A year ago I wrote about a man for who I have the utmost respect.
http://notsoprivatei.blogspot.ca/2011/06/sun-shines-on-mr-rumsey.html
I still feel that way and, if possible, that respect has grown. Mr. Gerard Rumsey is the principal of the school where my kids have learned, laughed, cried, cheered and blossomed during the last seven years. More importantly, under the leadership of Mr. Rumsey, the school has been a place that will forever be one of the building blocks for young lives that have limitless possibilities. St. Francis of Assisi has been a home to my kids and the adults, who report to work there from September to June, have been more like family than public servants.
At the time I wrote my story, rumours were rampant that Mr. Rumsey may retire after one more year of tireless and selfless dedication to a profession that certainly does not get its just rewards. In a world where even modestly talented professional athletes easily earn fifty to one hundred times more annually than our teachers, I question our priorities. As a sports enthusiast and a parent, I can attest that neither a goal nor a home run stacks up to the immense responsibility of shaping the future of our young people. The theme of my story was somewhat self-serving. I asked that Mr. Rumsey delay any thoughts of riding off into the sunset for a minimum of three years. That's when my younger daughter, Avery, would have completed grade 6 and my days of dodging the craters of the St. Francis of Assisi parking lot will have come to an end.
I know Mr. Rumsey is a frequent reader of my stories, but he did not heed my request in this instance. A hour ago I stood in that very school parking lot and watched Mr. Rumsey being greeted by the students, staff and many parents as he arrived at the school for his final day as its leader. He was accompanied by the grade 5 teacher, Mrs. Furey, who will also be retiring. Although, it the case of Mrs. Furey it must be early retirement because she looks no where near old enough to call it a day. Perhaps she has a second career planned?
It was very symbolic that the fog that enshrouded the school was lifting just as Mr. Rumsey and Mrs. Furey arrived. In a real sense, that's what educators do for our children. As for arriving in sports cars, I'm not exactly sure what that says about Gerard and Janet future plans, but the kids sure loved the spectacular entrance. We all lingered in the parking lot to soak up the good tidings, as much as the sunshine. Given the title of my previous story about Mr. Rumsey, how fitting that the weather behaved as it did. Every time I looked for Mr. Rumsey I found him joyfully conversing with the kids. When he's amongst the elementary students he can be hard to locate, as he is somewhat vertically challenged. Despite that, Mr. Rumsey will always be a giant in the eyes of the people that know him. His heart must occupy most of his body because it is huge.
I could go on and on and on.... but as Mr. Rumsey knows, there is always a right time to stop doing something. Farewell sir!
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
A Daughter's Dad is Watching
My oldest daughter is graduating. Let me type that again so I can get my nearly hairless head around that concept - Kendall is graduating! Am I Proud? Yes. Hopeful? Yes. Scared shitless? Definitely.
Oh, she's seems perfectly at ease with the idea. It's her parents (okay, me) who will lay awake at night wondering what evil awaits here as she transitions from our country garden sleepy hollow school to the harrowing hallways of a middle school in the big city. It's not the girls that concern me. Sure, they can often be catty to one another and sometimes even cruel. Actual fist fights are almost know existent, as most girls learn early in life that the tongue cuts much deeper and hurts a lot longer than a slap in the head or a scratch on the cheek. My sleeplessness will be because Kendall will be in her new school with boys. Boys who are teenagers. Boys who are teenagers tend to think with the wrong head. I know, I was one. The knowledge that comes with that is what scares me. I remember all too well.
Middle school is like a lifelike version of Lord of the Rings. The boys are morphing into young adults, which results in a cast of characters that touches both ends of the physical spectrum. Some will look and sound as they did in grade 6, as yet untouched by the forces of puberty. No matter what these boys are really like, their 'youngster-ish' looks portray them to be sweet and innocent. These kids are often disappointed with their late charge to adulthood. As is often said, youth is wasted on the young.
In dressing rooms of beer league hockey leagues everywhere, middle-aged and round in the middle men are always recounting sexual conquests and heroic adventures from a time long forgotten by almost everyone, when they were the Romeo of some girls life. It didn't matter that the love affair lasted for only a few minutes, which it often did for teen-aged boys. I have often heard these beer leaguers say that they wish they could be thirteen again. That wasn't because they now knew the secret to making it to the NHL, or what six numbers to pick for the huge 6-49 jackpot. No, the wish to once again be thirteen had only to do with, and everything to do with, girls.
The maturing boys (a term I use very loosely) are like those creature that relentlessly attack Gandalf and friends in the great quest for the ring. These teenage boys are freakish in appearance, with feet too big for stick-like legs and heads certainly too big for the grey matter contained therein. Their voices are shrill one second and so deep the next that they could pass for Louis Armstrong clones. It may be a wonderful world, but it is also a confusing one. Many boys, and I include myself, incur the wrath of early physical maturity by becoming kids in the bodies of men. Real adults expected you to act your size rather than your age. I wasn't very good at that sometimes. I guess mom lowered her expectations because her favourite come back to my two brothers and me was: "Act your age, not your shoe size." None of us have big feet. Hey! You know what they say about small feet.......! (Just don't ask the guys I shower with after beer league hockey. They'll say that they don't look at such things, but they would be lying. We all peek.)
So this is the scene my soon to be twelve year old daughter will be faced with. What's a father to do? I can't follow her around forever. Some of the time maybe, but 24-7-365 is not realistic and those monsters won't need much time to defile my little princess and toss her into the "conquest completed" pile. Her mom and I talk openly with her and tell her many of the realities of life. It's not all white picket fences. Life is a product of choices and opportunities. She has to make her own correct choices and don't give any testosterone driven swinging dick an opportunity. (I haven't told her that one yet. Not in so many words anyway.)
That's all fine and good, but no father should sit back and let the chips fall where they may. We must always stack the deck a little. These previous three or four years I've taken up coaching various activities in our community. My time spent at basketball, hockey and even chess has been fun, but it has also allowed me to better understand my daughter's peer group. I'm 47 years old, so 12 was a hell of a long time ago and times have changed a little. In my day, there were two stations on TV, Pong was king of video games and phoning your friends hurt too much because of that cursed rotary dial. Coaching allows me to peer into their world at a different level than that of a parent. The kids are a little more relaxed around Coach Jim than around Mr. Nixon. I know many of the boys from the Northeast Avalon area that are on the verge of becoming young men. Just as importantly, they know me.
When I was a cop, those of us who were dad's of girls often joked about scaring the crap out of our daughters' future boyfriends by the subtle reminder that we had a gun. We were just joking. Or were we? I no longer have that card to play, but I'm not totally unarmed. I have my ways. If any prospective suitors are reading, I'll leave it to your shrunken grey matter to take it from here.
I am thankful that Kendall's first official graduation is from grade 6 and not grade 9, as was mine. By grade 9, boys and girls both are hormones on legs. I went to an all boys school, yet the tradition had somehow developed that graduates would have a dance to end ten years of togetherness. All that accomplished was to put pressure on everyone to ask a girl to the dance as there would be no single girls stuck to the wall waiting to be asked to dance. Suits or even tux's were also tradition, so that only added to the uncomfortableness. For the first time I took a girl out to a restaurant that had real napkins and more than one fork that wasn't even plastic. Surely, my first such foray should have been at McDonald's. The Big M hadn't been here that long and still only had one location in town, so that should have been good enough. Tradition and hormones combined to make sure it wasn't. To be honest, I didn't even understand what my hormones were telling me. I liked girls. The times I had kissed them were certainly nice. But to actually talk with one and to understand what her words and body language were saying was another matter. I was thirteen going on fourteen, but the hormones traversing through my body and guiding my thoughts were newborns.
After the dining and dancing, my date and my firends with their dates, all retired to my house for the next phase of the adventure. In September, we would be heading to the land of the big boys. As a rite of passage or perhaps to teach us a lesson, our parents let us have a small bottle of champagne, which would be shared between the ten of us. I was young, but this all seemed so grown up. That's probably when we, the "men", reverted to our true state of just being boys. Our jokes and actions must not have been to the liking of the ladies. Who knew that a wedgie or two could be so unrefined? In any event, before any of us finished our half glass of bubbly (that's gross stuff - highly overrated), our dates had all been rescued...I mean picked up by their parents. That left just me and the boys.
Finally our hormones could relax. On went the 45 of the Bay City Rollers and all was once again right with the world. We chalked the evening up to experience and figured things could only get better for the next time. The next time would be in two years, when we finished high school at Brother Rice. By then I would just have turned seventeen and surely I'd know everything there was to know or needed to know about such stuff. I figured, by then, I'd be a master of my domain and my hormones. So ladies, watch out! I know now how that high school graduation turned out. In retrospect I was a bigger goof at seventeen than I was at fifteen. Knowing more only meant that I really knew less. Thinking you have all of the answers is worse than having none. At 47 that lesson is now easy to see and to chuckle about as I reminisce to write.
So how does my personal experience help me guide Kendall through her graduation to middle school and into young adulthood? I still have little clue as to how adolescent girls think. The biggest mistake I could make is to fool myself into thinking that I have all of the answers about the fairer sex. My strength lies in knowing how boys think. At the ages when my two daughters will be most at risk from boys of similar age, I know for certain that there is little progressive brain activity taking place in the male melon. Most adolescent boys are guided by one impulse, so we fathers know all too well what that means. Thankfully, it also allows us to intervene and suppress the advances of any boy with his sites set squarely on our daughters. One other dressing room slogan has turned out to be all too true: "I have a son, so all I have to worry about is one prick. You have a daughter, so you have to worry about every prick in the world."
All I can say is: "Let the games begin." Kendall is my daughter. She is as precious to me. I am the lord of the ring and will vanquish all who come to her with unpure hearts. Okay, that sounds a little hokey. How's this - I will ask questions to any boy who looks sideways at Kendall. When you are with her, I will be watching, closely.
I figure that should be enough to thwart any hormone raging teen that has designs on soiling the virtue of my daughter, which will probably be all of them. I hope they get the message. I think I have spelled it out clearly enough, so even a teen-aged boy should be able to understand. I have to go now. I'm off to the shooting range for some extra target practice.
Oh, she's seems perfectly at ease with the idea. It's her parents (okay, me) who will lay awake at night wondering what evil awaits here as she transitions from our country garden sleepy hollow school to the harrowing hallways of a middle school in the big city. It's not the girls that concern me. Sure, they can often be catty to one another and sometimes even cruel. Actual fist fights are almost know existent, as most girls learn early in life that the tongue cuts much deeper and hurts a lot longer than a slap in the head or a scratch on the cheek. My sleeplessness will be because Kendall will be in her new school with boys. Boys who are teenagers. Boys who are teenagers tend to think with the wrong head. I know, I was one. The knowledge that comes with that is what scares me. I remember all too well.
Middle school is like a lifelike version of Lord of the Rings. The boys are morphing into young adults, which results in a cast of characters that touches both ends of the physical spectrum. Some will look and sound as they did in grade 6, as yet untouched by the forces of puberty. No matter what these boys are really like, their 'youngster-ish' looks portray them to be sweet and innocent. These kids are often disappointed with their late charge to adulthood. As is often said, youth is wasted on the young.
In dressing rooms of beer league hockey leagues everywhere, middle-aged and round in the middle men are always recounting sexual conquests and heroic adventures from a time long forgotten by almost everyone, when they were the Romeo of some girls life. It didn't matter that the love affair lasted for only a few minutes, which it often did for teen-aged boys. I have often heard these beer leaguers say that they wish they could be thirteen again. That wasn't because they now knew the secret to making it to the NHL, or what six numbers to pick for the huge 6-49 jackpot. No, the wish to once again be thirteen had only to do with, and everything to do with, girls.
The maturing boys (a term I use very loosely) are like those creature that relentlessly attack Gandalf and friends in the great quest for the ring. These teenage boys are freakish in appearance, with feet too big for stick-like legs and heads certainly too big for the grey matter contained therein. Their voices are shrill one second and so deep the next that they could pass for Louis Armstrong clones. It may be a wonderful world, but it is also a confusing one. Many boys, and I include myself, incur the wrath of early physical maturity by becoming kids in the bodies of men. Real adults expected you to act your size rather than your age. I wasn't very good at that sometimes. I guess mom lowered her expectations because her favourite come back to my two brothers and me was: "Act your age, not your shoe size." None of us have big feet. Hey! You know what they say about small feet.......! (Just don't ask the guys I shower with after beer league hockey. They'll say that they don't look at such things, but they would be lying. We all peek.)
So this is the scene my soon to be twelve year old daughter will be faced with. What's a father to do? I can't follow her around forever. Some of the time maybe, but 24-7-365 is not realistic and those monsters won't need much time to defile my little princess and toss her into the "conquest completed" pile. Her mom and I talk openly with her and tell her many of the realities of life. It's not all white picket fences. Life is a product of choices and opportunities. She has to make her own correct choices and don't give any testosterone driven swinging dick an opportunity. (I haven't told her that one yet. Not in so many words anyway.)
That's all fine and good, but no father should sit back and let the chips fall where they may. We must always stack the deck a little. These previous three or four years I've taken up coaching various activities in our community. My time spent at basketball, hockey and even chess has been fun, but it has also allowed me to better understand my daughter's peer group. I'm 47 years old, so 12 was a hell of a long time ago and times have changed a little. In my day, there were two stations on TV, Pong was king of video games and phoning your friends hurt too much because of that cursed rotary dial. Coaching allows me to peer into their world at a different level than that of a parent. The kids are a little more relaxed around Coach Jim than around Mr. Nixon. I know many of the boys from the Northeast Avalon area that are on the verge of becoming young men. Just as importantly, they know me.
When I was a cop, those of us who were dad's of girls often joked about scaring the crap out of our daughters' future boyfriends by the subtle reminder that we had a gun. We were just joking. Or were we? I no longer have that card to play, but I'm not totally unarmed. I have my ways. If any prospective suitors are reading, I'll leave it to your shrunken grey matter to take it from here.
I am thankful that Kendall's first official graduation is from grade 6 and not grade 9, as was mine. By grade 9, boys and girls both are hormones on legs. I went to an all boys school, yet the tradition had somehow developed that graduates would have a dance to end ten years of togetherness. All that accomplished was to put pressure on everyone to ask a girl to the dance as there would be no single girls stuck to the wall waiting to be asked to dance. Suits or even tux's were also tradition, so that only added to the uncomfortableness. For the first time I took a girl out to a restaurant that had real napkins and more than one fork that wasn't even plastic. Surely, my first such foray should have been at McDonald's. The Big M hadn't been here that long and still only had one location in town, so that should have been good enough. Tradition and hormones combined to make sure it wasn't. To be honest, I didn't even understand what my hormones were telling me. I liked girls. The times I had kissed them were certainly nice. But to actually talk with one and to understand what her words and body language were saying was another matter. I was thirteen going on fourteen, but the hormones traversing through my body and guiding my thoughts were newborns.
After the dining and dancing, my date and my firends with their dates, all retired to my house for the next phase of the adventure. In September, we would be heading to the land of the big boys. As a rite of passage or perhaps to teach us a lesson, our parents let us have a small bottle of champagne, which would be shared between the ten of us. I was young, but this all seemed so grown up. That's probably when we, the "men", reverted to our true state of just being boys. Our jokes and actions must not have been to the liking of the ladies. Who knew that a wedgie or two could be so unrefined? In any event, before any of us finished our half glass of bubbly (that's gross stuff - highly overrated), our dates had all been rescued...I mean picked up by their parents. That left just me and the boys.
Finally our hormones could relax. On went the 45 of the Bay City Rollers and all was once again right with the world. We chalked the evening up to experience and figured things could only get better for the next time. The next time would be in two years, when we finished high school at Brother Rice. By then I would just have turned seventeen and surely I'd know everything there was to know or needed to know about such stuff. I figured, by then, I'd be a master of my domain and my hormones. So ladies, watch out! I know now how that high school graduation turned out. In retrospect I was a bigger goof at seventeen than I was at fifteen. Knowing more only meant that I really knew less. Thinking you have all of the answers is worse than having none. At 47 that lesson is now easy to see and to chuckle about as I reminisce to write.
So how does my personal experience help me guide Kendall through her graduation to middle school and into young adulthood? I still have little clue as to how adolescent girls think. The biggest mistake I could make is to fool myself into thinking that I have all of the answers about the fairer sex. My strength lies in knowing how boys think. At the ages when my two daughters will be most at risk from boys of similar age, I know for certain that there is little progressive brain activity taking place in the male melon. Most adolescent boys are guided by one impulse, so we fathers know all too well what that means. Thankfully, it also allows us to intervene and suppress the advances of any boy with his sites set squarely on our daughters. One other dressing room slogan has turned out to be all too true: "I have a son, so all I have to worry about is one prick. You have a daughter, so you have to worry about every prick in the world."
All I can say is: "Let the games begin." Kendall is my daughter. She is as precious to me. I am the lord of the ring and will vanquish all who come to her with unpure hearts. Okay, that sounds a little hokey. How's this - I will ask questions to any boy who looks sideways at Kendall. When you are with her, I will be watching, closely.
I figure that should be enough to thwart any hormone raging teen that has designs on soiling the virtue of my daughter, which will probably be all of them. I hope they get the message. I think I have spelled it out clearly enough, so even a teen-aged boy should be able to understand. I have to go now. I'm off to the shooting range for some extra target practice.
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