(1) There is no way to ease a 10 year old girl out of her class room (telling her to get her coat and her book bag, cause she's got to come to the office so we can call her mamma) in such a way as to protect her privacy and dignity, when the entire class is being checked for lice.
(2) 9,10,11 year old kids are amazingly trusting and open and malleable and if you send them to a school that is substandard, run-down, miserable, embarrassingly horrible, they will believe everything is as it should be . . . adults are in charge and this is ok.
(3) Elementary school trashcans are excellent for catching projectile vomit- I give credit to the wider opening at the top.
(4) One person you really don't want to rely on is a 10 year old's grandmother's husband.
(5) Or stepbrother's girlfriend.
(6) Or anything on the contact card that reads "friend/other- and in parenthesis (mom's boyfriend)"
(7) Not that any of that is so terrible- mostly you'll just be scared cause you can't believe children in America are being sent to such a crappy rundown school- this will, in general, make you paranoid and cranky.
(8) You will remind yourself that the 9.10.11 year olds seem generally accepting of it all- you will wonder if perhaps you, yourself, went to substandard schools and just didn't notice- also, whether or not you're getting wound up about it all because you'd really rather not study for this next test comig up.
(9) You'll berate yourself for being both guilty and non-involved. You'll also go home and be especially nice to your own children- for a little while.
(10) You'll answer phones for the up coming flu clinic.
(11) It will be your job to weed out the un-needy from the needy
(12) But really, you'll just be nice to nice people, who are mostly old
(13) Old people will come
(14) You'll be surrounded
(15) Because everyone is old, you'll stop thinking of them as feeble and uninspired and stuck and hanging around waiting to die
(16) You'll just see people, many of them impeccably groomed.
(17) They will be named Ruby and Myrtle and Everett
(18) You will remember for a moment that these were the people that elected George W. for a seond term
(19) You will recognize these folks, fumbling around for their medicare cards, as actually, surprisinly, pretty teachable.
