"teaching is hard - what makes you think you'll be good at it?" It's because I come from a family with a lot of professional teachers, I think, that it gets my back up when people assume anyone can do it.

Oh, yeah, that is maddening! My sister-in-law, who is a 2nd grade teacher, home schooled my older niece for a year when niece was 6ish and she had a rough time of it. Just being together alone day in and day out took a toll.

The thing that totally baffles me about the strip search case is why in the hell they didn't call the child's mother in the first place. If they needed to give her ibuprofen they would HAVE to call her. But to strip search the child for her, they don't bother to call?

The Slate article on it notes that schools finding naked pictures on cell phones or email immediately call the police on the basis that the teenagers are child pornographers.

I'm pissed about the whole thing and worry about what my kids are going to face in public schools but I also know that you have to fight the good fight sometimes, from the inside to make a difference.

Somewhere I saw a video of some guys who set a Tickle Me Elmo on fire while it was laughing. Funny and cathartic.

I'm the only one who's disturbed about it?

It seems a little disturbing to me too. Of course, in an hour I might find it hysterical. I'm moody like that.

Then again, in my boarding school, my roommate who had teddy bears got used to get back to our room once in a while and find one of them hanged from the lamp (as if it committed suicide), with a note on it says "I didn't tell a thing" (literally, "I didn't betrayed [the country]"). Funny.

Hee.

Something about my Sister makes people want to give her laughing, talking, and otherwise noise-making and shaking toys. Once at a party we all had a few too many and started putting them in sexual positions. Hysteria.

We should do it again and put the videos on YouTube.

I'd certainly pull my kid out of THAT public school... but a different state entirely? Several years later?

We've had some recent cases in the area where schools have a "zero-tolerance" policy on drugs of any sort, including kids' own prescription or OTC drugs, and the kids being thrown out of school for it. One girl took a prescription pill (her own) rather than having the school nurse hold it and going to the office in order to take it and was thrown out of school. Another boy was caught with illegal drugs and thrown out a few months before he was scheduled to graduate.

And a lot of parents are all for zero-tolerance ... until their own kid gets caught in it.

Why didn't someone tell me that the guys I slept with in high school would be the same men I'd have to eventually face at my 20th high school reunion?

My school had a similar sort of policy with medicines -- the only things that kids were allowed to carry around with them were inhalers and epipens. Everything else had to be kept at the nurse's office. Luckily, this was a small school with a very good nurse, so the system generally worked pretty well. I sometimes needed to take Advil during the school day. When I needed that, I'd go to the nurse, who would take two Advils from a locked cabinet and give them to me. That bottle of Advil was one that I had brought in, with notes from my mother and doctor saying how many I could have.

The place where this systems could sometimes break down was if a teacher didn't let the kid go to the nurse. It was always the same two or three gym teachers who would insist that kids were "just fine" and wouldn't give a hall pass to go to the nurse. With one of them once, I just ignored her and went without a hall pass anyway, knowing that the nurse would be on my side, and that I was really in too much pain to argue any more, anyway. My sister, and several other kids with asthma, who followed the rules and didn't go to the nurse when the teacher said no, ended up in the ER, several times.

I swear that Dahlia's humor is the only thing that gets me through some of the opinions coming out of the Court. I know that I am not alone.

And this is so odd in light of the car search ruling that they handed down yesterday.

And, a Buffista (if he's not, he should be) explains Easter.

On the subject of nekkidness at school, my kids had swimming today. Afterwards, the swimming teacher took me aside to recount the following.

Boys in changing rooms: GIGGLE GIGGLE GIGGLE GIGGLE GIGGLE!

PE Teacher suspects all may not be well. Goes in.

Teacher: What's all this about?

A: They're laughing at my penis!

Teacher: prepares to crush other boys for wrecking A's self confidence.

A: (clearly insulted) ...because it's so big!

Teacher: ....Er...I think you're going to have the last laugh on that one, mate.