Dear Tina,
Today begins the week that marks the final week of school. This should mean very little to me as I am two years…ugh…past celebrating the end of a school year. But as a nanny I am susceptible to secondhand joy over those final days when you get to play outside until bedtime because you are no longer assigned homework. Of course when I was in school my favorite end of the year tradition was cleaning out my already tidy desk and/or locker, but we don’t need to delve any further into that portion of my personality.
Then of course there is the handing out of the yearbook. A catalog of all your friends and enemies complete with a selection of pictures from the halloween parade and that day you went out to the field to look at blades of grass with a plastic magnifying glass. I glanced through this 2009-2010 edition to see if much has changed since the early 90s when I was in elementary school. That there is. There appears to be an astounding number of parents who feel it is necessary to make their children wear a jacket and tie for picture day. Even if by astounding I mean three (I am fairly certain there were a handful more than that), it’s too many. One would be too many. I just scanned my yearbook from the 1995-1996 school year and not one child, Kindergarten through Fourth grade, was wearing a tie. The most repeated trends were Bulls jerseys and overalls, which are both awesome. Children have their whole adult life to look great and pompous in a suit. Why force them into something professionals don’t even wear to the office anymore? Especially when all they want to do is wear a shirt that they tie-dyed themselves at day camp. It seems like such a false sense of maturity for someone so young. It’s a school picture yet it says a lot more about the parent than the child. Don’t put someone in a suit and tie who doesn’t even have the fine motor skills to tie it themselves…nor the attention span to sit and learn how. Remember that a yearbook photo is meant to crystalize a child’s place in the world at that moment. We should never be rushing our littlest ones into a dress code that coexists with a lot of handshaking and scotch served neat.
When I was in fourth a grade a classmate brought his dad’s old briefcase to school instead of a backpack. We never let him live it down.
Onto television. I know it’s Monday night and I alluded to recapping The Bachelorette on a weekly basis a few weeks ago. The truth of the matter is, I haven’t been around from 7-9 the past couple of Monday nights nor have I set a series recording on my DVR as I believe this would subconsciously encourage me to invest opinions and emotions into men that consciously horrify me. Plus, too much attention paid can only make their behavior worse. Like a two year old throwing a tantrum in public. But I also realize that this manfest has already ended and now we are just watching edited down snippets of Ali’s adventures from two months ago so my interest or lack thereof plays no part in how this story unfolds. So next week I will try to keep my word.
I did catch a portion of the rebroadcast this past Saturday while I was at homing nursing the four gaping holes in the back of my mouth. Here is a context-free excerpt from my brief notes:
His white Miami Vice jacket is longer than him.
Also, in The Bachelorette title card that appears at the end of virtually every segment before a commercial break, Ali looks like The Little Mermaid. Which is appropriate because her laugh reminds me of Flounder.
30 Rock Quote of the Day:
Pete: We haven’t been able to find you mom.
Tracy: I gave Kenneth the info.
Pete: Her name might be Sheryl and she was wearing a shirt in 1984.
Dear Tina 