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The Thought For Today

"Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself." - Robin Williams

The Thought For Today

"She is not perfect. You are not perfect. The question is whether or not you are perfect for each other." - Robin Williams

The Hard Truth From Orlando

Article in the news about the North Carolina English teacher

Rex Roland who labels his students’ homework with LOSER
when they make a mistake caught my attention. Apparently,
that’s not all he reportedly does. He allegedly threw a
student’s property into the hallway and is otherwise verbally
abusive. More important, it’s not the first time his conduct
has been brought to the school’s attention. The victim he’s
selected – and apparently is bearing the brunt of his disdain
– is a pretty little blonde, blue-eyed 11 year old girl. How
interesting. I wonder if he always selects pretty little girls
to torment. I wonder if his torment ends with degrading
remarks or if he’s grooming her for additional, more
physical abuse?

You know what I expect the school administrators to do?
Nothing. After all, it’s only one kid that’s complaining –
there’re however many other kids in his class that he’s not
abusing, so that kid must be wrong, or just too sensitive, or
just too dumb to keep up. Of course, the mother of this little
girl has hopefully been contacted by an attorney or two, and
the school and Mr. Roland are about to find out just how
expensively not funny and unacceptable his “loser” labels
and meanness really are.

Education was a priority in our household. I liked school.
I liked learning, but I have to say to this day, almost 40
years later, I remember my abusive teachers, not
lousy teachers, there were a few – but the truly abusive
ones. I was a good student. I was consistently at the top
of my grade, dean’s list, annual awards in languages, good
attendance, NEVER a disciplinary report. And you know,
I have always believed myself to be dismal in math and I
can tell you why; lousy, abusive teachers – which is ironic
as I was responsible for payroll preparation for hundreds
of government employees for years and years. And it’s
probably due to my lack of confidence that I triple-checked
and then re-checked every calculation – and had very few
errors in all those years of multiple payrolls. I went to college.
I took the minimum, dumbest math class I could and still got
my degrees – made deans list most of the time, too. There
were careers I was interested in, but the prerequisites
involved math – so I skipped them. I often wonder what
else I might be doing with my life if not for “loser” teachers
who got their kicks out of mangling kids instead of teaching.

My fourth grade math teacher, Ms. Clements, once pulled
me up in front of the class to tell me how difficult and sulky
I was when I repeatedly asked for help because I didn’t
understand the “New Math.” To my knowledge, I never
did anything to warrant her displeasure. Thereafter, she
made a point of ridiculing me in class. Her constant picking
at me didn’t stop until my mother started calling her every
day to get a progress report – in person – from Ms.
Clements. When my mother started making her explain
my progress and report on my classroom behavior every
single day, Ms. Clements left me alone. I got passing grades
and I never understood a thing that was being taught in her
class. And frankly, I never caught up and I never felt the
slightest confidence in my ability to learn math after that.

Then there was my 6th grade pre-algebra teacher, Mr. Riley.
He had a disparaging nickname for almost every one in the
classroom. He liked to walk by the desks and slap the long
wooden pointer against your chair to make you jump. He
enjoyed sending you to the blackboard to do the algebra
problems in front of everyone, especially if you were one of
the ones he recognized wasn’t getting it – then he’d get a good
five minutes worth of enjoyment by telling you how stupid
you were when you didn’t get it right. To my memory, he
never explained how to do a problem himself once. He left
up to you and the textbook to decipher. You know what I
learned about in his class? Nothing, except how much I hated
math and him. I don’t know how I passed his class, but I
hope to be around when his obituary is in the paper so I can
go spit on his coffin. He was a sorry excuse for a human
being and a teacher.

My brother and cousin, and later a nephew, all fell afoul of
another teacher named Mr. Griggs, the one who told my
mother that my brother was retarded and had no business
in school. This is the same brother who became project
manager of overseas armored vehicles assembly and
maintenance programs for a DOD-contracted American
corporation. What I find unbelievable is that the
administration kept this poor excuse of an instructor,
even after receiving reports of him having parties and
serving alcohol to his students at his residence.

I hope this child gets out of Mr. Roland’s class and gets
a decent representative of the teaching profession before
her confidence is destroyed. And I hope Mr. Roland gets
some serious psychotherapy. That guy’s a wrong one.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw

The Hard Truth From Orlando

Pretty little Shannon Marie, age 17, of Marion County, Florida,
is charged with aggravated cyberstalking, a felony, for targeting
a 15-year-old girl who USED to date the guy that Shannon is
going with now. Shannon was apparently so insecure in her
relationship with this new guy that she posted the 15-year-old’s
phone number and photo on an Internet porn site with
suggestive messages to call the 15-year-old, she does great
phone sex, etc.

Wow. Shannon sounds like a winner, huh? Sounds like
another Amy Fisher, the kind you want to bank your future
on. She dates a guy, probably a senior like her, who dates
the sophomore girls – girls who are miles behind his female
peers in maturity if not actual physical age, which doesn’t say
much good about what kind of guy he is. Well, now he’s
going with that 15-year-old girl, he’s going with Shannon .
But Shannon isn’t content with that; she’s got to destroy any
previous rivals. Sounds to me like boyfriend is one of those
who keeps dipping his wick where it’s not supposed to be.

But isn’t this such a typical deadly scenario anymore that
we’re seeing played out across the nation? Used to be if the
guy switched partners, the new girl was the one preening
and the old one was the one crying – or supposed to be crying
Very few recognized it was usually a step in the right direction
when they got Mr. Liability out of their lives. Nowadays, it’s
like a pack behavior. He switches partners and the new
partner has to prove she’s queen bitch of the pack and tear
out the throat of any rivals because she knows her mate
can’t control himself and never will, so she takes it out on
any possible competition. We’re seeing it in the news more
and more frequently where the girls are beating the hell out
of each other over some guy who can’t keep it in his pants –
instead of beating the hell out of the guy who can’t keep it in
his pants and dumping him as the loser he is.

The second part of this little nightmare was little Miss
Insecurity’s choice of weapons, one that’s all too common
with the cell phone/Internet generation. She chose to put
her rival in the crosshairs of every pervert and freak who
has access to cyberspace by putting the girl’s face and
phone number on that porn site. When confronted by law
enforcement, Shannon Marie point-blank says she’s not
going to stop the harassment, either. Take that as a red
flag. There’s no remorse, no comprehension, no sense of
perspective with this one.

Please let someone be paying attention. This callous and
calculated viciousness because Ms. Shannon Marie feels
romantically threatened goes way beyond cyber-bullying
and harassment. Shannon Marie is pathologically jealous
and possibly psychopathic. She needs a psych eval, and
students at her school need to be carefully interviewed –
this will not be the first time she’s done something like this.
She’s a bully and a danger to the community. She needs to
be tagged by law enforcement and labeled by the community
so everyone knows what they’re dealing with – a malicious
psycho. And her parents – guarantee you they’re gutless
wimps or she’d never be playing these kinds of games with
other’s lives.

I hope the 15-year-old’s parents sue Shannon ’s family and
take everything they own. It might make a dent in Shannon ’s
complacent sense that nothing can happen to her - loss of
possessions might scare her where the police and the loss
of future jobs and income due to her criminal behavior
haven’t. We’ll see this little monster again in the system.
She won’t stop; she’s hardwired to destroy and there are
no brakes.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"Some men see things as they are and say why - I dream things that never were and say why not." - George Bernard Shaw