Mark Thoma's Other Blog

Avoiding Ruts

When I was in 7th grade, a teacher told us that you should put your shoes and socks on in a different order every day in order to remind yourself not to fall into a rut.

I thought that was good advice, and I've tried to follow it ever since. But I have top admit to feeling kind of silly this morning when I realized I'd just put one sock on half way, then the other halfway, then the first was pulled up all the way, then the shoe (untied), then the other sock was pulled up, then the other shoe (again untied), go back and tie the first shoe, then tie the second.

It doesn't have to be unique each day, just different from the day before, but I don't think I'd ever used that particular variation in the past.

Has it helped? Dunno. I seem to do the same thing every morning - this shoe and sock in a different order thing - and it feels kind of ruttish.

Some Like it Hot

It's 95 outside right now. I wonder if I'm the only one in town drinking hot coffee.

Ear Pulling

I just realized I said something that wasn't entirely correct on my other blog. I said that I'd only failed one examine my life, but there is another F in my past.

It was in first grade, and it wasn't an exam it was a worksheet. It was a matching exercise, I still remember how the worksheet page looked for some reason - it was trivially easy - and I didn't take it seriously at all.

Mrs. Seal, our teacher, graded the worksheet at her desk, then brought it over to me, dropped it on my desk, and proceeded to pull and twist my ear until it hurt like hell as punishment. That's what she did when she was displeased, she pulled your ear. Hard. This was before bans on spanking in school, and boys were still told to "grab their ankles" before getting hit with the "board". Twisting ears was nothing.

Unless you are a little kid. I never, ever wanted that to happen again. It hurt, it was embarrassing, and I didn't like it one bit. From then on, I was the model of good behavior, mostly out of fear. This was early in the year, and later in the spring my mom came home from a parent-teacher conference and reported that my teacher had said good things, including that she'd only had to pull my ear once all year. My mom seemed proud of that.

I'm not recommending the fear approach, but I probably needed something to keep me on track (an understatement...) and I've often wondered how much that incident, which clearly left a mark on me, mattered for how I did in school in the early years.

Fly Herding Failure

That wasn't very smart. I opened a door and left it open hoping to shoo an annoying fly out of the house, and more came in. Grrr.