For the six weeks that I had limited use of my damaged arm, I needed to do something more inventive during the day than scroll eBay auctions and watch Crossing Jordan. In the end, let me say this about that: winning sounds less expensive than buying but it really isn’t; and Jill Hennessy can’t carry a show alone. It’s just one woman’s opinion but there it is.
The activity that presented itself as an outlet for creative purpose was forming a student council at the school I’ve been attending for over a year. The administration was begging students to volunteer for this task since I started there, and with so much unexpected time on my hands I stepped up to the challenge along with another fellow student we’ll call Blondie.
Blondie just turned fifty which puts her in my rarified age range as far as the student body is concerned. Speaking of the student body, she and I are among the few in attendance who don’t have some message tattooed above our ass. Blondie is an Irish/Italian firecracker who doesn’t believe in unexpressed thoughts so she’s a hoot to work with. Her children are younger than mine so she’s still doing the carpool-PTA-scout leader thing and it also happens that she is the correspondent who sent me the George Carlin forward featured in the entry Still Funny After All These Years which is a reader favorite.
And speaking of years, by the time this entry is published I will have turned 54 and also shed the cast I’ve been waving around since I fell on my side in Indiana and broke the distal radius bone in my wrist. You would think there’d be enough shit to trip over in New York but it turns out I had to go to the Midwest to hurt myself enough to require immobilization. So I’m proud to say I have never let distance or fear of flying prevent me from a rendezvous with destiny.
Implementing a student council where none existed before meant writing a mission statement, designing bulletin board displays, posting fliers, thinking up incentives for recruitment, and constructing a cool suggestion box. This was a job for the arts and crafts gods, not an injured blogger and a scout leader. Since Daughter is an early childhood special ed teacher and talented artist, I picked her brain without disturbing the Soho haircut and now everyone at school thinks I’m some kind of genius.
I adopted every single one of her ideas and told her up front it was too bad she wouldn’t be getting the credit she deserved. I figured it was payback for all the nighttime runs I made to Staples when she ran out of adhesive backed letters for those science fair projects. I even asked if I could use some of her keepsake bat mitzvah decorations stored away in our basement for the past thirteen years. She said yes. It’s amazing what a struggling Manhattan schoolteacher will agree to for a free sushi dinner.
In honor of Spring, Daughter’s Featured Fotos give a New York Salute to Naycha
a tree grows in central park
birds during construction
folk rock
field of play (girls on a roof)