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.