Glass House

I have a friend who has some strange habits. Smoking is not one of them. Bike riding is. I should also disclose that my friend is an enthusiastic and very talented math teacher. When she bikes, she spends a lot of mental energy on preoccupying herself with mathematical problems that keep her distracted and, perhaps, in the saddle a little longer. Recently, she has developed a fascination for studying an issue related to smoking. She is able to do this from her perch on her bike which makes it near perfect.
As we bike riders know, the leisurely (sort of) pace of riding combined with its open air nature gives one rich opportunity to observe the surroundings, especially the ground near the bike. My friend does this too and has recently excitedly informed me that she has begun to study the empty cigarette packages frequently discarded on the roads around Chico. Like I said, a bit strange. Anyway, she has observed that lots of empty packs get thrown on the street. I suspect she is not the only person who has made this observation, however, her mathematical mind has taken it a step further than most of us. Mathematicians are all about patterns. So she started looking more carefully at the empty packs to see if she could detect a pattern. Interestingly there actually is one. The vast majority of the empty, discarded packs are Marlboros. To be exact, as mathematicians tend to be, there have been 25 empty Marlboro packs, 5 Camel packs and a smattering of other brands (we saw an American Spirit pack on Old Humboldt road last Saturday). We are still collecting data (I say we because she has got me doing it too) but have begun the analysis phase of our research. What seems to stand out is that Marlboro smokers are litterbugs.

Posted by Laurie Feldman at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Guns at schools are very, very scary. Sheer cold-sweaty terror is the feeling I imagine I would feel if someone brought a gun to my child's school. If one of my children had been at Las Plumas that day I'm sure I would have been sick with terror and that would have probably easily become anger at anything handy. The school administrators, law enforcement, the student with the gun.
For some reason, my mind keeps going back to the boy with the gun. I've read in the paper that he is to be charged as an adult. That seems so wrong. Even though what he did was terrifying and shocking, I still think that boy is still just a boy. A boy who's moved around a lot lately, maybe making it hard to make or keep friends. A boy who has had a couple of homes with a couple of different parents lately. Maybe a boy who's angry about how the world has been treating him. Sounds like he found a little comfort with a girl in Oroville for a while. I bet she got tired of trying to heal all of his wounds and finally said, enough is enough. Good for her, she's a strong girl who knows herself and is willing to speak up for her own needs. But the boy was so sad when she decided this. Maybe she found it easier to say that she had another boyfriend, maybe she really did. So the boy's sadness turned to anger, fueled by all the anger he already had pent up inside. And he got a gun and took it to school.
Thank heavens everything turned out all right. Two other self-possessed young ladies with courage to spare evidently knew the right words to say, the right things to do. And they brought everyone out unharmed, including the boy with the gun. Let's send these two young ladies to Iraq, sounds like they've got what it takes to handle that sorry mess. But where was I...yes, the boy with the gun.
Now we have a problem, what to do with the boy who had a gun? Well, I say try him as a juvenile for possession of a weapon on school property and terrorist threats. That seems about right. Then lets put him on probation, get him some good counseling and see what we can do about redeeming that troubled soul. Just like his friends want us to do, or they wouldn't have saved him.

Posted by Laurie Feldman at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)