I had my one year blogaversary a few days ago.  I sat down to write something significant and heartwarming and special, but thought to myself, “You know, I really don’t care.”   This has been my blogging state-of-mind for a few days now.   It wasn’t writer’s block.   It was caring block.   Oh, about a month ago I cared.  About a month ago I thought of researching my files and picking the highlights, the best of Arby’s Archives.   But, the closer the actual date of my blogaversary came the less I cared because, if truth be told, it just sounded like too much work. 

Twisted Sister posted the results of an on-line quiz that she took.  This one asked, “What Superhero are you?”   I went to the website that hosted the quiz and answered a bunch of questions about myself, such as, “Are you accident prone?” and “Did you have a bad childhood?” and “Do you wear a push-up bra?”  (note to self: return to that site and change answer to, “No”)   I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw my result.  According to them, I am the Flash!   Somewhere in Iraq, the Boss just spewed Mountain Dew on a computer screen.  I am about as un-flash-like as a guy can be.  Honestly, fat people don’t move that quickly, unless you’re Ted Kennedy and someone yells “Last call!” 

Major Havoc has turned out to be the most enthusiastic homeschooler you could wish for.  Emphasis on “you.”  He walked into my bedroom yesterday morning and woke me up from a sound sleep by asking, “Dad, can you make me a PO?  Dad?  Can we do schoolwork?” 

“Schoolwork?” I mumbled, lifting my head from the pillow and staring at a blurry alarm clock.  “Son, I haven’t brewed a pot of coffee yet, so if you want to be alive when it’s time to do your math, I suggest you go find something else to do right now.” 

That sweet kid.  He said, “Okay.”

Two friends came to my house for dinner last night.  They brought the dinner, too!  All I had to do was supply the plates and utensils.  I had adult conversation last night.  I spoke in long sentences without being interrupted.  We made inappropriate comments when the kids weren’t in the room and laughed at them.   It was GREAT!   I offered to let them move in, but they had to go home.  This is the second time in two weeks that they have come over.  I think I’m in love.

Homeschooling is busy this year!  This teaching two kids thing is really different than teaching one.  Major Havoc’s enthusiasm is infectious.  While we were working on language arts this morning, General Mayhem kept interrupting us to share interesting facts from his history book. Normally, he’d read his history silently, answer a few question and be done with it.  It has occurred to me that for the last four years Major Havoc watched me teach his brother.  He saw his brother get a lot of attention.  He has been waiting for his turn, and now that his turn has arrived he is taking full advantage of it.  It never occurred to me when we were making the decision on whether or not to homeschool the Major that he saw it as a rite of passage.  His time has come.  To do anything but homeschool him would be grossly unfair, and probably cause a lot of harm.  He is a happy, eager learner, and a delight to work with.

I was amused to see that the Major shares something in common with his brother, that being that he does his work in the starter’s blocks.  The boy sits on the edge of a chair, one cheek on the seat and the other off, one leg behind him and the other in front, ready to run straight ahead on a moment’s notice.  This is his preferred position for all subjects.  Sometimes he will momentarily tuck his feet under his rump and sit on his heels, but that doesn’t last long.  Sometimes he will lean over the table on his arms.  Mostly, he’s ready to be off at the races.  While watching this today I had one reoccurring thought: Classrooms are just not made for little boys.

It is my hope that each and every one of you, who take the time to stop here at the Archives and share a bit of life in my home, has a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.  I appreciate the fact that you find something here that keeps you coming back.  I appreciate your comments.  I enjoy it when someone delurks.   Thank you for helping to make this a fun year. 

It is with absolutely no regret that I must announce the passing of Va-va-voom.  The entire scandalously red gallon of chicken bordello paint spent its final hours in a large puddle on the floor of my garage, knocked over by my seldom spoken of fourth child, “Idunno.”  I first heard of Ms. Voom’s fatal predicament when the General entered the kitchen from the garage and casually mentioned, “Dad, there’s some paint on the floor.”

“Some paint?” I replied.

“Yeah.  I think some paint might have spilled.”

Our first vocabulary lesson of the school year will be defining “some.”  “Some paint might have spilled” is like being a little bit pregnant. 

I was mad.  Hoo-wee, I was mad.  I wasn’t mad because the paint spilled.  If there was ever a color of paint to have spilled on the garage floor, it was Va-va-voom.  If it hadn’t spilled, I would have mailed the entire gallon to Kellieann.  She seemed to enjoy it.   No, I was mad because the discovery of the spill came directly on the heels of 30 minutes of play time that involved 29 minutes and 59 seconds of screaming by all three children, and one second of my announcing, “That’s enough!  My nerves can’t take it anymore!” 

I felt like my wife.

I was mad because I could not get a straight answer out of General Mayhem as to how the paint was spilled.  He was pushing for a Latex-based suicide. He denied all possible involvement.  Major Havoc and Captain Chaos were both possible culprits, but it was the General who climbing through the mountain of stuff in our garage right before the floor changed colors.  If he had just come to me and said, “Dad, I spilled a gallon of paint on the floor, I’m sorry,” or said, “Dad, I’m not sure how it happened, but a gallon of paint has been spilled on the garage floor and we need to clean it up before it runs to all corners of the garage and underneath everything on sitting on the floor,” I would have been okay.  Instead, I was told about “some” paint possibly being on the floor.

I don’t know how to get it through to my son that his instincts for self-preservation get him in more trouble than the original incident from which he is trying to disassociate himself.   When he comes to me and tells me the truth, like the day he brought me my favorite cordless drill in two pieces, I’m pretty cool.  It’s when I get jerked around that I come unglued.

To his credit, the young man apologized for not telling me the truth, although he still dodged full responsibility for any wrong-doing.  That kid would make an excellent lawyer.  I was ankle deep in scarlet glop when he observed, “Dad, you’re kinda scary when you’re mad.” 

God love him. 

We were laughing about the entire thing before I was finished cleaning.  Deep down, I was just grateful that it was on the garage floor and not on my carpeting.   Oh, Va-va-voom, how we’ll miss you.

Not!

I know I looked like Navin R. Johnson, running down the street yelling, “The phone books are here!  The phone books are here!”   When I saw the big brown truck pull up in front of my house, I ran down the driveway yelling, “The curriculum is here!  The curriculum is here!”   The UPS man smiled, handing me a large box.  “Wow,” I told him.  “The kids are going to hate this!  I’m so happy!”

Thus ends part two of a three part odyssey known as ordering this year’s curriculum.  I know, I know, all of you disgusting people who planned in advance and ordered in advance and cleaned and painted and organized in advance - I really don’t want to hear it.  Remember the picture of my desk?  Did that look like the desk of someone who is organized?

All of the organization in the world wouldn’t have prepared me for the secret attack of the VISA security force, those sly little buggers who work for my bank, monitoring debit card action and attempting to prevent fraud.   Personally, I appreciate the fact that they have my back.  I just wish that they told me in advance of my shopping trip that they closed my debit card because the Boss needed a few supplies in Baghdad and used her debit card to buy them.  The VISA security people noticed that 99.9% of my debits come from the greater Kansas City area.  The Baghdad charge looked slightly out-of-place.  6,722 miles slightly out-of-place, to be exact.  So they shut down the card.   That’s cool.  The fact that they never called, never left a message, and decided that popping a letter in the mail was enough of an effort on their part to contact me was not cool.   A phone call from me solved the problem, and soon the debit card was free for use.

Last weekend, I noticed that my curriculum order with A Beka did not leave the “Pending” stage on the online invoice and move into the “Shipping” stage and then on to the “arriving at my door step” phase.  I called them Monday morning to inquire on the status of my order. 

“Oh, your charge was declined,” the nice customer service representative told me. 

“Gee, were you going to tell me?” I asked.

Silence.

I then politely explained what had happened with my debit card and why it had happened and expressed my gratitude for the VISA people looking out for my best interests and would A Beka please reprocess the order?  They did.  It went through, as I knew it would, because the problem was never an availability of funds but rather a convenient method of transferring said funds from my meager stockpile of gators to A Beka’s coffers. 

After ending that conversation I called Rainbow Resources, because I knew the same thing happened there.  A short conversation with a Rainbow Resources customer service representative informed me that some of the materials I ordered were on backorder and wouldn’t be in stock until today.  They wouldn’t charge me until the entire order was ready to be shipped, so unlike with A Beka, nothing was declined.   Cool. 

Rainbow Resources’ shipment arrived today.  The backorder must have arrived early. 

So, “The curriculum is here!  The curriculum is here!”  I get to start first grade math with Major Havoc!

Solving the temporarily suspended debit card and reprocessing my orders was part one of the ordering curriculum odyssey.   Receiving both shipments was parts two and three.   As soon as the A Beka order arrives, we will have completed part three. 

Now, because I am married to the world’s best sale shopper and internet sorceress, a great deal of our curriculum was purchased online at a significant savings by the Boss before she deployed.   This allowed me to begin math with General Mayhem this week, because his Saxon math books have been on the shelf all summer.   General Mayhem expressed his joy at the resumption of mathematical studies by stretching out 25 basic review math problems over three hours on the first day.  He needed four hours to complete 35 problems on the second day.   I needed only a few seconds to remind him how quickly I can pick up the phone and register him for classes at our local middle school, a building that we ride past every day when we take our bikes to bring Captain Chaos to her preschool class at the new elementary school with the broken exit a block further south of the middle school.  One of the middle school students saw the General riding his bike during normal school hours and took it upon himself to shout, “Hey, why aren’t you in class here?” out of a window.  The General just laughed.  He wasn’t laughing when an elementary school assistant principal stopped him while I was unloading the Captain from the bike trailer and asked him why he wasn’t in class.  General Mayhem responded, “Because I’m home schooled.”   That satisfied the man, but not me.  I walked up to the principal after the Captain went inside the building with her teacher and asked him, “Is anything wrong?”  The guy shot me a look of annoyance and mumbled, “Just checking.”   Then he told me not to ride my bike on the sidewalk.   We will see if the General has any stronger motivation for faster computations on Monday.

Speaking of the Boss, she finds herself with a little extra time on her hands in the evening.  There isn’t enough time to watch a movie on her DVD player, which may or may not work depending upon whether or not she fried her adaptor with the foreign power source, but there is enough time to read a book.  The problem is, she doesn’t have any.  So, I have a request for you!

Do any of you happen to have a copy of one of the 13 Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum novels that you would like to donate to the Boss for her reading pleasure while relaxing in the evenings in Iraq?   Would you be willing to drop said novel in an envelope and send it to her?   She already read books #1 and #3, and I am sending her book #7 tomorrow (sshh!  Keep it a secret! I want it to be a surprise!)  The boss is interested in reading Two For the Dough, Four to Score, High Five, Hot Six, Hard Eight, Visions of Sugar Plums, To the Nines, Ten Big Ones, Eleven on Top, Twelve Sharp, Plum Lovin’, and Mean Thirteen.  If you have any of these titles sitting on your book shelves and you are willing to send them to the Boss, please e-mail me at writearby@gmail.com.  I have been trying to buy these books through eBay auctions and keep losing to people who are willing to spend some tall dollars to obtain them. 

I hope that you have a good weekend!

Here’s something that hasn’t happened in a long time.  I’ve been tagged.  That’s actually a good thing, as I really didn’t have much to say today.  Thank you to Mamasmurf for sending this assignment my way.  If you are not a regular reader of Mamasmurf’s blog, you should take a peek.  She is a remarkable homeschooling mother of one, who just happens to have been battling cancer for over a decade. Her faith and her gratitude in the face of her struggle are truly inspirational.  Her nature pictures are great to look at, too. 

The tag is titled “6 Quirky Things.”  I am supposed to

1. Link back to the person who tagged you

2. Mention the rules on your blog

3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours

4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them

5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Six unspectacular quirky things about Arby...

I really should have the Boss write this one.

Who am I kidding?  I’m not that stupid. 

1.  I like riding bikes in the snow.  I haven’t done it in decades, but in my teens I rode my bike year round.   Snow and ice never bothered me.  I had some spectacular crashes, too, but the precursor to the mountain bike, an old balloon tire Schwinn, handled extremely well in snow and on ice. 

Now, my old friend Martin would not agree.  Martin lost contact with the back of my bicycle when we were riding from his house to my house one snowy Friday night. I was peddling and he was riding on the flat rack over the back fender.  It was in an alley.  I don’t remember how the crash began.  I have vague memories of blinding headlights, snow, and Martin ricocheting off of a garage door and into a garbage can.   He was pretty mad, but he climbed back on and we completed the trip. 

2.  One of my goals in life is to ride a bike from the northern-most tip of Maine to San Diego, California.  My friend Ron and I decided to make this trip together when we were in high school.   Now we’re older, fatter, and have kids, and we still want to do this. Recently, I told my friend that we’d need to get in a little better shape before beginning such a journey.  He voted for riding into shape, a concept that I declined on the grounds that I want to make it out of Maine alive.  If we wait long enough we can take our kids with us, but the Boss already told me, “Have a nice trip.  I’ll see you when you get back.”  I suspect Ron’s Boss will say the same thing.

3.  My right pinky is slightly shorter than my left pinky and it curves inward because I dove low and to the right to catch an errant knuckleball which bounced in the dirt, skipped away from my catcher’s mitt and into my right hand, breaking the little finger on the end.   After the game, I learned that those aluminum splints that wrap around a broken finger aren’t worth diddly. 

4.  The longest running joke in my marriage is the strange roll reversal where I remember the date of our wedding anniversary and my wife doesn’t.  It was my favorite stump-the-chump question in one of those teasing play-fights we like to have.

“Oh yeah?  So what’s our anniversary, Miss Smarty Pants?”

“Uh...oh...um...I know it has a 9 in it!”

That twelve year joke came to a surprising end last Saturday when I received an anniversary card from the Boss, mailed from Baghdad.   It arrived three days early.  She’s great.  I didn’t see it coming soon enough to get a card to her on time.   But, I know that she will enjoy the contents of the box I sent her with the card, so I think I’ll be forgiven. 

5.   I often wonder why some people are known for sympathy vomiting when around a vomiting person, but absolutely no one is susceptible to a sympathy reaction when someone near them is hit with diarrhea. 

That’s probably a good thing.

6.   I love cracking a joke that makes the listener shoot their beverage of choice out their nose.   It gives me that warm feeling of satisfaction that comes with completing a job well done. 

In keeping with this rules, I will tag

Prodoceo, because all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl; WrongWayWendy, who needs a little help defeating writer’s block; TwistedSister, just because; as well as subbertfamily, whose blog is worth visiting just to see pictues of an adorable smiling baby girl; pumpkinshellzpatch, who has great music; and Debbles107, who just needs to blog more!

Language Warning: Turn the volume down if there are young children within ear shot.  Charlie lets fly with a coarse turn-of-phrase at the end of this one! 

One day the observant little girl strapped in the car seat in the back seat of the car noticed that every time the driver unlocks the doors there is a little button that pops out of the door right next to her.  I’m certain that she doesn’t understand the term “lock,” but she gets the concept.  She knows that if she reaches up with her foot and pushes the little button back into the door, I cannot open the door to let her out of her car seat.  She looks at me through the glass and smiles.   This means that I have to open the front door on the passenger’s side of the car and hit the unlock button while holding on to her door handle with my other hand in order to pull the door open the instant her door unlocks so that she cannot lock me out a second time.  I learned the necessity of speed the hard way.  This game became such a regular part of getting out of the car that I started to tease her when I beat her to the door.    On those occasions that I opened the door before she thought to relock it, I looked at her and smiled.

“Nice try, Captain!” I teased. 

Yesterday, I stepped around the car just in time to see her push the lock shut with her foot.  She grinned at me through the glass.

“Nice try, Dad!”

I kid you not. 

Major Havoc turned to me the minute his fish was safely in the water and immediately began petitioning for his next desire.   In typical Major Havoc fashion, every spare moment of the last 36 hours was peppered with, “Dad, can you fix my bike?  Dad, can we go for a bike ride? Dad, is it time to fix my bike yet?”

I put his bike repair on my list of things to do and reached that item on the list tonight.  We took out all of the bikes, filled the tires with air, and went for a bike ride from our house to the Captain’s new preschool and back again.  The round trip, at Major speed, took an hour.  The round trip, at dad speed, should have been fifteen minutes.  Unfortunately, Major Havoc likes to gaze at the scenery as he slowly peddles down the street.  General Mayhem leads in front, and generally rides about a block ahead, turns around, comes back, rides a block ahead again, and returns to find that we’ve moved four feet.  I ride behind the Major, urging him to move forward, doing my best Karl Wallenda while waiting for the boy to roll far enough for me to turn the peddles of my bike one full rotation without riding into his hip pocket.   Captain Chaos sits in the trailer that I pull, merrily passing away the miles giggling at me as I try to stay upright.  Tonight was the first time I’ve ever seen someone dawdle on a bicycle.  If he peddled any slower he’d go backwards. 

General Mayhem asked me, “Dad, can I play Star Wars Battle Front on the computer while you go to the movies?” 

I made the mistake of answering, “Sure.”  I should have said, “For an hour.”  So, when I returned home from seeing Iron Man this afternoon I was not surprised to learn that he had been playing the entire time I was gone.  4 ½ hours!   A good portion of the rest of my day was spent listening to a replay of every battle he engaged in during my absence.  He’s still too self-absorbed to notice my eyes rolling into the back of my head when he gets into the nitty-gritty of the Star Wars world.  I remember when seeing Star Wars in the theater was an event.  Then it left the theater for a long, long time, and life went on.  Today, kids can jump in and out of that world at will, thanks to modern technology.  I miss the old ways.  Rest assured, the Star Wars marathon will not be repeated anytime soon.

It’s Saturday night.  The children are nestled all snug in their beds. 

Whew! 

Major Havoc walked up to me while I was at the computer, paying bills. 

“Dad, can I do some school work?”

Sure. 

“Can I have some crayons?”

Yes, you can.  They are in the classroom.  You can go get them. 

He ran off to our classroom, but returned in seconds.

“Dad, can you help me get the crayons?” he asked.

They are up high.  Are you too short to get them?

“Yeah, I’m too five,” he replied.

Today was a big day in this five-year-old’s life.  Today is the day that Major Havoc received his first pet.   He let me know a couple of weeks ago that he wanted his own pet.  The seven that we already have weren’t enough.  I knew that the perfect first pet for this boy would be a goldfish.  We had a small hexagon tank, pump, and under-gravel filter that were not being used.  All I needed was the colored gravel of his choice and a $0.25 feeder from Wal-Mart.   It would be easy for him to take care of, and since I have an aquarium, it would be no problem for me to teach him (okay, let’s face it, do most of the work) how to care for his fish.  No problem. 

Then he decided that he wanted a rock.

“Can we have a rock, Dad?”

A rock?

“Yeah, a rock.  For the fish.”

Oh, you mean a large rock for the bottom of the aquarium?

“Yes!”

We can buy one with the gift card that Grandma and Grandpa sent you at Easter. 

“A rock?”

Yes, a rock.

“For my fish?”

Yes, a rock for your fish.

“Oh thanks, dad!” he squealed, jumping up and down. 

Then the boy who put the O in OCD asked me every day, 816 times each day, for a week...

“Am I getting my fish today?”

No son, on Thursday.

“On Thursday?”

On Thursday.

“What’s Thursday?”

The day after Wednesday.

“The day after wen..wens...wensday?”

Exactly.

“I get my fish?”

Tonight we drove to Petsmart to choose a fish, because Wal-Mart was completely out of feeders.  That isn’t a bad thing, because more often than not the Wal-Mart fish tanks have signs on them stating that the fish are sick and not for sale.  In an extremely rare occurrence, Petsmart actually had goldfish that cost less than Wal-Mart’s goldfish.  As an added bonus, nowhere on the fish did I see stamped “Made in China.”  

Major Havoc didn’t choose his fish as much as he watched a young girl snatch a healthy orange feeder from a tank of about 8 million because she asked me which one I wanted and I thought “You’ve got to be kidding me,” but I actually told her, “Just grab a healthy looking orange fish.”   She did.  The boy held out his hands to take the bagged fish and asked, “Is this mine?”  He was thrilled!

It was the best $0.12 I’ve ever spent.

Before we left the store he did choose his rock, which turned out to be a bridge.  Every aquarium decoration that he saw was his “favorite,” but the bridge seemed to be his favorite “favorite.”  It’s a bit large.  I had my doubts about whether or not it would fit in the tank, but there is easily 1/300 of an inch of clearance on either side, between the bridge and the glass.   The fish seemed to like it.  He is small enough to swim underneath.

My last request before bed was for a picture of the Major with his new fish to send to mommy.  He shook his head. 

“No, dad.  Maybe tomorrow.”  He set up camp on the floor next to the desk with the fish tank on top, with the room lights off and the tank light on, and the boy and his fish fell fast asleep. 

You would have thought that three year’s worth of planning and 18 month’s worth of construction would have ensured that the road on the west side of the brand new elementary school would have been completed before the first day of school.   You would have thought that the only exit for the entire school would be open on the first day of school and not blocked by a squad car, an indifferent cop, and a dirty construction foreman shrugging at drivers and shouting, “Hey!  What can I do?  It won’t be this way tomorrow!”   This “snafu” on the first day of school forced drivers waiting to pick up their kids to drive through the teacher’s parking lot to the east side of school, make an illegal left hand turn, and drive through one of the school’s two entrance lanes in order to exit on to the street.   The cop on the east side of parking lot, the one who did not bother to wave his arms and direct traffic, the one who stood in the middle of the one open “entrance” lane with his back to the line of traffic waiting to make the illegal turn, chatted with a driver waiting in the car pool line to pick up her children.  While I sat and waited for him to turn around, to wave us through, to make any indication that he was aware of our presence and didn’t want to become Officer Hood Ornament, drivers behind me waved their arms in frustration and pointed to the entrance that we needed to exit through as if I was the problem.  

Welcome to public school.

“What?” you say.  “Arby was in a public school car pool lane?  Arby, the ardent supporter of homeschooler’s rights, sends his kids to a public school?”

Yeah.  Well.  Yeah.  Well...

Only one, and I would not be doing this if some genius at the Leavenworth County Special Education Co-operative had not decided that all children receiving special education services would receive those services in their local school district.  This plan came about because the local library purchased the building that the Co-op leased, waited patiently for a year for the Co-op to find a new location, waited impatiently for a second year for the Co-op to find a new location, and then booted them out the door.   

Our local school district handled the transition superbly.   I attended a registration fair that had absolutely no signage for parents of special education preschoolers indicating where to begin the registration process.  I wrote about that here.  I waited for weeks for the Co-op to call me and tell me when classes would begin, what room they would be held in, and how and where I should drop off/pick up my child.  Yesterday, the day before school began, I called the Co-op.  They gave me all of the information that I needed.  Two hours later my daughter’s teacher called me to apologize.  The official word was, “I didn’t know the school didn’t send out letters this year.”  

Oops.

When Captain Chaos completed her school day she returned to the car with a folder containing, of all things, the letter informing me of when school started, class times, locations, and drop off/ pickup procedures.  The folder also contained the supply list for the class.  This is a class for four and five year old students who have two or more developmental delays. They sit in a three hour class, four days per week, with two “ringers” (children with no delays who set the example for what the slower children need to achieve) and get pulled out of class to spend time with their individual therapists.  The list is HUGE.  The list also indicates that the parents of “AM” class children should pick up certain items, while the parents of “PM” class children should pick up other items.  It is obvious that we are providing supplies for both classes, not for individual use by our children who then bring those supplies home at the end of the year.  I couldn’t help but wonder, “Don’t they have a budget?”  They built a shiny new school with a broken exit and not a single pair of scissors for Johnny to use while cutting paper.  

And they wonder why we homeschool?   

I wonder why we are still in the Co-op.  While last year’s preschool teacher was nice, the occupational therapist was adequate, at best.   It was her inattentiveness to our concerns that caused us to return to Children’s Mercy and visit Laura, the phenomenal OT who directed the Captain’s immobilization therapy.  That triggered dramatic developmental leaps in our little girl.  Our Co-op speech therapist was incredible, and we wish that she could work with the Captain this year.  She will work with Major Havoc for the third year, now that he is officially enrolled in our home school, but the Captain will get a new therapist at the new school with the broken parking lot and no budget for supplies for the students.  

I’m glad we pay taxes.

I left my teaching career in June of 2001 after teaching for seven years.  I’m starting my fifth year of homeschooling, my first year teaching two children.  I find that the longer that I am away from public schools, the less tolerant I am of public schools and public school teachers. I'll have three at home next year. There's no place like home.

Has it ever occurred to you that the recipient of a college diploma is not necessarily well educated?   A diploma looks the same whether the student maintained a 2.0 or a 4.0 grade point average.   Certainly, the college transcripts look different, and there are a few employers who actually look at them.  By and large, the benchmark for employment is the sheepskin.  Have diploma, will hire.  So it is understandable that the vast majority of parents in this country want the people teaching their children to have a college education.   They want a little extra, too.  The teaching candidate must pass a state-issued examination.  Only then can they be called “teacher.”  Only then, can they receive a license to teach. Only then can they be deemed by the government as qualified to teach children. 

Even with all of this required education and testing, school systems nationwide have problems.  In fact, some have severe problems - problems that homeschooling families wish to avoid.  These problems are well documented in print and visual media, on-line, and over the air waves.   No matter how many times we hear that US schools are dropping in the rankings of schools world-wide, we hear homeschooling critics insist that all children should attend public school.₁  No matter how many stories we hear about middle school and high school students distributing nude photos of girls via cell phones and school laptop computers, we also hear public educators raise concerns that home schooled children are not properly socialized.₂  It does not matter how many teachers make the list of sexual predators who have raped students,₃ opponents of homeschooling seem more concerned about what happens within the walls of a home school than what happens within their own walls.  Embedded in the desire to shine light into the houses where homeschoolers reside is the idea that there is some evil that must be exposed.  In short, no matter how badly public schools perform, supporters continue to believe that those public schools are head and shoulders above any other choice. 

While problems exist, the vast majority of our schools are safe.  A student who attends class each day, works attentively, completes his homework, and studies hard can receive a decent education.  The difference between students who fail and students who excel is often their parents.   It is true more often than it is not that parents who are actively involved in their children’s lives - who instill the value of a good education and force their children to work hard at their studies - are the parents of successful students.  Strong, effective parenting can mean the difference between students who do drugs and those who do not. An involved parent can make the difference between a student who distributes pornographic pictures of herself to her friends and a student who does not.  There are no better examples of the effect of active parenting than in the homeschooling community.  The results of study after study reveal that homeschooled children outperform their peers on academic tests at all levels.  Homeschoolers typically give up a second income and many of the luxuries in life in order to provide a high quality education and sound instruction in morals, values, and often, faith.  Homeschoolers choose to do this while paying taxes to the public school system and asking for nothing in return, except to be left alone to pursue this academic freedom. 

A question remains in the great debate between those who would abolish home education and those who support academic freedom.  Why would citizens who support public education deny the freedom of home education to their fellow citizens, when the home educators do not harm them in any manner?  Sonny Scott, writing in a Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal article titled, “Home-schoolers Threaten Our Cultural Comfort,” offered one good reason why homeschooling is disliked. 

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?

Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.   

When confronted with a message that is uncomfortable to hear, it is human nature to want to shoot the messenger.  When confronted with an uncomfortable image, many people turn away.  Parents who see the failing state of public education yet place their children in that system anyway see a homeschooler’s rejection of public education as a judgment of their values.  Parents who see instances of sexual abuse in their schools and still choose to send their children to those schools see a homeschooler’s rejection of that option as a judgment of their parenting.  The public school teacher who hears home educators say, “No thank you, we can do it better at home,” hears a rejection of his or her professional competence.  And what makes that rejection even more offensive to the teacher is that it comes from individuals whom they consider grossly unqualified—parents who are not tested, not certified, and not licensed by the state.  The success of homeschooling is a mirror which reflects the state of public education to the greater community.  If in fact homeschooling is the mirror that reveals the flaws of that system to the community, it is no wonder that so many people want to break the mirror.  It is easier to ignore a problem than to turn an introspective eye and correct what needs to be fixed.

More than ever, homeschoolers need to stand firm in the defense of academic freedom.  We need to fight to protect homeschooling as an option for all Americans.  While doing so, we must meet our detractors with grace.  We must listen to their arguments with love.  Our communities are hurting.  We must assure them that while we may not agree, we respect their right to educate their children as they choose.  All that we ask is the same in return.  We should be allowed the freedom to educate our children at home.  

(Permission to reprint Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, Miss.)

₁ http://media.www.srumosaic.com/media/storage/paper658/news/2005/10/20/News/U.s-Drops.In.International.Education.Rankings-1026807.shtml

₂ http://www.northjersey.com/news/crimeandcourts/Underage_nude_pics_probed_at_Pascack.html

_{3 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53859}

©2008 Richard Barrette 

I was more than a little surprised Friday afternoon when one of my hens walked up to me and crowed.  It was a cock-a-doodle-doo type crow, although not the full-fledged good-morning-to-you-Mr.-Sun crowing that one normally expects from a rooster.   It also happened at 4:00 in the afternoon, about the time the sun dips behind my neighbor’s trees and one half of the yard is cast into shadows. 

Hmmm...

It was either Yoshi or Phyllis, one of the White Crested Black Polish birds.  I wasn’t close enough to get a good look at the bird’s beak, which is the only way to tell the difference between those two.  Yoshi’s beak has a black spot on it.  Phyllis’ beak does not.  Or the reverse.  I’m not certain anymore.  They’re all chickens to me, which is what I normally call them. 

“Good morning, chickens!”

“Good evening, chickens!”

“You’ll sure taste good with gravy, chickens!” 

Calling them “chickens” solves the problem of having to rename them, as “Yoshi” may be androgynous, but “Phyllis” definitely is not.  Writing that sentence guarantees that some blogger somewhere will leave me message telling me about their cousin’s sister’s best friend’s uncle’s mother who had a son named “Phyllis.”  I will have to restrain from asking them where they live in Mississippi.  You show me a boy named Phyllis and I’ll show you a boy who knows how to fight. 

It was one of the two black crested that I found stretched out on the patio yesterday afternoon, head down, lying so still that I thought she had died.  No movement at all.  The other birds just stood there staring at her.  I opened the door and stepped out to check on her.  She heard me coming, got up, and walked away.  Apparently, I disturbed her afternoon nap.

Last night, there was quite the ruckus outside on my patio, about 9 p.m.  I looked through the sliding glass door and saw all four birds huddled together, heads down, trying to sleep.  They had been jockeying for position next to the glass.    I opened the door, expecting them to flee to their coop.  No such luck.  It was my turn to pick up each bird and carry them individually back to their home.  It’s amazing.  They each waited their turn, and then when I grabbed them, they squawked in protest. 

These are dumb birds.

When I picked up Trouble, her squawk sounded frighteningly similar to Friday’s crowing hen.  “We didn’t get more roosters?” I asked myself.  What are the odds of getting four roosters in batch of four eggs?  This is one of the two Americana birds that have feathers that make them look like they are sporting mutton chops. 

I shared all of this with the Boss in an e-mail last night.  She politely reminded me that chickens are not common on the streets of Chicago where I grew up, and maybe I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. 

She made a valid point. 

I was out with the kids taking some pictures when I came across this guy:

Normally, I wouldn’t give this guy a moment’s notice.  I would not casually balance my camera on my knee, pointed in the general direction of a tourist snapping a picture.  I wouldn’t take a picture when he wasn’t looking.  But normally, I wouldn’t see this guy.

This walking violation of fashion sense went out in public wearing sneakers, white tube socks, khakis shorts, an XXL Miami Dolphins t-shirt, and a crisp, clean, stiff, genuine “Indiana Jones” fedora.    I’m rather shocked that his wrist watch wasn’t a miniature TI-89 Titanium Graphing Calculator.  While the kids ran around playing, I watched this guy pose for a picture in front of the Buffalo Soldier Monument on Fort Leavenworth.   His friend pointed the camera while this guy took off his hat and wiped his brow.  I thought that he was removing his hat for the picture.  When he replaced it on his head for the picture, I realized that at some point in time yesterday morning this guy woke up (hopefully showered) dressed, stood in front of the mirror and thought, “Hmmm....this outfit is missing something.”  After a moment’s hesitation he thought, “I know!  I have the perfect thing!”  He grabbed his hat (opting to leave behind his Raiders of the Lost Ark bullwhip) placed it on his head, and reassessed in front of the mirror.  It was at this point that he decided, “Hey, I look good!” 

“Hey, I look good.” 

Those might be the four worst words a single man can utter before walking out of his house in the morning.

I’m speaking from experience here.  If the Boss chimed in she’d assure you that she was attracted to me in spite of my fashion taste, not because of it.  My wardrobe has improved considerably since I met her, and I think she still calls me “Beige Boy” just to remind me how much color she's brought into my life.

It is very possible that these gentlemen were attempting to take a video of the Buffalo Soldier Memorial.  That occurred to me because of the long stretches of time where they stood pointing their cameras at the statue as if they were waiting for something to happen.   I don’t know what you would expect to see happen while staring at a bronze figure of a man on a horse, although I did have an overwhelming urge to toss apples in the reflecting pond directly behind the horse just to see if anyone got it.  Wouldn’t that make for an interesting home video?   

The water from the reflecting pond flows down a ten foot rock waterfall in front of the soldier and collects in a lit circulating pool.  Any attempts at capturing the normally serene memorial were destroyed when Major Havoc and Captain Chaos entered the scene.  The Major felt it was his duty to stop his sister from climbing on the edge of the reflecting pool and reaching for the water, while the Captain felt it was her duty to scream like a stuck pig every time her brother came near her.  I returned from chasing down the girl after she grew bored of serenading her brother and ran off towards the big lake behind us only to find that the Major had climbed up the ten foot water fall in order to throw cedar mulch chips into the reflecting pool.  Where does he come up with this stuff?  He explained to me that I never told him he couldn’t climb on the rocks, only that he could not throw small rocks into the water, and since he was only throwing small pieces of wood into the water, there really was no reason why my face was purple and my eyes were bulging as I attempted to snag him off the waterfall without letting go of the she-beast in my other hand. 

Kinda makes me wonder what picture this guy has on his blog this morning. 

It’s funny, the passage of time.  So many things are remembered.  So many things are forgotten.  One of the things I had forgotten was a picture taken of me in 1989 or 1990.  I was in my early 20’s, freshly discharged from the Navy after serving for five years, and a college student at Morton College in Cicero, Illinois.  By the time this picture was taken, I had lived on a nuclear powered submarine for two years, had toured the western Pacific, and had lived for a year at McMurdo Station on Antarctica.  I joined a community theater after I was discharged.  There, a friend of mine and I were challenged with writing a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol after we complained about the script that was used in our local production.  We spent six months pouring over the short story, painstakingly preserving Dickens’ voice in telling the well known tale.   Our script was used the following year.  We revisited the story for a re-write after the first year that our’s was performed.  It was a good script.

I don’t know how, but the script was lost.  Every stinking copy.  Every draft.  Every computer disc.  Poof!  Gone.  Neither my friend Dave nor I have located a copy in the twenty years since we started that project.   Recently, someone unearthed this photo, and I was able to obtain a copy of it.  It was taken backstage by the mother of one of the child actors, a young girl who wanted her picture taken with one of us.   

On the left is Michael, a classmate at Morton College and a skilled kitchen and bath installer.  Michael did not want to spend his entire life in the construction industry.  He moved to Florida, put himself through college and law school working as a waiter, and now works as an attorney representing DuPont Chemicals.   

In the middle, rear, is Dave.  Dave was my co-writer, a friend from high school who helped me get the job at America West Airlines at Midway Airport where I met the Boss.  Dave remained with the airlines for a decade before completing his degree.  Currently, he teaches English at a middle school in Elmhurst, Illinois. 

On the far right is Arby.  There I am, 23 or 24 years old, dressed as Jacob Marley.  I loved that role.  I was out of make-up and in my street clothes before the first act was completed.  I had aspirations to become an English teacher way back then.  I hadn’t heard of home schooling when that picture was taken.  When I did hear of it, as I wrote on my Heart of the Matter Online feature, I thought that homeschooling was the realm of society’s kooks and weirdoes.  Now I’m one of the kooks.  If you had told me then what I’d be doing now, I would have laughed you out of the room. 

I’m not nostalgic for days gone by in the sense that I would like to return to them.  I am constantly amused when I look back in time and see where I was, what I was planning on doing with my life, and where I’ve come to now.  This picture was a genuine pleasure to find.  I thought it would be fun to share it with you. 

According to Mapquest, the drive from Leavenworth, Kansas, to Easton, Missouri, is 46 miles long and takes approximately 51 minutes.  When the car contains two 11–year-old boys, a joke book, the Major and the General, the ride feels like hours.  In near unison, the General and his friend shared every joke in the book, every joke that they knew that was not in the book, and a few they had made up.  Thankfully that was very few.  I do not know how they understood one another to laugh at the jokes as they spoke over one another non-stop. 

What do you call something that is black and white, black and white, black and white?

I don’t know, what?

A nun falling down the stairs!

AH-HA HA HA HA HA HA!

What do you call something that is black and white and laughing?

I don’t know, what?

The nun that pushed her!