Farley vs. Simple Dog

Yes, he really does sit this way!

So my friend L introduced me to a blog site called "Hyperbole and a Half."  Blogger Allie has written several entries about her dog that L thought I would enjoy.  And I did.  I laughed so hard at some of them that I choked on my own spit and had a violent coughing fit.  Now that's true enjoyment!

Allie refers to one of her dogs as "Simple Dog" because, you guessed it, she (the dog, not Allie) is not highly blessed with gray matter.  Since Farley is also not a canine Einstein, I could totally relate.  After reading the entry entitled "The Simple Dog Goes for a Joy Ride," I was actually feeling slightly relieved; Simple Dog made Farley look like a rocket scientist!

Alas, my joy was short-lived.  In an earlier entry, Allie described how she performed a doggy IQ test on Simple Dog by draping a towel over her head to see how long it would take for her to get out.  As expected, SD failed this test.  The other night while I was getting ready for bed, I decided to give my dogs the IQ Challenge!  I flipped a part of my blanket over Rusty's head; he immediately shook his head vigorously from side to side and within seconds, darted out from the opening his thrashing had created.  Then he gave me a dirty look that translated, "I know you did that.  The question is why?"  Suspicious, but smart!

Then it was Farley's turn.  I flipped the blanket over his head and he immediately turned his head under the blanket carefully from one side to the next.  Slight pause.  Then the blanket hump that was Farley sloooowly slid down onto the mattress till he was completely prone.  Longer pause.  I flipped up the part of the blanket covering his face to find him perfectly relaxed, his eyes completely closed.  The blanket fazed him not at all.

I'd say the score is tied.

Sex Education

My global studies classes were discussing diseases in history today.  Naturally we started off with the black plague and I was pleasantly surprised that there was some spirited discussion on how diseases are passed and why some carriers (like fleas) are completely immune to its effects.  The black plague discussion led to modern diseases such as hepatitis and its high prevalence in college students; as my students are soon-to-be-graduating seniors, this was quite apropros.  Since one of my students did her senior project on HPV and her panel presentation was within a few hours of our class, she also piped up that students should also consider getting the Gardasil shot to protect them against this steadily rising STD.

Nothing perks up a class discussion like the merest hint of sex.  The black plague was cool for its gross-out factor but STDs!  Now there were 30+ students with lots of questions they wanted to ask.  Some questions were purely anatomical while others were obviously based on real-life experience:  "What if my friend did..."  Change the "friend" to "I" and fill in the blank.  And the new generation think they are so clever and sophisticated.  They can't even create an original story.


This is not the first time that I've had discussions with my students about sex.  In the 10th grade Health Core class I introduce the body systems and when we get to reproduction, questions abound.  Now my students are far from innocent; you don't grow up in our neighborhood without learning a thing or two about life, but for all their street smarts and the language that goes along with that, many of them couldn't even bring themselves to ask their questions.  They struggled to actually describe the behaviors in question and couldn't even verbally identify the body parts involved in said behaviors.  The embarrassment!  The horror!  And these are future health care providers?

After too many moments of hemming and hawing, I finally told them to get the questions out and have done with it; if they had a question worth asking, I was going to answer it and nothing they said would embarrass or upset me.   One brave soul finally spoke up and asked, "Can you get an STD if you, uh, masturbate someone?"  Naturally the class erupted with nervous laughter.  I replied, "With your hand or with your mouth?"  Yes, I can create moments of complete and utter silence.

I am always startled by how naive some of the questions are--even the questions that come from students who I know are already sexually active.  It's sad to think that they can't talk about their body parts without giggling, let alone have a mature discussion with their partners about contraception, yet they are already engaging in the behavior.  Few of the students said they were able to have any kind of open conversation with their parents about anything remotely sexual, so they don't bother trying.  That saddens me even more.

Common courtesy...it ain't so common!

We are in the thick of band concert season and since C and T are now in different bands, that means keeping track of two very different schedules. Last night E, C and I went to watch T's first concert performance of the season.  It was a special concert since it was the first collaboration between Farrington High School and Hawaii Pacific University. Both bands performed well but our enjoyment was tempered by the behavior of some less-than-courteous audience members. 

During his welcome speech, the emcee reminded the audience of appropriate behavior for a performance of this sort:  if you need to leave, please wait till the end of the song, please turn off your cell phones, please refrain from talking during the performances.  C turned to me at the end of the reminder and said, "People actually need to be told this."  Yes, they do.  Too bad some of them choose not to follow it.

The auditorium was far from full but a family group decided to sit in our row anyway.  The group consisted of four women and two children; the elder was perhaps 9 years old and he decided to go sit way down in the front row for a while.  The younger boy was about 7 and he ended up about 3 seats away from me.  About one song into Farrington's performance, three of the women and the younger boy got into a discussion that seemed to revolve around the use of a digital camera that none of them could figure out.  Things pretty much went downhill from there. 

One of the women just could not shut up.  I don't know what she was saying since it wasn't in English but she had frequent comments to make to the women next to her.  Even if they didn't actively respond, she kept right on talking.  I know a lot of family members aren't really interested in classical music but they do come to support the students.  Except for the incident with the camera, she showed absolutely no interest in anything related to the performance; not the music, not the staging and not the performers. 

It was annoying during Farrington's performance; it was downright infuriating by the time HPU took the stage.  During the brief intermission, the older boy decided to rejoin his group; he plopped down in front of the woman with diarrhea of the mouth and began an animated conversation with her that seemed to revolve around the Nintendo DS he held in his hand.  During HPU's performance, the boy continued to play his game, but did not bother to turn the sound all the way down; HPU played "Danny Boy" in preparation for an Ireland tour they are taking soon.  For those in our row, the beautiful melody was interspersed with "ping, ping, blat, blat, blat, blat" from the DS in the row in front of us.  Diarrhea woman kept leaning over the kid's seat to see what he was doing and making comments to him as he played.  Then her phone rang.  Yes, she answered it.  Yes, she had a short conversation.  Two minutes later, it rang again.  Yes, she answered it and then passed it to the woman next to her.  She, at least, had the grace to look slightly embarrassed in my direction.  She still took the phone and had a brief conversation though.

I videotaped the performance last night and midway through I had a wild urge to swing the camera in their direction and say loudly, "And this is what rude people look like."  With my luck, they would have reacted as if it were a well-deserved photo op.  People like that just never get the point.