Elementary school field trips: The adulthood reminder

Nothing reminds you you’re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids. On a field trip. In a school bus. It’s chaotic chatter — like birds in the trees — until one child starts humming Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Why Beethoven’s Ninth? And then they all start to join in, one after another. Only … wait a minute … no, they’re not humming. They’re moo-ing. They are all moo-ing like cows! Beethoven! All of them now. Every last one. The bus is filled with the sound of bovines. And I just have to smile. Nothing reminds you you’re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids.

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The questions we weren’t hearing in the presidential debates

Here’s my problem with presidential debates: I can’t help but sit there and think that the hard questions aren’t being asked. The tough questions. The questions we neck-deep-in-it Americans have on our minds. No, instead it’s the same old hum-drum questions that give us no better understanding of two candidates we have to choose between. So after watching the second presidential debate, and with the third one coming up, I thought I would share a few questions I would love to see the candidates answer. Here they are:

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Time for a wascally wabbit education

She sat there with a carrot plugged into the side of her mouth. Gnawing on it. It’s the only way to describe it. The kid was gnawing on it with her back teeth, grinding away little bits and smacking her lips while she did it. My daughter will ask for a carrot before she’ll ask for a piece of candy — who knew such a thing was possible? Not carrot sticks, but a whole carrot. She’ll chomp down to the very end, until her fingertips are brushing her teeth. She was doing this at the dinner table and I looked over at her. I put my chin on my fist and got nostalgic.

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