Why Is This Necessary?

Today we had, according an administrator, our "monthly-annual" tornado drill.  I would have laughed harder at this grammatical anomaly, but every month we have a "monthly-annual" fire drill too.  To clarify, we have monthly fire drills, and annual tornado drills, despite what this administrator thinks while making the announcements. 

Apparently, the state requires we have these drills.  Why?  Who really knows?  Fire drills almost make sense, but then again at the high school level, it is doubtful that anybody in the building wouldn't know where or how to proceed during a fire.  But why is a tornado drill required?  The same governing body that compiles a working calender down to the minute, also requires school systems to employ these gross wastes of time.  Elementary school should absolutely have these drills, to teach the kids what to do.  But why in high school?  This brings me to my three points.

Point one:
If a student does not know what to do in the event of inclement weather by the time they get to high school, let's face it, they probably shouldn't be in high school.  Okay okay, what about those student who went to private school or were home-schooled and never learned?  I would assume, and maybe making assumptions is why I struggle with this job, that if the rest of the student body is getting on their hands and knees in hallways, that the student that didn't know the procedure, could probably process what is happening and follow suit.

You may also be wondering why this is such an issue.  Have you have been around high school students?  Let me let you in on a secret.  If you ask hundreds, possibly thousands, of teenagers to go lay on the ground in the hallway for 5 minutes, the maturity level in the building immediately begins to approach zero.  Not only that, but any chance of calm or concentration is now lost for the rest of the day.  It's a huge mess. 

Point two:
Why are we enabling them in such simple activities?  Is it not the goal of providing an education to instill a sense of learning?  That is the problem with our educational system, and the source of all the heat we take.  Enabling!  To give a drunk a drink, right? How on earth can expect a high school student to learn how to graph and solve quadratic functions and actually remember how and why to do so, if we do not even expect them to remember what do in a situation where a tornado is approaching the school?  We do not expect them to retain anything, we enable the entire student body of the United States.  Why do we continue refine our educational systems while also continue to simplify our expectations? That's an inverse relationship, taking 2 steps back for every 1 taken forward.  

Point three:
This one is a little selfish, but I don't care.  If high schools where not required to have 10 "monthly-annual" fire drills and 1 "monthly-annual" tornado drills, we would have approximately 160 minutes of extra time to disperse throughout the calender.  Perhaps more than six minutes for class changes so that even a teacher has time to use the bathroom, or maybe longer than 22 minutes for lunch would be a better use of the time.  I don't know, just a thought.

Learning? No, not today.  Instead we are going practice leaving the school building.  Because high school students really need help learning how to leave school faster!

Here's Your Sign

You have probably heard the stand-up comedy of one Bill Engvall.  If you have not, I strongly recommend you do.  He is one of the few, relatively clean, but actually funny comics left in the world.  His earlier material is better in my opinion, as once he became widely known I feel it lost some of its appeal, but I still like his stuff.

Anyway, his signature is the "Here's your sign..." bit.  Here's your sign is Bill's reply to someone who asks a blatantly obvious (read: incredibly stupid) question.  So the idea is that when this question is asked, he would like to hand you a big sign.  A sign that you have to carry around and hold in front of you for all to see.  A sign that says:  "I'm stupid."  Since that isn't really realistic, he's reserved himself to just tell the person "Here's your sign" so that they know they've just embarrassed themselves.  I remember, I think, an example from his early work.  He's in the bathroom brushing his teeth, his wife walks in and says "You brushin' your teeth?"  He turns and with a mouthful of toothpaste says "Here's your sign."   Pretty funny.

Where is the going you ask?  Well, although everyone is susceptable to needing a sign every now and then, sometimes its such a shocking inquiry that before you have the chance to say "Here's your sign," you first find yourself saying "REALLY!?"  And as you may have guessed, the wonderful youth whose minds I mold are an everyday source of these moments. 

It happens at least twice a week; a student walks past my desk and peers over the framed picture sitting to my left.  Its a picture of my wife and I on our wedding day.  That's right.  Me, in a tuxedo with my arm around my wife, in a wedding dress holding a bouquet of flowers gazing star-struck and lovingly into each others eyes.

"Is that your wife?"

*sigh*

"Here's your sign."

Black Market ... Beer?

On a normal weekend camping trip to one of our favorite spots, I was unable to make the trip on Friday night with the rest of the crew.  Instead, I woke up at 0'dark-thirty on Saturday morning and made my way to the camp site.  I stopped at a local Quik-Trip to grab a coffee, biscuit, and some adult beverages for the weekend.  However, due to completely asinine laws in our state/county, you can't purchase alcohol between 12am and 9am. While checking out, the QT employee asked me where I was traveling, and I responded with an annoyed "north."  She informed me that the laws are different in different counties so I should stop again when I am farther north. 

I drove about 60 miles north and stopped at another QT, 4 counties north.  The time was now 6:25 am.  As I walk inside I notice the lights in the coolers containing the beverages for which I'm searching are off.  By this point I'm starting to get a little angry.  I really hate how the government can tell me when it's okay to buy alcohol and when it's not okay.  I quickly turned to leave and the QT employee at this location said "Can I help you find something?"  I snapped back "Not unless you can sell me some beer, but I'm guessing big brother has taken our rights hostage in this county too."  He nodded and said, "At least until 8 am."

"Well, I'm not sitting around for an hour and half so thanks anyway."

"Where ya headin'?"

"North."

"Will you passing the Walmart about 20 miles north of here?"

"Yes."

And here is where it gets weird.  He said "I know a guy.  He works in Electronics.  I'll call him and tell him you'll meet him there in 30 minutes, keep your brown jacket on."

I said okay, and left, thinking I'll just have to be that guy.  The guy that shows up to go camping and drinks everybody's beer.  About halfway between the QT and Walmart I thought, "you know what, I'll at least stop in and see if this guy was for real.  Maybe I can sneak some beer out through a self checkout anyway." 

When I get there, I walk back to electronics and start browsing through the video games.  About 30 seconds later an employee walks over and asks if need any help.  I said no thanks and he turned and walked away.  So I figured it was over.  But after another 30 seconds, the same guy walks back over to me and whispers, "Are you from QT?"

"Yes."

"Follow me, about 20 feet behind" he whispered.  "What kind of beer?"

"Miller Lite"

We walked across the store.  He turned around about halfway and said, "Go back to the video games, I'll be right back"

So here is where I wise up a bit.  I went back towards the video game section, but stopped before and tried to inconspicuously hide in the craft section.  I figured if he walked back with security or something like that, I could get out pretty quickly.  He didn't though, all he had with him was a case of Miller Lite.  I followed him back to the electronics section.  As he was logging in to his register he asked for me to have $20 ready.  It was on sale for $14.99 so my total was $16 something.  He scanned it, typed in some numbers for my birthday, took my $20, counted out the change, pretended to hand it to me, and then put it in his pocket.  He put my beer in a big bag and handed it to me and said, I'll walk you to the front. 

We walked to the front of the store, he told the greeter that I was "good to go" and I walked out.  When I got to my truck I giggled a little bit.  His fee was under $4!  Cheap!

I never tried to buy beer with a fake ID when I was underage, but I was able to experience what it must be like. It really is a shame that someone who is almost 30 years old is apparently not mature or intelligent enough to decide when it is appropriate to purchase beer.  Tax dollars hard at work I guess.