The feeling will pass...the feeling will pass...

There was an advertisement on the school district's website. The ad was for a job opening, and the opening was for a DBA. I know I could have gotten deep into the interview process, and maybe even won the job. The salary range's bottom end was ten thousand dollars more than I'm making now, and the high end was off the teacher salary charts. I thought wistfully, and with much heavy sighing, about how nice it was to make lots of money and never give it a thought. I can't do that any more. Then I imagined myself back in a cubicle, fixing errors, analyzing code, carrying a PAGER...and I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I wouldn't be able to go back (unless I was really, really desperate, which I'm not), so I didn't apply for the job. After I'd made my mind up, I still felt a kind of longing, almost a yearning, for the old moneyed days. That will pass, right?

I'm in Florida, and I'm a teacher.

Has the ratio of smart kids to stupid kids changed? I'll never see 49 again, so that puts me over the hill in the eyes of many, but I think we were smarter in my day. I blame TV, consumerism, and uninvolved parents, and not necessarily in that order. Sorry, but families worked better when Mom (or Dad, I suppose) stayed home and reared the kids and made damn sure they did their homework. And kids were smarter when they didn't have so much god damned television so they played more and read more. Why do I finger consumerism? Because back in the day, if you couldn't afford something you just did without it. Now, both Mom and Dad work in order to afford the big screen, or the house they can't really afford (don't get me started on the real estate debacle). So who's minding Junior? MTV, that's who. Which would be OK, if Junior was studying MTV with a critical eye. But most Juniors are not. They are passive receptacles for the ideas of others, and they are not critical. They have few opinions, if you define "opinion" as a thought-out position. They have reactions, of course, which they flatter themselves as being opinions, but they are not. I keep telling the kids, fine, play the games, but learn to write the games as well. Most will not. We're teaching our kids to be consumers and not producers. How long can a nation of consumers hold out? What happens when the money runs out? Who knows...we can't even count back change any more.

Why do I live here?

One reason is the carefree adventure I just had with my kid. Unobstructed (mostly) and unmolested (mostly) by automobile traffc, we rode our bikes all the way to the bakery where my wife works and then we stuffed ourselves, gratis. Then we ambled across the parking lot to Target and lounged about on the patio furniture, cracking jokes and cracking up. All the while, we're basking in the gentle warmth and tropical breezes that sometimes caress this godforsaken peninsula. When it's nice here, it's very nice.

I don't care what you think. Wait, yes I do.

I'm only writing a blog because it makes me write, period. I can defend what I'm writing, but that's not my purpose. I'm exhibitionistic enough to want to see my stuff on a screen, but not so insecure that I care whether anyone else does. Perversely, however, I hope someone's reading this.

I ask my students what they think about the war in Iraq. Why should they even care? Has war always been so meaningless? I wonder what the vibe was, back in WWII. If we were bombed again, would enlistments soar? I don't count the WTC as a bombing, by the way, because it wasn't. It was wrongheaded to focus the USA's resources on anything other than finding and imprisoning OBL. Now, of course, we've squandered all that global goodwill on the Iraq fiasco. Which raises the question, do we feel safer? Well, did you feel safe before? If you did, then you probably feel safe now. If you didn't before, then probably nothing's changed for you, either.

If I have to explain it, it's not funny.

There's nothing funny about the trend of deliberately misspelling (or concocting) baby names. These are pathetically uneducated attempts to make our offspring "unique" but it only makes them confusing and defensive and, eventually, embarassed. As a school teacher, I've come across such idiocies as "Kyla" (whatever the hell that means); "Shreall" (pronounced "Shirelle"); and "Savahannah" (pronounced "Savannah"). Other insults include Jazmyn, Antawn, Chone ("Sean"), and, God help us, "Jhon". Which is worse: deliberate stupidity, accidental stupidity, or accidental stupidity that just thinks it's being deliberately stupid?

And speaking of stupid, Bee Movie. Don't waste your kid's time.