Ah, teachers. Who’d be one? Like nursing, it’s a career path of critical importance to society, yet vastly undervalued both in public prestige and in the critical area of renumeration. That’s how you spell it, right? “Renumeration.”

What can I say? I was homeschooled as a toddler. Then public schools. Then hippie boarding school where they told my mother “Raincoaster doesn’t come to class. She sits in the hall and reads books. But they are very good books, so we’re giving her an A.” So there’s lots of blame to go around.

In any case, I’d like to share with you the case of United States District Judge Samuel B. Kent, a man who obviously paid attention in school. It should warm the very cockles of any underappreciated teacher’s neglected heart to know that out there, somewhere, perhaps in the back of class, perhaps hidden behind that big Samoan kid in the third row, there may be a Samuel B. Kent of her own, a student who not only listened in class, but who learned, and that profoundly.

Watch the master at work (via Metroblog):

Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact — complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words — to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions.

With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor’s edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins…

And concludes:

At this juncture, Plaintiff retains, albeit seemingly to his befuddlement and/or consternation, a maritime law cause of action versus his alleged Jones Act employer, Defendant Unity Marine Corporation, Inc. However, it is well known around these parts that Unity Marine’s lawyer is equally likable and has been writing crisply in ink since the second grade. Some old-timers even spin yarns of an ability to type. The Court cannot speak to the veracity of such loose talk, but out of caution, the Court suggests that Plaintiff’s lovable counsel had best upgrade to a nice shiny No. 2 pencil or at least sharpen what’s left of the stubs of his crayons for what remains of this heart-stopping, spine-tingling action.

In either case, the Court cautions Plaintiff’s counsel not to run with a sharpened writing utensil in hand — he could put his eye out.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Selah.

As I have mentioned before, the Munchkin is playing T-ball this year.  Nothing excites him more than being able to put on his uniform, which is a blue jersey with his name on the back and his sparkling white pants.

Wait, did I just say sparkling white pants?

Listen, obviously the T-ball league is run by a bunch of men, because no woman in their right mind would ever sentence another woman to the laundry hell that is a five year old in white pants.  Who plays on grass.  Which is sometimes muddy.  Which results in pants that wind up being not so sparkling white at the end of a game.

A fellow mom was sitting next to me as we watched practice last week, and she asked me what I used to get the Munchkin’s pants clean.  She told me that she didn’t want to use bleach, but had heard that Oxi-Clean worked well.

I had to fess up that I do use a bit of bleach, else the pants would already be gray-green from the knee down.

She told me that nothing she had used got the pants clean, so she just went ahead and bought a few other pairs.

It was at that point that I wanted to leap off my folding chair and cry, “We must stop the insanity! Who gives a crap if our sons’ pants are not pure white?  Does it make us bad mothers if they are not?”

The answer is, of course not.

But if only we lived in a world where dirty pants were worn with pride.  They would be the mark of a dedicated player and a mother who is too proud to get rid of her child’s badge of honor for sacrificing their body for that ground ball.

Maybe someday.

But until then, I’m sticking with the bleach.

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