Basketball Head: Story of a Grade School Guidance Counselor

Yep, that's what we used to call her.  Sixth through eighth grades.  Her real name was Mrs. X, or something.  I'm not going to share her real name, which I do remember, not out of any courtesy for her, but because Basketball Head is more ridiculous.  She was mean.  I don't remember anything specific she did that was mean....wait, that also is a lie.  I remember a good few.  I came to her once with intense distress over a personal situation having to do with my parents, who were divorcing, and she was flip and made me feel like a retard.  My best friend was verbally abused by her;  I would go so far as to say emotionally manipulated by her.  Basketball Head was maybe a bit sick.  By the way, we called her Basketball Head because of her hair.  It was short and fuzzy, wiry-curly, so thin you could easily see her scalp, and colored something weird and pale and nondescript.  Why this reminded us of a basketball is a mystery, but look, we were twelve.

My niece went to the same school twenty-some years later, and fortunately B.H. had long retired.  What made this woman want to be a guidance counselor is not only obvious, it's frightening: she enjoyed the privilege of being a jerk to easy prey.  Now that I'm a mother and have a child in school, I'm suddenly remembering stuff long buried in the old coffers.  I realize we're WAAAAAAY too early in the game to worry about such things, and I also realize that my kid goes to a school that so far we could not be happier with, but facts and logic have never stopped my anxiety disorder yet, and they're certainly not about to when it comes to my kids.

I had one small victory with Basketball Head, in 8th grade when we all had to fill out some career survey thing and then have our results evaluated in a private consult with her.  My profile showed that I should have become either a meteorologist or a babysitter for brain-injured pigs.  No, really....I have no idea what it said.  Too long ago.  What I do remember is that when B.H. asked me what I thought I might want to do, I told her I wanted to be a philanthropist.  I had recently learned what that word meant, and I thought it was hilariously funny - to be a philanthropist you had to have a shitload of money, right?  Isn't that great as a career choice, then?  I mean, HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

....Tumbleweeds.  Among her many crimes, B.H. had no sense of humor.  I have since told that joke to probably too many people over the years (.."ya know what I always wanted to be growing up?  A philanthropist!  HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!)  It's kind of like when I crack wise at the doctor's office, which I like to do because dammit, going to the doctor is stressful - rarely have I gotten the response I wanted.  Tough crowd, these "professionals" with "credentials."  But that's another post.

Chopped Up Fish Farts

So, the summer crop of experiments has been harvested, dug up, and composted over the back fence, and the soil has been turned over.  It was a good crop - all credit to GW for defying the drought and the record heat this summer.  We had basil, chili peppers, cucumbers, a couple of watermelons, and a ton of really awesome cherry tomatoes.  Among the casualties were the pumpkins, which died of some horrible bacterial infection that turned the insides of their stems to goo.  The cilantro lasted about ten minutes, its delicate little leaves fried by the intense sun like mosquitoes in a bug zapper.  But a great many gardening lessons were learned, and the next go should be easier. 

Last weekend Avery was helping GW plant some carrot seeds, and he decided to fertilize.  He doesn't just use Miracle-Gro - he has this rust-colored concoction in a milk jug that he made himself, and although the plants love it, GW's the first to acknowledge that it smells like the rear end of a cow with dysentery.  Noticing this, Av commented on it and asked her dad what, exactly, this foul stuff was made of.  "Mostly it's chopped up fish parts," he replied helpfully.  She seems to have made a highly appropriate pronunciation error of that last word.  We thought it was pretty funny.