The New Math

I was working on homework with my second grader and puzzling through some addition problems. See, they add big numbers differently then when I was a kid. No more carrying the one and such. Now they add the hundreds, add the tens, add the ones. Put them together, then you’re done. Or something like that.

Actually, I kind of like the system, it’s just a little foreign after thirty odd years of doing it another way. The thing is, at a class meeting with the teacher earlier this year, she explained the whole thing to the parents. It was a sort of warning of what to expect. I thought it was interesting. A funny Mom sitting next to me commented that she’d struggled with it when her older daughter went through second grade – FINALLY it made sense. We chuckled.

Then the bus driver Mom chimed in. She’s grizzled and weird and very trailer-y. You know what I mean, don’t even pretend you don’t. I know she is a bus driver because she tells me and everyone else at every opportunity. And there’s nothing wrong with that, until she goes into her rant about how her company is good and the drivers are well trained (she drives for a school district about 35 minutes south of us) while the company our district uses employs untrained idiots.

She goes on about how she doesn’t like letting her son ride the bus to school because the drivers don’;t know what they are doing and are piloting “death traps.” Did I mention that I thought she was the kid’s grandmother until she mentioned that she was all alone. The boy’s father is “long gone” and Granny (presumably her own mother) is around, but she can’t be doin’ no driving.

This is the woman who got into a shouting match with the principal when the school requested her son be checked by a doctor for H1N1 when he’d been in and out (mostly out) of school for three weeks with flu-like symptoms. Okay, I know the H1N1 hysteria was irritating, but even I thought it was reasonable for the school to demand a note from the kid’s doctor that it had been considered. I mean, without such confirmation, how would they even know that bus Mom is taking him to the doctor. Seriously, the kid was sick for a month. I mean…what the hell?

Look, I’m not saying people with advanced degrees are better or something. Sure, a GED might help, but…okay, that was mean. Jobs in IT or banking or education or whatever do not make you any smarter or more well-rounded, or even more hygienically sound. I know that. Nevertheless, when the teacher is explaining how they now teach math to kids, a new system developed by educators to be more useful and sensible for youngsters, I don’t think you should argue with her.

And when she explains that she will be teaching this method in school, but if the child already knows another way and uses it to get correct answers, she will accept it, I don’t think this is either necessary or appropriate as a response:

“So if my kid does it the right way, not your way, you’re not going to give him an F?”

snowblind friend

Lying on the pavement with the misery on his brain –

Steppenwolf quote. Great song. Makes me think about plow guys in these blizzard days.

Okay, it hasn’t snowed too much in the last few days, but we’ve still well over a foot…everywhere. And now I’m reflecting on those heavy snow days and the familiar enemy of the sane: the snow plow driver. In particular I think of the guy who plows the driveway across the street from our. Ours has been paved for a couple years now and I am a snow blowing fiend whenever the powder falls. The drive across the street is gravel, or pea stone, or whatever you want to call it.

I should say, it was gravel. Last year, pretty much the entire length of stone got dumped at the foot of my newly paved driveway. Boy, that was annoying. Our neighbors got the guy to redo their driveway somewhat, but this year he was at it again. Not as much stone ended up in our yard this time, but man, you should see the mounds of snow. No, you don’t see gravel in the snow, you see about an inch of the underlying dirt.

I’m thinking this guy is going to need some life insurance. And not because he drives like a maniac…but because my neighbor, when she gets a look at that…

Blue, Gold and Vroom Vroom

We just had the big Blue & Gold dinner for Cub Scouts. Boy, does this bring me back. I can still remember sneaking bits and pieces of such events from back when I was a scout. I mean, I never progressed beyond Webelos, something like 6th grade for me, but there were some good times.

The B&G dinner is a big family event for scouts, and it’s when most receive their next significant achievement, or the one they’ve been working toward for the year. My little guy got his Wolf badge, looking so good in his uniform. And the penne and meatballs plus salad served buffet style… not too bad.

The best part of the evening – the Native American dance demonstration. It was…illuminating. It gave me a whole new perspective on that snake dance ritual in Billy Jack, too. There’s really nothing I can say that won’t sound like a sleight, so I’m going to just leave it at that.

We still have a couple of good scouting events to end out the year. In a couple of months there’s an overnight trip to a battleship. I’m totally looking forward to that. And, of course, the Pine Wood Derby is only a month away. Our car is shaped and ready for paint. And I’ve already priced high risk auto insurance for the event, so we’re ready to roll.

Is it weird that I’m having more fun with my son as scout then when I was a scout myself?

Mattress Dump

You know that warm feeling I had thinking about the kindness and generosity of people donating their used books to local libraries for fundraising book sales?…yeah, that’s gone.

I mean, I think it’s still really cool that people are willing to donate their stuff to benefit a charity, or people in need. But only when they do it properly. I guess it is hard to screw up library donations. You have books, you put them in an old office supplies box, and tote them to the library.

It’s kind of like the big metal Goodwill donation bins. You know, they put them in parking lots with clear instructions that they’re for clothes and shoes only. If you bother to read the smaller print you see that they ask people to not leave anything around the bins. This is because the owners of the land on which the bins are sitting usually get pissed if there’s a lot of garbage hanging around, and they will have the bins moved.

The instructions ask that you not leave bags of clothes or shoes around the bin if the bin is full. they also ask that you not leave anything else around the bin, like books (we already know the library will take them) or furniture or baby items like cribs and strollers. They are pretty specific.

So can someone tell me who the incredible ass munchers are that leave strollers and cribs and chairs and other huge things around those bins? Come one. How much ass do you have to much for your brain to rot so much that you gleefully dump your old jizzy couch next to the Goodwill clothes and shoes bin? There was actually just such a bin with just such a couch on my way to work, in a little park and ride lot. I noticed a couch and armchair show up about a year ago. Every week for about 2 months I drove by and it was still there. Finally, after two months, the couch and armchair were gone. And so was the bin. Thanks for ruining it for everybody else couch jizzer.

A couple weeks ago we went to a favorite local diner. Toward the back of the parking lot are a couple of Goodwill bins. Leaning against the Goodwill bins were a couple of mattresses. Seriously. Mattresses?Think about it. Somebody had to actually transport that mattress to the bins. Couldn’t they have just gone another mile or two down the road to the town dump? Talk about a super douche.