As I was driving home from work, I spied an electronic billboard that read: Since January 1, 2008, the Rapid City Police Department has made 392 DUI arrests. A quick calculation shows that this equates to about 3 DUI arrests per day.
I’m not sure whether the billboard speaks more to the dedication of the Rapid City police force or the sheer number of drunks in Rapid City.
HAEV U EV3R WANT3D 2 COMUNICAET WIT TENAEGRS ONLIEN OR THROUGH TEXT MESAGNG BUT U WERE NOT SUR3 HOW 2 PROP3RLEY PRESANT U IN A MANAR TAHT WUD B UND3RS2D BY SUCH P3OPLA!!1!!!1! OMG FR3T NO MORE!1!1!! OMG WTF LOL*
It’s the English-to-12-Year-Old Texter converter.
* (Have you ever wanted to communicate with teenagers online or through text messaging, but you were not sure how to properly present yourself in a manner that would be understood by such people. Fret no more!)
Dear Ladybug,
Happy Easter, or as you pronounce it, Happy birthday to me!
Yes, on Wednesday you turned two years old. Usually I try to write these within a day of your monthly birthdate, but this week has been a little different, in that you’re convinced that every day of it has been your birthday. Each morning you wake up and, convinced that it’s your birthday, demand to be sung Happy Birthday, served cake and ice cream, and pampered with presents. It’s like living with a little Hilton sister. It started on Monday, when the first of what would be several boxes of gifts started arriving from your grandparents. Initially confused by it, your mom and I explained that it contained presents for you from your Nana and Papa for your birthday. We then foolishly let you open one before going to bed.
The very next day you awoke, announced “Happy birthday” to yourself, and proceeded to sneak into the living room and open up all your other presents. That might have been the end of it, except that another box arrived on Tuesday for you… and then they threw you a party at daycare on Wednesday… and then another box arrived for you on Thursday… and so on. Indeed, here on Easter Sunday, you are 100% convinced that the entire Black Hills region spent the day hiding plastic colored eggs filled with toys and candy expressly for you to find for your birthday.* Only two years old, and you already have a God complex.
* On a related note, tonight we went to the Olive Garden for Easter dinner. Near the end of the meal, in some far off corner of the restaurant came the sounds of a song that was remarkably similar to (but not copyright infringingly so) to “Happy Birthday to You” sung by the wait staff. At that moement you realized that they had made a horrible mistake, singing the song for the wrong person, as it was most universally evident that it was your birthday for the seventh consecutive time this week. Hence, every subsequent time our waiter came to the table, we would helpfully announce “Happy birthday Ah-na! Happy birthday Ah-na! Ice cream?” in an adorably desperate attempt to rectify the situation.
And, yes, you eventually got them to sing for you and get your ice cream too, so all was right in the world.
Apparently convinced that your mother and I are incapable of meeting your entertainment needs, over the course of this week your various grandmothers have equipped you with movies, music, medical toys, gardening toys, a new car, a jet pack, and a pony. Couple that with all the Easter festivities and candy, and you mother decided that this month you weren’t getting a birthday party, lest your ego swell to unhealthy proportions. (Given that you’ve already identified the festivities intended for the arisen Messiah with yourself, I’d contend she’s a bit too late.) Since you actually had two birthday parties last year, there’s a nice zero-sum finality to this.
So, what’s happened in the three-quarters of this month that wasn’t your birthday?
Well, for starters, you are now completely potty trained. In what I can only describe as the easiest transition in the history of the known Universe, you are a lean, mean, peeing machine. Gone are the Elmo and Pohh diapers; in their place it’s Disney Princess panties. You are particularly enamored with Cinderella, and I often catch you humming “Cinderella dressed in yellow” as you sit on the potty staring at your britches. I should remark that you’ve gone well past the impending-disaster phase, wherein you would announce your intent to leak (”Daddy, tinkle!“), giving me but precious few seconds to whisk you to your Elmo-seated throne before you commenced leaking. No, now when you make your announcement, you lazily stroll to the potty, hoist yourself up, grab a magazine to read while you do your business, and then unsubtly recommend “Bye-bye Daddy” to give you a little privacy. Next month I suspect you’ll be in there doing Sudoko.
You’ve also moved up in the world at daycare. You are now in the 4-to-4-year-old room. For you, the transition was easy: you finally get to go to the back room (which has always, inexplicably fascinated you), and you now have access to the playground equipment when you play. Perhaps the only downside is that you don’t have Miss Iris as a teacher anymore, which means you are stuck all day with whatever dorky hairstyle I decorate you with in the morning. Sorry, pumpkin.
We’ve also taken to reading stories each night as an established habit. Each night around 8:30, once you’ve been properly bathed and pajamaed, you announce “Booooook” while simultaneously pantomiming the opening of a book. (Yay ASL!) We then march into your room and grab a short stack of books to read for the evening. While the choices vary from night to night, some of your current favorites include:
But let’s get a little perspective here… over the course of the year you’ve gone from a silent, toothless, baby to a chatty, toothy, girl. Let’s take a look at some then-and-now comparisons to see how you’ve grown. And quit making that face, it’ll be fun.
Then: soulful eyes, button nose, pouty lips, and indescrible beauty. Now: soulful eyes, button nose, pouty lips, and indscribable beauty. Okay, not everything changes.
You still like to help me with chores around the house. Not only are you pretty proficient at unloading the dishwasher, you have now learned how to load it with soap and turn it on by yourself as well. You’ve also taken to “vacuuming” the house with your opocorn-popper, usually side-by-side with as I vacuum too. I don’t know how long this little domestic goddess phase will last (although perhaps it exlains your innate fascination with Cinderella), but by golly am I gonna milk it this year. Next week, I plan to teach you to scrub the toilet.
While you still love to be naked, it’s only from the ankles up. Now that you can (more or less) get your shoes on by yourself, you love to walk around the house, proudly wearing your boots or your new, house-only tennis shoes (what you call your pretty shoes)… and nothing else.
On one hand, oh how things change. one year ago, you had nary a tooth in your head, just a goofy gummy smile. Now at 2 years old, you’ve got a mouth full of big, goofily crooked, chomping teeth. On the other hand, you’re as big a dork as ever.
You still love to play outside at the park, although you are now tall enough to play on just about everything — the slides, the bouncers, the playground equipment, you name it. One nice change — at least for my cardiac condition — is that you are now less prone to throw yourself headfirst off on every slide you find yourself on. Then again, you’re now more willing to climb up on any piece of jagged metal and brittle plastic masquerading as playground equipment, which I think might be worse. If you’re wondering where all that grey hair on my head came from, I’d suggest Robbinsdale Park.
You still love to swing, and you still can’t do it by yourself. Given that the swings are probably the only thing that you haven’t yet mastered to a degree that you could inflict irreparable brain damage on yourself by screwing around upon it, the swings are definitely my favorite toy at the park. Any park.
You are still very much a bath baby. You like to splash and float and scrub yourself down with washcloths and plastic ladybugs.
After a bath, you still like to relax a bit. If anything, you’ve gotten better at being lazy! Go, skills!
One year ago — just twelve short months — you were my little baby. Now, you are my fiesty, silly, wonderful little girl.
Yes, you may be growing up quick… but don’t you forget that no matter how old you are, mybaby you’ll always be. I love you, Ladybug.
– Ba ba
See more pictures from your twenty-fourth month of existence over at Flickr.
In this morning’s newspaper headline reads NAU fires president, eliminates sports program. The article is about how the Rapid City campus of National American University has, well, fired its president and is eliminating its sports (specifically, volleyball, rodeo, and equestrian) programs next academic year.
Now, I don’t have an opinion on this either way — I only bring it up here to highlight on excerpt from the article:
NAU’s business decision has just turned Tabitha Unhjem’s world upside down. “If [the acting president of the University] is a businessman, then technically we’re his customers. You’d think he’d want to bring us in, not kick us out.”
I find this mentality extraordinarily frustrating: education is not a consumer product. A college education is not something you purchase and haggle on like a used car or a garage-sale kitchen appliance; nor should it be something so generic or mundane that everyone should get one. A college education is something that must be earned through hard work and a combination of exceptional ability and dedication.
In any event, students are not customers of education. I know this because, if college education was indeed a custumer product, then “the customer is always right.” However, one need only look at my most recent pile of calculus exams to find all the counterexamples to this that they require.
This week is “Spring Break,” which is a misnomer on several counts. First, it’s not even Spring yet; in fact, what with the threat of impending snow storms this week, it’s clearly Winter II: The Revenge. Second, “Break” would imply that, well, I get one, but that’s clearly not the case.
I gave a midterm exam on Friday (Pi Day) to my Calculus II students, which meant I spent the next four days grading them. Clearly, this is bad pre-Break planning on my part, and I accept that. What I have a problem with is this: no sooner do I finish grading them and posting the scores to WebCT do I get a phone call from an irate student about his grade.
Student: Yo, Dr. K. I just saw on WebCt that I got a 36% on Exam II. What’s up with that, yo?
Me: What? I just entered those grades… Wow, that was fast… I’m sorry, what now?
Student: I do’t think I deserved that grade. Can I, like, come in tomorrow and take a make-up exam or something?
Me: You want me to write you a special exam that I will administer and grade during my vacation so that you can improve your exam score?
Student: Yeah.
Me: And why should I do this again?
Student: Because I don’t think I deserved the grade I got.
Me: You haven’t even seen your exam.
Student: I still don’t think I deserved it. I’m doing fine on the homework.
Me: How much of the homework do you do? Do you work on the problems I give out each day, or just the weekly homework quizzes.
Student: I only get graded on the quizzes, so that’s what I do.
Me: Well, that’s not exactly…
Student: …And I’ve been getting, like, sevens and eights out of ten on the weekly homeworks, so I should be getting a better grade on the exams.
Me: Ah, I see. Do you think that your ability to get an average score on a single weekly quiz consisting of only four problems covering few pages of material while simultaneously being given nearly unlimited time and unlimitied resourses to assist you in any way whatsoever provides adequate preparation to successfully complete a ten problem exam covering an entire chapter of material in only fifty minutes with no resources to assist you whatsoever?
[ Long pause ]
Student: Well, I guess not when you put it like that.
Me: More to the point, what does it say about your mastery of the material if you cannot even score a nine or ten on a quiz of only four problems with unlimited time and resources?
[ Long pause ]
Student: …Maybe I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was…
Me: You need to do more of the daily assigned problems, and you need to really take these weekly quizzes more seriously. That’s the only way to improve your exam scores in my class.
[ Long pause ]
Student: So, soes this mean your not gonna give me a make-up exam?
[ Click and dial tone ]
I need a vacation.
