Full Circle

Wow. How do teeth get THAT yellow without smoking?


As a child I lived on a very large piece of property for Southern California. It was great too, because we were right up against miles of citrus orchards and adjacent to the Santa Ana River wetlands area. Open space was all around, and I have memories of waking up in a cold sweat at 4a.m. to the sound of a human male blurting out the sounds of military reveille. The yard was huge, and on a slope. Prior to the sun piercing the sky, in that odd blue-black hue of the pre-dawn California summer, I was frightened awake by the overbearing father unit. It was time to hit that vast Kansas-esque plain of grass in the front of the property and begin the daily regimen of "Invasive Species Relocation."
Not a form of internment for whatever ethnic group we are supposed to hate for this decade, it was more a task set forth by my father to remove weeds from the yard. I hated it. I told myself I would never again pick weeds as long as I was out of that house.

Enter Luka.


He threw a fit upon waking up while at his father's house this morning, prompting him to ALLOW HIM to stay home from school. I got home from work and discovered this transgression. Immediately my brain triggered a chemical that recalled the memory of the "Invasive Species Relocation Act Of 1976." It has rained here off and on for days, and the weeds were ripe and full between the many bricks along the backyard's walkways. "If you don't go to school, you better learn to do manual labor!" I said to the almost six-year-old. I marched him out back, away from Nintendo, Jenny The Teenage Robot, Avatar, and Spongebob for a little early childhood development. If you didn't go to school, you don't get T.V. time, and you WILL get manual labor time. Ya gotta make it a non-option to skip school, so weed picking was the order of the day.



It wasn't long before the whining started. I then was happily able to discuss that kids who don't attend school have to work a LOT harder than those who do. By talking his dad into staying home from school, he earned the really amazing and fun ability to do back-breaking manual labor until it was dark. That was at 3p.m. It doesn't get dark here until 9p.m. It's going slowly, but the old Socialist adage of "Peace Through Labor" seems to be working some mind-magic for the boy who would stay home. When asked thirty minutes ago if he'd like to miss school again on Monday, he quickly answered.




"I love school now."