Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS page 481

[Owly]

Dork. Am not.

Now now, kids, you can both be dorks.

Which is, of course, why I think you are both awesome.

[spughy]

Did anyone watch this week's Hoarders and the Battle Over The Rock?!?

Fight! Fight!! Fight!!!

The hoarder could not bear to part with a rock.

I do not watch Hoarders because it gives me heebie-jeebies and nightmares. But I can certainly believe hoarding rocks. I helped my mom downsize her place last spring and found many, many bags of rocks all over the place. They all belonged to my sister, who had worked in geology and archaeology camps for much of her university career, and these rocks somehow reminded her of the good times spent hanging out in gravel pits with a gazillion mosquitoes, stinky unwashed scientists and only a satellite phone for entertainment. My other sister and I took to referring to the bags of rocks as "More F*cking Rocks". Then on the last day of cleaning stuff out, we found a box, covered in 20 or so years of dust, at the back of a shelf in the laundry room. We opened it. It contained yet more f*cking rocks. This one, however, held a small slip of paper with guesses as to the mineralogical content of the rocks. The paper, however, was in our MOTHER'S handwriting.

We knew, then, that the propensity to hoard rocks is genetic. And we were frightened for our offspring. No more trips to the Scratch Patch for my kid.

[winencandy]

Um, when I moved last month...
I moved 10 rocks

[naiadknight]

Erm... if you include my spirit rock pile, we moved 12 rocks, 14 if you count the carved marble mortar pestle set. It may have grown sice then.

[Sigi]

I have a collection of dozens of little polished rocks, ores and gemstones scattered around my house ... am I cool enough to join the rock-hoarding-dork club?

[Gay Panda]

Rock collectors are everywhere!!!

The saddest part of the episode was the teenaged daughter who was, in essence, saying Mom, please pick me over the rock. And Mom picked the rock.

[Gay Panda]

PART THREE: While I have been able to bring many stories to successful conclusions, despite what Mother Panda said, I feel like I will never be able to do the same with my weight.

I’m in one of those emotional states where I feel if I try, I don’t win, and if I don’t try, I don’t win. It was a common feeling when I was a cub with two very slightly unbalanced parents. Maybe you grew up in an eggshell home of your own, where your every step cracked something, and your voice had to be an echo or further breakage occurred. And then as a young adult, instead of turning your face to the world, you are still looking inwards trying to figure out which parts of you are you and which parts of you are echoes. There was no way to win in my cubhood home, and eventually I walked away. The echoes followed, and though many years have passed, I am still parsing them from myself.

The feeling of heads you win tails I lose persisted as an adult in work, as it does for many. If I tried, I didn’t win. If I didn’t try, I didn’t win. I felt like that as a lifeguard at Spiffy Slides when a four-year-old boy came down a slide at the far end of the pool and went under. He wore no life jacket and he couldn’t swim, and the frothing currents sucked him under without so much as a peep of a cry. I threw myself into the water to find him, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw another four-year-old boy come down a slide at the other far end of the pool and go under. Neither of them even flailed. They were just gone, and I was the only lifeguard stationed there. No other lifeguards were in whistle range. It was one of the worst moments of my life, searching blindly for the first boy in the raging waters and knowing that I couldn’t do anything for the second. Later, I called my boss and requested a second lifeguard in the area, because the four flumes dumping into this pool were sending down people so fast that it was becoming dangerous. He told me to suck it up. I quit at the end of the summer, and when they called to ask me back, I said no.*****

I felt like that as a teacher. If you had a bad classroom, you were chastised. If you had a good classroom, you were praised. And then the principal dumped every problem case she had in your room because it was so wonderful, and your good classroom turned into a bad one. You could not win. The summer program I taught was five weeks of terror, because she dumped even more students in my room and the violence was growing out of control. The only solution was for me to split my class into thirds with the two freshly hired aides I had been given, who had never before worked with high needs children. You take this group of kids out to the playground. You take that group of kids to our fenced sensory area. I will keep the last group inside, and we will rotate positions. This was the only way I could stop my students from assaulting one another and being assaulted, by keeping them in three smaller groups in different places on campus. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel every morning as I drove to school, mentally maneuvering students around and working out how to keep my gentle, speaks-only-in-echolalia-of-cartoons autistic boy by my side at all times. Not being able to say Billy hit me makes one a target.

I left teaching. It made me ill. Had the principal taken it into her head to transfer a fire-setter, or a student with a history of committing sexual assaults, you would have seen my class in the news and my name as the incompetent teacher. Watching my gentle boy get punched twice and sob my name is Spongebob Squarepants broke me for the work, as did several other similar instances. I could not keep him safe. I could not keep any of them safe, because there were simply too many. There was no way to be successful.

[DinoHunter]

Because Pandas need a bit of cheering up to...


FIFTY SHADES OF GREY - (a husbands point of view)

The missus bought a Paperback
down Shepton, Saturday,
I had a look inside her bag;


......T'was "fifty shades of grey".

Well I just left her to it,
And at ten I went to bed.
An hour later she appeared;

The sight filled me with dread…..

In her left she held a rope;
And in her right a whip!
She threw them down upon the floor,
And then began to strip.

Well fifty years or so ago;
I might have had a peek;
But Mabel hasn't weathered well;
She's eighty four next week!!

Watching Mabel bump and grind;
Could not have been much grimmer.
And things then went from bad to worse;
She toppled off her Zimmer!

She struggled back upon her feet;
A couple minutes later;
She put her teeth back in and said
I must dominate !!

Now if you knew our Mabel,
You'd see just why I spluttered,
I'd spent two months in traction
For the last complaint I'd uttered.

She stood there nude and naked
Bent forward just a bit
I went to hold her, sensual like
and stood on her left tit!

Mabel screamed, her teeth shot out;
My god what had I done!?
She moaned and groaned then shouted out:
"Step on the other one"!!

Well readers, I can't tell no more;
About what occurred that day.
Suffice to say my jet black hair,
Turned fifty shades of Grey

[Gay Panda]

UPDATE: (in explanation of *****)

****** Someone did drown at this park in the years before I worked there, and it was blamed on a careless lifeguard. After my experience there, I’m more inclined to blame the amusement park. Under-staffing in hospitals, classrooms, and pools is asking for disaster.

PART IV MONDAY

[naiadknight]

GP-
I was the kid in an eggshell household. Sucked like hell. I'm still trying to figure out what's me and what's them; I think I always will be. Until that magic day arrives, I just keep plunging ahead and hoping.