A Fine Line

We’re over a month into summer vacation and many of you are off on trips. Some teachers are traveling as well, but many more are employed throughout the area. They’re tapping beer at festivals, tutoring, teaching summer school, clerking, selling, painting, and working hundreds of other odd jobs to get through to September 15. As nice as it may sound to have the summer off, income has the summer off too, unless you can afford to have some skimmed off every paycheck during the rest of the year. By the first week in September, the wallet can get pretty thin and the balance in the checkbooks down to double digits. So what are teachers who are on the 10 month pay plan, had to get new roofing, and whose twenty year old car needs a new used transmission to do? In an effort to supply ideas to any empathic folks willing to help out teachers new to the job, single or just couldn't make it 12 months on their ambitious 10 month fantasy budgets, I’ve created some job opportunities that could make everyone big winners. Here are a few:

-Hire a teacher to take your child shopping for school supplies. Teachers know. They can guarantee no markers that smell like flavors, no glittery pencils, no multicolored pens and no talking folders. They make children cry. Kids argue over these items to the point where teachers have to go through markers and extract all the “Laser Lemons” or “Meatball Madness” and hide them about four feet up over a counter until “Food Smelling School Supply Day“.

-Hire a teacher to help your kids buy shoes. They’ll get Velcro for everyone, no rubber gardening shoes that children fall out of or drop while hanging upside down on the playground equipment, no ties because half the kids can‘t tie and the other half don‘t even notice the foot of dirty, frayed string dragging along the ground. Although there is some satisfaction in headshaking and reminding (as we pick children up from the floor), “I told you to tie your shoes about a million times,“ we don’t like to see kids fall.

-Hire a teacher to pick a backpack that your child can actually carry by him or herself, one with enough pockets for money and notes but not enough compartments to smuggle in little toys, hair decorations, jewelry or expensive, breakable things they bring from home that you don’t realize are missing.

-Hire a teacher to throw your next children’s party. They know how to keep things short and avoid pitfalls that create situations resulting in crying, pouting, arguing or hiding. That goes for the kids, too. They know to serve all identical cupcakes, white with white frosting. If there must be a beverage, they know to just pick one kind, clear. Everyone gets the exact same everything because life is much easier that way.

Along with that there are also short one-hour lessons we can offer on fib detection, fake crying identification, manipulation recognition and how to make placebo ice-packs. Workshops are available for teaching parents how to ask children questions they won’t answer, “Nothing.” or “I don’t know!“ to.
There are tricks.

So if someday in the next month it’s your child’s teacher who hands you that delivery pizza, or spritzes your windshield in a surprise entrepreneurial cleaning, understand that it’s probably been a long, under budgeted summer.

So kids, pay attention during math; you might be a teacher someday.

There are quite a few D2D signs around town and I must admit I haven’t paid much attention to it until now. After reading the information on the website I started to think about how this huge investment can possibly pay off for everyone in town irregardless of ball or running skills. What would possibly make people who don’t have kids or energy want to invest in something costing almost 5 million dollars and pretty much just sits there. If we want to get people fired up over this thing, it’s important to emphasize the universal appeal such an endeavor could have. So let’s put on our thinking caps and step outside the box. Here are some uses that may not have been considered as yet, but those that may hold appeal to a broader audience than sports lovers.

1. Shorewood really needs a dog park. Everybody knows that when the sun goes down pet owners and their dogs (both dressed in black) enjoy the off leash experience people with backyards are used to. People would willingly pay a yearly fee if they could drive someplace close for exercise. Cha-ching$

2. We could use a CD store, like The Exclusive Company. Think of all the money that could be made if a section of the dome could be used for music retail. Why, the place would practically pay for itself with the right inventory and snack racks.

3. Take what we’ve learned from the Mitchell Park Dome folks and apply it to the Shorewood Dome. Seasonal plant and flower shows attract a completely different audience than the afore mentioned. Fund raising flower and SHS wreath sales could be run from there. Prom and homecoming corsages or boutonnières could be sold by all the kids who don’t dance.

4. We could host the first Northshore hot or veggie dog eating contest. Seems they are catching on across the country. If CNN covers it, it’s got to be news.

5. Practice lawns could be sectioned off so kids could learn how to mow and trim with emotional support personnel nearby.

6. Make sure the high school kids are invested in this project by promising concerts by bands that would impress them. Give them packs of “Promise Tickets” to sell to their friends from other schools.

The more I think about fundraising for D2D, the more excited I get. I can see now that even though I don’t have a child interested in sports, a boy on the football team, a kid in the marching band or even the slightest interest in organized sports, there is a place for me and all other Shorewood residents under the wonder dome.

Let’s get crackin’.