J.T.'s Guest Blog #1: My week. Also...a question.

First of all...the flashing cursor didn't automatically show up in the text box, and thus I spent 15 seconds clicking around wondering why my tab from the title box didn't get me where I wanted to be. Second of all, I'm doing this without Charlie's knowledge, though I do have her full permission, because she has Mozilla (no I will NOT call you Seamonkey) save all her passwords.

Anyway.

Monday I went on a field trip downtown as a substitute chaperone for a kindergarten class. That was an interesting experience. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be though. For the bus trip there, I'm sure from the outside I looked hilarious, as I was sitting halfway back, surrounded by 5 year olds with a look of terror on my face. It was a storytelling thing at the public library, which I didn't find particularly interesting. The most interesting part was my trip to the bathroom with the boys. You haven't felt awkward until you glance over and see three boys using the same urinal. Also as there were other schools from around the city having the same field trip, so I got to feel like a zoo animal as I got many strange looks from teachers and adults from the other schools. After that we went to a park and had lunch. A cold windy lunch as it's late October and we were at a flat hill-less park next to a river. I ate my two cold ham and cheese sandwiches, drank my carton of chocolate milk, and spend the rest of the time picking up the trash that got blown and thrown away.

Asheville used to have a short track for racing, which was turned into a park. I always felt kind of negatively about that, as I am in fact a race fan. Once I got there all my negativity was erased. It still feels odd that the track itself is only used for bicycles, but the infield of it is amazing. They have a large grassy area, a full basketball court, a roller hockey rink, two sand volleyball courts, and a gigantic playground. Guess where we went? It is amazing how much joy can be had by 5 year olds just running around and randomly screaming. I don't mean yelling either, I mean fucking screaming, as though they are being chased by beasts from the depths of hell. It wasn't so bad though, I ended up spending the majority of the time, lifting the children into swings and pushing them. Some was spent sparing glances at some dude in his mid-late 40s I assume trying to be impressive. He was "playing basketball" almost as bad as me, and I'm pretty fucking terrible. He then took off his shirt, and was doing pushups. DUDE! Really?! It's not even like he had a body that needed to be shown off, it was the typical body of a late 40 yr old in mediocre shape. Needless to say, I could have done without that.

The rest of the week was spent recovering from that day, basically.

The question...with some lead up. Every Friday I set up a DVD player, data projector, and sound system in the cafeteria so the kids waiting for the 2nd and 3rd load buses can watch a movie. I've shown basically the same 5-6 movies every week for the past two years. As we can only show G movies, and the only G movie I own is the Lion King, I decided, hey, I'll bring that in and they can watch it for the next few weeks. So I did. Once there, I started thinking about the movie, and how fucking intense it is at times. Even now, because really, the movie is that awesome. So after asking around I didn't show it. So my question: Is the Lion King too intense to show to a room ranging from 5-10 yr olds?

So now that I've typed all this, I really want to delete it. Charlie (who is now home) will not allow it, so post it I shall.