@yakkoTDI Intelligence coupled with sarcasm gets far too much of the wrong kind of attention. “Keep the sarcastic comments in your head and off your tongue.” Always good advice, but it does lead to an “inner dialogue” that’s more like an unruly group chat at times. Also - mumbling to yourself gets more of the wrong kind of attention.
@ItalianScallion@yakkoTDI went to school with a kid who had a noticeable stutter. one day, he and his speech teacher came to class to do a presentation. he called on three kids to go to the front, one at a time, and talk about their weekend (or favorite pet, or whatever sixth graders talk about) for two minutes.
after the third kid, the speech teacher had craig go to the front and explain the exercise. kid one said “um” or “uh” or other fillers x amount of times, and on for the other two, then explained how a stutter works and is not much different than fillers.
no one ribbed him any more, and i never forgot that lesson (45 years later)
@catthegreat@yakkoTDI The appearance of using filler words and that way that some people stutter may look the same, but they aren’t at all the same inside. I might add filler words because I am unable to speak a word that I want to speak rather than saying a filler word while I decide what I’m going to say. My discussions with other stutterers and the last speech therapist I had confirm the former and make it clear that the latter is very different.
It’s only been in recent years that researchers have concluded, based on scientific evidence, that some of the causes of stuttering are neurological and genetic. Of course, this is very different than what’s behind the use of filler words.
Feel free to ask me more about stuttering. I have a long lifetime of acquired knowledge about it!
And being the youngest in a grade by an entire year gets you all kinds of really special and emphatic attention.
@yakkoTDI, have we meet in real life? I forgot that it was decided for me that I was going to skip first grade. Just another challenge in my social development as a child…
@ItalianScallion@werehatrack@yakkoTDI My father, who was very short his whole life and came from a dirt-poor family, got jumped up a grade. I think it was brutal for him; he was always socially awkward.
@catthegreat@Kyeh@yakkoTDI Never! Not one bit. (and I take singing lessons, by the way) Weird, isn’t it? This is common (almost universal?) among stutterers because singing uses a different part of the brain than ordinary speaking. I generally don’t stutter when I read out loud, either. I’m not sure why that is. I’ve never heard it said that doing that uses a different part of the brain too.
@Kyeh, I’ve read that skipping grades isn’t done anymore, or at least it’s very rarely been done for quite some time. The reason is exactly what you and @werehatrack said: the negative impact on social behavior and development.
@heartny@mehcuda67@pmarin I was in elementary school in the 1960s and I don’t remember ever doing the under-the-desk thing. I find it hard to believe that my town’s school system realized that it was a useless thing to do. Maybe they were worried about putting the overwhelming fear of a real nuclear attack in the impressionable imaginations of young kids. They would have been right about that with me. Hey, I was afraid to watch the 1980s made-for-TV movie The Day After about a fictional nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, because of rather horrifying portayals of people being vaporized during a nuclear explosion. (I was in my mid-20s at the time.) I recorded it on VHS tape and didn’t watch it until several years later.
@ItalianScallion When I was in elementary school I lived about 35 miles outside of New York City, so we were probably vulnerable to attack. In addition to the hiding under the desk thing, we sometimes had drills where we went out in the hall and put our hands over our heads while facing the wall. Not sure who thought that was a good idea. In addition to the Day After, you should check out the movie Threads.
@shahnm My mom, who was a kindergarten teacher, said the most important things that kids needed to learn in kindergarten was that school was fun so they wanted to go to school and how to follow rules so they wouldn’t get in trouble or get a reputation for being a trouble maker.
Not so long ago my mom saw a doctor who had had her for his kindergarten teacher. He wanted to take a photo with her as apparently he credits her with getting him off to a good start to become what he had become.
@Kidsandliz The most important lesson I learned in kindergarten was that my birthday didn’t matter, and nobody was going to celebrate it. The rest of what they tried to teach was mostly stuff I already knew. I was bored, so my mother finally took me back out of it.
Little Johnny’s neighbor had a baby. Unfortunately, the baby was born without ears.
When mother and new baby came home from the hospital, Johnny’s family was invited over to see the baby. Before they left their house, Little Johnny’s dad had a talk with him and explained that the baby had no ears.
His dad also told him that if he so much mentioned anything about the baby’s missing ears or even said the word ears, he would get the smacking of his life when they came back home.
Little Johnny told his dad he understood completely. When Johnny looked in the crib he said: “What a beautiful baby.” The mother said, 'Why, Thank you Johnny." Johnny said: “He has beautiful little feet, beautiful little hands, a cute little nose and really beautiful eyes. Can he see all right?”
“Yes”, the mother replied, “we are so thankful; the Doctor said he will have 20/20 Vision.”
“That’s great”, said Little Johnny, “cos he’d be fucked if he needed glasses!”
@hchavers Also discovering that I was made of
Greasy, grimy gopher guts
Little birdies’ dirty feet
Concentrated monkey meat
and
French fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood.
The girls that were worth the dreaded Cootie risk didn’t belabor my ingredients.
@phendrick I discovered that all of my teachers had a sense of humor. However, the path to finding what they thought was funny was often not be worth the consequences.
Those who can’t get jobs after college, teach.
Those who can’t teach work clerical or janitorial jobs.
If you want to know what’s REALLY going on at the school, ask those who have clerical or janitorial jobs.
@werehatrack I’m not going to disagree with you, but how about THiS alternate version:
Those who can, teach.
Those who cannot teach can get jobs in academia.
@haydesigner I once told my English teacher that I didn’t feel well. She told me that I had just said that the appendages I used to feel didn’t work correctly. No, you use “well” when regarding health.
@pmarin The 1960s answer was this: If you hit back, you’ll get accused of fighting, and you’ll collect unwanted attention from the Admin, who never seem to do anything to the bullies because the bullies’ parents do not give a flying fuck how assholic their kid is at school. Also, if you dared to hit back, the bullies would gang up on you, and you’d still get accused of starting it, while they just walked.
I hated every single day of school from the middle of 5th grade onward.
I learned that my mom would always go to bat for me when my second grade teacher tried to turn me from a lefty into a righty. My mom (now 92) is the sweetest person in the world, but holy shit, don’t mess with her kids. The 70’s were fun
@capnjb@zhicks1987
My French cousin in the late 50s/early 60s was forced to switch to his right hand. I didn’t realize we had done that here as late as the '70s. Oh my God!
(BTW I am also sinister…)
@texmarc@zhicks1987 Every day was You’ll Hate This Crap Day in the Dade County Public Schools in the '60s. (It would be difficult to convince me that anything might have changed.)
Quicksand lurks everywhere. OK, I learned that from TV, but I was in grade school when I learned it. Turns out, there’s a surprising lack of quicksand in my area.
@dave@mediocrebot@Tadlem43 Actually, yeah. Learning “How to learn” was great for me. I was taught to be a good student, and that helped me through high school and college.
@dave@mediocrebot@zhicks1987
My point was that, there’s a lot that we learn, like how to read, arithmetic, spelling, etc., but when you learn how to learn, you can learn anything.
I think one of the most important things I learned in grade school was how to take the basics I’d been taught and apply them to learn other things.
I don’t think kids are taught that today, and that’s one reason kids graduate without really knowing anything, or how to learn anything.
Even things I learned a bit later than grade school…things like making an outline when I write a paper, or mapping out a study plan for a big test, have helped me learn in other areas of my life and my career.
It wasn’t intended to be a cop out at all, but rather the truth about the foundation I received that opened the whole world to me.
@mediocrebot@Tadlem43@zhicks1987 No, right, sorry, I definitely did not mean that about your comment. It was my initial gut reaction to the AI image, but then thinking about it I think it’s totally right.
@dave@mediocrebot@Tadlem43@zhicks1987 I was ahead of my fellow students in grade school and didn’t need to learn to learn. The result in high school and college was predictable.
Some faculty treat the smarter kids better and some treat them worse. (I’m guessing the latter are the insecure ones who feel threatened.) So it’s important to modulate your outward behavior appropriately for the situation.
Weeeellll back in my day it was “Duck & Cover” when the alarm went off because the Ruskies had dropped the bomb. I still remember being huddled under our desks…
@rancho I was in third grade in Miami during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I had the temerity to point out that given the estimated size of potential warheads on the subject missiles, we would be inside the zone of total destruction, and possibly the crater if the Miami International Airport was targeted. “Duck and cover” would accomplish nothing.
@jouest@Thumperchick Opposite for me, grade school was fun, but jr. high was pure hell and high school not a lot better.
It didn’t help that I changed schools every single year until 8th grade so I didn’t have a base of friends to rely on.
The most important lesson I missed was that the school administration was not interested in educating me, it just wanted me to be out of their way as soon as possible, no matter how much it screwed me up.
It took me more than 40 years to appreciate just how deep the damage ran. By that time, it was long past fixing. Am I bitter? Not if I ignore the past and just keep looking forward. Revisiting the multitude of might-have-beens would drive me to suicide in short order, so I just don’t go there. I am who I am, I have what I have, and it has to suffice.
Many decades ago when I first lived in Germany, one of my German co-workers was talking about cultural differences. When Germans wait for a bus (or a theater to open) they stand around wherever and then mob the door when it opens. But once inside, they politely wait to make sure young/old/infirm people have seats first. Americans get in lines and move in order through an open door, then knock each other over to get the seats they want. Then he asked: “But how do you Americans organize yourself into lines? Who decides that there can only be one line and this is the line?” (And there was a common joke about Friday night entertainment: Americans go to the theater. Germans stand outside the theater and watch the Americans form a line.)
I thought about the question and remembered elementary school. We got into a line to go to recess, a line to come back, a line to go to lunch, etc. At first, the teachers lined us up, then they made us line ourselves up in some specified order: alphabetically by first name, or last name, or height, or something else. So one of the most enduring lessons I had from Grade 1 was that I had to get in a line.
@rockblossom I’ve given up. There’s a QI clip where Alan Daves is asked “what do the Germans do when they don’t have a driver’s license?”
And he says
That never happens. They invented the driver’s license. They made a checkpoint. Hoo are yoo? Vat are yu driving? Right. One. NEXT!
I learned that the mean girl who picked on me had problems at home and was secretly jealous. Sometimes discovering the real issue requires thought, reflelection and kindness.
The long version. my mom called her mom, blah, blah. Turns out she was a foster kid who had been bumped around in the system before she landed in her current (very nice) family, and was adopted. Her life was hard (we were 10 or 11)and even though she was finally in a good spot she was acting out. Unfortunately I was one of her targets because she was jealous of my family life. My mom sat me down and explained the situation and her mom had a talk with her. In the end, we became friends and she started adjusting to being part of a loving family; one with several adopted and foster children.
Intelligence gets you unwanted attention.
@yakkoTDI Yep, and add stuttering and you get even more attention.
@yakkoTDI Intelligence coupled with sarcasm gets far too much of the wrong kind of attention. “Keep the sarcastic comments in your head and off your tongue.” Always good advice, but it does lead to an “inner dialogue” that’s more like an unruly group chat at times. Also - mumbling to yourself gets more of the wrong kind of attention.
@ItalianScallion @yakkoTDI went to school with a kid who had a noticeable stutter. one day, he and his speech teacher came to class to do a presentation. he called on three kids to go to the front, one at a time, and talk about their weekend (or favorite pet, or whatever sixth graders talk about) for two minutes.
after the third kid, the speech teacher had craig go to the front and explain the exercise. kid one said “um” or “uh” or other fillers x amount of times, and on for the other two, then explained how a stutter works and is not much different than fillers.
no one ribbed him any more, and i never forgot that lesson (45 years later)
@yakkoTDI Oh, ghods, yes. And being the youngest in a grade by an entire year gets you all kinds of really special and emphatic attention.
@catthegreat @yakkoTDI The appearance of using filler words and that way that some people stutter may look the same, but they aren’t at all the same inside. I might add filler words because I am unable to speak a word that I want to speak rather than saying a filler word while I decide what I’m going to say. My discussions with other stutterers and the last speech therapist I had confirm the former and make it clear that the latter is very different.
It’s only been in recent years that researchers have concluded, based on scientific evidence, that some of the causes of stuttering are neurological and genetic. Of course, this is very different than what’s behind the use of filler words.
Feel free to ask me more about stuttering. I have a long lifetime of acquired knowledge about it!
@werehatrack
@yakkoTDI, have we meet in real life?
I forgot that it was decided for me that I was going to skip first grade. Just another challenge in my social development as a child…
@ItalianScallion @yakkoTDI I’m sure that I’ve never met either of you.
@ItalianScallion @werehatrack @yakkoTDI My father, who was very short his whole life and came from a dirt-poor family, got jumped up a grade. I think it was brutal for him; he was always socially awkward.
@catthegreat @yakkoTDI
@ItalianScallion, do you stutter when you sing?
@catthegreat @Kyeh @yakkoTDI Never! Not one bit. (and I take singing lessons, by the way) Weird, isn’t it? This is common (almost universal?) among stutterers because singing uses a different part of the brain than ordinary speaking. I generally don’t stutter when I read out loud, either. I’m not sure why that is. I’ve never heard it said that doing that uses a different part of the brain too.
@Kyeh @werehatrack @yakkoTDI
@Kyeh, I’ve read that skipping grades isn’t done anymore, or at least it’s very rarely been done for quite some time. The reason is exactly what you and @werehatrack said: the negative impact on social behavior and development.
@catthegreat @ItalianScallion @yakkoTDI Hah! I thought you probably didn’t, because I have heard of things like that. Cool.
Look, listen, live but dysentery is a close second.
Hide under your desk in the event of a nuclear attack.
@heartny Going from “Duck Duck Goose” to “Duck and Cover” was confusing to me.
@heartny @mehcuda67 yes, hiding under a desk would protect us from Russian nuclear bombs.
Then I guess later it was earthquakes; same solution.
Now 50 years later it’s active shooters. Some things never change.
@heartny @mehcuda67 @pmarin I was in elementary school in the 1960s and I don’t remember ever doing the under-the-desk thing. I find it hard to believe that my town’s school system realized that it was a useless thing to do. Maybe they were worried about putting the overwhelming fear of a real nuclear attack in the impressionable imaginations of young kids. They would have been right about that with me. Hey, I was afraid to watch the 1980s made-for-TV movie The Day After about a fictional nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, because of rather horrifying portayals of people being vaporized during a nuclear explosion. (I was in my mid-20s at the time.) I recorded it on VHS tape and didn’t watch it until several years later.
@heartny @ItalianScallion @mehcuda67 @pmarin
Same. I’m guessing that a small town in rural Oregon wasn’t considered a likely target for nuc’ing.
@heartny @macromeh @mehcuda67 @pmarin Ah, I didn’t think of that as being a reason to not do the under-the-desk drills.
@ItalianScallion When I was in elementary school I lived about 35 miles outside of New York City, so we were probably vulnerable to attack. In addition to the hiding under the desk thing, we sometimes had drills where we went out in the hall and put our hands over our heads while facing the wall. Not sure who thought that was a good idea. In addition to the Day After, you should check out the movie Threads.
@heartny Well, isn’t that wall thing the height of scaring the pants off kids for absolutely so reason.
And thanks for the recommendation for Threads.
/image all I really need to know I learned in kindergarten
@shahnm My mom, who was a kindergarten teacher, said the most important things that kids needed to learn in kindergarten was that school was fun so they wanted to go to school and how to follow rules so they wouldn’t get in trouble or get a reputation for being a trouble maker.
Not so long ago my mom saw a doctor who had had her for his kindergarten teacher. He wanted to take a photo with her as apparently he credits her with getting him off to a good start to become what he had become.
@Kidsandliz The most important lesson I learned in kindergarten was that my birthday didn’t matter, and nobody was going to celebrate it. The rest of what they tried to teach was mostly stuff I already knew. I was bored, so my mother finally took me back out of it.
@Kidsandliz @shahnm your mom was a wise woman and I love that poem. The world would be a better place if we all acted accordingly.
Never sit next to Little Johnny. He makes too many jokes.
Little Johnny’s neighbor had a baby. Unfortunately, the baby was born without ears.
When mother and new baby came home from the hospital, Johnny’s family was invited over to see the baby. Before they left their house, Little Johnny’s dad had a talk with him and explained that the baby had no ears.
His dad also told him that if he so much mentioned anything about the baby’s missing ears or even said the word ears, he would get the smacking of his life when they came back home.
Little Johnny told his dad he understood completely. When Johnny looked in the crib he said: “What a beautiful baby.” The mother said, 'Why, Thank you Johnny." Johnny said: “He has beautiful little feet, beautiful little hands, a cute little nose and really beautiful eyes. Can he see all right?”
“Yes”, the mother replied, “we are so thankful; the Doctor said he will have 20/20 Vision.”
“That’s great”, said Little Johnny, “cos he’d be fucked if he needed glasses!”
Girls have cooties!
@hchavers Well known fact! But at 7 years old I secretly determined that certain girls might be worth the terrifying Cootie risk.
@hchavers Also discovering that I was made of
Greasy, grimy gopher guts
Little birdies’ dirty feet
Concentrated monkey meat
and
French fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood.
The girls that were worth the dreaded Cootie risk didn’t belabor my ingredients.
Not all teachers have a sense of humor.
@phendrick I discovered that all of my teachers had a sense of humor. However, the path to finding what they thought was funny was often not be worth the consequences.
Those who can’t get jobs after college, teach.
Those who can’t teach work clerical or janitorial jobs.
If you want to know what’s REALLY going on at the school, ask those who have clerical or janitorial jobs.
@aetris Alternate version:
Those who can, teach.
Those who cannot teach become school administrators.
@werehatrack I’m not going to disagree with you, but how about THiS alternate version:
Those who can, teach.
Those who cannot teach can get jobs in academia.
arecan be monstersAlso, perhaps the least obvious one,
Possibly I’m more cynical or jaded than the general public.
@xobzoo the delicate line is between your conclusion and “Just F_- you all; none of it matters anymore.”
And now 50 years later I watch world news and realize that was right all along.
@xobzoo I was about to come say some of this.
@Thumperchick @xobzoo @pmarin
All of that. Every. Damned. Word.
@xobzoo
“Children can be monsters.”
“We can??” wreaks havoc
Most important thing to me: I learned how to read.
@Kyeh And hopefully you [still] choose to.
I learned that people will take advantage of you any chance they get.
Don’t look weak
I used Stop, Drop and Roll to save my mom when her hair caught fire.
@Salanth um. i think we need more to this story.
@catthegreat @Salanth seconded
Never disagree with the teacher.
@haydesigner I never actually learned that lesson. I did, however, learn how to clean blackboards very well.
@haydesigner I once told my English teacher that I didn’t feel well. She told me that I had just said that the appendages I used to feel didn’t work correctly. No, you use “well” when regarding health.
How to learn.
Nontoxic doesn’t guarantee that something tastes good.
The 1970s answer to bullying was “just hit them back.”
Even if there were 4 of them and they were bigger than you.
@pmarin The 1960s answer was this: If you hit back, you’ll get accused of fighting, and you’ll collect unwanted attention from the Admin, who never seem to do anything to the bullies because the bullies’ parents do not give a flying fuck how assholic their kid is at school. Also, if you dared to hit back, the bullies would gang up on you, and you’d still get accused of starting it, while they just walked.
I hated every single day of school from the middle of 5th grade onward.
A whale is not a fish
@posmr15 Killer whales are not whales.
@posmr15 @zhicks1987 And starfish are not fish, and seahorses …
@posmr15 @rockblossom @zhicks1987 And male seahorses carry the embryos and give birth to the young!
Oh, wait - I think I learned that on TV.
@Kyeh @posmr15 @rockblossom @zhicks1987
I learned that my mom would always go to bat for me when my second grade teacher tried to turn me from a lefty into a righty. My mom (now 92) is the sweetest person in the world, but holy shit, don’t mess with her kids. The 70’s were fun
@capnjb Similar: I learned that my dad fought against me being put in the SpecEd program. I found out when they put me in the GT program.
@zhicks1987 It’s good to have a weird brain. I have one too
@capnjb @zhicks1987
My French cousin in the late 50s/early 60s was forced to switch to his right hand. I didn’t realize we had done that here as late as the '70s. Oh my God!
(BTW I am also sinister…)
I think reading, writing, and arithmetic was important.
Take your own lunch on Friday, because the cafeteria selection sucks that day!
Fish sticks!
@texmarc I’m here thinking back on my Friday Rib Sandwich Day privilege
@texmarc But Friday was pizza day.
@texmarc @zhicks1987 Every day was You’ll Hate This Crap Day in the Dade County Public Schools in the '60s. (It would be difficult to convince me that anything might have changed.)
@texmarc @werehatrack @zhicks1987
YES!! And the octagon shaped pizzas were better than the square ones but both were good.
@texmarc @zhicks1987
Quicksand lurks everywhere. OK, I learned that from TV, but I was in grade school when I learned it. Turns out, there’s a surprising lack of quicksand in my area.
@lisagd22 bermuda triangle though
Hell is other people
/showme a visualization of the single most important thing a person learns in grade school
@mediocrebot At first I thought that was a copout, but…it’s probably right.
Assuming it didn’t just copy from @Tadlem43, but I don’t think the image gen can see other comments.
@dave @mediocrebot @Tadlem43 Actually, yeah. Learning “How to learn” was great for me. I was taught to be a good student, and that helped me through high school and college.
@dave @mediocrebot @zhicks1987
My point was that, there’s a lot that we learn, like how to read, arithmetic, spelling, etc., but when you learn how to learn, you can learn anything.
I think one of the most important things I learned in grade school was how to take the basics I’d been taught and apply them to learn other things.
I don’t think kids are taught that today, and that’s one reason kids graduate without really knowing anything, or how to learn anything.
Even things I learned a bit later than grade school…things like making an outline when I write a paper, or mapping out a study plan for a big test, have helped me learn in other areas of my life and my career.
It wasn’t intended to be a cop out at all, but rather the truth about the foundation I received that opened the whole world to me.
@mediocrebot @Tadlem43 @zhicks1987 No, right, sorry, I definitely did not mean that about your comment. It was my initial gut reaction to the AI image, but then thinking about it I think it’s totally right.
@dave @mediocrebot @Tadlem43 @zhicks1987 I was ahead of my fellow students in grade school and didn’t need to learn to learn. The result in high school and college was predictable.
Some faculty treat the smarter kids better and some treat them worse. (I’m guessing the latter are the insecure ones who feel threatened.) So it’s important to modulate your outward behavior appropriately for the situation.
It’s where you first learn that not all adults have your best interests in mind.
@chuegen …if you have the wit to overcome the cultural bias and the propaganda.
Sadly, I trusted them.
Weeeellll back in my day it was “Duck & Cover” when the alarm went off because the Ruskies had dropped the bomb. I still remember being huddled under our desks…
@rancho They taught us the same nonsense for earthquake safety.
@rancho I was in third grade in Miami during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I had the temerity to point out that given the estimated size of potential warheads on the subject missiles, we would be inside the zone of total destruction, and possibly the crater if the Miami International Airport was targeted. “Duck and cover” would accomplish nothing.
@rancho @werehatrack
@ItalianScallion @werehatrack Now were talking
How to swear, a skill that is still useful
@2many2no Only whores and fucking sailors cuss.
@zhicks1987 I think you used the adjective on the wrong noun… Oh wait, maybe it should have been on both nouns.
@2many2no @zhicks1987 how’re you at sailing?
@ItalianScallion
I think you used the adjective on the wrong noun… Oh wait, maybe it should have been on both nouns
and the verb…
guys these answers are bleak.
@jouest That’s how you grow when you’re young.
@jouest grade school sucked for me. I know some kids breeze through it, though.
@jouest @Thumperchick Opposite for me, grade school was fun, but jr. high was pure hell and high school not a lot better.
It didn’t help that I changed schools every single year until 8th grade so I didn’t have a base of friends to rely on.
@Kyeh Knowing who you can trust and how far you can trust them is arguably the most important lesson you’ll EVER learn.
The most important lesson I missed was that the school administration was not interested in educating me, it just wanted me to be out of their way as soon as possible, no matter how much it screwed me up.
It took me more than 40 years to appreciate just how deep the damage ran. By that time, it was long past fixing. Am I bitter? Not if I ignore the past and just keep looking forward. Revisiting the multitude of might-have-beens would drive me to suicide in short order, so I just don’t go there. I am who I am, I have what I have, and it has to suffice.
Many decades ago when I first lived in Germany, one of my German co-workers was talking about cultural differences. When Germans wait for a bus (or a theater to open) they stand around wherever and then mob the door when it opens. But once inside, they politely wait to make sure young/old/infirm people have seats first. Americans get in lines and move in order through an open door, then knock each other over to get the seats they want. Then he asked: “But how do you Americans organize yourself into lines? Who decides that there can only be one line and this is the line?” (And there was a common joke about Friday night entertainment: Americans go to the theater. Germans stand outside the theater and watch the Americans form a line.)
I thought about the question and remembered elementary school. We got into a line to go to recess, a line to come back, a line to go to lunch, etc. At first, the teachers lined us up, then they made us line ourselves up in some specified order: alphabetically by first name, or last name, or height, or something else. So one of the most enduring lessons I had from Grade 1 was that I had to get in a line.
@rockblossom I’ve given up. There’s a QI clip where Alan Daves is asked “what do the Germans do when they don’t have a driver’s license?”
And he says
That never happens. They invented the driver’s license. They made a checkpoint. Hoo are yoo? Vat are yu driving? Right. One. NEXT!
@rockblossom as a W who was sorted alphabetically all through grade school, I still remember the one time they did it Z to A.
You were a real one, Sister John Marie.
@rockblossom
Here’s one of my favorite songs concerning the topic of education. Sure do miss Harry…
@chienfou That was great!! Thanks for posting it.
@yakkoTDI
truly my pleasure. He just had such a wonderful way with words…
I graduated from high school so I’m pretty sure I went to grade school. Really don’t remember anything much about that time period.
@chienfou I was in grade school and don’t recall seeing you there
@jouest
i was shy
Collusion is always better than going at it alone.
Just don’t get caught.
@pakopako
collusion is a great word. it’s like teamwork that’s up to no good.
@jouest @pakopako It’s always good to have someone else to blame it on.
I learned that the mean girl who picked on me had problems at home and was secretly jealous. Sometimes discovering the real issue requires thought, reflelection and kindness.
The long version. my mom called her mom, blah, blah. Turns out she was a foster kid who had been bumped around in the system before she landed in her current (very nice) family, and was adopted. Her life was hard (we were 10 or 11)and even though she was finally in a good spot she was acting out. Unfortunately I was one of her targets because she was jealous of my family life. My mom sat me down and explained the situation and her mom had a talk with her. In the end, we became friends and she started adjusting to being part of a loving family; one with several adopted and foster children.