Wildly Out of Date

Hmmm, I'm not writing much, am I?

Not much new on the gender front. I broke out the shorts last weekend for the first time. Almost immediately, the missus whispered to me, wondering if I should be revealing my bare legs. I proceeded to show her the six weeks of growth which is quite visible on my legs (especially to me!). She said that she hadn't realized. Within five minutes, I was feeling so self-conscious that I changed into long pants. She then said that it was okay, and I didn't need to do that, but the mental ship had sailed for me.

She was actually apologetic about it at bedtime, that night and the next. She sensed that I had my feelings hurt to some degree, and she was right. If I'm going to have to grow this hair for her, she should at least notice it. It seems that she had been sensing the smoothness of my half-calf(tm) epilating. We talked some about my bald shins, bald since my teen years with no outside help. She accepted that this phenomenon must have been what she mistook for bare legs. Her apology was welcome and helpful.

On a very different front, I have been battling the urge to send a nastygram to my boy's private school. He was having a lot of trouble learning the European countries. We bought an up-to-date atlas, and found a good website that would quiz him. We worked on it for several weeks. So, he took his test last Monday, and we learned some surprising information. It seems that their materials are a bit antiquated, yet being presented as current. Yes, he was expected to know about Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and East Germany and the Soviet Union!

Some of you already know my intense interest in geography and history. To say that I was appalled would be understating it. If they had been studying the Cold War, this could have been presented as historical geography, but it has no more relevance to the present day than Prussia or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially to a twelve-year-old.

My boy would have had a much easier time memorizing the Europe of 1987, as it had about twenty fewer nations to identify. I am sorely tempted to ask for a month's tuition to be refunded. We have spent an enormous amount of money on this school over the last dozen or so years. My middle child also corroborated the story, as we learned that she had used the same materials when she was in the sixth grade. Grrrrr! The school has lost a lot of credibility with me, needless to say.

After a week of ruminating, the sarcasm has diminished. I feel that I can now write a fairly civil email to the teacher, expressing disappointment instead of outrage. I think that it does need to be said, and I need to insist that they invest some of their dollars in some modern geographic materials. I mean, really!