David's Blog

I spend quite a bit of time in the neighborhood of one of my running buddies, not so many miles from my house.  Before we go for our run, we meet with our dogs in a vacant lot near his home to chat, stretch, and watch the dogs romp.  Langley and I happened to get to the lot first last Saturday afternoon where I saw Max, a kid I know from the neighborhood, and two fourteen year-old girls whom I did not know. They were sitting with their backs to me as walked around the fence into the otherwise deserted lot.

Until recently--on an evolutionary time scale--pretty much everyone was starving.  Always.

My foot itches.  

I think I maybe got bit by a mosquito but it could be foot cancer.  You never know.  I heard about a woman who had foot cancer.  I've tried scratching my foot and then I tried soaking my foot in strawberry jam while scratching my left ear with my right hand, but nothing seems to work.  Now my foot doesn't just itch, it hurts.

Teaching math is not just what I do.  Teaching math is who I am.

Teaching math is a source of pride to me, a craft if you will.  Some people can build a canoe or do a backflip.  I can teach math.

I can teach math to low income students at the community college; I can teach math to privileged kids at a private day school.  I can teach math one on one or in large lecture halls.  Wake me up at two in the morning and I can teach math.   

An erudite reader responded to my column last week about bad parenting:  "One question: Do people respond to requests for stories? It seems your call to action should be a bit higher up in the post and set apart rather than at the end and as part of another paragraph. Thoughts?"

"Do people respond?"  The question got me thinking.  "Do people respond?" is a subset of "Why do I write these blogs?" OK, so why do I write these?

A scant 33 years ago, at the ripe old age of 22, I eked out a precarious existence as a middle school math teacher at a private day school.  I loved teaching; I loved my colleagues on the faculty; I loved my students.

But their parents scared me to death.

Amanda is watching Oprah in her off-campus apartment.  Her feet are propped up on the sofa, a cold lemonade in one hand, a trashy novel in the other..  She is the epitome of relaxed, the tottering tower of dirty dishes in the sink notwithstanding. 

Her roommate walks in and addresses her as follows: "I am sick and tired of doing your dishes all the time, Mandy.  When we said we'd room together, you said you'd do half the dishes.  You never do dishes; I'm always the one who gets stuck doing the dishes.  Would you just look at that stack of dishes?"

For some time now Pooh had been saying "Yes" and "No" in turn, with his eyes shut, to all that Owl was saying, and having said, "Yes, Yes," last time, he said "No, not at all," now, without really knowing what Owl was talking about.

The choice argument

Tell me if any of the following sound even remotely plausible:

Six Year Old Child:  Mommy, May I go out and play?

Mommy:  Shut up!  We only had you to save the marriage.

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The except above is as far as I've gotten in my new book, Parent Ineffectiveness Training:  How to Ensure that your Child Grows up to be, at the Very Least, Miserably Unhappy, Quite Possibly a Burden to Society. I'm concerned about finding a publisher because: