With school starting up again, I know some of you kids are wishing you didn't have to go. You just don't want to give up those leisurely days of summer to get back into the hard work of studying.
But I want to tell you that you really don't have it so bad.
In fact, you ought to enjoy your days in school and study hard because they just might be the easiest days of your life!
Let me tell you what I mean.
If you really think about it, school isn't all that hard. You only have to go for about six or seven hours a day, and that's filled with breaks and recesses. If you do your homework everyday, it's still probably a lot less hours than your parents have to work each day. And you get weekends off, long vacations and just about every holiday. I don't even think government employees have it quite that good!
Then, just to make things easier, you've got computers to help you with your writing and homework. They even help you spell things right as long as you don't misspell the word you're intending to use with the correct spelling of another word you don't intend to use, and they'll sometimes let you know when you've made a major grammatical mistake, as well. As for doing your math, you have calculators to help you figure things out - though it's still kind of important to know which number to enter in what part of the equation.
Back when I went to school, we didn't have all the hightech helps kids have today. We had pencils, paper, and erasers which often didn't erase mistakes well enough to prevent rewriting the whole assignment. We had to memorize our multiplication tables and learn how to spell words - or at least find them in the dictionary, and not in the online version but in the big book in the back of the classroom.
And when I think back to the old, old days, you've really got it made. If you live in the country, the school bus picks you up at your front door. If you live in town, you might have to walk a block or two down the sidewalk, but chances are that your parents give you a ride to school. And, when youthink you're old enough to drive, you probably drive yourself there. Well, let me tell you, things weren't always that easy.
My parents told me on numerous occasions, when I complained about going to school, that whether rain, sleet or shine, they walked to school every day and carried a meager sack lunch. If I recall the story right, my mom had to walk to school through the snow in the middle of winter, barefoot.
And hearing her tell it, it must have been at least four or five miles to school and uphill both ways. She may have exaggerated just a bit to make her point.
And sports? They didn't have much along those lines because they had to hurry home to do their chores. There were cows to milk, hogs and chickens to feed, eggs to gather, and so on. By the time they finished chores, ate their supper and did their homework, they had to go to bed so that they could get up early in the morning and do it all over again the next day.
Even in my day, after-school sports were not an option because I had to work to help pay some of the school tuition and transportation costs. And do you know, I never went to kindergarten because our school didn't have one - we just jumped right in there at grade one.
And just in case you're still not convinced that you've got it easy, I'll have to tell you that teachers back in my day had big, thick yard sticks and knew how to use them for more than drawing a straight line. They kind of made sure that kids measured up and walked a straight line.
If a young fellow dozed off in class or started day dreaming, he'd be brought back to the real world by a crack of that stick across his desk. And if a fellow misbehaved, that stick sure could change his mind about things. If that stick was used on a fellow at school, the suffering wasn't over until his parents applied a little discipline at home, too!
I guess that's why were careful to address our teachers very politely with a Mister, Mrs. or Miss in front of their last names.
How do I know these things? Well, lets just say that I do and leave it at that.
And, if any of you students think your teachers make you write too much, it could be worse. You could have to fill the pages of a newspaper every week. That takes a bit of writing.
And, when you don't get something right, it's not only a teacher that tells you about it. The whole town knows, and a good number of them aren't afraid to give you a bad time about it, either.
Government 'Cash For Codgers' program
Editor's note: I don't usually even read - much less, reprint - those e-mails circulated and forwarded from address book to address book, but this one caught my eye because of its take off from the "Cash for Clunkers" program which, I think, is one of the most blatantly stupid and unconstitutional things I've ever seen our government do - well, at least it's up there with all the other unconstitutional government bailout programs which have only dug a deeper hole in which all of us will be made to dig for a long, long time, or until it caves in on us all.
I don't know who to credit for this witty piece, but I take my hat off to the author for his comparison.
Of course, there is the possibility that the program below may one day become reality in one way or another - hopefully after someone considers trading me in for recycling. Nevertheless, I'll reprint this one so we can laugh about it now and, maybe, cry about it later when the government finally takes over health care:
Congress, realizing the success of the "Cash For Clunkers" rebate program, has joined forces with the White House to revamp a major portion of the National Health Care Plan in order to make it less cost prohibitive on future generations and more appealing to young voters.
The new proposal, named "Cash for Codgers," works like this:
Couples wishing to access health care funds in order to pay for the delivery of a child will be required to turn in one old person.
The amount the government grants them will be fixed according to a sliding scale. Older and more prescription-dependent "codgers" will garner the highest amounts. Special "bonuses" will be paid for those submitting "codgers" in targeted groups, such as smokers, alcohol drinkers, persons 10 pounds over their government-prescribed weight, and any voting "codger" who seeks to uphold constitutional restrictions on the federal government.
Smaller bonuses will be given for "codgers" who consume beef, soda, fried foods, potato chips, lattes, whole milk, dairy products, bacon, Brussels sprouts or Girl Scout Cookies.
All "codgers" will be rendered totally useless via toxic injection.
This will insure that they are not secretly resold or their body parts harvested to keep other "codgers" in good repair.
By recycling old "codgers" and taking them off the rolls of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the savings to government will more than offset the benefits paid out for the birth and medical care of new citizens who, by the way, will have no memory of the Constitution or the principles of the Nation's founding fathers.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 08/26/2009