Your unpopular opinions and creepy admissions

Don’t ask me; I got expelled 2 weeks before graduation.

 

In my hometown, they have a tradition that I didn't know about until today. Graduation for the public high school was tonight. This afternoon, there were ceremonies at every elementary school for the high schoolers to go back and thank their elementary school teachers. Very cool. I saw FB posts from several friends who are elementary school teachers who were truly moved by having their former students come back to see them today.

 

As a high school student, I would have loved this. Teachers are heroes.

 

In our town, the 12th graders do something similar and end by going to their 5th grade classrooms to celebrate the kids going from elementary to middle school.

 

We have four high schools in our system. One time - and one time only - some genius thought it would be a good idea to schedule all four graduations at the exact same time. In some cases, families had to chose which one to go to. I thought somebody was going to get strung up.

 

One thing I remember from watching Hoop Dreams is how big a deal they made about 8th grade graduation, because many of those kids would either wind up dead or dropouts. We take so much for granted in our privileged little bubbles.

 

The local high school did that on Friday. It’s nice for the older kids to see their old teachers and for the younger kids to see the high schoolers.

 

I'm a grumpy old man, and I hate baby gender reveals.
Congratulations. You reproduced, further shallowing the gene pool. La dee dah.
We'll see how junior likes being born in a prison infirmary because in your quest for social media likes you bought some knockoff pyrotechnics from a guy with Tijuana license plates and burned down the whole neighborhood.


To be fair, I"m not against finding out the gender and telling people. Just stop with PT Barnum nonsense.

 

I'm getting older and grumpier, and I totally agree with you. You shouldn't need a party planner to tell people whether you're having a boy or a girl.
How about the ones they'll show on Facebook or YouTube where the dad obviously is pining for a boy, and he'll start pouting when pink powder flies all over the place. Yeah, I bet it'll be great when your angst-filled tween Kaitlyn sees that clip about 12 years later.

 

Yikes!

Jinkies, even!

 

Happened to be in Oslo one late-spring day where, if I understood right, students in a certain grade (probably similar to our 10th or 11th grade ) get the run of the city in an annual sanctioned parade. Kids were drinking, yucking it up, committing non-permanent vandalism along the parade route, that sort of stuff. I remember there were several looks of concern and disapproval from parents and other adult bystanders, but there was also a lot of adults who were at worst unbothered by the goings-on.

I think (maybe I was told this and I'm incorporating it into my reaction) that there was a philosophy of, They're allowed this one day of unbridled adolescence for all of the buttoned-down behavior they are required to put in every other day of their lives. Not that living in Oslo is so bad, but there seemed to be an attitude of, Let's just let them do what they want this one day, and we know they'll be their good normal selves come tomorrow.

And gender-reveal parties are the stupidest. Except, maybe, destination bachelorette parties.

 

I have a cousin that just had a gender reveal party and I had to cringe seeing the pictures on Facebook.