Thursday-Monday 5

Bwahahahaha.

Today was "pajama"(what an odd looking word that is, eh?) day at school for 'Spirit Week' and because I rather could not do it last year, this time I took full advantage of it and wore my favorite old flannel p.j.'s with the Frosty the Snowman design that Deb upstairs gifted me long ago. I got some weird looks and some compliments and that's fine. It looked funny and strange perhaps, and I appeared rather plump and dumpy, but it was so very comfortable and therefore I spent the day mostly content in my own inner skin and outer sleep-wear.

Tra-la-la-la-la.

Ah. Before I get too tired I want to write a bit about the weekend, because some interesting things occurred! I'm just going to list them for the sake of brevity. Steve brought home two beautiful little Beta fish. Bought a bunch of stuff at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Ordered our train tickets to Seattle (and places for our bikes too)along with hotel reservations and printed confirmations on the new printer (had to figure out how to use it along the way). Bought advance tickets for Star Wars to send to our little neighbor friend (who moved away last year) for Halloween and his birthday. Went to the gym with Steve and he worked with his trainer while I did a lot of jogging and stretching and some slow swimming. Biggest accomplishment was doing all the laundry, which was a fair ton. Watched The Walking Dead premiere. Wrote a sort of descriptive essay (as the students had been assigned to do) in my head about the swimming pool while I was relaxing in the jacuzzi. I may write it down sometime, I don't know, but I wanted to sort of challenge myself to see if I could do what the teacher was asking of them. She did say I had legible handwriting (I was going for that of course), did a nice job of making comments and suggestions as I was editing their drafts and told me later that she decided to have me also work in her second writing class as well, which is really great I think! 

Poor lad.

First thing when I got to school today I was regaled with a story by one of the kids about a very scary experience he had of being picked up by the police on the side of the highway where he was walking. He was interviewed and patted down and placed in the back of the police car. It was just a case of a series of unfortunate events. He didn't have the foreknowledge that the public transit went back the way he had come from and didn't know how to travel any other way so he started walking but found himself in a place where no pedestrians are allowed. He didn't know his parent's new phone number by heart, his own phone had died and he was either too shy or too proud and stubborn to ask for directions or to borrow someone's phone. He said several people had called to report him walking along there, which was good in the end of course, and that there was a female police officer which made him feel a little less intimidated by the cops, who he has a predisposition for not liking. I was glad to hear that it happened during daytime and that he was respectful to the officers because he's a very polite kid, but being in that situation can engage one's fight or flight instinct if you're unused to interaction with LEO's, even if you've done nothing wrong. Which is what happened to me years ago...He admitted he considered running for a minute and I know he's glad he didn't, because they drove him all the way home. And even if he won't admit it to his friends, the cops were nice people. But it begs the question, should we teach these kids who have a variety of disabilities that can affect how they behave and communicate how to deal with the police? Should we tell them to announce to the cops that they are in special education programs? Would it help the officers to understand them?

Well, that was several hours of on and off writing, with some tele, but zero Twitter, so good for me. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Peace, Love, Goodnight.