Thank You For Helping With The Trees

One of my Northeast Kansas neighbors wrote something rather special to me today, and here it is!

Sensing that this is not really about being thanked for hauling off trees, and I believe the person was actually thanked, I decided to write a response to the comment and include the post it followed, which is actually about Governor Sam Brownback and his contribution to education in Kansas. Had I known the names of all my neighbors, as I generally have in other places I have lived, my daughter and I would have baked some bread or cupcakes for the helpful soul who took the branches away and written a note. Seriously. I would have loved to do that, I just don't know many of my neighbors, at this point. Most of them are not terribly friendly, and when some of them favor such actions as following me home from the store to let me know they will burn my house down if I don't move away, going out of my way to meet more of them is a challenge. I know that does not represent every one of them, but experiences like that tend to stand out. It also illustrates more reasons to bring the "unified school districts" under state and federal control, rather than allowing local control by people who really just want to curse and threaten murder.

Here's what I told this person, in return:

So nice of you to respond in language that was, no doubt, taught and encouraged by USD 380! Jesus and your mother must be very proud!

I was not present when the tree was removed; if it was you, thank you. Seriously. That's still not a reason to write to me, using profanity. I don't think I know anyone like you, anywhere else but here. No one has ever thanked me for potty training an eight year old who had not been taught to use the bathroom by her frankfurter momma, or for teaching two six year olds how to talk; when I married their dad, their frankfurter mom had not taught them a darned thing. Within six months, they were proficient with the language, at a fifth grade level. My "lazy ass" may have cardiac problems brought on by thallesemia, (look it up; my hemoglobin was around 6 when it was diagnosed) but I bothered to teach my children and stepchildren how to use the language in this country. No small task in an isolated community where children are deliberately under socialized. All anyone ever wants to say to me, or to my husband about the fact that his children now achieve, rather than fail, are nasty things. Once again, people like you do not exist elsewhere on the planet, and that's a good thing.

I am so glad you know how to count. Yes, USD 380 does, indeed, have one school board. But learn to analyze numbers more efficiently, please. Marshall County has about 10,000 people within it's borders, and it really only needs one school board. It could probably use three or four small elementary schools, and either two middle schools or one junior high, depending on how the state would decide to manage the system, and one high school. That's all we need. We could offer all the students a better curriculum and better education, and we would save a lot of money. The state could see to it that no one who is unqualified even ran for a position on the school board, and we would all be following the same laws as the rest of the state and the nation. Pretty soon, Marshall County children might even be able to compete, academically, with children from other countries! None of you can now. You know why? Almost all of you, except the "illegals" you keep crying about, are MONOLINGUAL!

To bring geography, as well as mathematics, into this, allow me to also point out that USD 380 has one inefficient institution in Marshall County, and one inefficient institution in Nemaha County. It's much better for the students if all the schools within a school district are in the same county, following the same laws. That way, fewer of your children get away with taking guns and drugs to school.

Once again, if you were the one who helped with the tree, thank you. I do appreciate it. I don't know who people are yet, because no one has reached out to me in gestures of friendship yet, since I moved here in 2007, and when everyone looks so similar to everyone else (I mean that in the nicest way possible; I am used to more diversity) and no one even extends his or her hand in a handshake and says, "Glad to meet you, my name is______", it is hard to track down who is involved in what, in order to say thank you. Believe me, that has bothered me a lot. But there's no need to cuss anyone out over it.