Lordy Lordy, It’s All Stuff

When I was in school in the Midwestern USA, we had a dress code, at least through junior high school. It was strict: dresses only for girls, length regulated, blah blah blah.

We moved to Arizona in February the year I was in 8th grade, midway through my second year of junior high school.

Whiplash

You don’t know culture shock until you’ve come from a place where the dress code dictated dresses touch the knee, to a place where girls showed up in hot pants, sizzler sets (the set at left is for sale on Etsy, for reference), halter tops, and so on.

I believe some of the guys wore shorts to school but I can’t swear to it. Tee shirts, though? Definitely. While I don’t recall any being outright obscene, there were more than a few suggestive ones.

Long hair… huge change. Nearly every guy at the new school had hair to his collar or longer.

Word got back to me that one of the male teachers commented on my appearance, something to the effect that I was pretty. Except in more vehement and inappropriate terms.

He didn’t say it directly to me, and I don’t recall it was someone who was one of my teachers – but the rumor mill was fast, if not always accurate. I blew it off at the time. After all, I was a gawky teenager and figured it had to be a joke at my expense. I didn’t learn until much later, it wasn’t a joke.

I may have gone through some crap, but I’ve also dodged a whole lot of bullets in my life.

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Two Million Years Later…

The grandson is back with his mama, after she did a crazy round-trip flight to Ohio and back. Because schools out here can be a crapshoot at best and insane at worst, she enrolled him in a nearby charter school.

It… was not a successful process.

His mama yanked him out after less than a week, after spending a fortune on uniforms and mandatory supplies. After some of the extreme-right-borderline-religious-nutcase garbage that went down, it was non-negotiable.

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One Bird, Many Stones

A couple of weeks after the start of the semester (the charter schools started later), grandson got registered into the closest public school and now rides the bus to and from school.

Just like the Midwest, there’s a ridiculous amount of bullying at school. He’s tiny for his age, thanks to the one-two autoimmune punch of CF and CMT. He’s dealing with the aftermath of losing a parent, and of being dragged back across the country into a less-than-ideal climate for his health. Add bullies to the mix and he was threatening suicide. (Nor was this the first time.)

Unlike his recently-departed dad, however, my daughter took action. He’ll be cooling his heels in a treatment facility for at least the next few days. She’d already tried to get him counseling, but he refused to participate. It’s no longer optional for him, which is probably the best outcome we could ask for, all things considered.

This was expected. We anticipated all kinds of BS after all that’s happened. But no matter how much you try to prepare, it doesn’t make it easy to go through it when it rolls around.

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On An Upbeat Note

If the picture at the top of this post looks familiar, you’ve probably already visited my tee shirt store on RedBubble.

So far I’m at nineteen live designs, counting four photos strictly being sold as art prints.

While I tend overall to stick with imagery over text, I do have a couple of designs with text. This is one of my favorites at the moment — at least for the quip. I’m kinda “meh” about the design. It’s not a bad design, just not my favorite.

But in an era of science denial and the extreme right referrences to “overeducated” women, banning books, and all that ridiculousness, I wanted to put my 2 cents’ worth out there. The alt-right will likely not understand it.

Even better.

I’m trying to find my niche. A few people favorited some of my designs and one person is following the store. I know it likely won’t take off until I do some advertising, but it’s nice to know a few folks like what they’re seeing.