Excuses, Ironies and Noise Incorporated!

"The computer is fun to play with but why should I learn to do anything else with it?

"School is not important...I'm going to put in my application at the (automobile) plant on Monday!

"What do you mean..I'm not graduating with my class? You didn't teach me anything (of course I have skipped your class since October)! Just give me my makeup work, I'll have it in on Monday...

"What do you mean...copying my term paper word for word from the internet is an automatic F?

"I'll put my cell phone up as soon as I text the answers to your test to my friend across the room...

"The answers on both our papers are the same...there is no way I could have flunked..wait a minute...the questions are different...that's not fair!

"Why should my son have an F...It doesn't matter that he was late to class every day of the semester...so what if he was only there ten minutes a day...of course I got your message on my answering machine..I didn't have time to call you back...

"Yeah, I signed for your syllabus with the class requirements...but I didn't think my kid had to do all that stuff...that's a lot of work....

"I don't care if final exams are next week and its the end of the semester.....our family is going on vacation to Florida...can't you schedule the tests some other time?

"You black teachers don't know anything..you don't have any education...everyone knows black people are dumb (from a "black" parent)....

"I want my child transferred to a white teacher 'cause everybody knows these black teachers are ignorant (from a white parent).....

"All it says is that I have to take the class, it didn't say I have to pass the class!

"I don't care if my daughter is the top student in Honors Spanish IV. She is dropping the class and going to work ......she doesn't need to know a foreign language..she needs to help me pay the bills!

"Yeah...I'm going to engineering school but this is my senior year...I'm dropping Mr. Jones' calculus class...he gives too much homework and I need to have some fun..besides I haven't done any work and I have a failing interim and that will mess up my Grade Point Average...and I'm number 1 in my class...!

"How do you know this student is high on drugs....he comes from a fine family...no I have no idea how a five foot tall, 120 pound male child could throw an oak sudent desk weighing close to 40 pounds the 35 foot length of your classroom and make a dent in the wall.......or why he then fell on the floor and started having convulsions...
(from an elderly principal who skipped the in-service on PCP and its affects on young teenagers....never saw this kid again...he is still in the state hospital...)

"You can'd flunk me just because my homework is written in four different handwritings!"

"My son can't be skipping school...I just dropped him off at the front door...You say you can see him from the window and he is walking away from school...the mounted police officer is walking him back to school...you must be mistaken...hold on a minute, I have another call....I apologize, the police just called me...they picked my kid up walking down the alley behind the school..."

"I know we laid you off on Wednesday...but we don't have anyone else with the right certification to teach your class....so can you come in on Monday (and every day until the end of the semester)!"

"We can't order any more textbooks...your textbook is out of print...I have no idea how you are supposed to teach a class of forty students when they have no books!"

"I'm not going to get upset because my daughter stole your extra textbook off your desk...it wasn't the teacher's edition...that's the book I told her to take..I don't care if it was a personal copy and you paid for it...."

"I know I changed your teaching schedule without asking you, changed your room and gave it to another teacher, cost you the extra pay for chairmanship of the department I moved you out of, overloaded your classes, but I don't understand why you are retiring!"

As the principal unlocks my door (in the middle of class) and asks why I sent a female student home (because her red thong underwear was showing above the waist of her too-tight jeans) "I don't see anything wrong with how she is dressed!"

As the same principal stomps into my classroom during my planning period...glares at the 20 seniors who came in an hour early to finish their homework..."What class is this...why are they out of control!" I pull my glasses down on my nose in imitation of my father, "I't senior study hall and none of them have a class this hour and neither do I!" The principal rapidly back pedals out of the room and disappears down the hall. The seniors finish their homework and keep on talking.

Time passes and I move on.

Brother, I Fixed Your Cigarettes!

My only brother was a generation ahead of me...so much so that when his army commanding officer told him that his mother had had a baby (me) he was ready to argue that the senior officer must have it wrong, surely his sister, who was a year younger than he, had had a baby. I'm pretty sure he was rather shocked when he got home from World War II and there was a toddler walking around the house. Not too long after that, my two year old self got even with him for dissing me. How did I do that? I remember it well....

World War II and its aftermath was a time of world turmoil...not only in the battle zones but also on the home front. My newly widowed father traded his ration coupons for women's stockings for (canned) milk coupons to feed the baby (me). Hill folk have always figured a way to work through hard times. The history books talked about people planting "victory gardens" and I remember asking how these "victory gardens" were different from every day gardens which everyone in the neighborhood planted? I don;t remember getting an answer but then, I really didn't need one. I know, I'm digressing from my story.

Tobacco was rationed during war times and i don't really remember it being too plentiful after the war was ended. At any rate, when my brothr came home he had developed a smoking habit...manufactured cigarettes...not roll your own like many folks did. Think I remember a camel on the package that he kept sitting in the window of his bedroom. On this particuoar day, Daddy had a new rifle and he and my brother were sitting on the garden steps taking target practice against the bull bats that used to flock over for hours. I had been sent in the house and told to stay,. Daddy was not to be disobeyed so I was in the house trying to find a window to watch from. If I sat on my brother's bed, I could see them perfectly, so there I was...watching...and then...I spotted that carton of cigarettes and a large empty ash tray. Very carefully, I opened each pack of cigarettes and then...each cigarette and carefully piled all that tobacco in the ash tray..until all the cigarettes were gone.

Much later, I remember telling Harry, "Brother, I fixed your cigarettes!" The only thing that saved me that day is that Daddy picked me up and carried me the 150 feet down the hill to my grandmother. Daddy didn't smoke cigarettes....he would occasionally light the tip of a cigar...chew the other end flat and throw the whole thing away...so I doubt if he was that upset....but my brother was angry for a long, long time.