Thoughts on the Macarena and other items

I don't remember when this was, but I'm guessing the mid 90's, when the Macarena became popular.  Everyone was doing the Macarena.  Even I knew how to do it -- sort of.  I don't remember where I was teaching, but I volunteered to help chaperon a school dance.  Why I would do that is beyond me, but never mind, the reason, I did.  The DJ played that song, and it stunned me when nearly every kid at the dance stood in lines and did the Macarena.  Now, granted, this was not a large city school, but there were at least a couple hundred kids there.  I remember thinking how cool that was to see.  For four minutes there were no cliques.  For four minutes, it didn't matter whom they stood next to.  I think we should make Congress, the cabinet, and the President all do the Macarena together.  Then, all the governors have to do it together, and we work our work up from there to the United Nations.  How can you fight with someone that you just did the Macarena with?

We went to Walmart today.  Ugh. Some lady grabbed my cart and started to walk away with it.  I'm happy to report she wasn't actually trying to steal it.  She had just gotten distracted talking to her children or grandchildren and wasn't watching what she was doing.  I said, "Um, pardon, ma'am, but that's my cart."  A lot of people were out shopping for school.

School. Ugh.  If you were here, you'd see me shudder.  Honestly though, I don't hate the idea of going back to school.  I think I'm going to be just too busy for this old body and even older mind.  I don't like to be too busy.  I have this lazy streak in me.  I'm going to have about 100 composition students.  If I spend ten minutes on average grading each paper, that is 1,000 minutes, or if my math is correct, 16 or 17 hours of grading.

I am rethinking my grading philosophy a bit.  A composition teacher can get so caught up in editing students' papers he or she doesn't actually grade them.  I think I am going to spend more time this year than ever before on reviewing grammar -- not the "name the parts of speech" level, but higher level grammar.  One of these days, I will see one too many comma splices or one too many it's instead of its, and I will go stark raving mad.  There is a snapping point.

I worked on Shadowlands Diary today.  I wrote the last five pages of the novel.  I want to work backwards for a little while.

I have to go right now, but I would like to leave you this thought.
Wisdom is a state of mind, not a measure of intelligence.