Queensland (Australia) School Board gets an F-

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081209/lf_nm_life/us_school;_ylt=AvFNQYNDG.tywpbFGPWfb6d34T0D
You have got to be kidding me.

Dealing with criticism is part of life. Dealing with failure is part of life. Learning to cope with one's imperfections is an important and necessary skill. I never got suicidal over red ink. I thought about why that red ink was there and how to make less red ink happen on the next assignment.

But gurdymonkey , you're thinking, you probably never got much red ink at all. O My Readers, you have no idea. Being the child of a graduate student who migrated to different universities in his quest for a Ph.D. meant multiple school changes before finally settling in one place. When I hit 5th grade, I was about two years behind in math because of the curriculum of the public school system I'd spent the past two years in.

Did my parents complain to my teachers about their red ink damaging my fragile self esteem? HELL NO! They said, "Load her up. She needs to get up to speed. Give her extra problems." I spent my afternoons chained to the dining room table until every last assignment was done - and my parents refused to help with them. It was my job, not theirs.

Did I attempt suicide over it? Did I hate my parents for it? Did I plot the demise of my teachers for Being So MEAN? No, obviously. I loathed math with a soul searing passion: so much so that I stunned the head of my high school math department by appearing in his Math 4 class my senior year. "But you hate this stuff," Mr. McDonnell said. "Yes," I said."In fact, I hate it so much, I'm taking your class so I won't have to take it in college." I passed with a hard fought C, my math pre-requisite duly satisfied. Then I went to Rutgers and took 6 credits of astronomy to satisfy my science requirements - without ever having taken physics. Two semesters of struggle (in addition to the near suicidal reading load of a history major), and dammit, I passed. 

Mammas, teach your babies to FIGHT when they see red.  They'll thank you later. 

Remembrance of things past.

One of the bushi boys posted a link to a photo on his website this afternoon over on the Tousando. Curious, I went exploring to see if there was anything else new there because the last time it had been somewhat bare bones. Well, it still is, with lots of pages for future projects to go on. I read his profile and discovered his hometown is the same one as my Mom's. 

So I emailed him and mentioned that my grandparents lived on High Street and we would go to church at St. Al's and so forth and he tells me he went to church at the Methodist church across the street from St. Al's and BTW, did I know they banned cruising on High Street in the 80's? And did I remember Zern's? 

For Marcel Proust, it was a cookie. For me - and quite possibly for my sisters - it's The Penny Candy Store.

Mind you, it wasn't really called The Penny Candy Store, we just called it that - in the sort of reverent way we spoke of Santa and the Baby Jesus. Grandpop would give us each a nickel or sometimes even a dime. We would process down High - well, it was kind of procession-like because Grandpop kept it to a stately saunter and we weren't supposed to get too far ahead and had to wait for him to cross the streets with us - up Adams, then continue down King to the tiny grocery on the corner. He'd get a cigar pre-pacemaker, a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint post-pacemaker). And we three, each clutching a coin in our fist would gaze upon the rows of candy on the wooden counter and drive ourselves wild with indecision. As the oldest, I'd try to play it cool, studying the choices in silence, while my younger sisters would cry and crow, "Ooh, this one, no wait, I want that!" Three kinds of licorice - black, red, brown and vaguely chocolate-like. Candy buttons on strips of cash register tape. Pixie Stix. Wax lips. Candy cigarettes, white chalky mint things with red food coloring on the ends. Jawbreakers. Maryjanes. Smartees. Bazooka bubblegum -two for a penny! Sugar Daddies. A giant Sweetart the size of the Jupiter II - my younger sister loved these monsters and would gnaw on one for what seemed like hours.  I preferred Smartees. And Necco Wafers. Those stupid candy buttons - we probably ingested as much of the paper as the candy, but we thought they were great. The prodigious working of young jaws on a newly unwrapped, Pepto Pink, rock hard piece of Bazooka, which came with a Bazooka Joe comic inside the wrapper. The massive bulge of jawbreaker between cheek and gums. Did you have the firmness of resolve to suck on a Tootsie Roll pop until you hit the center or would you lose it and bite through the hard candy shell instead?