School Daze

I know it’s too early to be talking about the beginning of school, but here in Arizona the schools pay no attention to what’s done in the rest of the country. So the start of classes can be anywhere from the beginning of August to early September, each school district setting its own calendar. Every now and then in the fall, I consider what it would be like to get back in the classroom, but then better sense prevails, and despite my mental alertness, my physical woes would prevent that long classroom day.

Wiley's Non Sequitur last Sunday had this hilarity to say about the start of school years.


I never deliberately made exams and assignments ugly hard just for the fun of baiting my students, but some them thought my tests were too testing. I usually made up for the difficulty by easing up on the grading. I always thought that anyone who could correctly answer 80% of what I was asking should get an A, and anyone who could answer 40% should pass. I was at odds with my fellow English teachers, who always stuck to the old 90% = A- and 64% = fail. Ah, the good old days. My only regret is that I will never again teach sentence structure using my ES³ method. More’s the pity.

An Internet joke that found me and I couldn't pass it up: A woman and her ten-year-old son were riding in a cab in New York City. It was raining and all the hookers were standing under the awnings.
“Mom,” said the boy, “what are all those women doing?”
“They’re waiting for their husbands to get off work,” she replied.
The cabbie turns around and said, “Geez, lady, why don’t you tell him the truth? They’re hookers, boy! They have sex with men for money.”
The little boy’s eyes got wide and he asked, “Is that true, Mom?”
His mother, glaring hard at the cabbie, answered in the affirmative.
After a few minutes, the kid asked, “Mom, what happens to the babies those women have?”
“Most of them become cab drivers,” she said.

This is my 998th post, creeping up on that one thousand mark. I still don't know if I'll continue after that or take some time off. What would I do to fill the hours each day if I didn't blog? We'll see.