National Grammar Day--Observe or Be Square

[shalanna]

Today is National Grammar Day! It seems fitting, considering that I've been fiddling with one particular sentence for a couple of days now, off and on. Grammarians, start your parsing engines!

I also just heard that Gary Gygax has crossed over to the Summerlands. Farewell, friend, and safe journey. Your visionary game ideas (and Dave Arneson's) meant that so many nerds, dreamers, and geeks could role-play with dignity (well, at least more dignity than the kids who were still playing Barbies.) D&D kept us off the streets and away from drugs and druggies. As someone mentioned on a comment thread, being in the drug gang instead of the gamer posse would have made us cooler, but we might be in jail or dead already. (Okay, *I* have always been terrified of druggies and drugs, but I am a devout coward, and the situation I mention is true of a lot of other people.) We wish you a respectful farewell. See you on the Other Side (but not for a long time yet, we hope.)

The snow was pretty, but it started to melt as soon as the sun came up. I managed to have an episode of snowblindness--or whatever you call it when you have been looking out the window at the really bright white and then turn away to find that there's a huge green stripe across your vision, like a flashbulb afterimage. I was watching hubby scrape away at his windshield with a paper towel (I kept shouting for him to come get a plastic scraper, but he eventually got some kind of garden tool to do it with--I'll bet he scratched up his windshield. He did that to my old car once and I had to get a new windshield!) and I over-dazzled my eyes. They're so light-sensitive to begin with, probably from the medications I take, but that was kind of scary. I had to go lie down for a half-hour after that with a wet cloth draped over my eyes so it could all fade back to normal. Lesson: don't stand in a dark house looking out at dazzling snow.

I did recover. I've spent most of the day taking elderly voters who are disabled or don't have transportation over to our polling place to vote in the Texas primary elections, or arranging for someone else to find a ride there. It's only a few blocks away, at the elementary school I attended. Around 6:30 my mom and I will go caucus (that's how Texas voters can vote twice on the same day without going to jail) over at our polling place. I don't think I can convince hubby to go, although he'd be caucusing for the other party, and we have a favorite over on their side as well.

Oh, and I was also supposed to start doing some tutoring today. Our neighbor's daughter is homeschooling now. She had several bad experiences at junior high, and after the last scary prank/harassment problem they've decided to pull her out of school. They called a couple of weeks ago to see if I'd be willing to help her once or twice a week with math and English lit. I have some ideas as to how to go about it, but I haven't seen the textbooks or the plan yet, so I'm still contemplating approaches. The family declared today a snow day, so I get to think about it a little more. We'll start on Wednesday or Thursday, I suppose.

And that brings up another question. Do you suppose that people who are bullies at that age (junior high) but later become "normal" members of society (ha) ever think about that past and feel bad about it? Or do you think they laugh and say, "That was just teasing, kid stuff." Or maybe they don't remember doing it at all. Or they think the victims deserved it for being different. Possibly they think they were making the victims stronger--or that's how they rationalize it to themselves. I just wonder if they ever think about it later on and perhaps live differently because of it. Probably they never give it another thought. I wonder, though.

Comments

[medusa.livejournal.com]

I sometimes have daydreams about confronting the people who bullied me at school and making them realise just how much it affected me, but then, what is the point? They are probably still just as awful now and probably still think I deserved to be treated that way. :(

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a teacher who saw many kids later, all of the above.

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

I have always suspected as much. People are all different, so you'd expect them to react differently. Personally, I was nasty-to-the-point-of-bullying to a kid who annoyed me back in grade five--for two days, if I recall correctly, at any rate, less than a week--and I worried about that off and on until I was thirty.

Jane Haddam wrote a really chilling novel about bullies

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Her Somebody Else's Music is about a young woman who is bullied in high school for being different. Her tormentors state quite clearly that she deserves it. The victim grows up to be a successful writer, and the novel takes place when she returns to her home town. Unfortunately, many of the same people who went to high school with her still live there. I commend it to you. It's available in paperbac from Amazon, and most libraries have it as well.

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

I celebrated National Grammar Day by teaching grammar. In both grammar and writing. Woot!

Catherine