Slow traffic day.

Today was the annual slow traffic day in our neck of the what-was-once woods.  The folks responsible for slowing down traffic are the good folks at Targa Newfoundland.  Every year we all gather at some point to watch as expensive and expensively modified cars race through our streets.  And every year the point is to make the most creative remark about the cars as they go by often comparing them to the young and not so young drivers that terrorize our town daily.

The best one this year came from the guy working on our heating system that said "Jesus, they only close the road because the Targa cars would frustrate the shit out of the usual speeders"!  He also informed me that he had gone faster than that when he was hooked to a tow truck in his old work van.

My beef today is the educational system and it's refusal to allow the kids to witness this event by keeping them in class in the name of safety. The same crowd that will cancel school two days in advance based upon the long range forecast.  This doesn't apply to my boy...I keep him home deliberately not to thumb my nose at the school folk but to allow him, a ten year old boy, to witness something cool that is actually brought to a remote place that doesn't always get to have cool.  In exchange he had to wash himself thoroughly this morning and do two pages of math practice the night before.  It turned out to be the easiest homework he has done in his life.

I don't expect my behaviour in this issue to be followed by many parents that simply can't deal with their youngster all morning long because they have punched into Facebook long before the bus has toted them from the roadside, but I only hope that a few more would jump on board...enough for the schools to note that absenteeism trumps the H1N1 on this morning annually and to send the youngin's home to watch legalized speeding.  Now I don't think all the teachers are stunned, but i do think that some of them need to be reminded that there is more to education than a classroom, and hell maybe I'll take A Crack At that job too.