Your unpopular opinions and creepy admissions

^^ Some tokers enjoy the ritual of the smoke.

I don't toke anymore and would rather take a few edibles which are every bit as potent and then some.

 

I knew the world was truly up for grabs when I saw a transit authority cop blazing one up on my way to the Cardinals game.

 

Here’s an unpopular one:

When I go to the beach or a public pool, I want there to be lots of people, music playing, loud splashing and giggling, the whole works. It feels like a small bit of community in a siloed world.

 

And everyone's pissing in the water, too. Oh, yummy!

 

You know, all the fish shit in the ocean.

 

This is largely my attitude about middle school promotion. I hate it and having promotions for the sake of promotions cheapen the accomplishments of high school and college graduations where you actually earn something.

But then you see the families beaming with pride for the kiddos who just couldn’t find an easy way to do school. And the families who probably didn’t get as far in school. I become a sucker. I still tell everyone promotion is not a graduation ceremony and they still have another to accomplish. But I have pictures with students from this last promotion I’m really going to miss and it was a good night. I also am moving to a high school next year, so I got extra weepy at this one.

 

Anyone lighting fireworks in a suburban or urban setting on any day other than July 4th is an asshole.

 

My daughter just had a promotion ceremony for fifth grade. We let her know in no uncertain terms that this is just the first step, you have to finish 8th grade, high school, and college. Then maybe grad school. I would add its the kids' first exposure to losing friends. Some kids are going to different schools in the fall, and in middle school they will have to change classes, so this was like the last time their "class" would be together.

 

June of 1990, I "graduated" from eighth grade at my Catholic grade school, a school that I had been attending with the same core of kids for a decade. By seventh and eighth grade, we were basically a crew of class clowns that each had a specialty -- one could burp on command, another could fart just the same, another could toss things out the window with the smoothness of Larry Bird. And everyone honored a code of silence, because you didn't want ratted on so why would you tell on someone else?

Half of us would be going to the Catholic high school and the other half public school and that Friday night of graduation was the last night we would all be together. Additionally, it would also be the last time the parents of these kids, many of whom had become friends through years of seeing each other at school picnics, concerts and birthday parties, would be together too. A group of those parents went out after mass that night to celebrate and, probably subconsciously, say goodbye.

I keep trying to get a reunion together. Next year will be 35 years. Maybe now is the time.

 

The Ocean’s 11 origin story.

 

Not sure where this goes, but an unpopular admission seems the place. The daughter I mentioned previously was admitted to another middle school. It’s still a public school, but it’s a lottery and has much smaller classes.

She doesn’t want to go, we do. So, in a grand bargain, we’re considering getting her a phone. We’ve been against getting a phone for her so early, but we want her to go to the second school.