Dawn and I have started going to elementary schools.
Professionals have been coming to high schools for years in order to scare the crap out of kids with stories of reefer madness and meth-mouth. A part of my life is consumed with crack pipes and Fentanyl overdoses and I get to be the one who now is commissioned to inflict that on your kids. If you read here often you can imagine how that went down. This was not your mother’s “Don’t do drugs!” and we never mentioned “just say no”. I live in the real world.
It is only in this year, 2015, that the world around here is waking up to the sick reality that drug and alcohol education, as well as impulse control in general, needs to be taught to kids in Grade 6 and 7. Unfortunately they really need to be taught in Grade 4 but we’ll get there eventually; right when we need to be in Grade 2.
So here we were, hanging out with forty or better Grade 6 and 7’s on this hot afternoon. We did our thing and the kids seemed to gel with the experience. This doesn’t always happen; you should have seen the 2 pm class last week. On this particular occasion, however, there were numerous great questions and a few brilliant comments. One little guy was among the keeners; and when he opened his mouth that one time, it was pure genius.
I didn’t know that if you call 911 and ask to order a pizza they will respond with, “Are you in trouble?” They have been trained to negotiate the strange and the sublime. If you call and whisper, “Hi Steve, this is Scott” they will calmly inquire, “Are you in trouble?”. You can begin to understand why. If you are a wife who is trying to escape getting your ass kicked for the hundredth time, it may not be convenient when your husband comes in the room while you are trying to call the police. It is going to take them 20 minutes to get there and you only have one jaw. It is brilliant in its simplicity.
That little kid taught me something today. You may have known this all your life and think I’ve been raised in a cabbage patch; but for some reason I was never given this information.
I just thought you should know.
scott-williams.ca 