this new nationwide “distance learning” directive like a boss over here at Smidge Central.

Do we need the boys to leave the house to get their education every day?

Heck no! We can totally do all that stuff right here at home. A home that used to be much, much larger, as I remember it.

We spent the weekend coming up with our new homeschooling schedule – and by weekend, I mean five minutes on Sunday night over a couple drinks. The schedule has since been honed to razor-sharp perfection, and we are running like a Swiss watch over here on day three.

Since this has been such a massive win for us, educationally speaking, we just wouldn’t feel right keeping it to ourselves. So, we have decided to post our homeschooling schedule here for you to adopt in your own home.

The Just a Smidge Homeschool Schedule

From whenever you wake up until 8:00 A.M.

Reading time (we think – we are taking this opportunity to sleep in until 8:00 because that NEVER happens, so we’re not really sure what they’re doing, but we told them to read and we also really don’t care that much as long as they let us sleep.)

8:00 – 9:00

Culinary – boys complain about having to make their own breakfasts

9:00 – 9:30

Work Experience – boys complain about having to vacuum and do dishes

9:30 – 11:30

Classroom – boys complain that the assignments from the teachers are dumb and don’t make sense. I ask them if they read the directions. They say stupid things and then shut up after they finally read the directions. Repeat. I also use this time to attempt to figure out the logistics of expelling one or more of my children from homeschool. Does that mean they have to live in the backyard? If so, I’m totally fine with that. We own tents.

11:30 – Noon

Culinary – boys complain that they aren’t hungry for lunch yet, but they are lying, because they are boys and therefore always hungry. They make themselves cereal and chips.

Noon – 1:00 P.M.

Reading time – boys complain that they already read a ton before we got up and their books are boring and this is dumb and why can’t we go play since there is no school. They also complain about being hungry. They shut up once they actually open their books and get sucked back into the amazing stories that await them on every page.

1:00 – 2:00

Physical Education – boys go to the garage and mostly punch each other and put each other in headlocks while they are supposed to be lifting weights, doing pullups, or running around the block. As long as they stay out in the garage for an hour, we give them full credit.

2:00 – 5:00

Free Play, including one hour of screen time – boys always start their three-hour free play time with their one hour of screen time, because they have already figured out that the one hour will likely be extended indefinitely since it’s the only peace and quiet I’ve had all day and I need to get some damn things done around here!

5:00 P.M.

Guided Culinary – dinner prep with the boys playing active roles in all major food preparation activities. We are having cereal again because I just can’t anymore.

6:00 P.M.

Survival Skills – get away from me if you want to live. Also, make sure you get yourself to bed at a reasonable hour. It’s a school night.

Anyway, like I said, we’re pretty much owning this whole homeschooling thing. Use this amazing schedule with our compliments.

Best of luck!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

This Column is Going Downhill

Our regularly scheduled column has been rudely preempted by Ski Week.

Yes, that’s right, I said Ski Week. Instead of celebrating the glorious birthdays of Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison on two separate Mondays in February, like we all did when we were young, our school district changed things up. Apparently, they think we’re all rich.

They tacked on three extra president’s days to the previous two, and lined them all up in a row this week. This phenomenon is nicknamed “Ski Week,” so the idea, apparently, is that we’re all supposed to head up to the slopes and spend the education-free week on a ski vacation. I guess I forgot to let our school district know that we don’t have thirty-eight thousand dollars lying around for just such an occasion.

And our school district failed to check with any of the surrounding districts to see if they were also populated by the idle rich and doing the same thing. Turns out they’re not. Since my wife teaches in a neighboring district, our ski week, could we afford it, would be momless.

Sure, we might be able to shave a few thousand bucks off the total cost with one less lift ticket and no overpriced ski lodge chardonnay, but if you think I’m taking these three monkeys skiing by myself, you’ve obviously been drinking something a lot stronger than wine.

So, what I’m telling you is, the kids in Rocklin, which unfortunately includes MY kids, have the ENTIRE damn week off. And not only that, but this particular week has weekends on BOTH sides of it! Do you know what that means? It means my three boys have been here at home with me now for five whole days in a row already, and we still have four more whole days, also in that row, left before they go back to school.

Those of you with kids, or those of you who have met kids before, should now understand the fact that I’ve got nothing done in the last five days, and that trend will continue for the next four. In particular, I haven’t been able to write this column. I haven’t been able to do anything useful. (Author’s note to aspiring writers: Take notice of how I deftly implied that this column is actually useful through the trickery of italics, even though there is absolutely no historical evidence that would support that claim.)

So, to all of you who are not currently on a weeks-long ski vacation, I apologize for not having a column for you today. I don’t know why our school district is choosing not to celebrate the President’s Days as our forefathers intended, but one thing is certain – our distinguished eighth and ninth presidents are rolling over in their ornate, gold and diamond-encrusted graves.

As for you folks who are swooshing down the slopes this week and sipping expensive ski lodge cocktails in plush leather chairs in front of magnificent fireplaces while I spend another day eating cold pizza and refereeing at the World Brothers Wrestling Federation, I’ll say this:

I am NOT sorry that I don’t have a column for you this week. You’re probably too busy to read it anyway, what with all your swooshing, and expensive sipping, and plush fireplace sitting, and stacking gold coins in your Rolls Royce, and snorting caviar, and whatever else it is you people do.

But I’m not bitter. I would never wish for you to have a skiing accident and break a bone or anything like that. That’s just not right.

But I do kinda wish you’d fall off your wallet in the lodge and get a mild sprain.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Snacking Dangerously

Son Number Three brought this permission slip home from his sixth-grade cooking elective class the other day:

Over the next few weeks we will be working on a unit focused on making healthy after-school snacks. We will be learning knife skills in class so that the students can prepare fruits and vegetables. Students will be placed in small groups of 4-5 and will work directly with me to learn how to properly hold and handle a knife, as well as how to slice, chop, and dice. In order to participate in the hands-on knife skills training, all students must bring a signed permission slip.

   ___   I would like my child to participate in knife skills training.

   ___   I do NOT want my child to participate in knife skills at this time.

I have a lot of issues with this permission slip, starting with the fact that someone in our school district thought that a permission slip was needed in the first place. My son is in the sixth grade. He’s eleven years old. He has his own monogrammed folding pocketknife that he carries around with him (off campus, of course). If he doesn’t know how to slice a cucumber without hurting himself by now, then let’s just let the natural learning and selection process run its course.

I checked the yes box, and added a note asking if they would also be learning proper knife throwing techniques. I mean, if you’re going to make me sign a permission slip before my kid is allowed to do something as crazy as chop a bell pepper, then let’s really use the parental permission to its fullest. This could be a combination cooking and bladed weapon self-defense class, for example. Appetizers and axe throwing? Brunch and bayonets? I just feel like we’re missing a real opportunity for some higher learning, here.

You know, it wasn’t too long ago that sixth graders were running the radial arm saw in woodshop, and no permission slip ever went home for that. Of course, the radial arm saw gets its name from the fact that it’s great at removing your arm, just above the radius. (The original name, “ulnar arm saw,” didn’t work because everyone thought you were saying “underarm saw,” which obviously refers to a gas-powered thirty-inch-bar chainsaw.)

We have drifted a long way from the days of being taught woodworking skills by an eight-fingered man, but it’s very clear that we’ve gone over the edge the wrong way in the name of safety. That being said, my biggest problem with this permission slip has nothing to do with the knives.

Apparently, the only “healthy after-school snacks” being presented as options to my impressionable young son are fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables!? This is a travesty. I ask you, Rocklin Unified School District, what about the Totino’s Pizza Rolls? You call this a responsible and informed education??

And you want to talk about safety concerns? Let’s talk about a pizza roll that just came out of the oven. The potential for third- or even sixth-degree burns from the explosive molten-lava-marinara and cheese filling cannot be understated. If our military could somehow develop a rapid delivery system to effectively weaponize hot Totino’s pizza rolls, conflicts around the globe could be ended tomorrow. Try to say that about fruits and vegetables.

Pizza rolls - now that’s a situation that should require a permission slip!

And safety goggles.

See you soon,

-Smidge

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