Day: June 7, 2013

Saying goodbye to the chicks.

 Today is the last day the chicks will be at school, they are going to live on a farm.
 
We have been teasing the teacher about animals living “on a farm” but it appears that it is a farm where they will not become chicken dinner.
 
They’ve grown up so fast.
 
Getting their real feathers.
 
One of them really likes to perch on things.
 
I tried to get the rest of them to do that too, but they weren’t ready.
 
Have fun with your new life, chicks.
 
The children named them, so you can see how incredibly creative they were.
 

Our volunteer Mary is the best.

Mary is a woman in her 80s who volunteers once per week at school.  She is full of fun and a kindred spirit of sorts, because she loves to go on walks and take pictures.

First, I must give you background.
Here is the sign on the inside of the door to the teacher bathroom.
(All adults can use the teacher bathroom at our school.  Sigh.)
This sign has been here as long as we have.  It came with the building.
 

Here are the lockers in the corner of the teacher bathroom.
 
And here are labels on the lockers.  The lockers came to us second-hand, so we have no idea who these guys are.  Charlie’s locker used to have a small sticker that said, “Fish On!” but it fell off a few years ago.
 
And here’s the poem that appeared on the side of the locker one day.
Mary left it anonymously, but we figured her out.

They’re gone, but not forgotton
immortalized in the loo
They are noticed in private moments,
those semi-anonymous two.
So here’s to Steve, Charlie and also
to some artful, anoymous wit.
We OPEN it ever so SLOWLY
and not nobody never gets hit.

45RPM: Mr. Brownstone

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

My parents bought me a car to drive about a year after I got my driver’s license.  It wasn’t fancy, a Mustang II with an AM radio and a penchant for leaking oil and breaking down.  When my brother got his license, my parents upgraded us to a green ’79 Mustang with tires too big for the wheel wells.  They would scrape every time we went over a big bump or a dip.  For a period of time, it had no radio.  This was more maddening than only being restricted to the AM band, but some good came out of it.  Before everyone had their licenses, we all piled in the cars of the few who could drive in order to get from here to there.  We were smashed together, chattering all the way, laughing and gossiping.  In other cars, music was the background or the foreground of our ride, but in my car we filled the silence ourselves.  Driving a dark road to somewhere one night we fell silent until Eric burst into the opening notes of Gun’s and Roses Mr. Brownstone.  We were all GnR fans, and knew every word, so we rode into the night, our drug-free bodies singing with great gusto about addition and touring and a life that nearly all of us would never lead.