History & A Lesson Learned

No matter how unimportant, minuscule, mundane, insert your own adjective you think your life is, you have lasting impact on others without even trying.

Even if you try to hermitize your life, like I have at times, you still impact others by the lack of your presence & input whether positive or negative. As I look back on my life, I can see that even the ugliest, hurtful times have helped make me a better person & if not better, the person I am.

I get some of my best ideas for this blog while chatting with friends on Pat Sloan's forum. I'm sure they must think I talk too much, but no one has told me to shut up yet, & I do TRY self control & somewhat limit myself.

I was relaying to them my happenings on Tuesday which is my quilt guild 1st meet day of the month. We always have such a super time, but Tuesday was exceptional. We had a great meeting then afterwards, a group of about 10 of us went to our favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch. Now THAT lunch is a whole nother story.

After I left them, I went to Walmart to get a few things. It was so hot & walking over that big store didn't help. I was so hot & sweaty all I wanted to do was go home & shower. I was almost done when I heard someone call my name.

It was Mary. I had seen her briefly about a year ago at same Walmart, of course. We had gone to high school together 40+ years ago & had become friends. That in itself is not the story.

The story is that was the time of the 60's in the south, in Alabama in particular, around the time that George Wallace was/had been governor & the schools were just beginning integration. Mary was one of two black kids that were put in the white school. Don't know if it was voluntary, forced, paid or what; don't remember us ever discussing the how/why she was there.

If the situation had been reversed & I had had to go to the black school, there's no way I would have done it. Not just because it was the black school, but because it was different. I was shy back then, but more than that I was selective. It meant something special for me to talk to anyone or be friends so mostly I kept my mouth shut.

This meeting with Mary, she brought up all these memories, she wanted to talk about it & what it meant to her to have a friend. She said something bout how she had seen that I never talked to anyone, but I talked to her & she couldn't believe it. I don't remember all that, but apparently she does.

Each one of us live in a part of what will become history. Each one of us make the history around us. I do believe God always guides our lives, whether we are willing to follow or not. I don't mean predestination, I mean He cares for us & He makes a way, a path, for us to follow. Sometimes it takes years for us to find that path, sometimes we may feel as though we never find it & sometimes it just pops up at Walmart & you look back & see at least once you were on it.

It would have been normal for me to treat her the way I guess she expected to be treated in that time & circumstance. I was brought up just like everyone else, with normal being a division, a prejudice towards blacks. And then they were called many other names besides blacks or African Americans. Coloreds was a common name.

I still have much of that prejudice instilled in me. Although I believe we are born into the evil of this world, I also believe love & hate are learned & although we all possess the traits of good & evil, it's what we choose to let rule our life that makes us.

As a quilter, color is an important factor in what I do. Even shades of one color can be very striking or bland depending on how they are used. If you think about it there is color everywhere. It's one of those gifts from God that make the world beautiful. And we as people are all colored, all different shades of color.

I thought Mary was gonna cry talking about this. She reached for me for a hug. Told her I was hot & sweaty, but she didn't care. If she had started crying, my heart would have melted. Then I couldn't be the tough broad life has made me. I would have cried too.

So in parting I told her, "I guess we just needed each other." So that's the history lesson here. We do all need each other. Each of us has a part to play in someones life. We chose whether for good or evil, love or hate.

Every 20 Years or So - Part 2

So last week my teen son mentioned that one of his last year's teachers had finally come back to school.  So naturally I asked why she had been out.  He said she had been beat up by a student.  A female student had hit her several times in the face, got her down on the floor and started kicking her.  The teacher had been out for about a week.

What has this got to do with my story?  It shows the attitude of much of this generations lack of care for anything or anyone but themselves.  I suppose every generation is the worst in the previous generations eyes.  And I suppose this has been so since the beginning of time.  Sorry, don't really want to go back that far.  My concern is that things of this nature seem be considered normal, even routine.

Ok, I'm going to say it.  Back in my day, if I had even got close to an incident of violence involving anyone, especially a teacher, I would have gotten my butt kicked at home.  NO!  Worse than that.  I'd a got a whoopin'!  There seems to be no shame for certain behavior.  And there seems to be an effort on the school system's part to keep things like this a secret.

Even with my first son, things were not like this.  Most kids still showed respect for adults and certain situations.  In other words, I wasn't afraid to go to my first son's school and walk down the hall without an escort.

I have to say that I am a critic of this public school system and the school system in general.  My dislike for this system and the way it is run contributed to the decision for us to home school for nine years.  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done to allow my son now to return, at his request, to this school system which I truly hate.

While I believe with all my heart, teaching is a calling, a very noble proffession, it is also infested with teachers who do not teach.  It's not my intention to bash teachers.  Even in this school system, there are some very good teachers.  And how do I define a good teacher?  As one that stands before her or his class and talks about the subject in a way that gets the student to think and get involved.  So how do I define a teacher who doesn't teach?  As one whose class instruction is handouts, with reading straight from the book, with playing video games instead of being involved in class time, one who won't take questions & belittles any who try to ask one.

As the saying goes, if the shoe fits...  Why this even matters here is because even an unruly, rebellious, undisciplined child might reconize dedication and passion and care shown toward them.  As on the other hand, that child might reconize having a teacher with less as a sign that they the student are seen as a hopeless case so may as well not bother.

And I understand, one huge complaint all teachers have is that they spend most of their class time discipling.  Well if that's the case, all those college grads ought to be able to think of a better way.  I've always thought that parent involvement would be a key factor in gaining better control of the classroom.  But years ago I had an administrative position person actually say to me that some parents you wouldn't want around your child.  Hello!  Job Screening!  It's like what all employers do.

Like it's been said a million times before, it all starts at home; teaching that is, whether good or bad.  And to pharaphase the Bible, "Teach a child the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it".  When a child is taught right from wrong, whether or not he chooses to do the right thing, the teaching doesn't leave his mind.