Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Raise Your Hand

Raise your hand.  Simple request. Easypeasy, really.  Unless you have a frozen shoulder. Then you cannot, simply cannot do it.  Even after a shot of cortisone.
It got me to thinking.
Remember raising your hand in school?  Sometimes it was a little raise like just to your shoulder.  Other times it was  like that ooh-ooh raise because you were the only one who knew that answer.  The smartest one.  Funny how the teacher never seemed to call on the ooh-oohers, only the timid raisers.  Probably learned that in old-fashioned teacher school.
When I taught, I called on some of the ooh-oohers but I have to admit not all of them.  It gets a little aggravating when someone is ooh-oohing their hand right in front of your face, only inches away!
In Kindergarten, most kids are ooh-oohers.  The timid ones just try to look invisible.
Which brings to mind the other kind of student, the never-raisers.  They don't want to be bothered for one reason or another.  Maybe they don't know the answer.  Maybe they don't want to try and think of the answer.  Maybe they are thinking about lunch or puppies or the cute girl in the next row.  Maybe they aren't there at all.  Physically, of course, they are.  But if you had no breakfast, your mom didn't bother to get up, she yelled at you when you tried to wake her and your baby brother is left pretty much on his own after you went to school, well, you wouldn't be there either, would you?
Unfortunately there are too many of those kids now.  It used to break my heart.  It's one of the reasons I retired.  I still think about those kids and wonder what happened to them.
I wonder what happened to the ooh-oohers too.  Did they become huge successes?  Did they just turn into pushy people that none of their colleagues can stand?  I don't know the answer to that but it's fun to speculate.
So anyway, that's what frozen shoulder made me think about.  It's not a completely frozen shoulder.  I got to the doctor as it was just starting according to him.  If you have frozen shoulder, you have my sympathy.  If you don't have frozen shoulder, keep raising your hand.  Apparently, it helps you to avoid it.

No comments: