Common Sense Bound and Gagged

There are times in my life when, sadly, I have completely ignored common sense. When I have gone so far as to bind it to a chair kicking and screaming, and then gag it. Taking my scoping exam was one of those times.

I'd like to say that my scoping class had gone well. I hoped that I would wow the instructors with my grammar skills, but I did go to school for that and it is my career, so it'd be embarrassing if I didn't do reasonably well. My instructors have provided positive feedback to my work, complete with blinking smiley faces and full-page pictures of Tigger leaping into a pile of leaves. I'm not really into clip-art for corresponding, and especially not between adults, but whatever floats their boat, as it were.

Then came the test. I was ready. I knew my stuff and I could use the hundreds of pages of reference materials to help me, so although I knew the test would take a while, I was pretty confident.

I got the test via email. I printed it out and proceeded to answer the questions by hand. I used my best handwriting and only had to scribble out one answer, but it was pretty contained and I hoped it would slide. It took me four hours to complete the test because I checked and double-checked my answers. I wanted to leave this wretched course with a bang, not a whimper.

The trick was figuring out how to send the test back. It was pretty long. I looked at the directions on the test. It said to do my best...blah blah blah...return the document...blah blah blah. I had visions of receiving the only perfect score. Of my directors speaking of me in awe in years to come. Monuments would be erected in my name. If only I could figure out how to send this darn test. Ah-ha! My scanner! I would scan this rather large document and send it via email to my director! Not only would she be amazed at my test, I could also show her my tech savvy. I took the document to my printer/scanner/copy machine and fed it into the device. When it had scanned all 10 pages of the test (it made some choking and gurgling sounds and seemed to be working hard) my computer had to do something to itself to be able to send such a large document. In fact, it had to make a whole new icon: "Large Attachments." My computer informed me that this would be a 30 MB file.

It was at this point that my common sense tried to tell me to abandon the scanner idea. 30 MB sounded like a lot. "Mega" sounded like a big number, but then so did "kila" and whatever other unites of measure computers use. In the back of my mind, my bound and gagged common sense was writhing against its ties and practically screaming at me, "Abort! Abort!" Did I listen? Sadly, I did not. I sent the large document to my director, scanned from my now-smoking machine.

I blithely went about my day. I received an email from my instructor, Cathy. It went something like this: "Hi Janae. Sadly I will not be able to accept this gargantuan document from you and you will have to redo it. Please use your brain this time and type it out using the test I will REsend and send it back on a much smaller Word document. Please don't use your horrible, scribbly handwriting that you have taught third graders with and for heaven's sake don't scan the document and then send me a $%^&* 30 MB file. Moron. Oh, and P.S., there will be no monument." Then she had one of those little blinking smiley faces at the end of her letter to mock me.

My common sense looked at me beseechingly from above the gag. I removed the obstruction and it patiently told me how to follow the instructions. It took me another hour (for a grand total of 5 hours) to type out the test. When I told my mother what had happened, she laughed and made up several metaphors of me getting tangled up in the finish line, running off the race track all together, etc, etc. I am glad I can entertain.

I missed four on the test.

To Everything There is a Season

Here's the good news: 1. I am an English teacher! I'm going to be teaching 6th and 7th grade starting August 22nd! 2. Mikayla and her best friend Gabby have been accepted to Providence Hall! (It's a charter school, so it can be tricky to get in.) 3. I won't be teaching Mikayla. It hurts Mikayla's feelings that I'm not fond of the idea of being her teacher. This is the scenario I see in my head: ME (acknowledging her raised hand): Yes, Mikayla? KAYLA: Hi, Mom/Janae. Should we tell everyone about the time you dated the guy who...(fill in the blank) or Remember when you... (insert another anecdote in which I did something weird.) ME: Go in the hall, Kayla. (Kayla stomps out.) 4. I have finally finished my scoping course! For those of you who, like me, have lived your lives not knowing what scoping is, it is a job where an individual takes the steno from a court reporter, translates it into English and corrects the punctuation and such before returning it and getting paid. Sure, it took longer than I was hoping and sure, I haven't made a red cent from it yet, but I HAVE FINISHED IT. Now to market myself. How can I say that without sounding like a hooker, I wonder? 5. I managed to go on a 5.2 mile hike without seriously injuring myself or the poor man who asked me to go with him. It's like this: I feel like I should have a dog. I feel like it's what happy, well-rounded people do. The only problem is, once I get a dog, I realize how happy I had been without one. That's what camping/hiking is like for me. I want to like camping. I want to have a closer relationship with nature, but then when I get out there, I realize how happy I had been keeping the relationship professional. 6. My children are healthy and happy. They fight. They seem to fight a lot. I'm counting down the days to when school starts again; however, I am assured by exhausted veterans who have been through this that it is normal and I will have retained a reasonable amount of my sanity by the time they are adults. 7. I am starting to feel like I am not riding the roller coaster from hell anymore. This is good. I'm not a fan.

Breath Mints

I went to a single's dance. My friends, there's a reason some of these people are still single. As I glanced around the room, I noticed a table, yes a WHOLE TABLE, full of different kinds of breath mints: York peppermint patties, LifeSavers, minty taffy...This was my first red flag. The next was when I was asked to dance by a shortish man in his mid-forties who prefers to pole dance to fast songs. If this is hard to picture, don't try. I have the image seared into my brain for eternity. As he told me about his man-crush on David Archuleta, suddenly he stopped talking and demanded to know why I was looking at him. Uh... I managed to escape to get a drink and every time I accidentally came near him and his giggling friend, he told me to stop stalking him.
The next man who asked me to dance was a dentist. He refused to dance, so I did a bit of a shuffle next to him. He was a spitter. He asked me if I was from Tennessee. I asked if I have an accent. He said, "No, you're the only ten I see," and gave a short, bark-y laugh. It took me a minute to realize that I was being given "a line," since I haven't been the lucky recipient of one of those babies since junior high. I managed to escape after he told me I have pretty teeth and offered to give me private skiing lessons.
Is that all, you ask? No. I had another fella tell me in detail why his three previous relationships had failed before I even knew his name. I was about to ask, but felt it was rude... "Uh-huh, that's too bad she was emotionally unavailable. What was your name again?"
I found myself waiting for a missionary couple to come in the room and inform us that they had been called to chaperone these dances for LDS delinquents/single people over thirty. The newsletter for this dance said 31+, which is a euphemism for 31-death. I saw an elderly gentleman in his eighties pushing his walker into the dance-hall. There HAS GOT to be a better way.
FYI: Older men have no problem asking women half their age to dance.