HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-01-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 2012. PAGE 5.
I n the first place, God made idiots. That
was for practice. Then he made school
boards.
– Mark Twain
News alert, folks – the Department of
Education has just announced a ban on
Christmas trees in schools. “Too many
prickles,” a spokesman said. “A child could
choke on a pine or spruce needle and possibly
die.”
Nah, I’m joshing ya – but only just. Big
Nurse is on the loose and She’s determined to
protect the little ones, even if it means you go
to jail.
Ask the ladies who were enjoying
donuts and coffee on a bench in one of New
York City’s public playgrounds last spring.
Busted! The cops who gave them tickets
also took down a notorious ring of seven
senior male citizens operating inside
the confines of yet another city playground.
Their offense? Playing chess. Adults in
New York are forbidden to even enter
public playgrounds unless accompanied by a
child.
Might be pedophiles, you know.
Several American libraries have caught the
paranoia bug, banning unaccompanied adults
from entering the children’s’ book sections.
There’s one library in Pennsylvania which
bans adults from using the rest rooms ‘unless
accompanied by their children’.
So it’s verboten for a solo grandpa to go to
the john but it’s okay for a pedophile to take a
kid in with him? I’m confused.
It’s just as dopey on this side of the border.
Last summer, a bunch of teenagers got
together to play a game of pickup baseball
on the grounds of Eagle View Elementary
school in Victoria, B.C. Why not? It was
summertime, there were no classes being held,
the field was empty. That’s when the Bylaw
Officer came over and asked them if they had
a permit. They hadn’t. He kicked them off the
property.
Just how safe do we want our kids to be?
Bubble-wrap safe. Parents of children
attending an elementary school in
North Brookfield, Massachusetts recently
received a letter informing them that
henceforth, students were not to bring pens or
pencils onto school property in pockets,
binders or backpacks. Writing utensils
would be handed out by school officials as
necessary. Sixth-grade teacher Wendy
Scott went on to say that if any student
was caught with a pen or pencil, he or
she would be assumed to have stolen it
from school with the intent “to build
weapons”.
Not that school kids need dangerous
armament-building material like pencils and
ballpoints to wreak havoc and destroy society
as we know it. Alert teachers at a junior school
in Bridlington, England, have ordered their
students to stop raising their hands to answer
questions. Head teacher Cheryl Adams
explains that the tradition of hand-raising to
respond to questions “creates too much
excitement”.
“Some children put their hands up at every
opportunity,” Adams says, “while others
won’t, even if they know the answers.”
But the Bridlington Brain Trust has a
solution. They want students to respond by
giving a ‘thumbs-up” instead.
(I hope they warn the kiddies not to try that
in Australia, Argentina and especially in Iran,
where a thumbs-up means a thumbs-up-
yours.)
They also better not try it any school-
rooms in Ionia, Michigan. Schools there have
a ‘zero tolerance policy’. Translated, that
means they are politically correct to the
point of insanity. A student by the name of
Mason Jammer made the thumbs-up sign
to a classmate in an Ionia public school
recently. His teacher decided he was
‘imitating a revolver’ and had him suspended
and sent home. Mason Jammer is six years
old.
Sad, sad, sad. I’m with author Ellen
Gilchrist who said: “All you have to do to
educate a child is to leave them alone and
teach them to read. The rest is brain-
washing.”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Bubble wrap the kiddies
It was the English poet John Donne that first
wrote “No man is an island, entire of itself”
and while no man may be an island, there
sure are times we might wish we were.
One such time was my first day at work after
The Citizen’s annual holiday break. I returned
to the office with the shadow of a sore throat,
so I took a short walk to find relief in the form
of lozenges at one of our local stores. My trip
was eventually made infinitely more exciting
when I hit a patch of ice under several
centimetres of snow.
Like many falls, mine wasn’t just a simple
slip and fall, it involved a lot of weight shifting
from side to side, a lot of arm flailing and what
must have looked like a poor, poor impression
of some sort of Cirque de Soleil presentation,
followed by the eventual impact. First it was
my knees and then my chest and arms.
So after taking a personal inventory and
singing my own version of Dry Bones in my
head (making sure the foot bone was in fact
still connected to the ankle bone and so on), I
did the first thing we all do when we’ve fallen
and realized that we’re alright: I looked to see
if anyone was around.
Sure enough there was. I was not lucky
enough to be an island at this particular time
and place. But then again, why would I be? We
rarely are afforded that kind of luxury. How
many of us out there have been caught in a
place when don’t want to be in a state we’d
rather not be in? I’d venture a guess that we’ve
all been there at least once.
Just over the Christmas holidays, a friend of
mine came down ill at a party hosted by one of
our mutual friends. When you’re under the
weather, there’s no place you want to be other
than in your bed, at your home. Unfortunately
for him, it didn’t work out that way that night
and he was stuck.
I felt the same way after my fall. While I
may feel sore and banged up as I sit and write
this, nothing was as bruised as my ego when I
looked up to see that I had just provided
comedy theatre to a young man in a suit
leaving Scrimgeour’s. A man my size just isn’t
meant to move with that kind of violence and
unpredictability.
So as I brushed the snow from my coat and
my pants, I thought about how nice it would be
to have been alone at that particular moment.
The worst part of it wasn’t the two or three
different times that I thought I had regained my
balance and was going to remain on foot, it
was that I had someone there to share in my
embarrassment.
Upon entering the store, employees just
thought it was really coming down outside, and
that’s why I was covered in snow. It would
have been great to leave them with that
impression. Instead, however, I’m too honest
for my own good, and I came clean about the
Three Stooges-like theatre that was my parking
lot mishap.
Maybe it was payback for this unnaturally
warm winter. For every trip I took to the post
office in jeans and a t-shirt this December,
perhaps I can expect a theatrical fall handed
out by Mother Nature to level the scales of
temperate justice. Or maybe I’m just thinking
about this whole incident a little too
much.
All I know is that just like every person
needs some time to themselves to think or to
pursue their own private interests, they too
yearn for the right to be embarrassed only
when they look in the mirror that night, not
wondering how many times their fall will be
replayed for humorous purposes in the mind of
the lone witness.
No man is an island
Idon’t know if I’ll ever make a good parent
someday, but I’m pretty darn sure I’ll have
all the life lessons ready to go.
The most important of which, and probably
the first I plan on teaching my progeny is that
the most difficult thing anyone in this world
has to do is say goodbye to someone or
something you may not see soon (or perhaps
never see again).
It takes on different forms; the releasing of
someone from your life, but it never gets any
easier, or it never has for me.
We say it all the time; “See you later,”
“Goodbye,” “Arrivederci” and so on and so
forth.
It’s something that just spills forward at the
end of conversations or exchanges, but every
once in a while it can hit the sturdiest of men
and the staunchest of women harder than a
sucker-punch to the stomach.
Like Houdini, when that quick jab hits and
you’re not ready it can feel pretty darn deadly.
Just as 2012 was rung in, I said goodbye to
someone important in my life.
I’ve only known her for about six months,
but on Jan. 1 she was gone and left a pretty
big hole in my heart that belies her small
stature.
Juno Eclipse, also known as the ragamuffin,
also known as the muppet-look-alike or
that ball of fur but probably best known
as my puppy wagged her tail for the last
time in my home and is now somewhere
else.
Changes in life led me to realize that Juno
deserves better than I could provide her.
When she came into my home it was an
ideal situation; usually there was someone
there to train her and spend time with
her. However, a career change here and
there and suddenly poor Juno found herself
sitting in her crate far too often for far too
long.
So she’s moved on up to London to a friend
of a friend’s house.
If a line must be drawn detailing who cares
for which animals in my home, Juno would
likely be my responsibility. Usually I’m the
one to sit with her and feed her and take
care of her simply because, even while at
work, I was pretty close to home. Because
of that, it was with a heavy heart that I
started planning for Juno to have a better
life.
All the pets in my home, the birds, the cats
the puppy... are fairly close to the centre of that
division, but I’ve always been a dog person, so
I’m probably closer to Juno than most of the
other pets.
I’m sure in a few months, being the only pet
in her new home, she’ll have completely
forgotten about her first home and be
so used to having all the attention on
herself that she’ll forget all about the time she
shared a house with several cats and some
birds.
For me, it won’t be so easy.
I’ve always preferred dogs because they’re
so much more centred on their owners, on their
caretakers, than cats are. There is a true sense
of companionship.
Cats, plain and simply, don’t give a darn
about their owners in my experience.
Unless moved to love or loathing by goodies
or grooming, they really don’t pay much
attention.
I’m sure there are exceptions out there but,
as several of my teachers explained to me
every rule has an exception or two and those
exceptions just prove the rule.
Dogs greet you when you come home. They
jump on you (if you let them and they’re not
too big) because they are just so darned happy
to see you.
They love you regardless of whether you
have the snack or the switch in your hand
because they know a loyalty that I wish every
human could know.
That’s why I remember, treasure and love
every dog my family ever owned. That’s
why, when asked, I’ll always help a friend or
family member care for a dog, because I know
that, if situations were reversed, the dog
would do the same for me (or at least for its
owner).
So I won’t be forgetting Juno anytime soon.
Every time I come home and open the door
to the mudroom and don’t hear her yelp
because she’d jumped on top of something
too high for her to climb down from will
my heart fall a little. For a long while that
will probably be the lowest point of my
day.
However, she’s my friend and I always want
what’s best for my friends.
So anytime I think of those more-intelligent-
than-she-let-on eyes looking up to me through
a mop of slightly-too-long hair and it knots up
my stomach I just have to remember she’s in a
better place.
Every time I walk around my back porch
and remember her being so enraptured with
me shovelling snow off the deck that she
walked backwards right off the deck and it
nearly brings a tear to my eye, I’ll remember
she’s in a home where she’s the centre of
attention.
She’s the star she’s always been in my eyes
and I know she’ll be happier for it.
Unfortunately, like I said, saying goodbye
will always be the toughest thing in the world
even if you know it’s for the best.
Goodbye Juno.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Goodbye is no sweet sorrow
Be always at war with your vices, at peace
with your neighbours, and let each new
year find you a better man.
– Benjamin Franklin
Final Thought