Kids Say The Darndest Things!

A first grade girl handed in this drawing for a homework assignment. After it was graded and the child brought it home, she returned to school the next day with the following note for the teacher:

Dear Ms. Davis, 
I want to be very clear on my child's illustration. It is NOT of me on a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint. I work at Home Depot and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm. This drawing is of me selling a shovel. 
  
Mrs. Harrington

Where Is Your Mother?

Before I get started on my rant I want to wish a very Happy Birthday to Lin over at Duck and Wheel with String. Stop by today and wish her well.

Yesterday Buggy and I, along with my daughter and one of her friends, went to my neighborhood pool for the afternoon. We haven't been over there at all this summer since, until recently, I was working every day and then weekends seem to be crazy busy! The weather was beautiful and sunny and about 95 degrees. Perfect pool side weather. We packed a picnic lunch and headed over.

The pool wasn't terribly crowded, maybe 50 people. We snagged a table and spread out. Then we came to a hurdle, small but real, in our idyllic afternoon. Buggy is at the age where she takes her injuries quite seriously. She had several bandaids on her leg, one was actually a case of broken skin, the others were bug bites and what not, you know. That was a good 8 minute discussion during which she announced that she might "pass out" if we removed the bandaid from her cut. *sigh* Drama Queen did you mutter? I tired of the whole thing quickly and told her she could just sit at the table while we went in the pool. It resolved itself pretty quickly after we walked away. Anyway, I got a little side tracked, let me get back to my rant.

Buggy was sticking right with us since she had Grandmom, Aunt Chrissy and Ms. Sarah as playmates, who else did she need? After lunch we waded back in for a dip. Aunt Chrissy and Ms. Sarah were swimming laps at that point and Buggy's eyes began to wander around for new playmates. Not far away there were 3 little girls splashing around, ages were probably 4, 5 and maybe 7. Buggy paddled over and asked if she could play with them, the 4 yo said ok. She announced her name and asked what theirs were, no answer. They were all trailing along behind the oldest girl, the boss, the leader. They all turned around facing the pool and awaiting new direction from their leader who now realized that Buggy had joined "her" group! She began whispering with her followers. They all moved to a different area, Buggy followed. She whispered some more. The little witch moved her blind cohorts down the pool a bit.

At this point Buggy was looking a little uncomfortable but didn't exactly understand. I decided to swim nearby and give that little dictator the "MOM" eye figuring she would be immediately intimidated and act a little nicer. I swam over until I was about 8 feet away from the brat, she didn't even blink, in fact, the whispering intensified. I glanced around wondering if the woman who had spawned this bundle of evil was even nearby. Not a single adult was looking their way. I just wanted to get a look at her.

Buggy was getting a bad feeling at this point and asked me why they wouldn't talk to her. Just then a boy threw his ball too far and Buggy picked it up and threw it back. The kid had the good manners to thank her for returning his ball! I told Buggy that since she had been so nice all day that I thought we should go out for an ice cream. Off we went...so there you little meanies!

Where were their mothers and have they taught those children nothing??? Admittedly, I was far more troubled by this than Buggy was, thank goodness. Wouldn't you have been?

The Spoiled Under 30 Crowd!

If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!! When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill... barefoot...BOTH ways... Yadda, yadda, yadda And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!! There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! No where was safe!There were no MP3' s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift ityourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone. cause that's how we rolled dig?

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your Bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards! And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove .... Imagine that!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!Regards,The over 30 Crowd (Send this to someone you'd like to make smile, Whether they are under 30 or not.)