(Note: Following is an expanded version of the A Texas Voice column currently appearing in subscriber newspapers. To share with your friends, please use the e-mail link by clicking on the envelope following the article. If you would like to see A Texas Voice in your newspaper, refer the editor to this page at www.ATexasVoice.com or send me a note, including your paper’s name.)
---
OK, folks, it’s time to climb aboard the virtual tour bus and see what’s going on around the country.
First stop is Modesto, Calif., where The Modesto Bee gives us a story that “illustrates the devastation and stress educators are under as districts across the state slash their bottom lines.”
“Bottom lines,” by the way, is a reference to budgets, not ... well, let’s go back to the story.
Modesto City Schools has notified 370 teachers they will likely lose their jobs as the district cuts spending. One high school teacher who received such notice received questions in class about what she might do if she does indeed lose her job.
According to the story, she replied she’d have to become a stripper and sell her reproductive eggs to pay the bills.
As we suspect will happen these days, a parent complained to the school district, which has said the matter has been addressed but did not give specifics.
From the tour bus, we shout, “Come on, people, these are high school students. They know about strippers and reproductive eggs ... what’s the problem?”
---
We duck our heads while driving through Thermal, Calif., after reading in the The Press-Enterprise about a brazen daylight armed robbery.
Wielding a semi-automatic pistol, the woman supposedly robbed 11 people at a food market in the desert town and escaped in an old car. Her efforts netted her $6, according to lawmen.
“Come on, people,” we yell encouragingly from the bus, “we can find her; she couldn’t have gone far on two gallons of gasoline.”
---
Wondering why we’re spending so much time in California, we travel through LA while getting an update from the Los Angeles Times about incredibly rude movie theater patrons.
During a screening of “Shutter Island,” someone complained about a woman talking on her cell phone, in spite of all the cute advisories on the screen not to do so. Supposedly, the woman and two men left the theater, but the guys came back and stabbed the complainer in the neck with a meat thermometer. Two others were injured after coming to the victim’s aid. The assailants escaped.
Totally befuddled, we mumbled in the bus, “Come on, people, who carries a meat thermometer around?”
---
Pulling the tour bus into Reed Point, Mont., we hear from the Billings Gazette about the school superintendent and former Civil War re-enactor who annually uses his replica antique black power muzzleloader gun to give a demonstration to the high school’s American history class.
He ends the demonstration by firing a cap in an otherwise empty gun, making a small pop.
This year, however, the presentation ended with the fully loaded gun firing a ball into a map on the wall. “I can’t explain how it was loaded,” he told the newspaper.
From the bus, we shout, “Come on, people, if this guy cannot explain how a muzzleloader is loaded, he should not be putting on a demonstration.”
As a side note, we commend the people of the school district for not overreacting, except maybe for one parent who reportedly laughed until he was crying.
---
Moving along to Indiana, the Indianapolis Star relates the story of a man released from prison after serving a four-month sentence for dealing in drugs.
His wife picked him up from prison with their 11-month-old daughter. That’s nice; we can hope they will pull together as a family and put this painful experience in the past. Right?
Their first mistake was the fact there was some sort of license plate infraction that prompted an officer to pull over the vehicle driven by the wife. The second, substantially more serious, mistake was they apparently were celebrating Daddy’s freedom by driving around smoking pot.
We collectively yell from the bus, “Come on, people, get a clue. If you want to mess up your life, don’t do it on the streets and definitely do not involve your baby.”
---
No one on the bus said he or she knew of Macomb County, Mich., before we passed through, but maybe we just forgot about it, like the parents of a 3-year-old boy who was left behind after his birthday party.
According to The Macomb Daily, the Saturday party was at a local pizza playground and the boy was noticed wandering unattended about 30 minutes after it ended. After nobody claimed him, police stepped in and eventually turned the boy over to Child Protective Services.
It was Monday afternoon before the mother and father and grandparents all realized that none of the others had the boy.
“Come on, people,” we bellow between pizza slices, “if you cannot remember all of your kids, at least keep a count of them.”
---
We’re reading in the Columbus Dispatch, as we roll through Ohio, about a 68-year-old grandfather (and wondering on the side why journalists always feel compelled to point out when someone acting up is a grandparent, as if having a grandchild should fix all of someone’s problems).
This grandfather, allegedly, found a way to entertain himself in an area Walmart by slipping his keys between his fingers and slapping boys in the back of their heads when their parents were not looking. He said he liked the excitement of getting away with it.
A cry arises from the bus, “Come on, people, Grandpa needs a safe place to release energy pent up by retirement. Give him a break.”
---
We complete our west-to-east tour in Fort Myers, Fla., where WBBH reports on a man with multiple malfunctions, one of which might be wardrobe.
We’ve all seen the signs on business entrances, “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.” One man challenged that point by entering a bar while not wearing shoes. The manager asked the man to leave, but he responded by removing all of his clothes and entering the women’s rest room.
Police responded, naturally, for the au naturel complaint, and they arrested him after a couple of Taser treatments.
From the bus, with eyes diverted, we bellow, “Come on, people, this is a public health issue. If you plan to walk around a public rest room, wear shoes ... you just do not know what’s on those floors.”
(c) 2010 by Steve Martaindale
No comments:
Post a Comment