Preschool Panicking (Dave Barry)

Miami Herald ^ | Oct. 31, 2004 | Dave Barry

[Our man in washington]

Guess I'm weird. If I ever have a kid, when he gets to be about 25, I'd rather hear the following:

"Dad, great to see you. You know I'd never miss a family reunion. Hey, I volunteered to do a shift on flipping the burgers, so let's chat by the grill. Anyway, the job's going okay. Still a lot to learn, you know, but I'll get by. All I can do is do my best and hope to move up someday. Hey, how about those Eagles?"

Then hear the following:

"Dad, got the invitation for the reunion, but you know I'm far too busy for that kind of thng. Looks like my work will be getting published again and I'm being profiled in a leading journal. If I get around to it, I'll send you a web link. Did you hear I'm now running five miles a day and I've learned to live on five hours of sleep? Gotta go."

[delacoert]

Colleges only look at what you did in high school, like your grades and SAT score.

You obviously went the wrong kindergarten, so you can't understand Dave Barry. S'okay. Pro'ly your parents fault.

[PennsylvaniaMom]

Kids, kids, kids...Dave is seeing the humor in the situation; making light of it; putting the situation in the context of his school experience as compared to his daughter's. He is being FUNNY. Don't over analyze...and if you find yourself doing so, just think about burping the theme of Gilligan's Island...

PaMom

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[facedown]

I just want a ******* cheeseburger.

[ikka]

Then hear the following:

THAN hear the following:

[dufekin]

Okay. I'm not that old. I started kindergarten in 1984. Okay, so I am old. Insofar as I could tell, my parents had four options: half-day kindergarten, no kindergarten, home-school, or perhaps some distant private school.

The fourth option lie outside my parents' abilities, both financial and travel. I got stuck with the first option, as did roughly three-quarters of the population (most of the rest took the second option).

In the end, I failed kindergarten, withdrew from school, and immediately re-enrolled as a first grader. Apparently, the school had to fail 30% of kindergartners to get state funding or some such nonsense. No big deal.

Oh, yeah, and if Mr. Barry really cares about his daughter, I suggest that he administer an eye test himself. No one told my parents that I was legally blind without glasses until I was in the fourth grade. School officials and even medical doctors irrationally presumed that everyone who didn't pass the eye test were either uncooperative or illiterate or both.

In the fourth grade, my teacher wrote something on the blackboard. As usual, I couldn't see it from my desk in the back of the classroom. She told me to move forward until I could see it. So I advanced to the front of the room--with my face probably at most a foot in front of the chalkboard, where the writing finally came into focus.

This teacher astutely observed something that even the school nurse couldn't describe: I literally couldn't see anything more than a foot in front of my head. By the end of that school year, a pair of eyeglasses corrected the problem.

I still only can wonder what I might have missed because I couldn't see. I understand some of it now. For example, you can't catch a ball if you don't see it.

[Graybeard58]

My younger brother was the same. I'll never forget when he first got glasses, he was all excited and told our mom "I can see birds flying around in the sky."

[Our man in washington]

Sorry. Now and than, I make that mistake. :)

[Ptarmigan]

I've read Dave Barry's book. They are really fuuny. I understand he is seeing the humor of it. All I am pointing out is, I never thought of college until high school. My parents never worried about it until high school. Yes, they do take what high school you go to. When I graduated high school, like 90 percent went to college.

[PAR35]

Colleges only look at what you did in high school,

But the selective high schools look at how you did in elementary school.

[Ptarmigan]

Yeah, so true, especially the more elite ones, like private ones for example.