And Now It's Down to this?

Yesterday afternoon our son, Patrick, sent me a FB site with "9 Classic Calvin and Hobbes Strips" or something like that-one of the many places devoted to the two Reformation thinkers who manifested themselves as Bill Watterson's creations a lifetime ago, for some of us.

I mention that to give you a starting point and will not speak of it again, at least today (I hope). One of the panels involved Calvin telling a story in school about how deer were hunting humans, employing all the turns of phrase that outdoors men use in explaining why they killed Bambi. Of course, Calvin using them in the manner in which he is prompts a request for a parent teacher conference and Calvin's folks are seen at the breakfast table trying to figure out who went to the last summit.

Having been the child in the household who was suspended for laughing at the teacher (a nun) in sixth grade and who was suspended for fighting in the recess yard in seventh grade (I think I was suspended twice; once for fighting and the other for losing the fight though after that my antagonist became my buddy), I can relate and more.

Of course, I tell these tales now because when our children went to school, their mom had a get out of jail free card, "I went to Deutsche Schule" so her other continent educational experience wasn't held against her. While my Mom and Dad raised crazy children, they didn't raise stupid ones so I figured my chances of keeping our two unguided missiles on the proper trajectory would disappear entirely if I 'fessed up to being the malicious miscreant I actually was.

Yes, I became the parent who walked six miles in the snow uphill in both directions every day to school, even on Saturday and Sunday, because my father was too poor to afford weekends (was never sure how well that played with either of our kid, but they were and are very polite so I skated), who always did all of his homework, and everyone else's, at least when I was telling the story and whose teachers wept at the end of each school year when I graduated to the next grade and class.

And that was true as far as it went. They wept for joy because I was gone, but tears are tears whatever the reason and sometimes truth is the first casualty of parenting if you want to avoid a new error.  
-bill kenny