Rant - crazy mom

[Bard2dbone]

btw aren't you the queen Latimour?

That's why he had that rifle. Smart move putting it away, Mark. We're all proud of you.


Now back to the thread subject.: This has become my favorite soap opera over the last couple of days. I want to see how it turns out.

I strongly recommend counseling, when I'm not making sarcastic smarta$$ remarks, anyway.

 

[d8g3jdh]

bump.



No seriously, don't just let this thread die. Sure, there has been a lot of stupid advice/comments from both sides of the age spectrum, but some of us actually want to know how this turns out. Even if the rig is gone, we want to know if your family is repaired sometime soon.

We love you BassManolukas!



Ok, I'm going to go get my medicine.

 

[Thursday]

As you can see, the douchebag epidemic is worldwide. Please contribute now. ONLY YOU, can stop a douchebag.

Your mean, you hurt my feelings.

 

[cheezewiz]

Your mean, you hurt my feelings.

Well, I wasn't referring to you, but I guess if the shoe fits....

 

[Jeff Moote]

Posting to remember to find out what happens.

On another note, this caught my eye:

Alex, when you are 'defiant' in class, *you* are the one 'stealing' time and educational opportunity from your fellow students. Instead of barking at you about doing your HW instead of the assigned classwork, your teacher would much rather help the kid two seats over who is totally struggling and needs to learn the stuff on order to pull his SAT score up or something.

That education is worth more than any bass rig, and if you're taking that away... think about it.

Even if the teacher is not the best teacher, it just doesn't matter. It's not your job to "punish" the teacher and the other students.

[edit]

Full disclosure: I'm a [edit] High School English teacher.

I'm not going to say it's ok to goof around in school, but from an academic point of view, it sounds like Alex is similar to what I was like in High School.

So, please let me ask: what is not ok about Alex wanting to do work in class rather than answer the teacher? As a teacher yourself, you think education needs to be this structured?

Actually, I will slow down. This isn't meant to be a personal attack. It's just that I relate to what goes on in school with smart kids like him.

So you say he's "stealing" the teacher's time by doing schoolwork *gasp* that happens to be something other than what is the focus at that moment? Maybe the teacher should forget about what the guy with the 4.0 average is doing and help the others then. I just don't buy the whole "here's the lesson, now do the questions and hand in the work" method of teaching. That works for people who have to do work. What about those who don't?

I just had to defend all those kids in school who didn't need to follow the structure to get by.

Keep up the good grades Alex. This issue will be resolved, and you're on your way to being successful in the long run.

 

[Bard2dbone]

I just had to defend all those kids in school who didn't need to follow the structure to get by.

This was me, as well. I got put in the 'Special' class in first grade. This was back when it was called the '******** program', because the only kids who were supposed to be there were the ******** kids.

My Granny taught me to read and write when I was four. So my first exposure to official education came from an ancient crone who was waaaaay beyond retirement age.

She had been a teaching nun until she got to the age that the church expected her to fall over dead at any time, which is apparently how they decided retirement age back then. So they sent her to this little neighborhood of houses in our town(Saginaw, TX) that just had all these ancient priests and nuns in them. She had three or four housemates, who all died. Then they were replaced by a few more, who all died. Then THEY were replaced by some more, who died. This went on for years.

As you can probably guess, the time she took off from teaching while waiting to die, she was bored. So she kept her teaching certificate up. She was hired to teach my first grade class, becaue the district was desperate. But over the fifteen or so years she had not taught,(mid 50's to 1970) a few things had changed.

On the first day of class she had everybody make a mark on our paper. Then she picked up a big ruler and hit Kim, David, and me. She didn't say why. Then all that happened again, and again, and again, ad infinitum. She kept hitting just the three of us, but wouldn't say why she kept hitting us. Kim was the first one to be so sore she picked up the pencil with her weak hand. She wasn't hit then. The reason we were being clubbed with a hunk of metal and wood was that we were writing with our 'wrong' hands. Any time she saw us pick up something with our left hand, she would lunge at us and hit us with that damned ruler.

So the clumsiness of having to constantly use my non-dominant hand, having to re-learn how to write with a different hand, and the poor ability to pay attention to "learning" things I had already been doing for two years was clear evidence to her that I was ********.

I would have thought it might be evidence that she was just a really bad teacher. I was so relieved to hear she finally died the summer between first and second grade.

I actually had a lot of fun in the special class, until they caught me reading the Three Musketeers and sent me back to the evil old wench.

Added: I have to clarify something. I read back over this because I'm a terrible typist and keep finding typos in my posts after I thought they were good. I noticed in this one that it is phrased like my Grandmother was "an ancient crone who was waaaaay beyond retirement age" . This is not the case. At the time my Grandmother was
in her early fifties. My first grade teacher, however was, depending on where I look for the information, either 88 or 90.

 

[Munjibunga]

This was me, as well. I got put in the 'Special' class in first grade. This was back when it was called the '******** program', because the only kids who were supposed to be there were the ******** kids.

My Granny taught me to read and write when I was four. So my first exposure to official education came from an ancient crone who was waaaaay beyond retirement age.

She had been a teaching nun until she got to the age that the church expected her to fall over dead at any time, which is apparently how they decided retirement age back then. So they sent her to this little neighborhood of houses in our town(Saginaw, TX) that just had all these ancient priests and nuns in them. She had three or four housemates, who all died. Then they were replaced by a few more, who all died. Then THEY were replaced by some more, who died. This went on for years.

As you can probably guess, the time she took off from teaching while waiting to die, she was bored. So she kept her teaching certificate up. She was hired to teach my first grade class, becaue the district was desperate. But over the fifteen or so years she had not taught,(mid 50's to 1970) a few things had changed.

On the first day of class she had everybody make a mark on our paper. Then she picked up a big ruler and hit Kim, David, and me. She didn't say why. Then all that happened again, and again, and again, ad infinitum. She kept hitting just the three of us, but wouldn't say why she kept hitting us. Kim was the first one to be so sore she picked up the pencil with her weak hand. She wasn't hit then. The reason we were being clubbed with a hunk of metal and wood was that we were writing with our 'wrong' hands. Any time she saw us pick up something with our left hand, she would lunge at us and hit us with that damned ruler.

So the clumsiness of having to constantly use my non-dominant hand, having to re-learn how to write with a different hand, and the poor ability to pay attention to "learning" things I had already been doing for two years was clear evidence to her that I was ********.

I would have thought it might be evidence that she was just a really bad teacher. I was so relieved to hear she finally died the summer between first and second grade.

I actually had a lot of fun in the special class, until they caught me reading the Three Musketeers and sent me back to the evil old wench.

Being left-handed is like being ********, though, isn't it?

 

[Bard2dbone]

Being left-handed is like being ********, though, isn't it?

Uh, Munji? Lean a little bit this way...

Whack!

Now straighten up and fly right.

I can wield the ruler of vengeance as well.

You'd think an ex-marine would know better than to piss off the corpsman.

I was just trying to make the point that sometimes teachers who are excessively rigid, aren't necessarily doing anyone any good, especially their students. And I'm not really even left-handed anymore. I'm sort of ambi-sinistrous, equally clumsy with both hands.

 

[CBRStingray]

Yeah, I thought about all that, but my mom wouldn't go for it. She's a real hardass. (I did pay for the gear myself btw)

As far as payback - I was going to smash all of her treasured Greek pottery and what not, but then I realized that I wasn't going to be an ******* right back. I'll be the better person. I'm a big believer in karma so maybe I'll find some awesome rig for $100 on eBay or something. Maybe I'm just being optimistic.

Karma is for chumps My initial though was that if I was you, and I did actually pay for the rig myself, and she refused (after calming down) to give me the money or buy a me new rig, I would consider taking some things of hers that she loved and selling them. I would sell as much as was necessary to buy an equivalent or better rig than the one you had. Then I would store that rig at a friends place - someone I trusted - until such time as it was safe to bring the rig home. After some more though I realised I would feel pretty bad after doing something like this.

Of course it would be irresponsible of me to recommend that you do this... so i won't. You might find that things will sort out in a few weeks. I'd advise you take the patient path and continue to be calm about things. I've learned in past the yelling/arguing with parents seldom helps a situation.

 

[CBRStingray]

Your mother took away some of your "toys" as punishment for doing something stupid.

-Mike

"Toys" paid for by your parents and a bass rig you paid for by yourself are two very different things. His mother didn't confiscate the rig until he learned his lesson. She didn't ground him and say "you can't use this for two weeks". Both of those options were available to her and would have been justified. But she took it, sold it, and kept the money. You might think this is quite acceptable, but I'm sure you would consider it stealing if your kids sold all your gear and then kept the money or blew it on something. The minute his mum sold the gear for less than it's value and refused to give him the money that was rightfullly his, she stole.

 

[Tom Crofts]

"Toys" paid for by your parents and a bass rig you paid for by yourself are two very different things. His mother didn't confiscate the rig until he learned his lesson. She didn't ground him and say "you can't use this for two weeks". Both of those options were available to her and would have been justified. But she took it, sold it, and kept the money. You might think this is quite acceptable, but I'm sure you would consider it stealing if your kids sold all your gear and then kept the money or blew it on something. The minute his mum sold the gear for less than it's value and refused to give him the money that was rightfullly his, she stole.

I concur.

 

[dlloyd]

The minute his mum sold the gear for less than it's value and refused to give him the money that was rightfullly his, she stole.

He's a minor, he doesn't have legal rights to possessions.

 

[Tom Crofts]

He's a minor, he doesn't have legal rights to possessions.

Legal or not, would you say it was ethically ok for a mother to sell something her son has worked hard for, and then to keep the money? I'd say that, legality aside, it wasn't really the best way of teaching her son right and wrong. To take it away for a period of time would be a reasonable punishment. imo.

 

[d8g3jdh]

He's a minor, he doesn't have legal rights to possessions.

dude, you know what you need to do! Move to Canada! It's much nicer up here, and our laws make more sense.

 

[arbitrary]

i suppose it is best to roll over for your mom right now.....and then ditch her after high school
if this happened to me there would be bad blood between me and my my for years to come and would seriously hurt out relationship (oh wait it did).
I suggest doing a lot of drugs and letting it ruin your life.
Or not buying you mom any birthday/christmas/mother day gifts and stop talking to her.
hehehe.......

 

[d8g3jdh]

i suppose it is best to roll over for your mom right now.....and then ditch her after high school
if this happened to me there would be bad blood between me and my my for years to come and would seriously hurt out relationship (oh wait it did).
I suggest doing a lot of drugs and letting it ruin your life.
Or not buying you mom any birthday/christmas/mother day gifts and stop talking to her.
hehehe.......

quick! You need to clarify the sarcasm otherwise the grown-ups will think you're serious! Nooo!

 

[dlloyd]

Legal or not, would you say it was ethically ok for a mother to sell something her son has worked hard for, and then to keep the money?

It's probably not the approach I'd take if I found out my son had been caught stealing and had subsequently given the teacher a hard time, but yeah, why not? Maybe it'll give him an appreciation of property.

 

[Alex]

dude, you know what you need to do! Move to Canada! It's much nicer up here, and our laws make more sense.

I've actually considered that for political reasons. I don't want to be a member of Team America: World Police much longer.

UBC is a good school, eh?

 

[plexibass]

I've actually considered that for political reasons. I don't want to be a member of Team America: World Police much longer.

UBC is a good school, eh?

you dont want to be a us citizen anymore.......bye

 

[ZoomBoy]

Legal or not, would you say it was ethically ok for a mother to sell something her son has worked hard for, and then to keep the money? I'd say that, legality aside, it wasn't really the best way of teaching her son right and wrong. To take it away for a period of time would be a reasonable punishment. imo.

IMO the punishment given should be appropriate for the crime. Hey, Alex made a mistake but I think his mother went way overboard in her reaction. Freaking out over this is not setting a good example for Alex or his siblings either. There is obviously something up with mom when dad won't speak up just to keep the peace because mom freaks out over things. There are some control issues here IMO.

Jeff