Did I ever mention that I have five (yup, you read that right!) brothers? Yea, my poor mother had to live with six boys and the old man in the house 24/7. If you have trouble visualizing the carnage, imagine a house that smells like the inside of a wet gym bag, with crusty sweat socks hanging from the curtain rods, and you won't be far off.
You'd think there's be a lot of fighting in the house with all that testosterone assembled into such a tiny area but that wasn't the case. When we were growing up, the six of us got along very well. We argued of course but there were never any fist fights in the house (that would have meant dealing with the old man and nobody wanted that!) The only two who I ever recall fighting growing up were Bryan and I. Man, we were oil and water (or kerosene and a match, not sure which). We would go off on each other on a daily basis and yea: there was a lot of flying fists (though never in the house). Generally that meant an ass whippin' for yours truly since Bry is almost seven years older than me. The rest of us all got along fine though.
Strangely, I'm not very close with any of my brothers now, except for Bry. I never see any of them more than once a year or so for family events. We still get along great and have a good time together but the closeness isn't there, even though we all live within 50 miles of each other. Bryan lives further away from me than any of the others and I see him more often. It just struck me as funny that the one I couldn't stand as a kid is the one I'm closest to as an adult. Weird, huh?
Did anybody see the video on the news recently of the five year old girl being handcuffed by the police and taken out of school? The child was completely out of control and hitting her teacher who (of course) could do nothing to restrain her for fear of a lawsuit. So, they called the girl's mother, who was too "busy" to come take care of the problem. With no other recourse, the school called the police who restrained the child and took her out of the school. Now (again: of course) the mother is suing the school & the police for traumatizing her daughter. Amazing. Simply amazing.
Here's an idea: why don't the parents of all the other children in this school get together and sue the mother for the trauma she caused their children by allowing her child to rampage at will through the school? How about calling DYFS and having them investigate why the mom refused to leave her job early to address the situation? How about she stands up and apologizes to the teachers and everyone else involved for the behavior of her child instead of rubbing her palms together and looking for a pay day? Nope. There's money to be had and the mom's lawyer is looking to sue everyone who ever set eyes on this kid.
Have I mentioned I hate lawyers?
Ah well, onto the writing. No editing last night, I didn't get home until after 10:00 and I was too beat to even think about it. I got another 2,000 or so words on "Fish" today. It's going a little slow right now, life is interfereing with my writing again! (I wish it would stop that!) I should have time to get some editing in tonight. The wife is off to get the hair done tonight so it'll be me and the boy for dinner, then a quick cleanup and (hopefully) right to work on GS. Lee Goldman has a very funny link to the Ten Worst Opening Sentences for a Novel on his site today. Sadly, there were several that I thought were not only funny, but pretty damn interesting. I particularly liked #2 & #1 . . . hell, I'd read those books!
Later!
4 comments:
Wow....that article blew my mind. What is the world coming to? That is absolutely ridiculous. I hope the judge is too intelligent to fall for that whole traumatizing crap. What BS. I think calling the police was an excellent idea. Wow.
My mother's a teacher at an infant school, and she occassionally gets kids like that: that bite, kick, even one that threw tables at people. And could they do anything? They couldn't even expell him. Calling the police might have been a good idea ;)
As for the judge falling for stuff like that, looking at some of the people that get compensation nowadays, I'd say it was pretty likely.
After viewing the video of the incident/s that this 5 year old incurred, I think that calling in the cops was a good idea. Now, on the other hand, I think the cops handcuffing the kid and taking her out to their cruiser might have been a bit of overkill. Only because it seems that the kid calmed way the hell down when the cops were called. A stern talking to by the local constabulary would probably been enough for the day. Save the cuffing for another outburst, ‘cause everyone knows there will be another outburst. On the good side of this...haven seen some of the video, it looks like the teacher and the principal behaved well within the limits of propriety. In fact I am surprised by their amount of restraint. They are just abso-frikkin-lutely lucky that it was being filmed.
If they hadn't filmed it, the teachers would be royally screwed! Funny thing is, the attorney wants to sue them for filming - claims it violated the girl's civil rights. Man, teachers are damned if they do/damned if they don't!
I'm not a fan of "Big Brother" but I'm starting to thing full time cameras in the classes may be necessary to protect the teachers from these ridiculous lawsuits.
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