Family Night - 2010

Remember when the family played games together? They would all have those stupid silly grins because they had been waiting for an entire week to land on someone else’s spot and send their not-so-favorite family member back to start? Wow times were simple. We got out the board games right after dinner, and set up the table in game mode, not in eating mode. With eating mode you had assigned seats. You don’t take Dad’s chair; no, you don’t. You could have any chair you wanted if you were playing games. No rules there.

    We had family game night at my house when I was growing up, but it was the kids really that played each other. My parents went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to play dominoes with my aunt and uncle, and I remember playing with my siblings around the standing floor furnace on a cold winter's snowy night. If I remember correctly, the adults drank coffee and we kids had cocoa with marshmallows; the tiny ones, leaving foamy residue and dark chocolate rings around the top of the cups. Family night was important then as it built up great rapport within the family dynamics. I think it's still very important today, too. Families need each other, each person is an important part of the unit.

    Times have changed a bit, that's for sure. No longer are we going to the top of the broom closet to pull out an old box with duct taped corners and missing pieces to the game “SORRY” (We used blue erases to make up for the missing blue pieces and a red jax to make up for a missing red piece I always picked yellow anyway). No longer do we have to gather up the cards and turn them all the right way before shuffling them, passing them out, and hoping no one realizes that the five of clubs isn't in the deck anymore. NOPE..we don't have to do that because now we play our family night games online! That's right, there's an app for that! There's an app for Monopoly, Sorry, Yahtzee, and anything else you can think of. We use to play Scrabble but now we play WORDS with Friends. It's the same thing only different, right?

    Any given night you'll find my family all crammed into the living room, slouching over couches, leaning over the recliner, or me -- worst of the bunch -- sitting in my computer chair with one hand on the phone keypad and the other on Facebook where I try to keep up with a few horse-loving friends in at least two horse-related chat rooms! It's so different, but not really, not when you consider that my mom was on the phone a great deal of the time when she was playing dominoes and we kids were running back and forth from Grandpa's to my aunt's (they lived next door) playing Chess with Cousin Gene, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O with his sister Beckie in one house and Checkers with our Uncle Marvin while he played dominoes with my parents. He was that cool uncle who would walk back and forth and play with us a few minutes, then go back to the boring adults.

    Brandon, Caity, Laura, and I will spend the better part of three hours on our smartphones, trying to slam each other with as many odd combinations, letters placed in just the right place, or letters that really shouldn't have been considered words in the first place; but because WORDS with Friends says they're words then by-golly they're words! I know I used "kart" and "ee" as words but couldn't use "kew" or "Iran". Caity used "moneys" but couldn't use "Tex". Laura couldn't use "tac" but she was able to place something in Japanese that no one had a clue was legal. It is what it is!! POINTS! Somehow those Japanese words always had interesting spellings with higher point values and no one had a dictionary to look up the words to make sure Laura wasn’t lying through her teeth. I don’t think we even knew really how to Google that well back then.

    Friday night was family night, or in our house, nearly every night is family night because get really bored watching TV and decide it’s more fun to blast each other with WORDS or something new that Brandon has found for us to try. Caity holds the record so far of pulling out the highest score; 120 points for the best placement of the word "jump". I think I'm next with 74 points, but hey, I'll take a good steady even flowing game of 12's, 15's, and 18's anytime. The worst thing is when you have a Q but you can't use it. DANG, I hate that! I should try using Gaelic words just to really make things interesting. Laura uses Japanese words, right? It’s fair - - at least a precedent has been set. I could argue that - - not that I would win, but I would have a standing for about a minute. Every minute counts.

Gotta Love Progress

In 2004 I worked for a public school system in Oklahoma. Let's just say they were the largest, and therefore this means they are often the LAST to make changes. Money is one thing, and schools just never seem to find it...not when they need it. So there I was teaching, using the affordable means of technology which was given to us, our personal cell phones, but the schools were adamantly against the students having their cells in class. GROW SOME administrators. Realize that there is NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING that you can do to separate a teenager and his or her phones. This being the case, you may as well use them, this at least keeps up the global pace with our European and Asian friends who have been texting their teachers for eons. (Or as long as there have been cell phones) * * I instructed the students to text me when they had a question during tests. They could text their friends, but texting me would be more beneficial as I actually knew the correct answers. This practice of course led to me texting constantly during the test so I could help out this or that student, and then it became a game to see who could stump the teacher. This activity served to build a HUGE rapport between myself and my class, but you guessed it -- the administration found out and I was called into the office to be reprimanded. TOO DAMN BAD. I didn't stop, and to this day the 18-20 students that I routinely texted actually ALL graduated, they ALL went to college, and 2 of them have become teachers; BOOYAH! Why do I mention this? Oh, because NOW...yes NOW, that same district is using MY technique to build rapport with their difficult students. Texting them to keep their eyes on their own papers - or to stop talking when someone is at the front of the room. YOU'RE WELCOME NORTHWEST CLASSEN HIGH SCHOOL!! * * The next school, also an Oklahoma City public school charter, Santa Fe South, was a challenge from the first day. I had about 110 students in the 9th grade ranging from age 13-17, as many of my kids were Hispanic and came from Mexico directly. Some were not quite ready for actual high school level classes even though they were older. I got the GREAT and I mean GREAT idea to allow these kids to use their natural given tagging talents to TAG UP my room - using magic markers. I had all white walls and there were rules. They couldn't use gang or gang-related symbols or language. They could tag if they got their work done, and they couldn't tag over someone else's work. This was done (on my part) for two reasons: I wanted to teach responsibility and respect. First they had to get their work done before they could tag and second, they had to learn to respect their own areas and/or territories on the wall. WOW..it was a MAJOR success....in the classroom. The administration - - didn't like it. I was fired for inciting violence. EVEN THOUGH there was NOTHING violent on the walls. * * Flash forward. ALL of the students missed me; wanted me back, and continued to be my friend on Facebook and at that time MySpace. They reported to me that the very next y year the principal put up white boards and brought in dry-erase markers to do the VERY SAME thing I was doing in my room. He didn't let me finish my project, but he was certainly happy enough to use my techniques and my ideas. He used dry-erase and claimed to me later that I was fired for destroying or allowing property to be destroyed. NO...idiot, that's why God made PAINT! I can say that now, I'm no longer working for the man. * * I just find it sad that I come up with great teaching ideas and others steal them but before they do they reprimand me rather than praise me, or encourage me for my progressive thinking. Please, believe me when I say I can come up with some really fun ways to learn - - and I have. Some of which may never be found out! I like it that way because that separates me from the dull and uncaring, or dull teacher. I am the FUN one....and that makes me happy. Of course now I'm not even teaching, and that makes me sad, but I will never ever ever forget my "babies", not one of them; and there have been thousands! My heart is blessed for this.

Somebody Trick or Treat My House Please!

I've lived in Indianapolis for 3 Halloweens now. The first one was 2010. I had barely settled into the neighborhood, however I knew enough to know that it was NOT conducive to having kids romping and stomping toward my door to get candy because my door was not exactly easy to find. I moved to a condo which had all of the garage doors facing out onto the 10th hole of a very nice, quiet, plush, private golf course. At first, because I typically assume too

much, I assumed that the association would have a Halloween block party. They did not. I assumed also, and also incorrectly, that the association would have put out flyers to let us know what we could or could not do regarding decorating my personal unit. I found out what I COULD NOT do the instant I put up a big fluffy black spider on my front gate. Because a would be trick-or-treater would have needed to (a) enter the association, (b) find the gate that led to my front door to see my porch light was lit and (c) he/she would have to have WRIST BANDS that showed they were living within 6 city blocks of my house - - can you believe it, I was not all that hopeful that my first Halloween in the metropolitan outskirts of Indianapolis was going to be that great. Turns out I was correct. NO ONE came to my door - and there I sat with two bags of Hershey's candy bars. Alone. YEAR TWO did not bode any better for us. We were no longer living in the condo where we had first moved. The owners had decided to remodel and rent it out from November to February to a group of Super Bowl realtors who I'm told brought more in 3 months than we had paid in a year at the residence - - our 2nd Halloween was spent in a mid-way, almost a LOANER type house while we searched for a better place to land. We were more than 12 miles from any real city and by real city I mean a township of about 20,000 or so people NONE of which felt that driving 12 miles out would be beneficial to get a few pieces of candy - - and again, I was left alone with bags and bags of Hershey's candy bars because that's what I typically pass out. I typically pass out Hershey's because I know I'll eat whatever may be lefted over and it happens to be one of my favorites. Two bags, one woman. THREE TIMES WAS NOT THE CHARM! We moved to a densely populated area in January, an area literally teeming with children and often to the point of annoyance to be perfectly honest. At least THIS year (I thought) I would have a endless supply of door knockers and bell-ringers on Halloween -- this thought process called for more preparation; something to the tune of 4 bags of Hershey's candy bars and I went ALL OUT and got two more bags of Almond Joys and Butterfingesr JUST IN CASE I didn't have enough. I found myself buying a silly costume for Matrix. I dressed up as a Colt's fan and counted the minutes to the six o'clock hour, the official time for Halloween to start on October 31, 2012. I even Googled the dates and times two or three times to be SURE that I wasn't just missing my neighbors when they didn't show up. NO ONE showed up. I forced Laura, Brandon, Caity, and Copeland to repeatedly knock on my door so I could pretend to hand out candy - - yes, I am THAT pathetic. I love Halloween! This afternoon, November 1, 2012, after school and after such time that I believed all of my neighbors should be home THIS WOMAN took her multiple bags of candy outside and DEMANDED that the neighbors come by and share in my bounty. It didn't take long. I had a few takers immediately, and within a few minutes they were out like bandits around the neighborhood bringing in more kids to take up the excess. Seems the ONLY reason they hadn't come by last night was because it is tradition in our association to go outside of the actual neighborhood to do parties, games at churches, and such. NO ONE knew that I was stuck at home with black paint under my eyes waiting on them. They all promised me that they'd be there for me next year. I assured them that I appreciated it. I do, but the association is selling off my unit, not to me, and again I'll be finding a new place to live come January. Maybe some day I'll have my own group of rug-rats and brats to come by and take my candy seriously! At least this year I had baby Copeland to spoil - - he let me too. He promised Gramma to always be there; and that I'd never have to eat candy alone again. AWESOME!!