I’ve never told anyone this before, but it’s about time I came clean. In high school history class, I cheated on the test that involved listing the presidents and vice presidents in order.
Mr. Warner, I’ll have you know, that I feel no shame in this. I see no practical reason why you wanted me to know that stuff to begin with. I’ve been out of high school for 20 years, and I’ve never once needed to list the presidents along with their vice presidents. I’ve also never once needed to spout off the state capitals.
And Mr. Sinclair, I’ve never once been asked to recite “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from Macbeth. Not a once.
While the knowledge of precisely how to light a Bunsen burner with a piece of flint probably benefitted some hairy, cave dwelling student many, many years ago, it certainly didn’t help me. I’ll have you know, Mr. Parlett, that there are these things called lighters. They even have these nice little wands that you can click, and out comes a flame.
I can’t say that my dissection skills ever came in handy, either. Perhaps seeing the insides of a frog, cricket, and starfish has better prepared me for the various pieces of road kill I’ve encountered. I’m not sure.
Learning to use the jigsaw did nothing for me either, and the algebra, geometry, and calculus? There’s this thing called a calculator. And, when that doesn’t work, there’s always my cousin, the actuarian who works for the Census Bureau. If I don’t know how to do a particular equation, I email it to him, and he emails me back the answer. Problem solved.
In lieu of all of that, I really wish you had made me memorize:
• The correct dosage of Tylenol to give to a child, broken down by age and body weight
• The car seat positioning schedule (rear facing, forward facing, booster, no seat required), again broken down by age and body weight
• The immunization and well child visit schedule
• The infant food introduction schedule (Do vegetables come before fruits or the other way around? Do green foods come before orange?)
• The Ferberizing schedule: Was I supposed to wait two minutes before checking on my screaming child? Or was it 5?
I also wish you had taught me:
• How to swaddle a baby correctly, so the swaddling does not unravel and a) cause the baby to wake b) cover the baby’s head and cause the baby to die from suffocation
• The best way to clean baby vomit off my shirt while inside a grocery store bathroom
• How to stay calm and collected when my toddler is grumpy and takes to whining and ordering me around for an entire day
• How to locate the other shoe or the other sock that I can never seem to find
• How to cook dinner and play with my child at the same time, without burning down the house
• How to get through a grocery store without spending $100 on all of the items my toddler declares she “needs”
Copyright 2008 Project Happily Ever After
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
“• The correct dosage of Tylenol to give to a child, broken down by age and body weight”
There’s a formula for it. 7mg/lb of child, so 7mg*weight of child in pounds. We teach you how to do formulaic math not so you can impress us, but so you can be comfortable using formulas all the time, rather than needing to memorize a chart. We also have you do research papers so that you can be comfortable using reference works and other research skills. We have you do dissections in order to learn anatomy, but I have to admit that as much as I love a good dissection, I’m not certain it is necessary. I’m not certain it isn’t, though – there’s a visceral understanding, pardon my pun, that comes from the kinesthetic experience of a real creature’s organs. When you picture where your child’s internal organs are, do you ever flash back to that frog dissection? I’m not assuming you do, I’m just wondering — I flash to dissections I’ve done when I think about anatomy.
As for the rest of it — yeah, I wish we could learn all these skills in high school. But then where would be the fun in the rest of life? Sorry you’re so stressed; hope things get better.
Yes, the stuff we really need in the real world weren’t taught to us. Such a shame. I still don’t know all the 50 states of the USA. (I was born in the USA.) And what is a capital? LOL!!!
Thankfully I took business classes in high school, so I do know how to balance a checkbook. Good thing too, since I was an accountant most of my working life.
Home Ec taught me the correct sequence for washing dishes by hand. That’s not all that useful since I have a dishwasher.
Maybe I should have dissected a frog, so road kill wouldn’t bother me so much.
Here’s how to get thru the grocery store – leave the kid with a babysitter. LOL!!! That’s how I did it when my daughter was young. When she got older, NO worked really well, too.