Day Three of a Week of Thanksgiving 2007 edition
Posted By Kathleen David on November 19, 2007
Peter has a picture of his strike buddy up on his website (www.peterdavid.net) which was pretty funny considering who we hung out with at UFC.
No snow but some off and on rain this morning which, considering the conditions down in the southeast, I am seriously giving thanks for.
I am thankful that I can read. Seems like a simple thing but consider how many people in the world can’t do so for a myriad of reasons. Reading is something that I treasure being able to do. I love to read. I read all the time. I read for information, entertainment, and to learn. I have spent many an hour lost in a book and transported to different places by the authors. I know it is a good book when I wonder about the characters outside of reading the book. I hope to pass this love of books and reading onto Caroline. She does love being read to.
I am thankful that I can do math and understand numbers. When I was a kid numbers were easier to understand than letters. They just made more sense. I enjoyed my math classes a lot. The only subject that gave me a little trouble until I sorted out what was I was doing wrong was fractions. And I think that was because our math teacher broke her hip and we had a substitute teacher who came in half way and taught us the “new math” way of doing fractions that totally confused me. But I got fractions sorted out and I do long division in my head to go to sleep at night. It amazes me, although it probably shouldn’t, that people can’t make simple change in their head. I have a purchase that is 1.87 so I had the clerk two dollars, two pennies, and a dime. They look at the change very confused, put the amount into the keyboard and I have heard audible “Oh”s when they see that they just have to hand me back a quarter.
I am thankful that my parents let me take Shop in the 8th grade rather than Home Ec. It was odd at the time for a girl to take shop. Out of my class only 5 of girls did and rest took home economics. That shop class taught me a lot about working with tools and the basics of how to put things together so they would stay together. Also shop was needed to get into Photography and Graphic Arts both of which I wanted to take. That shop class has served me very well through the years of set building and home repair.
I am grateful for all the education I have gotten during my life.
Ah ha! Someone else who elected for shop. Girls just didn’t take shop then. I figured I could learn Home Ec at home, but shop had tools we didn’t. I was one of two girls in 7th grade, and the only girl in 8th to take shop. I fear no powertool, and can build or make anything. I never did learn home ec at home, but drafting and engineering taught me how to handle sewing patterns. Reading pattern steps taught me cooking. Printing (the old-fashioned kind, with movable type) taught me silkscreening, lay-out, and design. I use those skills far more often then I ever have need to calculate trigonometric slopes, or measure the volume spaces between pebbles in a non-symmetrical container, yet the math was mandatory. Sadly, most of those classes are gone from the schools now, with wiring, engines, metalwork, and printing all replaced by computers – and you only get one year. What a shame.
Kathleen, fractions threw me, too, for almost a whole year, until one day, after tutoring and all kinds of extra help, the teacher, in frustration, said… “Flip the 2nd fraction over and multiply!” (To this day I think she wanted to add “stupid!” to her remark. I’m thankful she didn’t…)
And while I didn’t take shop, my Grandpa let my sis and I “play” with his tools and scrap wood, teaching us the right way to nail, screw and cut wood… and I’ll always be thankful to him for that.
Isn’t it amazing that the learning we take for granted serves us so well?