Picture Day

Tomorrow is picture day at the child care center where I work. I'm going to leave class and immediately head over so I can be in the picture with my class. Me and a bunch of adorable toddlers: priceless! I use these pictures so that maybe people don't bother me so much about being an old spinster (which I, apparently, am). I'm 27 years old and I'm not married and I don't have any illegitimate children. My extended family is, for the most part, very religious and traditional and I usually spend the first two or three hours in their presence fighting the urge to say the word "fuck" when every little thing goes wrong. Because that's what I do on my own.

It gets to be empty noise, doesn't it? Profanity, I mean. Why do I use these words? To show anger? To sound cool? I think the second answer was the reason I was experimenting with the words "damn" and "shit" at age nine. Now, I suppose I do it when I'm angry, but what do I want that word to demonstrate? Are my more religious friends right in suggesting that maybe profanity shouldn't lace every other word of my vocabulary? "Then," they say, "when you really mean it, you can drop an F-Bomb."

I also don't use these words in front of children. You'd think this would go without saying, but it's not the case. Sure a child hits those late-elementary/early-junior-high school years and they know all the words I know and plenty that I don't. But when they're young, the language stays clean.

That's also where the pictures come in. I work with kids...as a profession. Have, now, for the better art of ten years. I don't need to be a parent right away because I get to feeling like a parent a lot of days at work. I'm like an unofficial worker-bee parent. Mom and dad, they're the kings and queens of the hive to be sure: what they say goes. But in this particular situation of jobs with long hours and busy school schedules, the preschool teachers become pretty important cogs in the machine.

I show these pictures to my family members to allay their fears. Then their thoughts can change from "why isn't he married?" to "wow! there are people in this world who trust him with little people that are pretty gosh-darn important!"

This is how I use an altruistic endeavor to cut me some slack on turkey days.

-IT-

I've been reading:

--lots of drudgery at school
--Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
--Tom Strong by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse

I've been watching:

--Serenity
--Batman Begins

I've been listening to:

--Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor on N.P.R.