by admin | Nov 2, 2015 | School Daze
Several weeks ago, the Mercer Island School District voted to ban the game of Tag on school grounds. I guess it had something to do with safety or that odd thing our society seems to have about touching one another. No matter. I guess we felt the need to suck all the...
by admin | Aug 11, 2014 | School Daze
The Mock Turtle went on. “We had the best of educations . . . Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” Education pains me these days. No, not my own. It continues...
by admin | Dec 26, 2012 | School Daze
I was watching Mr. Holland’s Opus last night for something like the twentieth time. I don’t always watch it all the way through; in fact, most of the time I seem to tune in right near the end where Mr. Holland (Richard Dreyfus) is being given the old...
by admin | Dec 17, 2012 | School Daze
I wish sometimes that my brain would show me the marvelous way it works. I often refer to it as a mental Cuisinart, which is about as close as I can come to it. I suppose a Dyson vacuum would also make a good analogy, as everything I’ve ever seen, heard, tasted...
by admin | Nov 29, 2012 | School Daze
Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind as well as the storage cabinet to my left are remnants of a fairly creative past. Yes, I have a fairly creative present, too, but I have to laugh at some of the things I used to get away with in school, things that would never...
by admin | Oct 22, 2012 | School Daze
There were two coveted positions in the elementary school hierarchy. Well, three, if you included being an office assistant. I didn’t have the right plumbing to work there, though I often wished I had, since they got to play with the mimeograph machine and other...
by admin | Oct 18, 2012 | School Daze
I know this may be hard to believe, but I went to school before the age of computers. Well, let me correct that a bit. I don’t need to sound older than I am. Rather, I went to school before desktop computers become the norm. Oh, how I wished I had had a Mac or...
by admin | Oct 10, 2012 | School Daze
In elementary school there are usually two plum roles a kid can have. One is being a member of the school patrol, the other is being a librarian’s assistant. I found my way through the back door to be on patrol, but I came through the front door to be a library...
by admin | Feb 8, 2012 | School Daze, Working Daze
When I was a kid I enjoyed shooting pictures with my camera. My first love was a Kodak camera, one that required you to thread your own film onto the spools. Then came along the Instamatic lines, which had the convenient cartridges so you couldn’t make the...
by admin | Jan 6, 2012 | School Daze
A couple days ago I wrote about my broken heart caused by a cheerleader. She was not my first broken heart. Nor was the Hermiston Watermelon my first. No, I have to go all the way back to kindergarten for that. I know that most boys don’t take any interest in...
