Street School

Now that I am an "adult" summer vacation is not really a thing, but in recognition of school being out for the summer I'd like to share with you the things I learned over the years outside of the classroom and reflect on the time I spent in it.

I think it's only appropriate that we start out with a lesson from Alice Cooper. The first time I ever heard the word "incognito" was in his song "No More Mr. Nice Guy" so I asked my dad what it meant and thus increased my vocabulary.

To this day, when spelling bananas, I put way too much emphasis on the "B" and say the rest of it rather rhythmically, thanks a lot Gwen Stefani!

I spell Florida by spelling Flo Rida and putting them together

In my Finance class, we learned how to write a complaint letter and my paper was the only one that got an "A" and I'm still confused whether this says something good or bad about me as a person.

I've learned not to compare myself to others. However, one area of self-evaluation does cause me to beam with pride. You see, I've started down the slippery slope of coffee consumption, but a piece of information from my dad made me realize there are degrees to ones dependence. There's a little switch on my coffee maker just above where the pot goes and my dad told me that the purpose of this little doohickey is so that people can pour themselves a cup of coffee as it's still brewing. Removing the pot trips the switch and causes the flow of coffee to stop. Who the hell is this for?!?! I start brewing my coffee and I go about my day until it finishes. I'm not claiming to be Sister Starbucks just because I possess this rational level of restraint and patience, but who sets this thing up and then stands there salivating like some kind of Maxwell House mad scientist mumbling to themselves "Come on, give me the coffee! Give me the precious!"

I have learned it is okay to disagree with someone else's position and not be a jerk about it. The amount of negativity on social media is mind boggling! On any public page dedicated to certain subject matter, the top comment seems more often than not to be some irate internet user going off as to why they don't like whatever it is that is being talked about and why their personal point of view is correct. I guess if people want to spend their time in such a way that is completely up to them, but it doesn't make sense for someone to stop into every store they see in order to let the owner know that they have no intention of shopping there, because that would be a gigantic waste of everyone's time.

I learned that my level of automotive intellect is in dire need of some fine tuning because any time I am with a group of people and conversation turns to cars I end up standing there and saying something like "Yeah.....steering wheels are crazy, right?"

Being a first time home owner has also been a wakeup call, because any time I so much as change a lightbulb I get this feeling like "Why don't I have my own HGTV show yet?"

I learned my 7s times tables by counting touchdown passes by Tom Brady and my division by how many of those touchdowns got called back because of doing something illegal.

I learned about the 9s times tables "trick" long after I had use for it and I opted to just do the math in my head like a normal person, but it did provide me with some relief, because for years I thought that the girl sitting next to me was some kind of witch trying to put a spell on her math test.

Survival of the Wittiest

Yesterday while walking my dog, Sammy, around the ‘hood this giant, half dog, half wolf, half bodybuilder that was too busy lifting weights to bother with learning fractions came barreling around the corner and Sammy gave me this precious look like “You’re going to protect me, right?”

In my best attempt at cross-species communication, I looked at him as if to say “Strength is not my strong suit. I was on the debate team, the geography club and the track team so I can try to convince him that eating us is a bad idea, I can suggest he move to a location with the highest density of dogs or we can get the heck out of here, your pick.”

Paws

I know that me teaching proper etiquette is like getting a vocabulary lesson from a Vulpix, but It is considered good manners to sit with your chair tucked in and to situate oneself a balled up fist away from the table.

While I’m sure this is to prevent people from just smashing their face into their food like they are bobbing for appetizers, I have found it serves another purpose. You see, every breakfast I now have a barking beggar right beside me. He lurks at every lunch and seeks to devour every dinner. Watching........waiting for that inevitable incident where I have a motor skills meltdown, where my hand-eye coordination takes it’s habitual hiatus and food hits the floor. He has a bowl full of water and a dish packed to the brim with food that I have hunted down and provided, but like a kindergartner who struggles with contentment, he wants what I have. In the past, I have gone scuba diving in the Caribbean and mingled amongst sting rays and sharks. Nothing makes me more uneasy than trying to enjoy a plateful of pizza while being ever so aware of the puppy’s presence......Circling........Savoring and getting me to say “I think I’m gonna need a bigger plate.”

Honey, I Shrunk the Roommates!

Here's something they didn't tell me when I first got my puppy: Eventually, I would start to find tiny little teeth around the house.

The first one I saw I was like “I don’t have popcorn in the house, what the heck is this?!” It’s turned into a little "Easter enamel hunt like “Where will the next one be?” I feel as though I moved into a house where a hockey player, a beaver, the tooth fairy and a version of the children’s toy, “Crocodile Dentist” that came to life were best friends in high school so they made the novice mistake of deciding “Let’s all live together! We’ll learn about each other’s nasty habits and weird quirks and ultimately, that we can only tolerate each other in small, spaced out doses and everything will be totally fine!”

Verbal jousting eventually turned to violence. In order to salvage the situation one of them thought “I know, let’s use a shrink ray, scale ourselves down so we’re not getting all up in each other’s grizzy so often.” (because that’s how the Crocodile Dentist talks) Sadly, the trail of tiny teeth only serves as evidence to the inevitable ending that while there have made a valiant effort to coexist peacefully, it’s just not going to work out.

Wingding Talkers

Twelve years of hard work completely and utterly undone!

I’d like to believe that I have a lot going for me. I’m a hard worker, friendly and I cook a mean hamburger. However, I’ll be the first to admit that my handwriting certainly has never and most likely will never come out looking  like calligraphy. For the past few years, the only writing I’ve done are stock sheets for work and I’m writing those up under duress and trying to get them done as quickly as possible. With my decision of placing a higher value on productivity over penmanship, the paper always ends up looking like someone tried to trace Sam and Frodo’s path of travel through a map of Middle Earth. The good news is I could probably write anything I wanted on there and people could spend years of uselessness trying to crack the code of the “Wingding Talkers.”

Ode to Mediocrity

A Hat Trick is when someone scores three goals in a game. In hockey, a Gordie Howe hat trick is when, in a single game, someone has a goal, an assist and a fight. During my playing days, a Mark Woonton hat trick was when I walked into the correct locker room, put my skates on the right feet and looked in the direction I was supposed to be looking prior to every puck drop.

My dad said if I scored one goal, he’d carry my hockey stick out of the locker room to the car. If I scored two goals, he’d also carry my equipment bag and if I scored three goals, we’d pack up the van move to Canada and I’d pursue a career in hockey full time. I’m sure this was meant as incentive to play well, but with this as my motivation, he inadvertently taught me to never pass the puck, ever! I was taking it from my own teammates, flying around the ice like the Rogue Rink Runner. As you can tell by my current residence and nearly transparent triceps, I scored plenty of goals but could never complete the trifecta. Every time I left the rink having scored only one one goal,  I’d bust through the doors, beat red in the face, breathing heavily struggling with a giant duffel bag shouting “BRING THE CAR AROUND, QUICK!!!” and to this day, I consider it a complete miracle that that chain of events didn't put me as the prime suspect for every murder in the past week within a 50 mile radius. There’s something to be said for striving to be a mediocre talent, because I’m proud of my playing days, but I’m also proud to still be an American.