I hope you reported the child you took ‘into your home because
he was too scared to go home because he tired of being hit and
abused by his parent’ to the authorities? You are a mandated
reporter.
“Oh, that’s what that was,” said my daughter, as she perused the front page of the Dispatch Thursday morning. She has a habit of using pronouns without antecedents.
“What’s what what was?” I inquired, even less intelligibly. She picked up my meaning from intonation, however, and began reading snippets to me. We had both wondered why the police had cordoned off 7th and Hanna near the police station the previous evening.
Now we chuckled as we learned that a young woman, cleaning her fiance’s apartment, had found a mortar shell, a souvenir from World War II. Her mother had, understandably, decided to turn it in, and the police, again understandably, had been alarmed to receive it, and had taken appropriate measures.
This incident illustrated one reason we subscribe to the Dispatch. We frequently find out in its pages the cause of cordoned off streets, helicopter noises, and the like.
On Oct. 26, for example, a couple of our daughter’s friends were spending the night. We kept hearing the unmistakable sounds of fireworks. Since the date was not July 4th, we assumed that they were illegal aerials. Later when we heard helicopters in the same direction, we assumed the choppers were seeking the firework users.
The next day in the Dispatch, we learned that the fireworks had been in honor of Homecoming, and the helicopter had been associated with a stabbing – no connection with Homecoming.Â
I also get useful reminders of newsworthy events not connected with crime. Tuesday morning I opened the paper and immediately spied an item about the election. Because of that reminder, I had enough time to run over to my polling place and vote before work. I even brought good cheer to the poll workers by parallel parking so clumsily that I knocked over a traffic cone. They thanked me for brightening their day.
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I hate to break it to my fellow columnist, Mr. Ben Anderson, but tattoos are indeed associated with hepatitis C, and AIDS, for that matter. This is not to say that every person with a tattoo will get hepatitis C, any more than every cigarette smoker will develop lung cancer.
But the association is strong enough that the Red Cross will not accept a blood donation from a person who has received a tattoo or piercing in the previous year.
You are an adult, and it is your right to take risks with your body if you wish. But it boggles my mind that any adult would glorify to young people a practice that could destroy their livers.
* * *
Thank you, Mr. Erik Wagle, for inviting me to visit South Valley Junior High. I accept. Fridays are best, or Wednesdays after 11 am. I am curious to know if my impressions garnered from past visits to Gilroy Unified School District schools are accurate: specifically whether it would be possible to teach effectively there. Please arrange for me to sit in on some math classes. I am not particularly interested in life skills or PE.
I must correct one myth you are promulgating. If you know an engineer with no degree who makes $250,000, he or she is not the norm. Perhaps that person owns the company or is a manager. I have several friends and relations who are engineers. A typical remark when I emailed them your comment was: “$250,000? That’s funny! BS with 10 years experience for me is $85,000.”
Please don’t hold me responsible for what you imagine I am implying. My points are two: I think teachers’ salaries are decent. I do not think it is possible to teach in chaos.
I do not understand why teachers and their union reps get so defensive about me saying their salaries are decent.
It is interesting that none of your questions revolve around actually teaching or learning. If I wanted to rescue abused and neglected children, I would be a licensed clinical social worker. And while we are on that topic, I hope you reported the child you took “into your home because he was too scared to go home because he tired of being hit and abused by his parent” to the authorities? You are a mandated reporter.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a published, independent author. Her column appears each Saturday.
