Minor children and drinking. In my opinion, oil and water...

The new Gwinnett County school year starts up next week. It’s weird; we used to plan our lives around the Gwinnett school calendar. Since our youngest graduated high school a couple of years ago, I don’t keep up with those dates any longer. I kind of miss it.



A friend of mine has a daughter who’s a junior this year, I believe. This friend and I were talking about preparations for the new school year (I miss that so much), and we inevitably got on the subject of trying to parent teenagers in a world that screams for their attention with some mighty scary things...(read full story)

So now Georgians can vote on Sunday alcohol sales. Will wonders never cease?

I have lived in Georgia all my life (save the stint in Nashville for college and a brief period of insanity when I lived in Manhattan). For as far back as I can remember, buying alcohol in this state has been a pain in the a**. I mean, I remember my parents used to plan their whole day around it. You see, the county in which I grew up was a dry one. It was DeKalb, by the way. Kinda funny, huh? I hear you can buy crack at the grocery stores there now, but this was a long time ago.

My parents used to pack all us kids up in the car and drive to a whole other county just to buy alcohol - and I don't even remember them drinking...ever! I used to think alcohol was a big secret, illegal thing, something the Commies invented to lead otherwise God-fearing families astray. It was that big of a deal.

Many times over the years I remember lawmakers shouting, arguing, pleading and crying over this issue. Many times I am reminded of hearing one particular moral leader looking into the TV camera and saying that God would obliterate the state of Georgia with His wrath if we ever sank low enough to sell alcohol on Sundays. As a newspaper reporter, I have covered many stories on the subject, each one heated, emotional and morally weighted.

And here we are. On March 16, 2011, the all-knowing powers-that-be finally decided to turn the issue over to the incompetent voters to let them decide whether their local government will allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays. I have heard it said before that you can't legislate morality. Well of course you can, or at least you can try. That's what we're all about in the South, right? We've always believed that the perception of something is more important than the reality of it. In other words, "if we don's sell it on Sundays, then surely people aren't drinking it on Sundays!"

But the true devotees soon figured out that they could buy their alcohol on Saturdays, in preparation for Sundays. They figured out that they could drive to a restaurant allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays (by the drink), then drive home. Good plan, by the way.

I think the matter boils down to the person,and not the liquid. If you're prone to abusing alcohol, the day of the week doesn't matter. If you really, really want to get your hands on alcohol on the Lord's day, you will. In fact, I'll go you one better. I think the LORD knows that if you want to get your hands on some alcohol, you will. I think He knows that if you abuse it, you'll do it whenever you please. I think He knows that the implications of buying alcohol on Saturday are the same as the ones associated with buying it on Sunday.

Long story short, thanks Georgia legialators. We voters'll take it from here.

Yes or no, should uninformed people be allowed to vote?

Oh come on now, I know voting is an unalienable right for every American citizen. But you know as well as I do that most people don’t even do it. Watch the news; the results are everywhere. Anyway, I got into an involved discussion with a colleague last night about a hypothetical situation: What if everyone who voted had to take a test first, just a test of basic knowledge of political issues, common sense solutions, etc.? Hypothetically, of course. What would happen?


The question arose because both of us know people who should never vote. No, I don’t mean “uninformed” as in those not having the benefit of formal higher education. Some of the smartest people I know don’t. And no, I’m not referring to people who don’t agree with my political views. I'm referring to people who likely can’t read the ballot, let alone understand what’s on it. And we all know people who don’t even care what’s on the ballot. Let me give you a few examples:

I know of a woman who made a point to vote in the last presidential election – for the first time in decades – just to vote against Obama based on his skin color. That was it. The color of his skin. She didn’t know anything about his platform, nothing about his voting record as an Illinois senator. His skin was simply too dark.

A checkout lady at Kroger made a point NOT to vote in the last presidential election because she was having a bad hair day. She had run out of her brand of hairspray and had to use whatever was in the ladies’ room. True story. I’m kind of glad she didn’t make it to the polls.

When I was standing in line waiting my turn to vote in November 2008, I was behind a couple who had hauled all three of their children to the polling place with them. No big deal really, except the parents were both smoking, ashes falling indiscriminately on the oldest kid’s head and into his hoodie. They argued the entire time about who the other was voting for, taking intermittent swats at their little human ashtray, finally agreeing to be happy that each vote would cancel out the other. Uh, OK. The entire time, I was afraid little Junior was going to combust.

A relative of mine voted for Bill Clinton because she thought he and Hilary made a cute couple. Talk about misguided.

You may remember my recent post about the woman dressed in camouflage at the car repair shop. She actually thought Obama and Pelosi were husband and wife. How can you draw breath in this country, walk through a Wal-Mart or order a Happy Meal, and think that? She voted. She said so.

Oh well, the question was only hypothetical. I believe so strongly in the right to vote in this country, the privilege of voting, and I know that everyone 18 and over here legally has that right. Still - makes you think, doesn’t it?

So…the Chinese are smarter than we are. Who’da thunk?

Well, according to the news piece I just watched, they are. In fact, the United States has dropped from the enviable top spot as world's most educated nation to (gulp) 12^th place. Please tell me that this does not come as a surprise, folks. I have always been struck by the discipline and level of expectation Asian parents in general have where their children are concerned.

On the flip side of that, I have always been bothered by the lack of expectation we as Americans have for our offspring. I'm bothered by the over-showering of praise we rain on our children when they do things that we should expect them to do anyway. "Oh look honey, Johnny went poopy in the potty. Let's rent a limo and take him and his entire daycare class to Chuck E. Cheese!" I remember leaving my daughter's 5^th grade graduation, and when we walked outside the building, there was a line of limousines waiting to scoop up the little darlings and spirit them off to God-knows-where. We're talking 5^th grade folks. That's what, 11 years old? What on earth do these parents have planned for the kids' high school graduations? The Concorde to Dubai?

What are these kids supposed to strive for? What, exactly, is within their reach when they're out on their own? I suppose that's an experiment; the results have yet to be revealed. Then again, have you ever watched the TV show "Pimp my Sweet Sixteen" or whatever it's called? It's positively nauseating. That's our future?

Back to education. All this goes hand-in-hand. For once, I'm not really wandering off-topic. I have a friend who, when her son was in 4^th grade, withdrew him from school because (and I quote) "His teacher got onto him for not doing his homework. He's just a little boy!" He never returned to conventional school, by the way. He was "home schooled" for a time, which means he sat on his behind and played video games day in and day out. The saddest thing about his story is that he was a very bright kid. He was also over-indulged and now, at age 20, he struggles with simple life issues, like getting a job and paying bills. Sadly, his is not the only story I'm familiar with.

We graduate kids from high school who can't spell. Many can't perform simple mathematical calculations. Our kids, on average, are in school more than 40 fewer days than kids in China. We push kids out into the world with their grubby little hands held out, expecting the world to accommodate them because they don't really feel like applying themselves. They've never had to. The world is not a nice place. It's not going to baby our babies, folks. Technology morphs by the second. The world is facing challenges that require smart people to solve. The world does not need whiny underachievers whose mommies and daddies swoop in to protect them from the world!

And while we're at it – YOUR is possessive – "Those are your shoes."

YOU'RE is a contraction of the two words YOU and ARE – "You're a poor speller."

THERE – "There are your shoes!"

THEIR – "Their shoes are not yours!"

THEY'RE – Another contraction, this time of THEY and ARE "They're confused about where their shoes are!"

OK now that that's settled…

You have to take care of your teeth. Period.

From a very young age, I have been seeing a dentist. My mother took us to the dentist not every 6 months but every 3 months. Clean, well-maintained teeth are a must if one ever hopes to avoid being lumped into the "white trash" category. Now before you get angry and accuse me of being shallow and stereotypical, hear me out.
Dental care is expensive. One must be committed to the undying commitment, both financial and otherwise, of caring for one's choppers. They support your smile, your speech and your cheeks. Good teeth matter to most people. The absence of teeth, by the same token, bothers most people. I remember the first time I saw a person with no teeth in his mouth. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with his face. It was all sunken in, like a dried apple doll. He was selling boiled peanuts and produce on the roadside in rural North Carolina, and I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. My parents had taken all of us kids on a road trip to the mountains in early Fall. The trip was great right up until I saw that old man with his sunken-in face. And when he laughed, I nearly wet my pants. I had never seen anything so scary in all my life. I have obviously never forgotten it.
Now this guy was obviously a country man, and he was no more bothered by his lack of teeth than I am by my lack of chest hair. He probably lost them in his 30s. No big deal - to him. To me, it was a huge deal. Ever since that fateful day by the side of the road in the picturesque mountains, I have equated a lack of teeth with, well, frightening backwoods ignorance. That logic may sound convoluted, but maybe you had to be there.
Teeth matter folks. I'm not saying that someone with no teeth is white trash, but I will venture to say that someone who walks around toothless and unabashed at the supermarket, at a wedding or at a ballgame, simply because they're too cheap or too unaware of its impact on others, well… draw your own conclusions.
I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. I have put off this appointment for too long strictly out of fear. Somewhere along the line (probably in North Carolina), I developed a phobia of anyone touching my mouth, teeth, lips, anything in that general area. I am so phobic, in fact, that I have to be sedated for even the simplest procedures. I sincerely hope that I do not hallucinate my old friend from 40-something years ago, hawking his wares on a North Carolina roadside and grinning from ear to ear. I may never go back to the dentist and end up joining the ranks of society's toothless.

Educated white trash

My husband and I just returned from Fall Family Weekend at GA Southern University. I wanted so badly for my daughter to love it wherever she went to school, to thrive and make lots of new friends and have the time of her life. There are 20,000 students at that school. Seemed to be a reasonable hope. Now growing up, all I heard about Southern was that it was a big party school. Of course it is. Name one that's not, right? But I thought well, she's going to party if she chooses, and she'll take the higher road if she chooses, no matter what school she attends.

The problem with that theory is that there's no higher road to choose at Southern, which is located in Statesboro. Statesboro is a town (city is stretching it) that consists of cotton fields and tractor shops. And bars, which surround the campus. Bars that are apparently more than happy to serve minors. If you should happen to not choose to be a slobbering alcoholic at Southern, you have no other options. My impression of the school this weekend was comparable to 20,000 12-year-olds that had been turned loose in a liquor store. Students relieving themselves in restaurant parking lots. Parents cheering them on. Uh, and on and on. I was so disappointed. Her roommates get drunk on a regular basis, and they're so loud and obnoxious that she sometimes has to sleep in her girlfriends' room just to get enough sleep for class the next day.

Not sure what else you'd call all this except White Trash – with a new spin: a "college education." She'll be transferring ASAP.