You may not believe in the Easter Bunny, but you’ll find yourself believing in a six-foot rabbit named Harvey after watching this charming film starring James Stewart.
Harvey, 1950, Universal Pictures. Starring James Stewart; co-starring Josephine Hull. Directed by Henry Koster. B&W, 105 minutes.
Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) is a naïve, yet oddly sage, man who would do anything for the family that wants nothing more than to hide him away from the world. Chiefly, they want him to keep his discussions about and with his best friend, Harvey, to himself. Harvey, you see, is a 6′ 3 -1/2″ invisible rabbit, or a “pooka,” a mischievous mythological creature .
His sister, Veta (Josephine Hull), among other things, is worried for her daughter’s prospects what with friends and neighbors hearing Elwood’s benevolent but strange talk about life…and a pooka. She arranges to have him committed to a local mental hospital, but in the process confesses to seeing Harvey herself at times. The admitting doctor (Charles Drake) takes note, and Veta is involuntarily placed in the hospital…
Apparently being good in math isn’t considered American.
Not by the rest of the world, anyway. Yes, I’m making broad generalizations, and stereotyping can be a dangerous choice, we all know that. When I was young, people from Poland and Italy were assumed to be less intelligent. The number of jokes I heard denigrating my Polish ancestry made an impression, and not a positive one.
So I’m sensitive to such comments as, “well, of course she’s good in math, she IS Chinese,” even if it’s a “good” stereotype (no such thing, but that’s for another post). Still, you can’t ignore the statistics. Asian countries place highest in math scores (well, all education scores, for that matter) and second-generation Asian-American students do better in math classes as well.
American students are way down the list. You’ve heard it before, and there are many explanations. A few actually make sense without being demeaning to anyone.
Are Asians inherently smarter? I couldn’t find any evidence of such, but two things stood out to me when I read up on this subject: one, they value education in a different way than Americans do, and two, they integrate math into everyday conversations with their little ones. Americans prize reading to their children, and there’s nothing to fault there. In fact, that’s a wonderful tradition to start in virtually any family.
There are countless ways to have fun with math.
But how many Americans make it a habit of getting on the elevator and saying to their children, “we’re getting on floor 3 and going to floor 8. How many floors is that?” One of my favorite fellow bloggers has a fantastic blog dedicated to this concept, Journey to Help Children With Math. She’s taking a break right now (she just finished her M. Ed. in Math Elementary Education!), but there are plenty of past posts with great ideas for parents.
You can’t make your kids focus on education at every moment, but you can make learning fun. Even without children at home, I struggle with the balance between work and play for young students. We all need our down time, and I see so much pressure in even the earliest grades with volumes of homework and projects. Some kids thrive on that pressure, while others break. I’ve seen both sides in my own family.
That’s perhaps an American way of thinking. No apologies.
Another article I read stated Asian countries teach a more intuitive style of learning math, and (note I’m quoting here) the “top schools” in America use that same method. If that’s the case, maybe more American schools — and their students — would benefit from making a change.
During the entire time I was a student, from kindergarten to college, I would initially struggle with my math lessons, then one day, I would have a breakthrough and “get it.” Today I have a fairly good “math mind,” although a lot of that I credit to the Schoolhouse Rock episodes that would play on Saturday morning between episodes of my favorite cartoons.
Even as I’m writing I hesitate to suggest any changes, since I’m no expert and read a whopping total of five articles on this subject. And I do know of some modifications schools have made in the way they teach other subjects that shock me. In particular, I’ve heard of teachers who instruct children to spell words the way they sound, and trust they’ll learn the correct spelling as they grow older. We’re talking second and third graders who are told “edyookashun” is acceptable. So changes should be made with care and a fair level of caution.
But I do think talking to your children in everyday conversation about math is a good thing. Of course as they get older, your own knowledge of math may need to expand.
Math is relevant. You use it in everyday life, from counting change to calculating how much you can get done in an hour to figuring out how far you can go on 1/3 of a tank of gas. That’s just the basics. Virtually every profession requires some math skills, particularly anything to do with anything computer-related.
If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
As a journalism student — let’s broaden that, as a college student — I was pretty amused by that quote. It was framed and hanging in the office of my journalism professor. My junior year, I was yearbook editor, and learned the hard truth. You wait to the last minute, you pay a high price.
There is a certain thrill in procrastination, and some say that’s why people do it, to get that adrenaline rush that comes from facing a deadline there’s no way you can meet. Then you do, and the surge that races through you (if you’re not dead tired) is reward enough to compensate for all, or most, of the negatives (like I mentioned, being dead tired).
There are times when you’re dependent on others to be responsible enough to meet their deadlines so you, in turn, can meet yours. Several years ago I worked as a communications manager for a major corporation in their benefits department. The company had a team of directors from numerous departments who approved all communication that went out from my department, and most of them were dependable and respectful of me, the lower-level employee making demands on their time.
Of course, one woman wasn’t so kind. In fact, she was a … . Well, you’ve all worked with the type. We had an exceptionally tight deadline, and I was depending on her to meet it. It was an absolute deadline for me, and I told her in numerous emails, a couple of phone calls and through the director of my division that whether or not I heard from her, the material had to go to press on Monday, June 7. I meant business.
That Monday came, and I hadn’t heard from her. With my director’s approval, for that matter, the support of the entire team of directors, I sent this material out.
GRRRRR!
The next morning I got a call from her assistant, who sheepishly told me Director B wanted to know what day was the REAL deadline.
“It was yesterday,” I told her, and reminded her of the multiple notifications I had sent out. In barely a whisper, she agreed I was right, but told me to expect a call.
Of course, my phone didn’t ring, my director’s did, but she was prepared. I’d like to say we won that battle, but we didn’t. We won the war, however. Director B was told by executive management she wouldn’t get a second chance next time.
We paid a high price for that situation, and here’s the thing: deadlines are deadlines for a reason. No one should have to play games by giving false dates, or give in because the other person resents being told what to do by someone lesser than her.
Of course, life happens, and sometimes deadlines are missed for legitimate reasons.
While I prioritize my projects, I no longer operate on the premise “it’s not a crisis, so I have plenty of time.” That doesn’t mean I’m not scrambling at the last minute with some projects, but that can’t always be helped. And admittedly, sometimes I just don’t feel like doing whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing, and I knit instead (obviously, that’s for projects I’m working on at home). I do my best to keep those times from being a habit, and I also avoid having deadlines with my knitting.
I only wish there was some funny quote for sparing myself the drama of procrastination.
When I was a child, we made frequent trips to the nearby aquarium. The first exhibit down one dark hall — a hall with few escapes — was the giant octopus (just how giant it was is today unclear, but at the time, I thought it was HUGE).
Now, this was not a pretty creature (name the octopus that is) and it seemed to be looking out at us, at me, with its wide eyes. I was certain it was quite angry at being cooped up in that little space, and one day was going to escape and…get me.
My parents were a little amused at this fear, but kept their smiles hidden as they reassured me that simply couldn’t happen. Even if it did get out, they told me, which was nearly impossible, it wouldn’t survive outside of water. In the dry environment, it would be immobilized.
“What are you doing out? I told you to stay in the tank!”
Apparently, that isn’t the case at all, although I have no doubt my parents were certain they were telling me the truth. In fact, on one trip, I think they even got aquarium workers to back them up.
As an adult, I’ve heard numerous stories of octopuses escaping from their tanks (most recently Inky of New Zealand, whom, aquarium authorities surmised, escaped out of his tank and down a drain pipe leading to the ocean.) In fact, in an article in “True Activist,” octopus expert Jennifer Mather is quoted from an interview in “Scientific American” as saying, “They are very strong, and it is practically impossible to keep an octopus in a tank unless you are very lucky. Octopuses simply take things apart. I recall reading about someone who had built a robot submarine to putter around in a large aquarium tank. The octopus got a hold of it and took it apart piece by piece.
“There’s a famous story from the Brighton Aquarium in England 100 years ago that an octopus there got out of its tank at night when no one was watching, went to the tank next door and ate one of the lumpfish and went back to his own tank and was sitting there the next morning.”
So not only can they escape, but apparently they’re pretty clever. The Brighton Aquarium lost several more lumpfish before they figured out what was going on.
Aquarium workers acknowledge they need to keep their captive octopuses entertained or they get bored, and who wants a bored octopus? My research revealed many of these captive creatures were injured when they were captured (in a fisherman’s net, perhaps), so some humanity is exhibited in keeping them contained.
But once they are well, it can be argued that holding them in a tank is a compromised existence.
You can’t see me if I can’t see you!
Which brings me back to my feelings about aquariums today. NO WAY am I going to one with an octopus. Another interesting piece of information I learned in my research for this post? Octopuses have fantastic eyesight. I know if I visit an aquarium, the resident octopus will spot me, far back in the crowd, and decide “this is it, now’s the time. I’m busting out of here and that chick is going to get it.”
Don’t even bother trying to convince me otherwise. I’ve already proven I know more than the grown-ups.
Note: While there is a general consensus in the discussions I read that the word “octopus” is of Greek origin, there was some disagreement about the plural. Some said it would be “octopuses,” while others emphatically stated it should be “octopodes.” One man disagreed with all of that, saying the word actually has it origins in Latin, which would, indeed, make the plural “octopi.”
Several years ago, my mom went to work for a major hotel chain at the front desk. She was nervous about learning their computer system, despite repeated assurances it was “super-easy” and “fool-proof.” My mom was convinced she’d push the one button that would bring the entire system down.
“Can’t happen,” her supervisor said. “No such button. Besides, you’ll learn on the training system. Even if there were such a button, all you’d do is bring down the training modules.”
Which she did, first day on the job. She found the magic button, or combination of buttons, that crashed the entire system. No one could train for several days while they scrambled to fix it.
Damn! I thought I had hidden that button!
Of course, it wasn’t her fault. There never should have been such a possibility, and in the long run, she did them a big favor, as the same problem existed on the “real” system. But she didn’t feel very good about it.
She got over it. My dad was a computer programmer for IBM, and we all learned that in these situations, the real problem is the programming. “Don’t yell at the computer, it’s only doing what it’s told to do” is a mantra we memorized early on. So instead I curse the unknown programmers.
The more complex the program, the greater the possibility of some unseen problem, some bizarre calculation that’s going to cause things to go haywire.
The same is true in human communication. We each grow up understanding the world in a way unique to ourselves, a combination of our personality, education and environment. The way I phrase a sentence could mean one thing to you, and something else entirely to another individual.
Political candidates learn early on how carefully they must phrase every thought, or they risk the anger and mockery of their constituents — and the rest of the world. What’s humorous in their circles will incense others, and not because they’re saying anything inappropriate. It’s simply understood in a different manner.
Imagine opening your door one morning, and there’s Hank…
Several years ago I was a reporter for a weekly newspaper, covering a city council meeting. They were debating what to do with non-domesticated pets after one man’s pet tiger, Hank, escaped and prowled around the neighborhood before being recaptured. The idea of grandfathering in any such pets was briefly considered.
“Why not?” Councilman Y asked another. “It’s not like there are more tigers out there.”
“Well, we don’t know what’s out there,” Councilman Z replied. “Someone could have a contraband ferret in their basement.” At the time, domesticated ferrets were unheard of in that part of the country.
I included the comment in my story, saying “in a lighter moment, councilman Z joked…” My editor thought it was a good addition to the story, and she was a pretty shrewd judge of what would and wouldn’t work.
Contraband ferrets? Not in my backyard!!!
It didn’t work, at least not for some people. Apparently, a handful of vocal individuals in the community didn’t agree with Councilman Z’s sense of humor, and his tenure as councilman was threatened. He caused multiple problems for me and my editor after that, problems that landed him in court for holding public meetings in private to try to control the press (me). All for a lightweight comment I included with nothing but good intent. A sensible comment, at that.
You can’t always know what button will crash a system, or what comment will bring down a career. All you can do is live with integrity, and trust others will know who you are despite the one inadvertent, errant move.
And perhaps, in the long run, you’ll have a great story.
You may not believe in the Easter Bunny, but you’ll find yourself believing in a six-foot rabbit named Harvey after watching this charming film starring James Stewart.
There is a certain thrill in procrastination, and some say that’s why people do it, to get that adrenaline rush that comes from facing a deadline there’s no way you can meet. Then you do, and the surge that races through you (if you’re not dead tired) is reward enough to compensate for all, or most, of the negatives (like I mentioned, being dead tired).![AdobeStock_109610839 [Converted] sm](https://myworldwithwords.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/adobestock_109610839-converted-sm1.png?w=300&h=213)
My World With Words 
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