Paragraph

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paragraph illustration from grammarly
image via Grammarly

So I work with young learners quite often right now (see also: snotty commentary and explosive questions), and I was recently reminded by one of them that when the brain is assimilating new information, it does so by trying to integrate the new information with already-known/understood things.

To wit:

We have been learning digraphs (ph sounds like /f/ for example) in writing. Digraphs.

So on a mid-year reading assessment (we’re halfway through the school year — huzzah!), the following exchange took place:

Kid (pointing to his screen): Mrs F, I don’t understand what this is telling me to do.

Me: Okay, read the sentence out loud to me.

Kid: It says, “Read the paragraph.”

Me: Right. So that’s what you do.

Kid: But I don’t know what a paragraph is! I know what a digraph is, but I don’t know what a paragraph is! How do I know which part to read?

.

.

.

.

.

Me: How about if you just read the whole thing and then do your best to answer the questions?

Kid: But that’s so much WORK. It says to read the paragraph. I just want to read the paragraph.

The whole thing is just one paragraph.

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{in}Completely Ridiculous

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“Sometimes,” he says as he’s backing out of the driveway, “I smell…”

His pause is long enough that I consider his statement on its own.

“Sometimes you smell?! Sometimes???”

Baaaa-haaa-ha-ha-ha!

I can’t help it. This is hilarious to me.

“I have been with you for twenty years, Smotch. I concur. Definitely, sometimes you smell.”

He lets me have my moment. We are, after all, VERY married. The stinky-ness of Smotch has been a Fact of Life for a long time now. Forgotten wet socks in the trunk of my car (“Oh THAT’S where I put those when I changed out of my waterlogged togs!”), hours worth of yard-work sweat build-up hovering close to my nose when we finish the garden (“When we’re done here, we DEFINITELY need to shower!”), and bodily functions too terrible to describe.

Yes. Sometimes he smells.

His point, however, had to be further expounded on. Something about ‘incomplete thought’ and mutterings about ‘need to finish what I was saying’ accompanied a more expansively worded, “Sometimes I smell something electrical burning.” Which, of course, is not a cause for laughter.

But still.

Sometimes he smells.

And later that day:

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No Fear

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No Fear in black handwriting on blue background, via Unsplash
image via Unsplash!

“What are you afraid of?”

As questions go, it’s not a bad one. It was couched, however, as “Other than something happening to Smotch… What are you afraid of?”

Which just did NOT work for me.

Because {a} I married Smotch knowing that he had a life-threatening medical condition1, so it makes no sense that I’d be afraid of ‘something happening’ to him because ‘something’ had been happening to him for the entire duration of our relationship, and {b} ‘something’ in those kinds of euphemistic statements usually means ‘death’, which is not something I happen to be afraid of.

So my initial reaction to that question was, “You really don’t know me AT ALL, do you?”

(I was nice enough not to say that at the time in response to the person who asked. But we *did* have a conversation about making assumptions.)

I don’t really remember what my response was beyond that, at the time.

I *do* think about Fear, though. In a conscious, analytical way. And I wonder what I’m afraid of.

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Thou Shalt Not F*ck (and other lessons I learned from my mother about sex)

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image borrowed from Pinterest

Conflicting Messages

I don’t think I’m alone in having received conflicting messages about sex as a kid. Neither do I think I’m alone in having consciously chosen to go my own way, despite the (conflicting) expectations that were laid out before me. Within my own family, however, I seem to be alone in choosing to analyze the examples that were set for me and consciously choose NOT to follow them.

This applies to a lot of things: how I utilize money, what I choose to spend my time and energy doing (both for work and for leisure), which sociocultural viewpoints I align myself with, etc.

But one thing that it definitely applies to is sex.

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