Going To The Theater? Don't Forget Your Manners!

Posted on by July 17, 2010
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Mamacita says:  I am so tired of shelling out money to watch a movie in a theater, only to have my (and everyone else’s, too) good time ruined by loud, wiggly, rude, mannerless, slurping  boors. Not just bratty kids, either. These tactless types come in all ages. Old women are some of the worst, in fact.  Talk, talk, talk, all through the film.


Anyone who disagrees with Val in this typically awesome Stone Soup cartoon is welcome to defend his/her really poor manners right here. Go on, explain to us why your loud, crackling packages of chips that you open AFTER the movie starts are justifiable.  Enlighten us about your desperate need to slurp down a four-course meal in a movie theater.  Tell us why you have a right to crunch that ice.  Be sure to arrive late so you have to sit in the middle, and then disturb everyone every fifteen minutes because you have to go to the bathroom.  Wear your biggest hat and don’t remove it.  Keep that iPod plugged into your ear and be sure the volume is up so high the people near you can’t tell the difference between it and the movie soundtrack.  Oh, and by all means keep your cell phone on; you might get an important call which you will no doubt answer with “Oh, nothing; what are YOU doing?”  Come on, try it. Tell us why you are entitled to behave in any way you choose in a public theater. We’re waiting.

If theaters brought back those uniformed ushers who threw out everybody who so much as wiggled too much during the movie, I’d pay extra to go to that theater.

So now, tell me why you think you have a right to talk, move around, eat like a slopping hog, check your email, block people’s view of the screen with your way cool chapeau, crunch your ice until people think they’re trapped in a cave during an avalanche, prop your feet on the back of the seat in front of you, and holler at the actors.  Come one, explain yourself.  If you’ve got something other than “Because I am a hog,” I want to hear it.

I didn’t think you could.

Everyone who agrees say ‘aye!’

The theater is not your living room.  When you enter the theater and the lights go out, your mouth should zip itself shut and not open again until the lights come back up.  You may leave room to insert a straw but the second you slurp, you lose that privilege, too.

The general public has no right to dictate your loud, slaphappy, wiggily, pizza-inhaling ways in your home, but the theater is not your home.  It’s a public place, and in a public place, nice people behave themselves.

Period.

What’s that?  You paid for your ticket?  Guess what; so did the rest of us.  Shut up and behave yourself.

Theaters, for the love of all that is holy, raise the ticket price a buck and hire ushers.  The meaner the better.  You might lost a few customers, but believe me, none of the rest of us will miss that kind, and if you guarantee that those people won’t be there, the rest of us will come back, again and again.  And we won’t leave the disgraceful horrendous mess all over the floor and seats that those people leave, either.  Think of the savings there.

Not to mention the positive word-of-mouth marketing that no amount of money could buy.

Please?

P.S.  If your bladder is small, get there in time to find a seat on the aisle.  The universe thanks you.

Freeeeeeedommmmmm. . . . .

Posted on by July 13, 2010
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Mamacita says:  I posted this in 2006, but I’ve been thinking about this same thing all day so here it is again.

My blog, my rules.  What up, dawggggg?

I admit it: too much Scrubs.

Here’s the post:

Is anyone else out there lucky enough to have a job that makes you so happy that all you have to do is walk into the building and you feel the positive vibes? My days seem so short now; most days I feel as though I’ve just begun, and bingo, it’s time to go to bed again.

I get tired, yes. I am exhausted, usually, by the end of the day. But even so, I love this teaching gig with a passion I didn’t even know I was still capable of after enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous public school dealings for so long.

I think that after so long in the school systems of our country, the teachers who stay evolve a mindset that is almost enslavement. We endure schedules and treatment that no other professional would dream of enduring. We allow ourselves to be used and misused and overworked, all in the name of love for our students. What other professionals have a clientele that pretty much expects to be supported, fed, dressed, taught, and catered to in every possible way, without showing the least bit of gratitude?

We get so used to it, we don’t even realize that there is another world out there, where people show each other respect.

We really do love the students, don’t get me wrong. But year after year in a public school kind of makes a teacher numb to any other possibility that might be out there for a person with these talents. Every year it gets worse and worse, even while we are thinking and saying things like “Next year it will be better.”

But it never is.

Next year, the classrooms are more overcrowded, there are fewer books, there are more dysfunctional families who seem to be in charge of the system, there are more duties, there are more responsibilities, there are more problems, there are more “incidents,” and there is less and less support. There is no respite. There is no discipline. The teacher’s union here stands idly by and allows a principal to schedule a teacher to the point that there isn’t even time in the course of the day to blow her nose. I am not exaggerating, either. The contract guarantees some prep time daily? We’ll count walking down the hall to fetch yet another class as break-time. We’ll count your driving time, from building to building, as your lunch. Ask any music teacher if I’m stretching the truth.

Yes, every year it’s worse. And a teacher doesn’t really know how bad it is, until that teacher walks out and tries something new.

Me, for instance.

And now, I teach every day in a building full of wonderful hardworking students and smiling administrators and friendly janitors and awesome bosses who TALK TO US AS THOUGH WE WERE EQUALS (instead of slaves) and the building resounds with humor and happiness and dedication.

Heck, even the restrooms here are superior. And there is ALWAYS toilet paper!!!!! The halls and classrooms are clean and well-maintained. Everyone behaves properly.

The sad and odd thing is, I did not know how bad it actually was until I left the public schools. While I was there, I was the most loyal and hardworking and dedicated person in the building. Sure, the days seems awfully long, and sometimes the despair and frustration were so thick one could cut it with a knife, but it was my obsession, to somehow be a positive force in this not-very-positive place. I came to school at 7:00; I got home around 6:00. I was determined to make a difference, a positive difference.

But, but, there was no appreciation. There was only the expectation that if I could do that, I should be doing even more.

I couldn’t keep on.

But now? I feel positive every day. I love coming to school. All I have to do is walk into this building and I am instantly wide-awake and happy.

Sure, there are some, um, “interesting” students here, but MOST of them are pure quality.

I still work the long hours. But I am appreciated, and treated like the professional I’d forgotten I was, all those years.

And now, I truly believe I am helping to make a positive difference. I can see it. I can hear it.

Scheisse, I love my job.

The really ironic thing is that in spite of all the negative things about the public schools, I still believe that this nation’s schools are the hope of our future. There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.

It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.

Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .

What happened to us as a people, as a culture, as a nation, that our idea of ‘school’ has sunk to the level of equating success with a number on a piece of paper?

I do tend to rant, don’t I. My apologies.

I miss what my former job might have been, in a perfect world.

But oh golly, I do love my job now!!!!

Making the Grade. . . .

Posted on by July 11, 2010
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Mamacita says:  I hate to admit this, but this was my attitude about my kids’ grades, kind of. . . .

Factor in individuality, talent, brains, work habits, etc, and you can’t help but have a set of expectations, and expectations should be met.

I know that there are exceptions to this and most other things, but I honestly believe that every kid should do his/her best, because NOT to do so just isn’t good enough, no-allowance-today-boy.

Of course, I also believe that a good parent knows what’s going on in his/her kids’ classrooms, too. That is, we should be aware that our kids, this grading period, are studying about the Revolutionary War, reading “The Giver,” writing little newspapers about things that happened in 1774, making recipe books with directions for preparing foods that the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) might have eaten, researching which Nation was already here and where they were forced to relocate and how do you feel about that, studying 50 words and their unique rules and exceptions to those rules, learning all about Peer Gynt and how to at least hum a few of the more popular melodies, and how to deal with fractions in everyday life (see recipe book assignment, above.)

And now I wish I were back in the fourth grade, doing just such things. Sigh.

Of course, nowadays there isn’t much time for creative assignments because the teachers are forced to use the time they might have utilized for such, to review and prepare for the almighty standardized test.

Personally? I believe that tests are sometimes necessary and occasionally important, but I also believe that the questions should pertain to “things every fourth-grader should know based on the available books and the creativity of the teachers,” not “things that are being pounded into every fourth-grader’s head starting three weeks before the Test because some old guys in the State Department who were influenced by a book salesman said so.” In other words, give each child a test based on standard fourth-grade curriculum. It would better benefit the child, and it would also better tell which children were at grade level, not that grade level is even the real goal.

As a child, I was always six or seven grade levels above the rest in anything regarding reading, writing, spelling, grammar, history, etc, but down in the depths of second grade remediation in math.

Guess what. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now.

In ten years, whatever your child scores on that test won’t mean anything, either.

What are those tests, anyway? They are tests put together by people who haven’t been in a classroom for years, if ever. It’s a test that is embraced by textbook publishers and salesmen, in hopes that the inevitable low scores will inspire schools to purchase THEIR books, because the new books all have individual State Standards written right in them and golly gee whiz, if the school buys OUR books, the students will do much better on those tests.

Eh, I’m rambling again. I really despise a school system that puts such emphasis on one test score that it ignores or neglects the really important part of a child’s education, to wit, the learning of things that will enable the child to better take care of himself/herself and others as an adult, to appreciate and love the writings and pictures and history of those who came before, to understand and appreciate music and art, and to be a part of a little community in which every child has an important role. Our students these days don’t understand how one vote can make or break an entire government. Some students don’t even know anyone who votes.

For some of our students, the teachers are the only adults they know who work for a living.

Many homeschoolers are turning out children with superior educations and abilities, and many are simply teaching their children that isolation from ‘other’ people is better and that it’s nobody’s business if you are fifteen and still don’t want to try to learn to read yet but be careful because if you raise the curtains, big government will SEE what we’re doing, or not doing, and try to interfere and make you LEARN to read so you can be JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER CLONES.

Sometimes it seems like a losing battle, and yet, these are our children, the hope of our nation, and we have to keep trying.

After a certain age, I do not believe that blaming one’s shortcomings on one’s background or family is a viable argument. Ultimately, each person must stand on his/her own feet and walk out into the sunshine and shadow of life and do it all alone. We must not send our children out there unprepared, and yet, what do we do when the families support their children in their desire to NOT work at it?

I keep saying this but here it is again: There are certain skills that intelligent persons simply must have, at certain ages. When one becomes a self-sustaining adult, (which status of course many ‘adults’ never attain because their families and they themselves allowed them to go through school without doing or learning anything!!!) (My SELF ESTEEM!!!!!!) a decent person will be armed with skills, marketable skills, with which to earn one’s own living.

To allow any person to leave any kind of school without these skills is a crime. And a high school diploma given to any person without these skills is a joke.

If your child is 27 and still isn’t interested in learning to read and is still playing video games all day and still hasn’t learned to write and doesn’t know how to spell or reason. . . . well, I guess you all know my opinion of your child. And of you. And yes, it does become my business after a certain point because my tax dollars will be supporting your bum kid.

I worry about us as a society, I really do.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Posted on by July 7, 2010
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Mamacita says:  Regarding any educator at any level, in any capacity, and in any kind of economic region, who is not making an effort to be extremely computer-savvy. . . . shame on you.

I know first-hand what kind of travesties can occur when an administrator doesn’t know anything about a computer, and I think it’s disgraceful to be in this business and not know what the students have known for years, even the tiny ones. It would be difficult to respect an “educator” who was, himself/herself, not educated in the very necessary “today” and “tomorrow” skill of simple computer literacy. Holy scheisse, what are some of these people THINKING?

They’re NOT thinking; they’re quite content to keep on doing what they’ve always done, in the way they’ve always done it.  That’s the problem.  The world has changed and they have not.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” –Alvin Toffler

“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” –Albert Einstein

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.” –Charlotte Bronte

“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” –Eric Hoffer

“There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies.” –Henry Ward Beecher

“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.” –Maria Montessori

“Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” –Roger Lewin

“The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.” –Simone Weil

Oh, and by the way, don’t try to use the excuse that you’re “too old to learn new tricks.” If that is really true, get out of our schools NOW. You are no longer needed there.

I Agree With Aristotle.

Posted on by July 3, 2010
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Mamacita says:  There are many things that are wrong with and in this country – many, many things. Open a newspaper, watch television, listen to the radio, surf around the blogosphere, pretty much all we hear about are the things that are wrong.

We SHOULD be hearing about them, too; if we don’t hear about them, we can’t work to make them right. One of the many things this country does do right is allow its citizens to talk about what it does wrong.

Making wrong things right is what we do here. It’s what this country was founded for. We’d still be a British colony if it wasn’t important for us to work hard to make wrong things right.

Any time more than four people get together for anything, one of them is going to want to do wrong. The other three have to help that one wrong person do right, but it actually goes deeper than that.

It has, sadly, become the responsibility of the other three to help that one person WANT to do right. Doing anything without understanding, and against one’s will, isn’t progress of any kind; doing anything without understanding, and against one’s will, is a kind of slavery. Uneducated people sometimes have to be dealt with in this way, and that is a shame, and that is also entirely their own fault.  Everyone has access to education in this country. Some schools are better than others, but any of them will at least teach a child to read if that child lets it. and whether or not a child lets it is the responsibility of the child and the child’s family. A family that does not allow the school to teach its child to read is a bad, bad family.

This country has always valued education as the means to promote the understanding that would help a person realize that. It used to work, too, until education was forced to include things that the family unit is supposed to teach and provide, as well. We are fast becoming a welfare state, and that is a definite downgrade from being an education state.

And why is the family unit not providing and teaching what it’s supposed to provide and teach, these days? Most family still are, but many families prefer to mooch off the government rolls. They have chosen to give up their independence and become the permanent poor relations, supported by those citizens who do still work. This was supposed to be a temporary fix, and people are supposed to be just a little big ashamed of being in this position. Welfare is supposed to be a somewhat embarrassing short-term episode in a person’s life, preceding a wage-earning job and giving a worker some income while he/she is seeking full-time work. We’ve removed all the embarrassment in the name of self esteem, and that was a mistake.

But you really don’t want to get me started about the self-esteem movement. I consider it to be like most other movements: full of the same sort of fecal matter.

Every day, more and more people join the welfare rolls, and for many it’s not the temporary helping hand it was meant to be. For many, it’s now a way of life. Some people believe that the welfare way is a right, and other people SHOULD be supporting them, sometimes forever. This was not the intention of welfare. It was intended to be temporary. It was never meant to be permanent.

An uneducated, or undereducated population is a dangerous thing. It quickly becomes a parasite, not an asset, sucking the lifeblood out of resources that really ought to be aimed elsewhere.

Ronald Reagan, who was not perfect, but then, neither are any of us, said “We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.”  In this, he  was right.

This country was founded by hard workers. This country has, as one of its foundations, education for the masses. It’s there, for free, for anybody who lives here to take full advantage of. To become an adult in this country and still not know how to read and write and support oneself is a disgrace, and that disgrace is not the country’s disgrace; it is a personal disgrace. In other words, if you do/did not take advantage of the opportunity to go to school; if you let yourself grow up without acquiring a single useful skill; if you allowed yourself to become an adult and did not learn how to support yourself, shame on you. I can’t think of a worse epithet for you than that. I know that shame is now politically incorrect, but that’s ridiculous, as are most political correctness attempts. Without shame, many people will never make themselves get up, walk out the door, and start earning their living themselves. Parasites are ugly. Parasites add nothing; they only subtract. Parasites destroy beauty. Parasites steal from others to enhance themselves without effort.

Those who are able-bodied and able to work, should work, for to take charity when one is fully able to do without it is a shameful thing. NO job is too menial if you don’t have one. No job is too menial if one is truly determined to do what is right. And what is right is to support oneself and any dependents one has acquired along the way.

Some of our immigrant ancestors were doctors and lawyers and professors back in the old country; they came here and took jobs as janitors and scrubwomen so their children could have the benefits this country offered. And since their children learned to speak the language, their job horizons were brighter than those of their parents. It is still so, today. Those who are educated have more options. They deserve more, too.

People who choose to take charity when they are perfectly capable of getting up and getting a job are to be despised for the societal leeches that that are. For every adult who uses welfare money to buy cigarettes, there is a little child somewhere NOT getting milk because there wasn’t any more money. The degradation of these adults is earned, of their own free will and decisions, and they deserve every bit of the disgust they receive.

The people who are the true citizens of this country, the true patriots, are those who made sure they had marketable skills and the ability to read, write, and generally take care of themselves and of others.

There are many people living here who claim to hate this country, and who work to bring it further down. There are people living here who rejoice in the streets when bad things happen to this country. I suggest that these people leave and leave now, and live elsewhere and see if any other country would put up with their whines and violence and gleeful reactions when others get hurt.

Those who insist on living here, yet reject the education, the opportunities for supporting themselves, and who feel justified in spending other people’s hard-earned money, are not the true Americans. They are parasites, and they are killing the rest of us.

Yes, this country has many faults. I defy anyone to name any other country that would put up with some of yours, or mine.

Freedom. Independence. Education for the masses. Rights. Responsibilities.

That is what we are. Take advantage of these things, if you have the guts and the brains and the heart and the decency. Ignore them if you don’t. That’s the freedom part.

Understand, though, that the hardworking educated population is getting very tired of supporting those who choose not to work, choose not to be educated, and choose not to behave themselves properly. We are also very tired of supporting anyone who does not understand that the right to swing his fist ends where the other person’s nose begins.

And those who claim their rights had better be prepared to stand up to their responsibilities as well. You can’t have one without the other, and keep either for long.

This country has learned many lessons: slavery is gone, discrimination is legally gone, although many people still have some lessons to learn (EDUCATION! DECENT FAMILIES!) Europeans came here to an already populated country and took over, without regard for people who had lived here for hundreds of years and already had well-established civilizations. Think how you would feel if aliens landed in spaceships and took over this country, completely disregarding your prior claim to your home and demanding that you leave immediately so they might build their culture on top of yours, and labeling and treating you as some kind of violent savage if you protested and tried to defend your property?

The point is – and I do tend to ramble late at night and other times as well – we made, and make, mistakes. Big ones. We must use our education to help right those wrongs, and help the nation aim for other and better goals. Learning from the past is what educated people do; dwelling on the past, not so much.

Aristotle said, “Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men, as the living are to the dead.” He was right.

Those who care only about themselves are not much good in any other circumstance. People who become accustomed to getting something for nothing become pretty much useless, too.

We must all get up, get to work, get cracking, get learning, get smarter every day. When we stop learning, they might as well bury us, as Lucy Maude Montgomery once said. (Quick! What did she write?)

Nowhere in the world is there any other country as free as ours. Nowhere else can everybody be educated. Nowhere else can we all go where we want, when we want, wear what we want, say what we want. . . .

In some countries, even if you have the money you still can’t have some things or go some places; it’s all about social levels.

If I said we didn’t have social levels here, it would be a joke because everybody knows that we do, even though we’re not supposed to. But here, our social levels are pretty much determined and evaluated by our education and behavior, not who your daddy was, or wasn’t.

In this country, we have equality of opportunity. If you think we don’t, you aren’t looking hard enough. Opportunity does knock, but you have to be smart enough to answer the door when it does, and to recognize it for what it is when you see it. That’s the education part.

Edison nailed it when he said that “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ”

Everybody gripes about the state of the nation. You do; I do; everybody does. There’s a lot to gripe about. But I honestly believe that there is even more to rejoice about, and to be grateful for, and to appreciate.

If everybody swept their own front steps, the whole world would be clean.

I don’t mind loaning someone my broom, but I do expect him/her to do his/her own sweeping.

I’m glad I live here. I’m glad you do, too.

But it is a crying shame that so many people don’t do their fair share and expect us to do it for them. Sweep your own steps. It’s not rocket science.

Have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day. Watch out for aliens; they shoot to kill. I seen it in a movie oncet, with Will Smith. It were cul.

July 4 Weekend Is Here!

Posted on by July 2, 2010
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Mamacita says:  Sunday is Independence Day! And, if you do not believe in that, then, Sunday is the Fourth of July.

Deny it if you will, but you will be wrong. You have a fourth of July. Everybody has a fourth of July. It’s right there between the third and the fifth, so none of your lip now. If you live here, this country’s history is now your history, too.

When our kids were younger, we used to use our deck as a launching pad for bottle rockets. Well, the actual launching pad was a pop bottle, but who can find those any more? Now, we just jam the rocket between the cracks in the deck boards, light it, and stand back. Our deck is covered with black burn marks, but I kind of like that. It makes me remember happy summers with small children.

Oh, hush. We watched them carefully.

When the kids were older, we used to set off the big stuff in the back yard while the children sat safely on that same deck, watching. But I won’t go there in case there are any of those prissy types reading.

Our sidewalk is covered with black spots, too. That’s where we set off the coiling snakes. I’m still kind of partial to those. I like to look at the sidewalk spots, too, because they make me remember those giggling little kids, watching the coiling black snakes with big laughing eyes. The kids, not the snakes.

Nothing perfect can be truly beautiful. I’d rather have my spotty sidewalks and the memories than a pristine landscaped lawn. Good thing, too, since our grass is over a foot high in places the regular mower can’t go. The tractor’s in the shop.