Adult Education

High school in Ontario once lasted five long years, from Grade 9 to Grade 13. And so, while most everyone else on the continent was heading off to their first year of college, my friends and I were obliged for one more year to fold our gangly frames into the same seats we’d used since 13 and share the halls with children half our size. But slowly it came to us, passed around like a secret the office really didn’t want us to understand . . . the same government that kept us in school past 17 also recognized us as full-fledged adults.

The biggest thing about suddenly being an adult in high school was that you could write your own notes. Not that any teacher would’ve ever asked you for a written explanation of why you’d missed class, but it was enough to know that you could write it and sign it if you really had to. Mostly, though, it wasn’t even worth their while to track you down, and so it was with great pleasure that I checked myself into the office at noon one day and proudly announced I’d spent the morning in queue for Star Trek, The Motion Picture.

Indulgence

It is pretty hard to convince kids that one of the greatest luxuries of their lives is their access to education. I point out examples of Afghan girls risking life and limb, and persevering in spite of acid being thrown at them, in order to go to school. In the space of less than a century western society has managed to transform a much-coveted goal into an instrument of torture for millions of school children. Something has gone wrong and there must be a way to change it – to rekindle the spark of inspiration and the ambition to learn.

I see my son turning away from the opportunity to be educated it is particularly puzzling for me. If I was in the position to do it, I would not hesitate to put myself back in school – any kind of class. Right now my daughter is at an amazing school and I am envious of the classes she is taking – philosophy, dream psychology… and life drawings lessons! Maybe after the kids leave home I can indulge in some adult education. Right now, working full time and trying to run a household my schedule simply does not permit that luxury.

T.D.B.S.

Regardless to what I thought of any of Dan’s teachers, I always pretended to like them. This was especially true in his early grades when I tried my hardest to win them over. His first teacher was an ancient Crone with an immunity to parental teat-suckling. At the end of the senior kindergarten year she left me with an outrageously ambiguous evaluation of my son. With her good eye focused somewhere in the ether above my head, she proclaimed “He is by far the most intellectually challenging child I have ever taught.” Some teachers were easier to like than others.

Since my pal Skiz has become an educator I’m getting a view of the proceedings from the other side. Three weeks into term and so far she has received a litany of outrageous requests from parents ranging from the relatively innocuous grilling over lost clothing to detailed instructions on how to clean their child’s bottom. This is what separates a vocation from a job. If it were me, I’d hang this warning over the door to my classroom: “Get outta my class if you can’t wipe your ass”. Of course, the parents would have to read this to their children.

Lloyd’s Accumatic 30

The computer bug bit me early, but with no desktop computers to be had in 1973, I had to content myself with a decade-long series of increasingly sophisticated calculators. But I found the money somehow, starting with the astounding sum of fifty dollars I managed to save towards the purchase of a Lloyd’s Accumatic 30, and that’s before I started indulging in the accessories: a Lloyd’s-branded AC adaptor to save on batteries, and then the rechargeable batteries when I discovered that the Accumatic 30 could do double duty as a battery charger. Unlimited, portable calculating power: how cool is that?

It’s not as if I even needed a calculator for school, because they didn’t even let us use them in class back then. Those were the days when they still expected us to carry our multiplication tables around in our heads and anything less than rote learning and raw skills would be cheating. And so I bought it just to have it . . . and play, I guess. Now, of course, math class and science comes with a bucket of calculators, a literal bucket from which they hand the things out so that every student has all the help he or she needs.

Fallibility

The multiplication table was my first introduction to humiliation. My fourth grade class studied it while I was ill for two weeks with bronchitis. The day of my return to class there was a test and I failed it. Before that I never even got low marks, and not passing was unthinkable. It sent me into a tailspin that had me at the doctor’s being examined for a stomach ulcer at age nine, because I was fretting over a project that had to be perfect. And – I have never been able to get the multiplication table straight in my mind.

Generally I always had really good relationships with most of my teachers. In retrospect I wonder about my grade four teacher who made me take a test on a subject I had missed while being away sick. I had adored her – maybe that was not reciprocal. In grade five I came head to head with a teacher who simply did not like me from the start. It was a huge eye-opener to me that I was not, for once, the teacher’s pet – and that teachers are not infallible beings on whom a person can always count for wisdom and reason.

The Sun will Come Out Tomorrow

My first file as a land claims researcher for the Department of Justice took my Lawyer-Bonobo and me to Sauble Beach. It would be the only warm and fuzzy claim I was allowed to work on during my two-year tenure, and it began terribly. Mrs. Peepers came on much too strong and had only begun dictating to the Chief how she would run the claim when we were dismissed. After that all that could be heard was our knuckle-walking retreat from the room. It took us three hours to drive to the reserve and fifteen minutes to get kicked out.

That was my introduction to band politics. Even a chimpanzee couldn’t save that act. And after that I learned that if I wanted to be coddled and fawned over I was in the wrong business. This was devastating for me, an only child and a Leo. I was raised to believe that I was the smartest, my voice was the prettiest and that everyone loved me. Phenomena reinforced daily by parental encouragement. In fact, from an early age I slept with the covers over my head just to make sure that the sun really did shine out of my ass.

Leaves Three

Leaves three, let it be . . . I picked up that particular wilderness tidbit in Scouts, while my poor mother had to learn it the hard way when she picked up a bad case of poison oak weeding out the worst of our little suburban clover patch. Now, in city parks they actually protect the stuff, and post signs amongst the poison ivy so that you can count the leaves at your leisure and pass the lore onto your children . . . in spite of the fact that not all three-leafed plants are hazardous (clover), any more than i before e except after c (leisure).

The beach at Sauble is unabashedly public, but if you ever do get tired of the crowds, for a mere $15.00 a day, you can drive as far as you want down the Indian’s beach for a bit of privacy. The people with lakefront lots have adjusted as best they can, just as they’ve learned to tolerate the cottagers from further inland walking past their property to the sand. On my route, for instance, I’ve noticed that a conscientious someone has posted a sign behind their fence warning of poison ivy, even though there is none to be seen.

Send In The Clowns

Dad’s company had an annual Christmas party at the Cascade Inn, the most elegant venue then, in the small city where we lived. Part of the fun arranged for the kids was a film. The children would be led into a room to watch it while the adults socialized. We were not allowed to go to movie theatres and our family did not have a TV, so you would think that anything would thrill me. But every year my excited expectations were met with Larry, Curly and Moe. The Three Stooges never impressed me much. I just found them tedious.

There were three partners in the firm so it was natural for the staff to draw comparisons to the various famous trios from film and literature – The Three Musketeers, The Three Amigos, and of course The Three Stooges, although it was never determined exactly which partner was Larry, Curly or Moe. Then a fourth partner came on board, although he was kind of a silent partner because, although he was considered equal in the hierarchy, his name was not added to the company letterhead. At that point we switched to the Marx Brothers, and the recent addition was naturally Harpo.

Ronald McDonald is a Freak

On our way home from TIFF Rich and I saw a young man in a Dr. Seussian top hat balancing on top of a five foot pair of stilts. “Whoever thought this was entertaining?” he said watching the boy from our vantage point inside the College streetcar.
     “I think is was the same people who invented mimes.” I answered.
     “Ah, the bloody French.” Suddenly it all made sense to Rich.
     Our conversation then turned to antiquated ideas of fun, activities we now view as perverse: Punch and Judy theatre, urban zoos, circuses and the creepiest of all entertainers: The Clown.

Although I have to acknowledge a girlish affection for the Detroit-based Oopsy Daisy, my love for clowns ended there. All that face makeup and satin just didn’t register with me. There was something creepily avuncular about Bozo with his Larry Fine hair, and although technically a puppet, H. R. PufnStuf was particularly distasteful with his big yellow head and little baby voice. That theme song “H. R. Pufnstuf, who’s your friend when things get rough?” sounded the death knell to my Saturday cartoon watching. Better to be out riding my bike than subjected to Jimmy and Freddy, his talking flute.

I Hanker for a Hunka Cheese

Perhaps to atone for their shameless hawking of sugar-coated cereal to unsuspecting children, the programmers at ABC would interrupt our regular Saturday-morning fare with public-service announcements that promoted the benefits of choosing healthy foods instead. Each featured a hideous animated character named Timer who looked like nothing if not a big fat fig balanced on a pair of impossibly skinny legs . . . well actually he looked a lot more like me when I started wearing the new down-filled jacket my mother had bought one size too big for me, and so my friends would shout: “Have you had a good breakfast today?!”

Whatever Works For You

I was raised on porridge for breakfast. I love the stuff. When I am a doddering old lady I can see myself exsisting on gruel. Such a dour image, but I would be happy and content. Given all that, I don't eat it for breakfast. In spite of all the advice about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, I find if I eat it I am less alert and I get hungry mid-morning. I don't think there are dietary rules that can apply to everybody. Every person should individually work out what makes them feel best.

Trans(fat)ubstantiation

I have a terrible addiction to cereal. I always have. It’s so bad that I only allow myself to eat it once a week. I’m also OCD about it: you have to put more milk into the bowl than you need, eat half - then fill up the bowl again with fresh cereal. My method works especially well with Cheerios and vanilla soymilk, and more than anything else proves that God’s alchemy is at work. A miracle occurs among those tiny Os floating in their little white sea. This perfect wet-dry balance makes my quasi-healthy breakfast taste like Lucky Charms.

ROCKST★R

You really don’t want to know what I just had for breakfast, but for the longest time it’s been pretty much sugar and caffeine . . . and since I don’t drink coffee and can’t handle tea on an empty stomach, more often than not it’s been a can of Coke (or two, if I’m feeling particularly sluggish) . . . at least until a few years ago, when I discovered “energy drinks” and realized I’d been under-medicating myself on caffeine and overdoing the sugar.
     They say these drinks offer nothing but empty calories, but really, aren’t those the fullest, most perfect calories you can buy?

Just Desserts

I watched the elderly woman pick at her meal. She ate only a few leaves of her salad and part of the slice of the pizza we were all sharing. "I just don't have any appetite left," she told us. I looked at her ample figure and wondered how she maintained that weight. Then dessert came and she managed to tuck it all away. She consumed it with such gusto, I think she would have licked the plate if she could get away with it. Well, not many pleasures left for the aged, they might as well enjoy their desserts.

Hunger Strike

“You want this?” he asked, handing me a piece of cake still nestled in its Meals on Wheels plastic container. He’d already offered me yesterday’s meatballs and today’s pork chops. Dad’s given up on most things, especially food and the suppers that are delivered by the Elliot Lake volunteers molder in his fridge. Now he eats like a toddler: tiny bowls of oatmeal, chicken soup, toast. And like a child, his refusing to eat is one of the few things left within his control. But I’m hopeful that he’ll get through this rough patch because there’s always room for pie.

Land of the Fat Free

On our big road trip down through the States, we decided, as a respite from the restaurant chains, to purchase some real groceries for a picnic. And so I found myself stuck in a small-town supermarket somewhere in Pennsylvania looking for yoghurt, found myself staring at a wide wall stacked high with the stuff, but not one that I’d buy, because it would seem that Americans consider yoghurt a diet food and take out the fat.
     Attention Americans: It’s all that sugar that’s making you fat, not the fat! And yoghurt without fat isn’t yoghurt, it’s jello—opaque, bacteria-flavoured jello!

Road Hog

On the road, eating in restaurants. It's pretty hard to find the right choices to eat in the first place, and it's doubly hard to resist the array of poor choices that are available to order. At home I don't have much for breakfast - a latte and an orange juice. Yesterday I had an omelet. A vegetable omelet - sounds like smart eating, but it was giant sized and came with toast AND homefries. I ate half the omelet, half the toast and had just a taste of the homefries. Not a great start for sitting in the car all day.

Witnessed at the Guardian Drug Store

The young girl behind the register chewed her gum and waited for her to make up her mind. Propped up next to the Kleenex and lighters, the brown box of waxy Polish chocolates beckoned. That should have been her first warning: This item had been placed there in anticipation of a quick and thoughtless purchase. She struggled with herself, craving the candies, but mindful of her obesity and how this inner turmoil played out to onlookers. In the end she had to have them, and involuntarily sticking out her tongue, she placed the box in front of the ruminating cashier.

Terre des Pommes

Thanks to FedEx, I can watch my new 27″ iMac slowly make its way across the continent. It’s in Calgary now, and it’s got me thinking of all the Apple equipment I’ve owned, a list that only a geek could love: Apple ][ plus; Apple //e; Macintosh II; LaserWriter IINT, upgraded to a LaserWriter IIg, PowerBook 140; Apple CD Plus; Macintosh IIfx; Newton MessagePad 110, upgraded to a MessagePad 120; iMac G3 (Tangerine); Powerbook G3 (Lombard); PowerMac G5; iMac 17″ Core 2 Duo.
     I may buy generic drugs and store-brand cereal, but yes, Steve Jobs has made me his bitch.

Taking Ownership

There was a time when I was swayed by labels and could not bring myself to wear anything but the most current shoe silhouette. I would feel ashamed for those women who just did not seem to care. I must admit that I still have certain standards – you will not catch me out in public wearing track pants. But I will not be dictated to by trend-setters anymore. I have come to pity those women who are slaves to seemingly misogynist designers that demand they squeeze into ridiculous garb. It is better to develop your own comfortable style.