With Friends Like These

"No man is poor who has friends," - from It's a Wonderful Life

This weekend My Director and I attended my 20th high school reunion. Amazing that two decades have passed since high school. We were driving to the reunion and she noticed I was quiet. "Are you nervous?" She asked. "No. I'm just...I find this...surreal. I can't believe we're driving to my 20th reunion. Isn't that crazy?" She agreed. Aging is a wonderful, mysterious, inevitable, frightening thing. I also felt excited. To see all the guys again. There are maybe two times a year where we're all together. I don't care what were doing as long as we're all there. It's always a good time. Always brings back happy memories, and always creates new ones.

On our way home, My Director said how great it was that all of my friends had made it. And that we took this great picture together:

We're very handsome. And very plaid.

I am who I am today thanks to a lot of people - my parents, My Director, Peanut - but these guys have been just as instrumental in making me me. (So they have themselves to blame.) And to quote my mother-in-law, of all people, "You can tell a lot about a person by who their friends are." Well, then I must be one hell of an amazing guy. Not because I have friends, but because of who they are. I'm so proud of my friends. For their successes in life and love. But more, for their success in friendship. 

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THE PEANUT GALLERY: Small Moments

Peanut came home from school yesterday with a stack of her writing work. Over the past few months, she and her classmates have been working on writing about "Small Moments." Here's how her teacher described the assignment:

"We taught the children to value tiny moments from their lives. We taught them that as writers we hold these moments in our minds and hearts, then we make a story about them."

Basically, for the past two months, Peanut has been doing in class what her dad has been doing on this blog since two months before she was born. I thought that was pretty cool.

Here are some of my favorite highlights:

"I was going to the American Girl doll store."
I love how she spells American: "uy mirikin." And how she
went there in a motor home with duck lips.

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THE PEANUT GALLERY: The Dog Ate My Homework

Peanut turns six this week. Can ya believe that nonsense? But before she hits that number, she hit another, less-significant but still mind-boggling one: 100 Days of School.

Apparently this is a big deal now. Such a big deal that a project is required. For Kindergarten. And being the forgetful procrastinators we are, we had to scramble together said project at the last minute on Sunday night:

That's 100 Cheerios made
into the number 100. Fancy.

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Kindergarten: You're Not in Daycare Anymore

"The universe is one great Kindergarten. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson." -Orison Swett Marden

Kindergarten, where have you been all my life? You mean to tell me all we had to do to avoid the nightly bedtime tug-of-war with Peanut was send her to school? This just seems too good to be true. Most nights she's in bed - and willingly - by 7:30. Read it again: 7:30. Some nights she ASKS to go upstairs. Amazing. But when you listen to Peanut, it's easy to understand why she's so tired.

On a recent cranky morning ride to school she informed My Director that she wants to go back to daycare. Those were the days, I guess. "The work is too hard," she complains. Turns out, learning is taxing on the mind and body. It's a good thing they give her two opportunities to feed her mind and body, right? Wrong. If you ask Peanut, she's not fed enough. "In daycare we had two snacks and we only get one in Kindergarten," she protests. My poor baby.

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Class Warfare

"Teach your children well... And feed them on your dreams." -Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young

I rarely, if ever, get political in blog posts. After all, I am a daddy blogger. But something happened in the world of politics this week that falls into my genre. So I feel compelled to share my thoughts.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke at an elementary school in York, PA on Wednesday. He spoke to a group of fourth graders. And he chose this audience to push the President's agenda. He was selling a provision in the jobs bill that would have given $35 billion for state and local governments to pay for public jobs, like teachers and police officers. (As it turns out it failed in the Senate on Thursday.)

He told the students - 9 and 10 year-olds, mind you - that all he and the President want to do is "ask people who make a lot of money to pay a little bit more in taxes" to pay for teachers likes the ones at their school who lost their jobs. Just like that. He even held his thumb and index finger apart just a tiny bit to illustrate his point, and show how little extra these people with a lot of money have to pay.

Unacceptable.



The Vice President wants to visit an elementary school and talk about the importance of working hard, or the dangers of drugs and alcohol, or the value in service to country, that's fine. I'm all for it. Instead, what Mr. Biden did amounts to nothing more than propaganda. Filling the heads of children with one party's ideas. He had a captive audience, and this is what he decided to talk about? Inexcusable.

As a parent, I would be furious if my child were in that classroom. And before you start making assumptions about my politics, I would be just as furious if a Republican spewed right-wing talking points to a bunch of kids. I would be furious because no one's personal politics belong as part of the curriculum in a public school classroom. Just like no one's religion belongs there either.

Maybe some of those students went home and asked their parents about what the Vice President said. Maybe some of the parents offered an opposing point of view. Maybe some of those kids didn't say anything to their parents because they assumed what this very important man was telling them must be true. Maybe their teachers reinforced Mr. Biden's ideas after he left. Maybe THEY offered the opposing view. I honestly don't know.

But that's a lot of maybes. Maybe Mr. Biden should have chosen something else to talk about. Or read them a book.

When we start presenting political views to impressionable children who are incapable of questioning the presenter, that's propaganda. It's disturbing. It can't happen. It shouldn't happen. It's one thing for parents to teach their children their political beliefs. One could even argue that in itself is potentially dangerous. But that is a parent's right. It is not a school's or the government's right to deliver an uncontested political message to our children.

We all have our own political beliefs. They are different from everyone else's. We all approach the issue of teaching these beliefs to our children differently. Whether it's right or wrong, I don't plan to instill my daughter with my beliefs. I want her to have her own. I hope to present both sides of issues to her when the time comes, tell her which side I am on, and have her decide which side she is on.

And when she enters public school next year, I certainly don't want a teacher, administrator, or politician bringing their political beliefs into the classroom and presenting them to my daughter as fact.

What are your thoughts? I'd appreciate if comments were kept to the issue of politics in the classroom, and not the merits of a particular agenda.

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