(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Scrapbooks and School Days

/ Katie

Graham’s family has been going through their scrapbooks, and y’all, some of this stuff. They’ve found so many beautiful memories – newspaper clippings and old photos and letters and just so much – and also some really funny ones. Like this:

Graham did very well in school, but apparently never, ever, ever, ever did his homework. Ever.

I can’t recall that I ever had to write a letter like this, and that his mom had to sign it! Oh my goodness! And for Graham, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. But it sure is hilarious to revisit now!

24 thoughts on “(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Scrapbooks and School Days”

    • Yeah, I’ve heard it’s bad right now. Like, college kids who can’t read and kindergartners who aren’t potty trained. I cannot imagine, and I feel bad for those kids. And the teachers. Teachers are super heroes.

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  4. Pretty much. Where I live, school was closed for over a year because of COVID, and many of those kids fell far behind not only in basic academic skills but also in life skills and common sense, and as teachers we were just trying to survive throwing something at them hoping that it would stick. That was all we could do really. And standards have been lowered to the point of being a joke. I read about a study just recently of how many kids get accepted to a certain prestigious public university in my state needing remedial middle school math, and how that number has skyrocketed since this school stopped using SAT or ACT scores, but of course they won’t do anything about it because they have to have all the acceptable political opinions…

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    • It’s so tough. I really do worry, for kids and teachers, and for the future. Especially with so much AI in the mix now, I hope we can pull back a little bit, examine what’s not working, and take some good steps forward. I give teachers a lot of credit. COVID was hard on all of us, but especially on teachers. I cannot imagine.

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      • Same, but I’m not optimistic… I have a lot of thoughts swimming around in my head about the future that I try not to dwell on, since it’s all depressing, and there are still a few good people out there.

        Teaching under COVID was a nightmare. Many students just logged in to not get marked absent, then went back to sleep, or played games, or did drugs all day. It literally felt like talking to a brick wall. Most of what made teaching enjoyable was taken from me by egomaniacal politicians who dictated rules for us and broke the rules themselves, who, of course, now want us to overlook all that and give them even more power. And they also took from me everything outside of work that made love enjoyable. Thirteen months of working under those conditions, and fifteen months of no gatherings, no socializing, and no fun. And all those viral posts about families coming together while in isolation didn’t do me any good when I live alone and have no family in the area.

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      • We were lucky in that we didn’t have children at the time and lived in an area with lots of outdoor spaces and hiking trails. I cannot imagine not being close to anyone or able to see anyone. We did a lot of stuff over Zoom, too, for a while. Even still, I don’t think I left the house at all, even to just sit outside on my patio, between April and June in 2020. It was crazy and probably not very good for me. I have OCD and anxiety, both triggered by health and germs and stuff, so it was a difficult period for me generally. I really admire my teacher friends. They did their best, and weren’t given much to work with. I think there are definitely some lessons we should take moving forward, but everything is so mean and weird and political now, I’m not feeling very hopeful at the moment either. But then I do remind myself of the good people, the “helpers,” and that they are out there. They just don’t make the news.

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      • Exactly… mean and weird and political. Especially around here. I did go for walks and bike rides during that time; I live near a big park, and I figured as long as I don’t get too close to people there, it’s probably okay, although with the stories I’d heard, sometimes I was afraid of getting arrested just for being outside, or I always had to keep up with whatever the new royal proclamations from the governor were to know whether or not I should be afraid of getting arrested for being outside. And yes, teachers did their best given what was going on, but (disclaimer: I haven’t studied this exhaustively) it feels like it didn’t have to be that way, that places that reopened soon didn’t have more COVID cases or deaths than places that didn’t. I got so angry at the situation twice that neighbors had to call the police to make sure I was ok and not hurting myself or others (I was mostly just screaming and throwing non-breakable things). And all of this led to another big failure in my life that I’d rather not share publicly, but you can message me privately and I’ll say more. Good point about the helpers, though.

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      • I’m so sorry you went through that, and I’m glad you’re okay. Looking back at that time now, I think there’s plenty we could have done differently, and I do hope we carry good lessons forward. I also hope we don’t see another event like this in our lifetime, or in Lucy’s, or ever again (though that might be too much to hope for).

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  5. Same… if it gets to the point of shutting things down again (which people have pushed for here approximately once a year ever since), then it’s probably time to move to a state that doesn’t shut down, although I’d be making significantly less money in such a place for the same amount of work, going back to just barely getting by for probably the rest of my life, and I’d be all alone but I feel pretty alone here as it is so that part of it probably wouldn’t be much worse…

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    • Finding community is really, really hard. Back before we moved to VA Beach, we lived in a small village connected to a small town, and knew everyone, and could always find someone to talk to at bars and breweries and such. Down here, we’re close to Graham’s family and a few old friends, but it’s been really hard otherwise to find our people. We’d be a trivia team of two, if we played. But I’m hoping that will change.

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  6. I think I was spoiled by moving away for school at 18, suddenly being surrounded by people all in the same place in life as me who didn’t know about the baggage I was carrying from the past, and then coming to faith at 19 at an age when being involved in church comes with a built-in social life, and at a time when Christianity was moderately trendy, at least more so than today. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to find community once that stage of my life was over, especially because so much of the culture I came of age in just assumed that you get married and started your own family in your 20s. That never worked out for me, and ever since I’ve always felt like there was no room for me in that culture anymore. Most other people who are childless in middle age are that way by choice and have very different values and beliefs from me, which makes it especially hard to find community in this era where everything is angry and political.

    As I start thinking about wrapping up DLTDGB in January (you’ve probably figured out by now that DLTDGB is heavily based on my own past), I’ve been thinking a lot about how I still feel such an attachment to the city that my fictional Jeromeville is based on. It’s about 30 miles from where I live now, I know people in the area, and I go back sometimes for football and basketball games and the annual event that my fictional Spring Picnic is based on. To me, being there reminds me of a unique time in life where freedom and optimism collided, where I was finally on my own and able to have my own life and meet my own friends without my mother gossiping about them and making fun of them behind their backs, and the future still felt hopeful. That is a feeling I will never get back, at least not exactly, because I’m older now and the world has changed too much. I’ve thought about moving back at several different times in my life, and I’ve always decided against it. I always used to think it wasn’t a good idea to move back because of the politics involved in a university town, especially these days, or because it’s really expensive, but I came to realize later that that’s not it at all. It’s not even that I want to move back there again, it’s that I want it to be 1998 again, and that is not a feeling that moving will satisfy. (I may reuse some of these thoughts in the final episode of DLTDGB.)

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    • I hate to hear you’re wrapping up DLTDGB soon. I enjoy reading your posts.

      I’ve often thought about what it would be like to move back to my hometown. It’s an odd feeling when the places that made you no longer have a place for you. I’ll always have a soft spot for it, but I don’t think it could ever be my home again. I like VA Beach, but right now, I feel kind of in between places. I think we’ll settle here, and that’s the plan. It’s hard to get out there and make friends with a busy toddler, but I’m hoping we’ll meet some people now that she’s in school. We shall see.

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      • When I first started DLTDGB in late 2018, the plan was always to write up to January 1, 2000 in the fictional timeline, and then do a few more episodes to tie up loose ends. If by then I had built up a huge following that demanded more episodes, I would have considered keeping the story going up until character-Greg moving away from Jeromeville in the summer of 2001 (the circumstances of which are one of the loose ends I’ll be tying up after I get to January 1, 2000), but that massive following hasn’t happened. I get fewer readers and comments today than I did in the early days. Also, I need a break, because I have other sorely neglected creative projects.

        But the good news is that I’m going to keep the DLTDGB archive up indefinitely. You can go back to episode 1 and reread about everything you missed, how Greg ended up in Jeromeville, how he got involved with church, how he ended up in the Acacia house with Jed and Brody, and all of that. I’m thinking when I’m done I might start reposting episodes on here, like reruns of a television show. I’ve also toyed with the idea of writing alternate history episodes, i.e. stories about what would have happened had character-Greg done something a little different, and retelling certain noteworthy episodes from the perspective of a different character. I already know I want to retell the story about throwing the box (#28 and 29) from Sarah’s perspective, and the time Greg met Megan McCauley for lunch (#53) from Megan’s perspective, given how the Megan subplot ended (see #67). Also, if I ever decide to write another continuing story blog, I already have a placeholder site for it and a premise, also based on something from my past:

        Just Take The Leap

        I did move back to my actual hometown (not “Jeromeville”) for three months in 2005-06, although I knew at the time it was just temporary. There’s no place for me there either. I feel like there has never really been a place for me anywhere that I’ve lived, although the city that Jeromeville was based on kind of came close at the time.

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      • I’ll have to go back and read from the beginning. And I wish you luck with your other creative projects! I have a backlog, too. It sometimes makes some noise in my head. We’ll see if I ever get to it.

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      • I’m really out of love with social media these days. I find it empty, and mostly post and keep up with it for family and friends. It’s funny – I used to really want to create a YouTube page for adventures and renovations, but that just seems so exhausting now, and I don’t want to put my life out there quite that way. It’s just funny how it’s changed for me, even in the last few years. I don’t meant to knock it, either, as there are still plenty of pages and people that I do follow, but I just can’t see myself in that world anymore.

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      • I get that. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, how social media was a good thing for me in its infancy, in my 20s, to keep in touch with friends when I had spent many years moving frequently, and when it’s hard for me to keep in touch and make plans in other ways. Now, though, it’s just a bunch of angry people (including many of my friends) posting things from angry people spouting off bad opinions. It must be exhausting to be angry at everything all the time, and I’m tired of having to read it (or, more realistically, skip through it).

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