Do people really get Columbus Day off from work? Seriously? Columbus Day? Man, that’s a second-tier “holiday” if I’ve ever heard of one. In my mind, it’s on the same level as Arbor Day, Flag Day, and Gerald Ford’s birthday. But maybe I’m way off?
Needless to say, I’ll be working tonight. My employer begrudgingly closes on Christmas and Thanksgiving, and that’s about it. At my job, today is Monday and nothing else. “Now get y’ass back to work!”
Columbus Day, of course, played a big part in the all-time worst episode of The Sopranos. And that’s what it’ll always mean to me.
I have a pimple in my left ear. Just thought you should know. It’s as hard as a BB, and I keep messing around with it. If I can’t get it to surrender to my prods and manipulations, I’m gonna go after it with a steak knife. Stay tuned for further developments.
Last week Toney and I went to the high school to experience an accelerated version of our oldest son’s school day. Have you done this? You actually go to each classroom (for ten minutes each), take lunch, etc. All the teachers are there, and it’s mildly surreal.
It’s been a long time since I’ve sat in a high school classroom waiting, praying, for the bell to ring. But I did it again on Thursday night.
It’s the math stuff that gets to me. Anything that’s even loosely associated with mathematics causes my eyes to glaze over, and my brain to start wandering and thinking about baseball and The Clash. Just like in 1981.
One class — CAD (aka Computer Assisted Design) — seemed promising, with all the expensive-looking computers and technology, and whatnot. But when I opened the textbook, I was instantly bored and making sarcastic remarks inside my brain. More math! If we’d been in there for ten minutes longer, I have a feeling I would’ve started throwing spit wads.
I also found myself making instant, and possibly unfair, judgments about each of our son’s teachers. One guy in particular rubbed me the wrong way, and I don’t really know why. He didn’t say anything objectionable, I just didn’t like him. I think it was his mannerisms. He kept spreading his arms for emphasis, and going up on his tiptoes while talking, and that stuff pissed me off.
I haven’t spent too much time in the local high school, and it’s massive. Probably three or four times as large as the school I attended… It’s also like an archeological dig. Over the years sections have been built-on, and it felt like we were walking through different eras. One minute it was 1957, then 1984, then 1969…
But the classrooms themselves are pretty much the way I remember them. Same smells, even. The desks are a little more fancy-pants than ours, but it had the same overall vibe. I’d say classrooms are 95% unchanged from olden times.
While sitting through yet another maff-based torture, I started making mental lists of stuff we had, that no longer exists, and vice versa. And here are some things that have disappeared since I was an unfortunate-looking student:
- mimeograph hand-outs (everybody sniffed them)
- film strips (with sound effect to signify that it’s time to move on to the next frame)
- 16mm films (with roaring fan and clickety-clack noise)
- manual typewriters (I took a typing class in high school and had Popeye forearms by the end of the course. Shit!)
- the rope in gym (I’d get roughly two feet off the ground, and gently swing back and forth until the coach disgustedly told me to get my ass out of the way.)
- framed photo of Jimmy Carter
And that’s gonna be the big Columbus Day Question, for you guys: What things existed in schools while you were attending, that are now extinct? And vice versa. Use the comments link below.
And by the way… We saw Poppa Half-Shirt in the lunchroom on Thursday. He was sitting at the nerd table. Thanks to the influence of my wife, we were eating with the popular parents, while ol’ Halfy was over there with the goobers and men in turbans.
Yes, it was highly satisfactory.
I’ll see you again tomorrow.
Now playing in the bunker
Evil Twin t-shirts now only $13!
First again?!
Toofer
Wife and I attended one of those a few years ago when our daughter was in high school. It was even more surreal because we attended the same school about 25 years earlier. I think some of the same trophies were still in the glass cases…
The paddle hanging either on the side of the teacher’s desk, or hanging on the wall of the principal’s office.
Our 6th grade teacher had his enscribed at the bottom
(cause it was one of those with holes in it)
“Hurts So Good”
He was a very cool popular teacher.
LOL! My 4th grade teacher had a paddle with holes in it resting in the chalk tray on the chalkboard in the front of the clasroom. Her’s was enscribed, “Board of Education.”
Thank God the only time I’ve been back to high school was to retrieve my transcripts (which were very embassing to look at) a couple of years after I graduated.
Slide rules. Big ol’ slide rules.
I with you Greg, they need to bring back slide rules. You could always tell the nerds cause they had the biggest slide rules! Gawd I miss being a nerd. ***Giggle Snort***
With it’s relatively high American Indian population, and pretty much no Italian Americans, MN does not recognize Columbus Day.
Well fuck MN then. Absurd. I’m sorry, but if you have land and you let men with powdered wigs and pantyhose take it from you, then you sorta deserve it. The neighborhoods have been improved. Is there any doubt? There weren’t any neighborhoods before Europeans came. And the natives most certainly wouldn’t have thought of giving each other casinos, paint to huff, or whiskey – because they didn’t have ANY OF THE ABOVE. For fucksake, if living to be 35 because you starve from lack of deer or vitimin C is “the good life” then you can have it!
Sorry Kristin, I’m not bashing you. I’m just so goddamn sick of the notion that whoever was there first own’s the land. Why don’t we apply the same standard to Europe? That fucking place was overrun with savages. And is anyone happy with the “all natural” and “organic” and “cultural” way that South Africa, South America, and many other parts of the world are doing?
We have medicine for that CHI-CHI, you don’t have to kill a virgin. You don’t have to lose all your teeth.
Fuck. Sorry. I’m on a rant that’s going nowhere. Sorry.
Kristin, you’re tops.
This kind of thinking makes me ashamed to say I am an American.
T. Farty – no offense taken. While I don’t agree with everything you said, I have my limits to my liberalism. I would not want to live without the little things – like indoor plumbing and Sudafed.
After more thought, the real reason MN may not do Columbus Day is that the state is very Scandinavian-centric, and we all know the Vikings got to the new world first. 🙂
Farty, I am behind you 100% (may not be such a wise decision considering your name).
Seriously, do you know how much Columbus’ discovery of the new world enriched Europe? That alone is worthy of celebrating. And it never ceases to amaze me that all of us European descendants living in America today complain about the guy who made life here possible.
“I’m sorry, but if you have land and you let men with powdered wigs and pantyhose take it from you, then you sorta deserve it.”
What about jackbooted, genocidal lunatics? Can they have your land if they come and take it? Why did we send so many guys to Europe to die? Did the rest of Europe deserve that because they weren’t putting every ounce of their strength into being an industrial war machine? Did the Jews deserve the Holocaust? Do Western advances in medicine and technology give us the right to murder, rape, torture and pillage “savages”? Just as long as you realize you’re talking like an ignorant bigot…………….
I have not been back which suits both me and the school just fine.
Things that are not there anymore might be that big ole honkin roll of maps over the chalk board. And how about the paddle in the principal’s office. I am certain the pussification of America has eliminated that by now.
Did the middle school version with the youngest Angel a couple of weeks back. She’s in a magnet program in a questionable part of town (Guns and Geeks). Very rush-rush and every organization trying to pick my pocket.
Today’s was a very satisfying entry.
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters….
Regarding the Bunker Cam; that’s one gigantic fucking goldfish.
Computer cards with punch holes
Beta Video tapes
Trapper Keepers?
Standing in home room every AM for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Prayer went out long before that but I still remember it. Oh boy…I’m old…
Thanks for the memory. I thought I had killed that braincell.
When I attended grade school in Okinawa, we had morning exercise.
The hitching post where we would tie up our dinosaurs is gone, and so is the rack for our snowshoes. Going back recently, the snow didn’t seems as deep, the 5 miles didn’t seem as long, and I STILL can’t figure out how it’s uphill in both directions!
Oh…one thing I know exists now that never did “back in the day”…..Metal detectors. Bringing a weapon to school was unheard of. Now a days they have arsenals.
Bringing a “weapon” to school was pretty common in duck season or squirrel season when every country kid seemed to have a shotgun in his car or truck. Nowdays that don’t fly, thanks to the sideways hat and giant cheap silver mall kiosk chain wearin’ set. And I think every one of us carried a pocket knife. 10 years ago my son got a three day vacation for getting caught with tiny little pocket knife that no one would have paid attention to in my high school.
Student Smoking Room in high school. No food choices – you ate the slop they served. We had a tight budget supervisor nun, she saved left-overs and combined them into unbelievable messes once a week. Her chili made with left-over green beans, baked beans, Lima beans and kidney beans put several of us out sick for a week. No vending machines. Boy’s side of school, girl’s side of school (this was elementary school – then called Grade School). Being chosen to clean the teacher’s lunch room – they ate separately and better than we did (we would snitch left-overs). Catholic Grade School – Mass EVERY morning. Corporal punishment, allowed and encouraged by parents. Back to grade school, actual inkwells in our desktops and learning to write cursive with a real ink pen.
OMG…You reminded me of my Grandmother on my Dads side. Terrible cook. Horrible. We always winced in pain knowing we were going to Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s house for dinner. Speghetti…if it was left over in was in the sauce…green beens, kidney beans. whatever meat she had sitting in the fridge for the last two weeks – lunch meat NOT excluded. BLECCCH!
LMAO! I have this image running through my head of ladling out sauce with slices of boloney in it!
Oh…no shit. She would dice everything up. As it’s swirling around in your mouth you’re thinking to yourself…”What the….??? Is this olive loaf?” If it was in the fridge, it was in the sauce.
Ewww. Just ewww.
Nuke attack drills of course. Air raid siren and all. And wait for the all clear siren.
Do they still pass out frogs and worms for disecting in biology class? Five of us…a select group (ahem) I might add…got to do do a starfish. I’m still waiting for that bit of handy work to pay off. I don’t think I could save a dying starfish but I know how to put it out of it’s misery.
Is shop still around or did they get tired sewing fingers back on in the nurse’s room?
Grade school…milk came in glass bottles with little bonnet type caps and we had a “cloak room”. I got in trouble for trying to kiss Jeannie Holland in there a few times. A frist grade temptress I tell ya.
…first…crap…but I just looked up frist and it’s a word. From the 13th century but heck…we’re all thinkg back…right?
dto, you must be as old as I am! Oh man, those nuke drills were freakin’ scary for kids in first grade. The siren went off, then we all crawled under our desks. Man, those musta been some pretty stout desks if the Civil Defense people expected the desks to protect little kids from a nuclear attack.
Chalk Boards ( maybe ).
Chalk board eraser cleaners
Haven’t most schools gone to the dry erase white board?
Real slate chalkboards. My old grade school still has them even though the building has been closed.
I remember the fancy machine that cleaned erasers.
Private school circa 1977?
Yes Ashton, I too feel very satisfied with today’s entry.
From yesterday:
-visible flatulance
-armpit gravy
-Freddie Mercury teeth
For some reason, yesterday this response would not post.
Today:
Just about everything has been covered, except for those pop-culture mags they sold in the elementary school Weekly Readers (‘Bananas’ & something else.)
And although there is no shortage of these cases anymore, I did bang a student teacher during my junior year. I still love to share that little bit of information, as it was a badge of honor.
i just spent the greater part of online searching for trapper keepers!! my little man wants one, and I don’t even think they still make them!! 🙁
Mart of Wal has Trapper Keepers!
Casey, google trapper keepers. It’ll take you to a page with shopping results, which is an amazon link. You can get them there.
dto reminded me of long forgotten school memories. The little glass milk bottles, chocolate on friday if you ordered it when you paid for the month. Walking to the front of the room to have the teacher poke a hole in the paper cap and insert a straw. Supposedly so we wouldn’t spill the thing on our desk (no lunch room, but we ate out of those cool lunch boxes). A bottle hitting the floor,once a week or so. Dissecting a fresh, formerly breathing frog and making a Picasso-like colored pencil drawing of his innards in freshman biology. No shop class, but our chemistry class manged to evacuate the entire school to the athletic field on no less than three seperate occassions. And as a current and upstanding member of the U.S. Postal service, yep, it’s a holiday. Although as a technician I did have to work. Got an extra day of vacation to use later for my effort though. That’s one of the perks they throw us for putting up with the nitwits and asshats that get promoted into management positions. My wife tells me I should write a book, but no one would believe the shit I could tell ya’ll.
Record players are becoming a rare bird.
Blank paper. Seriously. Try and find a sheet of blank paper in a classroom uness it has a printer in it.
Overhead projectors are becoming less and less used with the wide embrace of Smart boards.
As are TV’s. They will likely become that piece of equipment that gets shoved into a dusty corner within 7 years.
3/4″ Umatic machines.
Filmstrips are still in use, surprisingly.
16mil projectors have pretty much died out.
A few diehards still have their Beta players.
CRT monitors are slowly getting weaned out in favor of LCDs.
Commodore computers. Still have scads of 1701’s being used for various purposes though.
Central control clock systems. Too expensive to maintain, so its cheap battery clocks everywhere.
Wooden staircases.
Carbon paper sheets that where used to make mimeographs.
Thats all the pops into mind at the moment.
I miss those fresh mimeographs…
Guilty of sniffing.
Sadly, when handed a hot sheet of paper Pavlov kicks in and I put it to my nose.
>(‘Bananas’ & something else.)<
'Dynamite'
Sure, the whole federal gov’t is closed for Columbus Day. It was pretty sweet here in the DC area, because there was NO traffic today. I got to work in half the time it normally takes.
Not having kids in HS, I haven’t set foot in one since the seventies, so I have no idea what’s changed since then. But I’d guess the chemistry labs no longer have chemicals that are actually dangerous. Or do they even have chemistry labs anymore?
(Here at Winston Smith Regional High School, it’s always 1984.)
.
Today was my first day as an employee of the US Government. And it being Columbus Day, it was also my first paid day off. I’m thinking about quitting now just because it can only go down hill from here.
I suspect I will make quite the bureaucrat.
Good luck, Dave!
Jeff,
Odds are that’s a sebaceous cyst. You might get a little pus out of it, but it will probably just form a little hard knot that your physician will cut out.
Enjoy.
Living in Beckley, WV as a child, I remember prayer each morning, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Each Friday afternoon was reserved for music. Since Beckley was once a Confederate Fort, many of my teachers families were rebels. Each friday we finished music time with the song, “I wish I was in Dixie”. No lie! In 1969 and 70, right after segregation, I had black kids in class with me singing this song. Now that I think about it, it was totally surreal.
Huh, I can’t really remember the words to Dixie… all I can come up with was our grade school version:
I wish I was in the land of cotton,
My shit stinks, but yours is rotten
I went to a small independent school district in Texas (my graduating class only included 32 people). Although I’m only 35 years old I think I might have been in a time warp.
We (boys) were required to maintain military-type haircuts. No facial hair. No long hair. No earrings. I didn’t have a problem with any of this because I’ve always been “clean cut” if you will.
I remember a couple of girls that had their asses shagged to another school because they were pregnant. And they wouldn’t have any short skirts or tops on females, much to my dismay.
But each classroom had a fucking sawed off boat oar that was engraved with the words “Board of Justice” above their desk and they’d whoop your ass in a second. There was also a “smoking section” where teachers and students alike would gather to smoke cigarettes.
I was always a “class clown” and got my ass beat repeatedly. But fuckem. I had a good time. And all in all, I didn’t consider their rules to be overbearing. It was just reality.
I drank beer while skipping school with my football coach. I was all of 16. No, he didn’t “diddle” me or anything of the sort.
We were in the country and nobody seemed to give a fuck. Good times. Hated to see those preggos go though, I sorta have a thing for pregnant chicks, still do.
Okay then. Go fuck yourselves.
Jason – I’m with ya on the pregnant chicks. Don’t know why, but about 5 years ago I started to appreciate the natural beauty aesthetic, along with an unvarnished perverted lust, of beautiful pregnant women. So sue me.
Yes – weapons in school used to be a joke! Why, back when I was in grade school (here comes the old geezer rant) it was unthinkable that a kid would bring an actual weapon to school with the intention of harming another student or teacher. Of course, myself and my classmates had plenty of pocket knives taken away from us, but this was during a time when every self-respecting young lad carried a pocket knife; and they were usually only taken away because they were a distraction in class, not because they were considered dangerous. If you were caught carving up your desktop, you lost your blade until the end of the school year. But, what was really mindblowing is that we were encouraged to bring in our favorite Christmas gifts for show-and-tell upon returning to school after the holiday break – when I was in the fourth grade my dad bought me my first rifle for Christmas – a .22 with a cream-colored resin stock, (from Sears Roebuck, no less!) sized just right for a 9 year-old. I cherished that rifle! I took it in for show-and-tell! No big deal. No one cared. No one freaked out. The earth didn’t spin off its axis and go hurtling toward the sun. My teacher, Mrs. Cook, kept it up by her desk in its carrier until time to show it, and I proudly displayed it when the time came. No bullshit! Glenwood Elementary on Charleston’s west side! I wasn’t the only one, either. Of course, it was 1968, and it was a different time then; but more importantly it demonstrates the differences in growing up in a place like West Virginia, where we’ve always been comfortable with firearms…
My uncle gave me a Remington .22 when I was 7 so that makes that gun…old. Used it in a school play I was in the 8th grade. (blakks of course) Carried it back and forth to school (I was a ‘walker’) in it’s canvas bag everyday for a month. No one gave it a second thought and really…neither did I. Rural (back then)southern Ohio.Still have the gun and a bullet has never gone down the barrel. Got another one I use for skunk plunkin’.
Do you ever get the compulsion to chamber a round and pop its cherry?
“What things existed in schools while you were attending, that are now extinct? “
Dodge Ball!
They took away Dodge Ball!
That would have been a relief for me. I always got nailed in Dodge Ball.
Are you kidding me?? They took away DODGE BALL?? For fucksake, why? Next thing you know they’ll only allow “flag” football. No more tackling allowed. Some mother who doesn’t want her faggot son to get muddy will get on her soapbox and start a campaign against it.
I loved dodge ball. And I was good at it!! I had a mean-ass side are throw and was hell on wheels catching the ball!!
Um…that would be “side-ARM throw”…carry on…
Oh, and another thing – around that same time a trend started in our school where the boys carried hunting knives in their leather holsters (or scabbards, if you prefer) on their belts. My mom got me an ace Coleman hunting knife by redeeming Top Value stamps at our local redemption center (anyone remember those? TV Stamps practically furnished our humble white-trash abode) and I wore it to school nearly every day. Hell, even in high school it was very common for every guy to have a Buck knife (or the copy equivelant) in a holster on their hip. Nowadays kids get suspended for the school year over a fucking plastic spork! Times sure have changed.
They actually still have TV Stamps, Google it! 🙂
Thanx for the tip – I googled them and found a whole load of sites dedicated to just trading stamps. I had forgotten all about the S&H green stamps, which I think were given away at IGA Supermarkets. I can remember when books of TV stamps had an attached dollar value – folks would sell them through the classified sections of newspapers. I can remember one Christmas where my aunt gave my mom a box of completed TV stamp books as a gift!
Where I grew up (western MA), S&H green stamps cams from the A&P supermarket and certain gas stations. My mom filled book after book of those things – since she’s a hoarder I’ll bet there are still boxes of them in the garage at home…
Albers grocery carried S&H green stamps here in central Ohio in the 1960’s. My “job” for my mom was to put them in the books. If I only had a few, I had to lick them to stick them in there. But for full pages, mom gave me a sponge and some water to do the job. Gee, thanks! I also remember going into the Green Stamp store to redeem the books. I seem to remember items on shelves with signs showing how many books it took to “buy” them. I think there was also a catalog you could order from too.
The metal ruler that Sister Georgette slapped us all with.
Yep – slate chalkboards, wood and metal desks (with thinks like “Lisa sucks dix” carved into the wooden desktop and/or the grey paint on the desk)….
Anybody else have a lift top desk? Had that and the kind with the storage thing underneith. Kept penciles, pens, protractors erasers and the like in a cigar box. Pretty much standard equipment back then. The Dutch Masters box was cool I thought. That was my fave.
ETW…got my leather handle hunting kind the same way and wore it daily. Some times it still had fish blood on it (just because). Bluegill…yum!
Geez, dto – did we go to the same school or what? Same deal here! I had a White Owl cigar box in my storage area that was covered with Odd Rods stickers and those great Basil Wolverton Wacky Alphabet stickers. It still smelled like cigars and I loved to lift the lid and huff it…
A cigar box used to be on our list of things to bring to school, along with the pencils, crayons, etc. I brought my pet cameleon to school one day in my cigar box. Wow. I haven’t thought of cigar boxes in a long, long time.
Yeah you guys…I’m 30 miles NE of Cincy so I’m fairly close to WV and I can smell Kentucky from my backyard. So it all kinda melds around here I guess.
Memo to self for Jeff…Request: edit button, delete button, and old geezer alert button. 🙂
I had a lift top desk. I remember I had a green and pink caboodles case in there holding all my stuff and some heavy set kid came barreling down the row, leaned on my desk and crushed my caboodle.
I was sad.
What were caboodles?
Sounds like a punchline:
…leaned on my desk and crushed my caboodle!
Badum-BUM! Heyoooooooo!!!
I had a lift-top desk. I think caboodles were kind of a little tackle box or carrying case to keep stuff in. They came neon colors. I think it was an 80’s/early 90’s thing. Brittney, am I right?
Yes, it was pretty much a tackle box, it had little round bumps on the top…I remember it had a word eched in the top of it but for the life of me cannot remember what brand it was…I also had Lisa Frank folders, the sparkly notebooks, glittery pencils, a 101 dalmations lunchbox and thermos that I would always put chocolate milk in. Ah memories.
We had lift top desks, too. My 2nd grade teacher, Miss Gibbons, was an attractive, busty redhead but a temper that could flare at any moment.
She’d get set off by a messy desk especially. All of a sudden, she’d pounce and turn the whole thing upside down and with the falling lid came all your stuff: papers, pencils, caboodles, whatever, onto the floor. And god forbid there was gum or candy in there…hell hath no fury.
In front of everyone, you had to get on on your knees and put it all back neatly while she screamed bloody murder at you. It was a fate worse than death so we generally kept everything pretty well organized in there.
Come to think of it, this was probably better than therapy for her.
She also used to flirt like crazy with the janitor as he made his rounds – he was tall dark & handsome (and probably dumb as a box of lugnuts, hence the custodial engineering position).
Jeff, the way you described your feeling about mathematics is exactly how I have felt my whole life about it. I HATE math with every fiber of my soul. I have never understood it, never will, not going to try.
I got a half day off work today. I didn’t even bother asking about it because I’ve been there long enough to know what not to ask the boss, but the girls were determined. I didn’t completely agree with the time off, but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna argue it! I got the dishes done and made some enchiladas. Wasn’t a total waste of a day.
Yes, I HATE the math as well. I made A’s and B’s, except for math. My first D, my first F, in math.
I remember the “nuke dills” in 4-5th grade. Not a big deal I guess…Duck and cover. Whatever.
What wouldn’t exist nowadays, would be the most awesome steamroller EVER ( dubbed Virgil), and the quarter ounce of weed, stashed in my locker. The quantity varied.
My locker was the one with the “I LOVE OZZY” sticker on it.
4 years, same locker, and never a question asked.
WTF?
Was Virgil made out of glass?
Let me guess – when Virgil finally “died,” he broke right at the neck of the bowl. Am I right? That was the Achilles heel of the glass steamrollers – they’d get really hot, someone would accidently tip it over or gently hit the bowl against a surface, and it would crack a full 360 around the neck of the bowl – the thinnest spot of the pulled glass…
What’s missing from school? Good ‘ol ass woopin’s. Not teacher abuse, but good ass woopin’s from teachers, to teachers, principles, staff, students (giving and receiving) and best of all, parents that got called in from work, came in, wooped ass in the lobby of the main office, and still made it back to work before lunch break was over.
Someone’s got to celebrate the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean!
Good Morning Surf Reporters……..
The air raid drills in grade school, 1956-1962. Our school was brick with a long, long hall with classrooms on both sides. When the air raid alarm rang — three short rings, pause, three short rings, pause, etc. — we left our classroom and went to the hall, opened our locker, retrieved our coat, covered our head and stuck our upper torso in our locker. Everyong knew, even at that tender age, that the Soviet atomic and nuclear tipped missiles would blow every brick about ten miles, but we played along.
Larry Handly, a sort of peculiar kid who wasn’t exactly in the advanced reading program, failed to return to class after one of the drills. One of the wits in the class yelled, “The Commies got him!” After an organized search, he was found inside his locker. It was never clear whether he did it accidentally or decided it was safer to not have his ass protruding into the hall.
From then on, whenever the alert signal rang, someone yelled, “Don’t let the Commies get Larry.”
jtb
Let’s see…caboolde and steamroller. I used The Goggle and I’m all ready two words smarter today and I haven’t even had my second beer y……uh….coffee yet. I’m here to learn.
Hey I just realized…I’m home skoolin’ today.
..kinda did some of that on purpose except…caboodle, caboodle, caboolde, caboodle. Caboodle probably came from “kit & caboodle”. Just a guess
Did you see some of the other definitions for steemroller? At urban dictionary they mention something about a girl squatting over a man’s chest, taking a dump on the chest and then sitting on it and moving back and forth. wow.
steamroller you retard!
Huh? Retard might be a bit harsh but…cool…whatever. They were not called that in the circles I swirled in and I’ve swirled with the best of them. And they have swirled with me.
And thanks for more information than I’d care to have on the word no matter how it’s spelled.
I had to google ‘steamroller’ to find out what that was. We called such a thing a shotgun.
Any NYC reporters in the house? The Mrs. and I are heading there in early Dec for 3 nights. Decent hotels(cheap) and must try pizza or Deli’s. Any help would be appreaciated. Thanks in advance.
SOS.
Son of Sam – I’m from NY and my mother lives in the city. I’ll get you some information. Which hotel are you in? I’ll try to sort out a good tour for you where you WON’T get riped off with decent restaurants and such.
Schools – do kids still cover their text books? I remember using borwn paper bags from the supermarket to do that. Pencil boxes? Metal lunchboxes with glass thermoses? Ink cartridge fountain pens for penmanship class.
madz1962 Thanks man I knew this crowd would come through. We didn’t pick a room yet but plan on being there Dec 9-12. Any suggestions on a room would be nice as well. Meeting my brother, sister-in-law and neice there to look at stores decorated for Christmas. I’ve never been to the city but all the others have.
I told my wife my blog friends would help me out.
If you’re driving, there is a Holiday Inn on west 57th stret(between 8th and 9th Avenue) that has parking. Decent hotel, no bed bugs. Hotel Front Desk: 1-212-581-8100. Across the street towards 8th Avenue is the legendary Kennedy’s Bar and restaurant. Good food, decent prices, great bar. Swing a left onto 8th Avenue, walk 2 blocks and around Columbus Circle to Central Park. I can go on and on… Get your room pretty soon. Between the Christmas shows and tourists, you want to nail your room down quickly.
I’m on it thanks again.
we’ll chat as the date gets closer.
TRS 80’s in the computer lab.
Smoke breaks for the upper classmen.
Teachers that bummed cigarettes from students-I bet you don’t see that anymore .
I haven’t been in my old high school building since graduation in 1982. I’m sure it still smells like damp socks & asbestos.
Recently, I went to one of my nephews basketball games at my old elementary school. Now, that was a strange experience. I walked those halls for the first time in over 30 years. I found my 1st grade classroom and was surprised how little it had changed. The school’s maintenance budget must be $0.00
Very surreal..
“Uncle Buck” was on TV last night. The scenes where he goes to the kids’ school reminded me of this update.
“Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face.”
I teach English (11th and 12th grade) at a high school in suburban Pennsylvania, so I can give you a few insights about what you would see in my school – a fairly typical one, I think.
My student’s desks are made of metal and wood. I still have chalkboards, but I also have a polyvision board (not a whiteboard) that I use most of the time for instruction. We do not have a metal detector or security guards of any sort. If they bring a weapon to school (certainly not a spork, but rather something more serious), they are immediately suspended.
The kids eat lunch in the cafeteria where they can choose to go to a regular lunch line, a hamburger/chicken patty/french fries line, a soup and salad line, or a pizza line. They can also pack a lunch, of course. They have a credit card of sorts to pay for their lunches – they may not use cash. There are NO soda or candy machines on campus.
They can listen to ipods during study hall and are on school-owned laptops every day. They can only be on their cell phones before and after school hours.
Their clothing may not be revealing or say anything inappropriate, but the kids can wear their hair whatever way they choose. They can bring bottles of water to class and even small snacks. We still say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning (and YES, we say “God”), and we still have dances and pep rallies and bonfires before big football and basketball games.
Drugs are a problem … so is bullying. The cliques have stayed intact. There are no “dirty/smoking lavs” and only the juniors and seniors are permitted to park cars on campus.
As a teacher, the biggest problem I face is parent apathy and lack of involvement. I think most of the time I care more about their child’s success than they do.
WVULauren even with the perks I wouldn’t want your job because of the parents. God Bless.