In which being a grown-up rocks
It always amazes me when people wax nostalgic about their youth. Yes, my childhood was fine and dandy, but honestly, being a grown-up is stupendously better. Why? Because of this list of things I will NEVER again have to do in my lifetime:
1. Hit a ball. Run far. Run fast. Pretend to care about foul lines, missed serves, or any other aspect of the ritualized horror that is physical education. (Honestly, why not a nice yoga class or a bit of Zumba? Because wind sprints? NOT CREATIVE, people.)
2. Perform quadratic equations. Let's be entirely forthright here, the vast majority of what we learned in math class is boring and useless for 99.99% of the population--hey look! I just used numbers!--and we all know it. There should be a series of courses called Practical Math and it should do nothing but teach you how to USE math in pragmatic ways like tallying the discount on the mark-down rack at Neiman-Marcus or calculating how much paint you need. And that is IT. Anybody wanting to pursue a career where higher math is needed can take it as an elective and spare the rest of us.
3. Diagram sentences. See above. Unless you are going into a narrow and specialized field populated with pedantic grammarians, you will not care about the proper placement of your participles on a diagram and whether they are dangling. Believe me, I taught it and I don't care.
4. Read a book I don't like. I'm looking at you, Lord of the Flies.
5. Group projects. File this under "does not work well with others". I am STILL holding a grudge against my sophomore English teacher for taking a point off every time my project partner misspelled "Caesar". She docked us more than 40 points for spelling and never graded the content. I hope it still keeps her up at night.
What will you not miss about your youth and childhood?
1. Hit a ball. Run far. Run fast. Pretend to care about foul lines, missed serves, or any other aspect of the ritualized horror that is physical education. (Honestly, why not a nice yoga class or a bit of Zumba? Because wind sprints? NOT CREATIVE, people.)
2. Perform quadratic equations. Let's be entirely forthright here, the vast majority of what we learned in math class is boring and useless for 99.99% of the population--hey look! I just used numbers!--and we all know it. There should be a series of courses called Practical Math and it should do nothing but teach you how to USE math in pragmatic ways like tallying the discount on the mark-down rack at Neiman-Marcus or calculating how much paint you need. And that is IT. Anybody wanting to pursue a career where higher math is needed can take it as an elective and spare the rest of us.
3. Diagram sentences. See above. Unless you are going into a narrow and specialized field populated with pedantic grammarians, you will not care about the proper placement of your participles on a diagram and whether they are dangling. Believe me, I taught it and I don't care.
4. Read a book I don't like. I'm looking at you, Lord of the Flies.
5. Group projects. File this under "does not work well with others". I am STILL holding a grudge against my sophomore English teacher for taking a point off every time my project partner misspelled "Caesar". She docked us more than 40 points for spelling and never graded the content. I hope it still keeps her up at night.
What will you not miss about your youth and childhood?
Labels: general musing
posted by deanna at
8:42 AM
22 Comments:
I'm the youngest of six children, and privacy and solitude were nonexistent in our small home. Though my family was loving, I couldn't wait to have control over my own environment. And of course who among us has been encouraged to eat foods we considered vile because they're "good for us". Peas, I'm looking at you!
I do NOT miss being made to eat fish. I loathe fish. No fish in my house EVER. No one telling me I will like something if I just eat it. Ugh. Also, my home is a no smoking home. Everybody has to smoke outside. After living with a chain smoker growing up, I don't let anyone smoke in my house.
I have to tell you, my highschool gym teacher was formerly in the Army and once a month would run us all in what was lovingly known as Hell Day. He set it up like Basic Training. I cannot express the horror.
Grew up with a single mom who served us reconstituted powdered milk because it was cheaper than fresh. I will never have to drink that awful sludge again. Love my mom, she took good care of us, but man that was disgusting.
Though I do like diagraming sentences, but then I liked math, too. And Lord of the Flies. ;)
Homework. Any and all. BLEH!
I hated adults who were condescending to you just because you were a kid, probably in part because my parents talked to me as though I were an adult at home. It was quite lowering to go from a pleasant, thoughtful conversation about Plato's Allegory of the Cave in the car on the way to school to a third grade classroom where the teacher always replied, "I don't know, can you?" when you asked "Can I go to the bathroom?" And it wasn't even as if she explained herself to you, and since I had never been told that "May" is nicer than "Can" (I was a transplant from Upstate New York to Southern Ohio) I had no idea what her point was, and was left to wonder what I was missing while suspecting that I was being made fun of. Not cool. Eighteen years later I'm still a little bitter about it. Other than that one character flaw she was a great teacher, though.
~Meredith
Right with y'all about not eating foods you don't like...My Mom inevitably made liver and onion and endive salad in the same meal...And in our house, it was "eat what's on your plate or go hungry." **sigh**
And no more games with hard, round objects being hurled at various tender spots on my body...After a dodgeball game, I'd be so bruised I looked like I'd been mugged...and by third-graders, yet!
Things about my youth I will not miss: Bad hair, bad glasses and my uncanny knack for picking out clothes that were guaranteed to make me look like a dork.
You're so right. Sure, I have good memories of my youth. But would I want to go BACK there? No, I like who I am now thank you very much.
I don't miss:
--> having to go to gym class and being picked last for teams due to my lack of any coordination/skill whatsoever
--> being talked down to by teachers/other peoples parents simply because I was young
--> relying on my parents for rides everywhere
--> having a poor body image
That being said, I do understand the desire to wax nostalgic about the "good ol' days." I do miss not really thinking about my own mortality. My mom died suddenly 15 months ago (when I was 20) and a friend of mine was hit by a drunk driver and killed. When I was a kid I didn't really think that anyone could die, ever. I also miss not having to pay rent or just generally having to worry about money.
Don't tell anyone, but I LIKE quadratic equations. And I taught MYSELF how to diagram sentences. In my spare time. For fun. (We never learn that at school, here.) o.O (Can anyone say 'complete and total nerd?) Mmmmm. XD
Gotta agree with you on one and five, though. Luckily, now that I'm a senior, I no longer have to do PE or sport and group projects are rare. Yay!
I liked diagramming sentences -- they were like solving mysteries, but I agree with you on advanced math. Equations are for those of the seriously nerd persuasion. Just give me the practical, non-conceptual, add-em-up, readable on the checkbook math.
I also hated the weekly, get on your feet, line up around the room, oral spelling quiz. It was my first exposure to public ridicule and failure.
How about lockers? I can honestly say that unless I become sufficiently wealthy to need one of those wall safes hidden behind fine art I will be very happy to never use a combination lock again. That and our lockers were assigned alphabetically, I was always next to Brian Connolly who was the resident cannabis dealer, needless to say the smell that lingered on my coat took some explaining to mom. School pictures are also right up there, did they ever come out well? When I became a teacher and they told me I needed to have one taken for the yearbook I refused, I believe my exact words were "go ahead and fire me" who needs one more of those horrors floating around? As to having to bum rides, I didn't get my license until I was eighteen at the end of my freshman year of college (Oh but think of how much money you'll save on insurance! Yeah Ma) My date for the senior prom didn't have his either so his parents had to drive us, talk about cramping your style. Then again I guess I can only blame myself, should have picked a date with wheels!
I never had clothes that fit. "You'll grow into 'em," was a popular statement.
It's nice to have my own budget now too. "You don't need it," was my mothers default phrase.
I love having the freedom to make my own decisions about where to go and what to do/eat/buy. Sometimes I still can't believe that I can get in my car and drive in any direction and know that wherever I end up I'll be OK. It's so very liberating!
I loved math, sentence diagramming, and group projects because they allowed my Type A control-freak self to run free and uninhibited. Talk about making other people happy? Watch teenage Kelly asking others for input and basically being asked to do the whole project, and almost squee in pure bliss?
One could argue group projects are an introduction to the collaborative nature of work, and therefore a valuable life skill. One could also argue teenagers are lazy and will either just not do it, or let one person do it all (see previous paragraph.) Wait... that's exactly like work.
Oh dear, where do I begin... :-) Just kidding - my childhood was cool and I actually didn't mind doing a lot of math or sentence diagramming or reading tons for the three literature classes we had (Russian, Ukrainian and English). As far as math goes, I look at it this way - mathematics is gymnastics for the brain. As with any other exercise, you may not be training for the Olympics, but you still want to keep in shape.
What I really won't miss is being unpopular, because I enjoyed math and reading and because I had so many other responsibilities at home that I didn't have time for parties. Being beaten up by girls - that definitely doesn't make me nostalgic. Boys didn't beat me up - they didn't consider me a worthy target. But girls... Uhh - they were vicious! I know it's immature, but sometimes I wish I could go back with 7 years' worth of martial arts training in my pocket and show them who is boss. :-)
Glasses! My mother wouldn't let me get contact lenses as a teenager, so I was stuck as a four-eyes with unflattering lenses. Unfortunately Mom had an idea of contact lens technology and pricing dating circa 1969. The very first thing I bought when I moved out was contact lenses.
I chucked as I read the "Hit a ball. Run far. Run fast." Oh how I hated that as a chubby, never picked for the team child. Now as a fairly slim and reasonably fit adult, I NEVER run far or fast. The tread mill doesn't count and I can read while riding my exercise bike:)
I agree, being a grown-up is very fun;)
Pretty much everything you said and some more.
Exams, assignments, tyrannical teachers, the worrying about grades and will I get to be what I want to be.
I had two older brothers and the phrase "hand-me-downs" still gives me shivers. It was impossible to be cool as a pre-teen in the 80s with boys clothes lemme tell ya! :)
Lord of the Flies. I hated that book so much I burst out in the middle of my sophomore English class: "Sometimes a mountain is just a mountain!"
I don't miss being seen by nearly everyone as this huge dork. I don't miss having only a couple of friends that I had nothing in common with but we still hung out because we were the only girls our age in that tiny two-goat town. I especially don't miss that they were always too chicken to ever try sticking up for me, they were too busy being glad that I was the target and not them. I don't miss that guy who admitted that he liked talking to me more than his boring girlfriend but he'd never dump her because she was pretty.
But I got lucky, because I was able to do my last two years in a kind of statewide magnet school for geeks. That was a lot more fun, but there was still too much teen drama and too little privacy, and I'm much happier now.
Sigh...I just get so tired of school/teacher bashing. For every poster who agrees with your top five, there are those for whom school was a refuge. They knew they had teachers who cared about them. Mathematics proved that were absolutes in their mixed up, crazy world. Diagramming sentences gave them a sense of order and control. They were exposed to all types of literature so that they could make their own decisions about authors, genres, etc. Public school has so much to offer, its a shame it is always the whipping boy for "What sucked in my life."
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