Tag Archives: parenting

We Need a Zero-Tolerance Zero-Tolerance Policy

OK, so I was on Facebook this week and couldn’t help but notice that all the ice buckets have been replaced with enough first-day-of-school photos that I’m actually beginning to miss cat pictures.  This can only mean one thing:  ‘Tis that special season when everyone under the age of 18 has a permanent shoulder slump and every one of their parents is high-fiving and rediscovering the lunch date.  ‘Back to School’ ain’t just a sale at Wal-Mart.

I look forward to this TIMe of year, not only for the lunch dates, but because I get to read all about the zero-tolerant administrators and their vigorous tolerance for zero-tolerance policies, which has them doling out more suspensions than a bridge-builder because at some point along their 100k graduate education they found that teaching rules is easier than teaching character.  Perhaps you are familiar with the famous ‘Pop-Tart gun’ incident I wrote about here.  Turns out this incident is just the tip of the iceberg lettuce wedge. With bacon bits.  And bleu cheese crumbles.

For example, Continue reading →

Hoosier Daddy

Last week was a rite of passage for me.  No, it was not breeching, smarty pants.  Nor was it completing my Rumspringa, something you are sure to Google and to which there is no end in sight.  What I did last week was take part in the compulsory and sometimes traumatic Western middle-age ceremony known as “Dropping Off Your Firstborn at College.”

Wow, does the time go fast.  It seems like just yesterday I was cleaning up the pasty Vaseline and baby powder concoction Thing 1 spread liberally about herself and her childhood bedroom.  Now here I am launching her three states away with the freedom and independence to do the same in an Indiana dorm full of strangers. Continue reading →

Time for a Graduation Innovation Conversation

Yesterday was Thing 1’s last day of high school, which means she graduates in the top 100% of her class this week and enters the ambiguous and limbotic state of a Phillip Phillips Summer; somewhere between “Home” and “Gone, Gone, Gone”.

Not unlike your typical middle-aged milquetoast who has survived such a life event as this, my emotive state is one of uneasy apprehension and terrible trepidation, not so much from the launching of a long-time household resident as from the requirement that I actually attend the lengthy and dreaded tradition that is the graduation ceremony. Continue reading →

Tim and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

I’ve had better weeks.

Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “First World Problems.”  It is a euphemism for such life difficulties as, “My lettuce turns brown too fast” or, “The escalator is broken again” or, “Which government agency should I use to harass my political enemies?”  I won’t say whether I have any of these specific problems or not, but I will say that after this week I am seriously looking at some lovely sand-front property in northern Mali.

Early this week I fought “The Battle of The Siding” which is a lot like “The Battle of The Bulge” except that nobody died and there probably won’t be a movie made about it starring George C. Scott, although one with someone like Bill Pullman is a distinct possibility. Continue reading →