Because We's Smart

Apparently before Thanksgiving the kids in Kady's 2nd grade class each got a feather on which they got to write what they were thankful for and then stick it up the turkey's butt decoratively behind the turkey, thus creating a beautiful and colorful Thanksgiving-esque bulletin board decoration.

Now that Thanksgiving is over and we've all moved on to stockings and jingle bells and the fat man himself the teacher sent the feathers home. I went through Kady's papers this weekend and found her beautiful blue feather with the word "SCHOOL" on it.

I chuckled at my youngest child's apparently budding nerdiness and said, "So, of all the things you're thankful for you put "school" on your feather?" Kady looked at me as serious as could be and said, "Well, DUH. If it wasn't for school I'd be dumb as a dang rock!"

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Paul's days off are during the week so that means on those two week days Conner and I usually give up watching Dora and The Fresh Beat Band and Hi-5 because Paul has a seriously disturbing penchant for watching trash TV - Jerry Springer, Maury and Steve Wilkos to be specific.

Last week, though, on the second day he was home he'd had enough of Conner going to the TV, standing in the way of the pole dancer trying to decide who her baby daddy was and hollering, "Backpack! Backpack!" over and over, so he gave up and let us Conner watch preschool programming.

Having been involved in childcare for the better part of my life, I have become rather immune to preschool programming. Admittedly, there are times it will bother me and there are other times it just makes me giggle - like the episode of Go Diego Go! where the water buffalo or some other large bovine-ish mammal has a symbiotic friend called the "oxpecker" - but for the most part I hum along with the songs but don't think much about it. Paul, though, likes TV with wild game taking bullets, outlaws taking bullets, crooked cops taking bullets and shows about bullets taking bullets. Preschool programming is just too cutesy for his taste. And there are rarely bullets.

He had watched the first few minutes of Dora the Explorer and didn't say a single word. A little further into the show I heard him "hmph". I tore my eyes from Etsy and asked what was wrong.

He said, "This show. It's stupid. That annoyin' kid is repeating everything she says a hunnerd times. Stupid show." I laughed and went back to Etsy and Conner continued hollering BACKPACK! every few seconds.

Not long after that I realized Paul was quietly counting. He was sitting in his recliner with his denim shirt, goosedown vest and camouflage OU Sooners hat on, spitcup in hand.....counting. "One........two.........three........" I sat here watching him, wondering. He got to seven before I finally had to ask, "What on earth are you counting?"

He spit, never taking his eyes off the TV, then said, "How many times that effin' map of Dora's says 'flower,'" then he spit again and continued with, "....eight.......nine......."

The count got up to thirteen before he finally gave up and grumbling, went outside to shoot something.