Stream of consciousness coupled with Twitter's character limits provides obvious challenges to what you are trying to convey as a writer. Twitter can be weird with archiving old content so I thought I would preserve it by importing it to this site. I also wanted to revisit some of the idea in what was described as an essay by some.
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*The tweets are italicized and indented.
My daughter is in Kindergarten. It's such an awesome age. She's a little sponge soaking up everything.
My other daughter is in Pre-school and will head to Kindergarten later this year. I felt very guilty that I failed to mention her.
What she soaks up now though is different from when she was 3 or 4. Now she's beginning to read what she learned to speak a short time ago.
We spell certain words out to cleverly mask adult content. She deciphered one of the words we spelled the other day. I don't know what Plan B is.
She had a spelling test today - only 3 words misspelled. I don't remember taking spelling tests in Kindergarten. It was only half day then.
Like I said, she can spell.
In addition to taking a spelling test she wore her pajamas to school today. I never got to do that. Her class watched Polar Express.
Fun.
They drank hot chocolate and made cookies and her class was filled with excited parents watching their kids genuinely enjoying school.
I should mention that it doesn't take hot chocolate and cookies and movies to make these kids genuinely enjoy school. They all have such fun regularly. They're in a great learning environment.
She just turned 6 so she's one of the older ones in her class. Her uncle is a giant. She looks like she may also have the giant gene.
She missed being a 1st grader by 3 days.
I'm a pretty big guy too but I tell ya, she's getting difficult to carry. She's growin'. But her classmates they're tiny. They're babies.
Maybe how I would have written it: She's growing. Fast. It's becoming a challenge to carry her but she's still a baby. And so are her classmates. Except they're tiny babies.
Her classmates don't have the giant gene and a good many are 6,7,8,9 months younger than her. They're tiny. Tiny little babies.
Innocent too.
Kids in Kindergarten aren't kids. They're babies. Her friends are the tiniest kids in the class. It's funny, cute, and wonderful.
It's cute to see her, the tallest kid in class, paired up with the shortest children. She looks like a big sister.
People talk about gun control. They don't really talk. They shout. They argue. They talk about conspiracies. They say a teacher needed a gun.
Too complex of an issue for twitter. But from the perspective of a teacher I regularly consider lock-down/school shooter scenarios. What will I do should the occasion arise? In that moment would I want a gun? Sure. But what about the 99.99999% of the time I will never need it yet still be carrying it in class? That's a considerable amount of potential danger I would bring to school on a daily basis. Do I carry it? Do I put it in my desk? Oh crap . . . I forgot it at school!
People talk about mental health too. There aren't mental health issues in my family so I don't know how poor services are for these people.
Far too complex of an issue for twitter. And I wish I wouldn't have said these people. They are not separate from people. People are a whole. Someone mentioned to me that he had a fantastic support system in place but still faced innumerable challenges because of how the service is provided when it is for a mental health impairment. Improving mental health services is likely the most important part of this equation.
There are more people on the planet so I guess it stands to reason that there would be more with mental health problems. Difficult to grasp.
. . .
Sometimes people talk about the breakdown of the family. When I see kids with issues there's almost always something going on at home.
. . .
Dad in prison. No dad at all. One parent working hard but leaving their kids to their own devices for extended periods of time.
I'm amazed at how full of cheer some kids are when I consider the traumas some of them have survived.
One thing I don't hear mentioned nearly enough is how young people are being desensitized to violence. Video Games/Movies/TV/Music/News.
I played war as a kid. I watched violent movies. I am still sensitive to the horrible things I see in this world. I don't know.
Here's an example of being desensitized to violence, using my wife instead of a young person. That sounds bad. My wife IS young & beautiful.
And very sensitive.
She's one of the most compassionate people I know. But we can watch an episode of Dexter and she doesn't bat an eye at the violence . . .
Dexter is crazy. I love that show.
But if she sees a show featuring violence towards cat or dog or any other animal there are audible groans. She's shaken by it.
The wife says I threw her under the bus with what I wrote here. It was not my intent.
But she's not shaken by the violence against humans. Most of us aren't.
. . .
Kids 25 and younger have grown up with a lot more violent content than I did. I don't know if that's the problem. Part of it though? Maybe.
Video games are crazy today. They're awesome but crazy. And many of the most popular (Call of Duty series) are rife with killing.
There's never one thing that explains it all though.
. . .
I was supposed to go to my Xmas work party today. But I didn't. I bailed. I left work as quick as I could and jetted to my daughter's school.
Both of my daughters.
I stood outside her classroom door with a group of other parents and I waited. And out she came. With a smile. In her pajamas.
Pick your child up from elementary school. It's awesome.
And still is.I wiped away my tears. And I smiled. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.
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