Because the bully blues just go on and on...

Y'all must be getting sooooo tired of me writing about bullies. I know I am.

*sigh*

Okay, so... the Impossible Son comes home and announces that he never, ever wants to go back to "that school" again. And I just knew... I just knew.

"What happened?" I asked.

Oh. My. God.

Okay, first, before I go on, let me assure you all, he's fine. Just some minor scrapes, sore muscles, and shock. And he doesn't want to go back to school. And what little trust he had in the school is... well, shot.

So... they didn't have P.E. today, they had music. So after lunch, they were allowed to go out to the playground. However, the second graders have the lunch period before the fifth graders, so the big kids have to wait in line behind some orange safety cones until the little kids clear the playground, and then they're allowed out. A new kid in the Impossible Son's class, we'll call him "Lug," had been in class long enough to know this rule, but was impatient to get on the playground, I guess.

Now, the Impossible Son's class teacher wasn't out there. Her class was being chaperoned by the school counselor and another teacher, Miss C.

Okay, so Lug decided to run out onto the playground, and the Impossible Son caught his sleeve gently (and this is the counselor's word, not mine) and said, "Hey, you can't go out there yet, Lug."

Lug turned and backhanded Mr. Impossible, then grabbed him by the arms, twisted them, and took him down to the ground. The counselor said she was shouting at them, but they couldn't hear her, and she got there as fast as she could. By the time she and Miss C. got there, Lug was about to stomp Mr. Impossible in the face.

*pause*

Yeah, I'm still shuddering over that part.

So, they pulled Lug off of my 4' 3", 66 pound son and hauled him to the principal's office. This was around 1 p.m. and the counselor said that she, the principal, and the assistant principal were dealing with him from then until 3:15 p.m.

But they never called me... and they didn't inform his teacher, either.

And guess who Lug's teacher is? I bet y'all can't. Yeah, she's the Impossible Son's former second grade teacher, the one who started us all on this lovely little round-about of bullying and denial. Yay.

So... when the Impossible Son told me about this, I was... livid. Though I managed not to audibly snarl. So, as soon as I sent the Impossible Son on to grab his things, I turned to the phone and put a call in to the school, demanding to know why I wasn't called when my son was attacked on the playground.

Oh, yeah, that took them aback a bit.

I was transferred to Mrs. S., his main teacher, and I left a voicemail, then went back to the main office and asked to speak to the counselor, "since I understand she is a witness."

Yeah, that shook them up, too.

She was on bus duty, though, so, I gave my cell phone number and waited for the call back. And she did call back, within ten minutes, and I got the story from her. At least, the part about the actual attack. What happened to Lug after wasn't so clear, though the counselor hastened to assure me that my son didn't have to worry about Lug again. She said, "There were some other issues, the longer we dealt with him, and the fact of the matter is, he won't be allowed back into this school until his... er... issues have been dealt with."

That didn't sound very encouraging, and the longer she went on, the worse it sounded. Finally, I said, "Okay, so... do the Husbandly One and I need to file charges for assault and battery? Because I have to tell you, I am not liking the sound of this at all, and the fact that you're telling me absolutely nothing isn't exactly inspiring confidence in me."

"Oh, no, no, we are dealing with this, Mrs. J, I assure you!"

"I also have to tell you that what little trust he had in you and the rest of the staff at your school is completely shot. You assured him last year that he would be safe, and he was extremely upset when he got home. He doesn't feel safe and he is begging us to transfer him..."

"OH no, there's no need to do that, Mrs. J.! Really! This boy will not be a problem, and your son will be safe..."

His grades are dropping, and he's having trouble focusing. I know he's been having bully problems again, but he's been telling me he's been dealing with it. I was planning on stopping by after school this week, or waiting for the conference I'll be having with his main teacher on the 20th to sound her out, but... no, I don't think it can wait now.

Oh, and after the call with the counselor, the phone rang again, and it was his main teacher, and that's when I found out that she hadn't been told, either! Nor did the Impossible Son tell her when he got back to class, which really puzzled her. "He didn't seem upset or anything," she said when I told her. "He just came in,grabbed his book, and started reading!"

I sighed, wondering how she could be teaching this long and not know this. "Look, Impossible has been having bully issues since second grade, and that was because Mrs. Oblivious Teacher, who is now teaching fifth grade with you, basically ignored it. She told him to stop trying to get attention for himself. And he's had ongoing bully issues since then. And every single time, it's taken a major effort by myself and his father to get your school to deal with it. He has no trust in the teachers, and no trust in the staff. He doesn't trust you on principle. It has nothing to do with you personally. Let me put it this way, if he ever actually comes to you and tells you someone is picking on him, or hurting him, or making fun of him, you can take it as read that it's bad, because if it wasn't, he wouldn't say anything to you, because he fully expects you to ignore it."

I could tell that shocked her, but... she has been ignoring him over the last week. Which was why I was planning on stopping by after school, so I could ask her why. And find out what she thought was going on (the answers to that are always so illuminating... and depressing).

Mr. Impossible is supposed to talk to the counselor tomorrow morning, but I'm planning on dropping by to talk to the principal myself and ask what the hell's going on, what is going on with Lug, and do whatever is necessary to shake the fog out of their brains. This is RIDICULOUS.

Man, oh, man, do I wish we could afford private school!! Or to transfer him to a better district!!

Another Math Rant in the Making...

Yes, you were spared my math rants last school year because of the Incredible Mr. Knickerbocker™, the most Awesome Math Teacher in this district. He, unlike most of the other teachers here, actually makes it his business to find out what the kids that will be coming into his class are learning at their previous schools. And this is why he is rarely surprised when they come to him with little or no math skills.

I wish the other teachers at the freshman campus and the high school would do this. It would reduce the amount of eye-rolling that happens whenever they say, "You should have learned this by now..."

This goes for every single subject they take, by the way.

Anyhow, the Impertinent Daughter's current Algebra teacher is completely unaware of what they have and haven't learned before coming to his class and... he doesn't care. He started his class with, "I don't do subtraction or division. I don't like it."

O_o????

Yeah, we're in trouble.

Because his "explanations" are... horrendous. I have no doubt he can do the math. Problem is, he understands it so well, he takes all these shortcuts, and expects his students to understand them. Problem is... if you don't have a grasp of how the equations work in the first place, if you don't understand the "long method " (his words) of doing them!

She understands how to do this. However, the wacky explanations she's been getting over the last three weeks have completely thrown her, so when she had to take a test yesterday, well... she didn't do well. And was so very upset when she got home. 'I know I know this stuff!" she wailed, "but I'm so confused!!"

She wrote out one of the problems she remembered for me and said, "I have no idea how to do this!"

I looked at it and was stunned.

x - 5 > 7

"You do know how to do this," I said, shaking my head.

"But..."

"Honey, you treat the greater than sign like an equal sign," I said and did the problem for her.

x - 5 > 7
x - 5 = 7
x - 5 + 5 = 7 + 5
x = 12

Her jaw dropped. "I do know how to do this! But... why didn't he say that??"

I shrugged.

"This is how he showed us how to do this," she said, and grabbed my pencil. "You just turn the minus sign into a plus."

x - 5 > 7
x + -5 > 7
x > 7 +5

And... he didn't go past that point in the notes.

Okay, that's great, and that works... if you already know how to do it the way I did it! If you don't, or if you don't remember it because you didn't spend your summer holiday doing algebra and math, you'll be completely lost!! You want to teach them shortcuts, great. Do it after you've taught them the standard forms!!

It looks like the Husbandly One and I are going to be algebra teachers again this year. As well as chemistry teachers. Because, yeah, I had to spend some time learning how to do dimensional analysis so I could teach the Impertinent One how to do it, because her chemistry teacher can't. And she admitted it, too! "If you can't understand my explanations, go to the teacher next door and ask her. She's better at it than I am."

And this woman is the Advanced Placement chemistry teacher!!!

In better news, I got the Impossible Son through a misunderstanding in multiplication. It seems one of his previous teachers, in teaching him how to multiply large numbers, taught him to add... oh, geez, let me just show you.

This is, of course, completely wrong!! Because the answer is actually 125.

So... I did it both ways, side by side and right next to each other, explaining what I was doing on every step, and asked him which answer made more sense.

"Um, 125," he said, frowning. "And the way you did it makes more sense, too. Because the way I was doing it just... felt weird."

Yeah, tell me about it! And I got him through long division again, too, which normally he breezes through, but for some reason, he wasn't getting it. Took me a while to figure out he'd never been taught to use trial and error to figure out where to start. You know, taking a scratch paper and multiplying different numbers against your divisor to get close enough to starting the actual dividing?

Okay, I know that made no sense whatsoever, but it's something we all do. Once I got him past that, he sped through his homework. I'm going to have to chat with his math teacher and point out what's going on so she can reinforce what I've already done. Fortunately, she's a good math teacher, once she knows what the problem is.

It's enough to make me want to scream. And absolutely dread the years he'll be in junior high, with the absolutely sucky math teachers there. It's almost, but not quite, enough to make me want to go back to school and change my major to mathematics so I can teach it. But not quite.

GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!! *tears out hair*

I'd like you to meet my husband... Fabio...

Well, in this picture, he kind of looks like him, don't you think?

*laughs*

It's the way his long hair is blowing in the wind, you know. And if you're wondering, that cute little fish was his catch of the night. He'd taken the kids salt water fishing for the first time, and while the Impossible Son caught the biggest fish of the night, and the Impertinent Daughter caught the second largest, the Husbandly One caught... the smallest. And no matter how hard he tried to catch something bigger, for the rest of the week, everything he caught was... pretty much the same size as that cute little Gulf cat in the picture. Heck, for all we know, it was the same fish the entire time, following him all around Rockport and Fulton, throwing itself shamelessly on his hook for one more look at its long haired hero! ♥ ♥ ♥!!

Oh, come on, I had to say it!

I find this an extraordinarily entertaining photo, on so many levels, and I'm proud of the Impertinent Daughter for taking it. She got a good shot of her papa!

I wanted to write more, but I'm just too tired to concentrate. School starts in three weeks, and... I can't wait.

Because "snarky" runs in the family...

There are many challenges to being a parent, not the least of which are those moments when your child does or says something that somewhere in the back of your mind, there's a niggle telling you that you really should reprimand him or her, but the rest of you is so caught up in either hilarity or admiration that you... just... can't quite manage it. Not without giving yourself away.

Or you don't know whether to scold... or applaud.

Tomorrow is the Impertinent Daughter's high school's homecoming game. For the uninitiated among you, Homecoming (and yes, it's usually capitalized like that) is usually held during football season for one specific game, and is ostensibly the game where the school's alumni is welcomed back. There is often a dance afterwards at the school gym, and a Homecoming Queen and King are elected by the students, along with their court, and theoretically at least, a good time is had by all.

There are also mums. HERE are some examples. Originally, they were these huge, ginormous, sometimes bigger than your head chrysanthemums, with ribbons that had your name, your date's name, the year, your school name, etc. written on them. Plus, there would be ribbons with charms on them, like miniature cowbells meant to jingle sweetly as you walk, little miniature football helmets, footballs, miniature school mascots, and so on. Nowadays, the mums are artificial, mostly silk, and you only get real ones if you're willing to spend megabucks on them.

With me so far?

Okay, so... the boy responsible for THIS got a mutual friend to ask Her Royal Impertinence to Homecoming. This friend, the Wombat (yes, that's his nickname, it's totally my fault, and I'm just lucky he likes it), asked her and was surprised when she said, "Oh, hell, no! no way!"

"Why not?" asked the Wombat, surprised.

She said she laughed and said, "Well, if he'd asked me face to face, instead of getting you to ask me for him, I would have respected him a bit more while I beat him up."

I completely lost it at that point. I was laughing so hard, I nearly wrecked the car!!

Of course, the Responsible Adult inside my brain was saying something ridiculous like, "That was very rude of her, and she should never be encouraged to beat someone up! She probably hurt that poor boy's feelings!!"

*snorts*

Fortunately, the rest of me quickly stifled the quasi-Responsible Adult, and not only died laughing again, but celebrated my daughter's independence and strength of character. She's got several friends who have "dated" boys (they were only in junior high, so "dating" mainly meant they hung around together, held hands, and tried not to look too embarrassed about it), simply because the boy asked them, not because they liked them or anything. Because some of their friends told them that having the boy ask them at all obligated them to say yes.

Excuse me??

No, you don't have to go out with a boy just because he asked you, or because you don't want to hurt his feelings, or because you're "obligated" by his asking. You have as much right to say "No" as you do "Yes." If you don't want to go out with him, say so. If you don't like him... don't go out with him.

*rolls eyes*

Of course, once I calmed down from my laughter, I did offer some motherly advice:

"If you're going to beat him up, dear, please don't do it on the school grounds. It might get you suspended and your father would be inappropriately proud wouldn't be too happy about that."

The Husbandly One and I ordered mums this year. One is from us, and the other is from the Impossible Son. He gave it to her after they got home from school today. When I handed it to him, I said, "Son, you get the honor of being the first boy to give your sister a mum."

He frowned. "Is that important?"

"Yes," I said very solemnly. "It is. And it's very special, because you're her brother. You're her Knight in Shiny Armor, Protector of all Sisterly Honor, and Official Tormentor of all who come to court her. Are you ready to take up your duties, Sir Impossible?"

"I am," he said very solemnly, and then he giggled.

"Go for it," I said, and watched him give her the mum.

She was grumpy when we first got home, so I was honestly worried that she'd snarl at him when he gave it to her, but... she rose to the occasion magnificently. In fact, her whole face lit up, and she got that million megawatt smile going. She looked at it, squeed at the little soccer balls on it, then snagged him for a fierce hug and kiss on top of his fuzzy little head.

It was awesome!

Later, she cornered me in the kitchen and asked, "Mum, what do I tell my friends when they ask me who gave it to me?"

"You tell them your Little Bother gave it to you," I said with a grin, and the concern in her face just melted away.

"Yeah," she said happily. "I'll say, 'my Little Bother gave it to me, stop asking questions!' and walk away."

I laughed. "Just tell them your Little Bother gave it to you because he's cool like that."

Later, my friend, Erin, came by with the mum her papa and I are giving her (Erin was returning a favor) and she was thrilled at the idea of having two mums to wear for Homecoming!! I'll have to take pictures in the morning!

All of it just made me think about what a challenge it is to make sure the little monsterskids we raise today turn out to be adults capable of making decisions and standing up for themselves while not destroying the world around them. It's a tough job. How to you balance teaching them to be polite and considerate of the feelings of others with keeping themselves safe and not letting other people treat them like door mats? How do you teach them the difference between not making a snap judgement about someone and listening to their own intuition? How do you teach them how to be constructively rude?

It's all a work in progress, really, and I'm making it up as I go along. Fortunately, neither the Impertinent Daughter nor the Impossible Son seem to be the worse for wear. At the moment, I'm just happy my girl didn't cave to the pressure of going out with someone she can't stand, just because he asked her.

It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I'm doing something right.

Boy on Fire!!

So yesterday, I picked the Impossible Son up from school as usual and when he climbed in the car, he said this week was "Stop-The-Bullying" week at his school, and in celebration of this, the kids in his class got to watch a film.

Prepare yourselves.

Now, the thing you have to understand is that when the Impossible Son is excited, or confused, or upset, his narrative tends to get somewhat... garbled. It's even worse when he's trying to work through his memory to tell you the story.

So, he started telling me about the film, and I could tell it bothered him, because his eyes were big, and his voice got high, and he was speaking very fast, as if he just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. The basic gist of what he told me is this; Kid A starts bullying Kid B. Kid B tells, and Kid A is suspended from school. His parents ground him for a month and take away all his privileges, so all he can basically do is just lay on his bed in his room and do nothing. This makes Kid A feel bad, and finally... he sets himself on fire.

Yes, you read that right. Go ahead and read it again, I'll just sit here and file my nails while I wait.

Done?

Okay, to reiterate, Kid A feels so bad he SETS HIMSELF ON FIRE.

This is bad.

He goes to the hospital and when he comes back, he has a lot of scars. The Impossible Son doesn't specify where the scars are, but I get a pretty good idea after Kid A goes back to school, because all his bullying buddies turn on him and call him "Pizza Face."

However, Kid B, his former victim, stands up for him and everyone stops. Kid A still has to transfer to another school, where he meets Kid C, who becomes his best friend and supporter, and when Kid A's teacher finds out what happened to him, he throws Kid A a party. The end.

O_o????

So... the message is... don't bully or you might set yourself on fire, and then your new teacher will give you a party???

Once Mr. Impossible told me about it, we talked about it and I asked him what he thought about it, and he said it was kinda freaky, because OMG, THE BOY WAS ON FIRE!! And I said, "Wait, did they show him on fire? I mean, did the film show him setting himself on fire and burning?"

"It was pretty weird, Mom," he said, which didn't really answer my question.

I backed off for a bit, then asked him about it again when we got home and he said, "It was just a movie," and I asked him if he thought what the boy had done was the right thing to do. He said, "It was pretty stupid to set himself on fire. It just made everything worse. All he had to do was just read some books to get through the boredom, and the month would be over and he could go back to playing and stuff. I didn't like that, it was stupid."

I thought, okay, no worries on that front. He understood that much.

I forgot about my son's overactive imagination.

The Husbandly One put him to bed last night while I made lunches early, because I felt like crap and just wanted to go to bed. And it looked like I was actually going to get to bed before 11 p.m., it really did! Until I sat down at the computer only to find a shivering child next to me with tears streaming down his face.

"What on earth?" I asked and he threw himself into my arms.

"I can't stop thinking about the boy being on fire!" he wailed.

. . .

It took putting him in our bed with THO on one side of him and me on the other, and a LOT of talking to settle him down. And none of the usual, "Think about cookies, think about Grandma holding you while she sings, think about Muta purring as he curls up next to you," worked to distract him. Finally, I had to give him a lot of water imagery to focus on, until he decided to imagine Katara from Avatar using her waterbending healing skills to put the fire out, and then he finally relaxed. I ended up having to sit at the computer so the light from the screen would light the room up enough to let him go to sleep. It was after midnight when THO was able to finally carry him to his bed and tuck him in.

Needless to say, I have emailed his teacher to get an idea of what actually happened yesterday. I called the school, but after the trouble it took for the secretary to understand me (I have a nasty case of laryngitis right now), email seemed to be a better idea.

*sighs*

Can we please just have one week without some sort of excitement going on around here? Just one???

Book-squee...

So, I'm in the middle of Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book, and I come across this:
-----------------
I bought a ticket, hurried to the check-in and spent ten minutes listening to a litany of pointless antiterrorist questions.

"I don't have a bag," I explained. She looked at me oddly, so I added, "Well, I did, but you lost it the last time I traveled. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a bag returned to me after tubing."

She thought about this for a moment and then said, "If you had a bag, and if you had packed it yourself, and if you had not left it unattended, might it contain any of the following?"

She showed me a list of prohibited items and I shook my head.

"Would you like an in-drop meal?"

"What are my choices?"

"Yes or no."

"No."

She looked at the next question on her sheet.

"Who would you prefer to sit next to?"

"Nun or a knitting granny, if that's possible."

"Hmmmm," mused the check-in girl, studying the passenger manifest carefully. "All the nuns, grannies, and intelligent non-amorous males are taken. It's technobore, lawyer, self-pitying drunk, or copiously vomiting baby, I'm afraid."

"Technobore and lawyer, then."

--------- Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde



Char is probably laughing herself silly at me right now, but I am getting seriously hooked. I mean... I actually had to stop reading this book for a short time, because... I got so stressed out when the main character's husband disappeared, and I couldn't help but take it personally!

And I am seriously in love with Pickwick the Dodo, and her "Plock, plock, plock." I want a dodo. I want a herd of dodo's wandering around in the backyard, nibbling on the vegetation and making "plock, plock" noises. Doesn't matter that they're extinct. I want one.

*brief discussion follows with the Husbandly One about the short story, "The Ugly Chickens"*

This is a relief, actually, because I've been in a bit of a reading bind, lately. I had picked up a newish Anne McCaffrey at the library, Catalyst, but... I just couldn't get into it. And the Husbandly One, who is a Vine Voice for Amazon and somewhere in their top 5000 for his reviews, sometimes gets freebies from Amazon if he's willing to review them. So, he gets books, and if he isn't interested, he gets Miss Priss or myself to read them and tell him what we think. Mind, the books we get are galley proofs that still need a lot of editing, and I try to keep that in mind, too, but... this last book THO got me... I couldn't read. It was a Mercedes Lackey book, Much Fall of Blood and I have to say, I had to give up halfway in because, seriously, the last time I was that confused, I was reading a somewhat incoherent fan-fiction. I'm hoping the copy I got was seriously preliminary because the story would leap perspective literally mid-paragraph. One second, I would be reading it from Character A's perspective, and the next, it would skip Characters B, C, D, and J, and leap all the way to Character Q. In the same sentence.

O_o????

It seriously screwed with my poor brain. And... I was never sure if we were Viking Werewolves, or Mongol vampires, or Viking Mongol Undead, or WHAT... because... well... like I said, let's hope this was just the extremely un-edited version, because O.O if it wasn't!!!

So, it was a very nice relief to get back in to a Thursday Next book.

And by the way, I recently finished My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme, and it was awesome I absolutely loved that book. It makes me wish very much that the movie "Julie & Julia" had been "Julia Child: My Life in France," instead. It would have been a much better movie, seriously.

And in case you're wondering at my sudden volubility, I have lost my voice (probably thanks to the stress of the last few days), and the Husbandly One has made me a very, very strong hot toddy, so Jo is pleasantly squiffed. Plus, I am very, very tired after a rough day of shopping for school supplies... on the tax-free weekend.

Prolly should have had the hot toddy before going school supply shopping, because seriously... ugh.

Next year, I'll start buying in July, when the supply lists come out, and save myself the hassle. I don't get the grabby, pushy, shove someone out of the way so you can snatch the one out of the 250 other boxesof the same thing that someone else already has their hand on. I don't do touchy-feely; I do ouchy-bleedy.

Oh, yeah, one man in particular learned a very harsh lesson. Do not grab Jo's bodacious booty and try to explain that it happened because you were making a grab for the glue-sticks, especially if the glue-sticks in question are at eye-level (and Jo's bodacious booty isn't). Most especially, don't do this in front of your wife.

I am sure he'll regain hearing in that ear... someday.

And now, my dear ones, I am going to pour myself into bed. Goodnight!