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Canopy at Midland town dock Do watch for school kids Dear Sir: The first week of September signals the return to school of millions of young Canadians. For hun- dreds of thousands of Tiny tykes this will be their very first venture into the unknown, away from the protection of parents and the security of home. We must be totally sensitive to the needs of these young people as they begin to learn how to become inoevenera of family and productive in their own right. Over two million students will be riding school buses everyday. In many cases the buses will be crowded and the trips to school will range from ten minutes to an hour or more. In addition, field trips and other school activities will require most students to ride a school bus at ~ some time or other during the academic year. School bus drivers continually face problems that demand much knowledge and skill to assure the safe operation of the vehicle. Many drivers say that school buses and their passengers do not get the respect they deserve from other motorists. Accident statistics and violations reports tend to confirm this view. For example, although it is the law in every province, many motorists do not stop when signals are flashing on a stopped school bus. Students, especially the younger ones, expect motorists to be stopped when they get off the bus and cross the street. The sense of security this creates could cause disaster if motorists do not co-operate by obeying the law. The Canada Safety Council will conduct its second annual School Bus Safety Week Campaign on a national basis from Sept. 24 - 30, 1980. Through it we hope to further reduce the possibility of school bus accidents. Whether we be students, parents, motorists, school authorities or school bus operators, the School Bus Safety Week Campaign is designed to remind us all of our personal obligations toward the safety of school bus passengers. Please share our concern for the safety and health of these young Canadians. Thank you for caring. Thanks, Balm Beach for super day Dear Sir: Congratulations Balm Beach! Summerama 1980 was a great success. We'd like to extend a very special '"'thank you" to Mrs. Sandra Baxter and the organizers of the Summerama for inviting us to participate as "Face-Painters". Our club is hoping to be involved in an in- ternational drama festival in New York 1981 and really appreciated this opportunity to raise funds for the trip. Balm Beach Summerama donated every penny that we raised through "face-painting"' towards our goal. Thank you again for a super day, good luck for next year and we'll see you at Summerama 1981. Sincerely, Val MacMeneney for "Upstage One"' Midland W. L. Higgitt President. Watch out for germs at Grandma's Shirley Whittington When we feel under the weather, most of us look for reasons. Perhaps we are tired and overworked. Maybe we indulged in too much potato salad at the annual-office golf tour- nament and barbecue. Or maybe we shouldn't have kissed so many distant relatives at that family reunion. Travellers can blame jet-lag. Tourists can blame a change in the water. But, when you're a lazy non-traveller who hasn't been on any picnics lately, you have to look hard for reasons for ill health. Blame my current malaise on a childhood burdened for a lime with a book called My Good Health Reader No. 2 - Profitable Seatwork to Train Ifealth Habits, by Pansy Barret Caldwell of DeLand, Florida. This book was first published in 1933 in the U.S., and later distributed through Moyer School Supplies to hundreds of Canadian school children. As I flipped through its yellowed pages, I realized how badly I let Pansy down, and it came to me that this current outbreak of bad health is my own darn fault. Pansy thoughtfully provided monthly charts in her book upon which pupils were asked to check off their observance of vital health habits. I see that I have left a lot of blanks on those charts. I did not drink four glasses of water daily. I did not sleep eleven hours a night with the window open. : And I persistently refused to check off the little box opposite "I am a good American."' If I let Pansy down, I think she reciprocated. Some of the stuff she promoted was absolute nonsense. How about this? "The children were going to see Grandma. Little Joe brought Baby's cup in a bag. Mother said, "Good boy, Joey, Everyone should have his own drinking cup." Right on. You never know what horrid diseases Baby might pick up from Grandma's filthy crockery. If you think Pansy was hard on Grandmas, you should hear what she did to Jack and the Beanstalk. Little Joe read the story about Jack and the Beanstalk. Then he said to his mother, "Jack did not need to sell his cow. If he had milked her and kept everything clean, he could have sold the milk and after a while he would have been a good milkman." So, although this is a book about good health habits, you can see that it also aimed at the development of some good free enterprise capitalistic notions as well. As well as tinkering around with fairy tales, Pansy addressed herself to the mental health of her readers, as follows: Alice thought she was not very pretty and she began to cry very hard. Mother said, "Do not cry dear. Just be sure to wash your face nice and clean every day and everyone will love you." Alice is pictured as a pudgy child with a spotty face, which may be why she thinks she isn't pretty. How did she get this way? A few pages later, Pansy tells us: Alice is always hungry after school but she never buys candy on the way home. She waits for some of Mother's bread and jam. She runs to wash her hands, and then waits for Mother to get it ready. She thinks Mother's bread and jam are better than anything. Poor Alice. She might be better off to go and live with Grandma and all her germs. A lot of attention is paid to Washing in this little tract. Readers are urged to wash before and after they do everything, including ~ "playing with Baby." In spite of this ob- sessive concern with handwashing, Pansy Caldwell says two baths a week are enough for your average American kid. "Cléan people are always strong people," says Mother supportively. But kids will be kids, and on page 41 Little Joe who hates taking a bath, asks his mother why he can't bathe in a little dish like birds do. "Can you guess what Mother said?"' asks Pansy coyly. Sure. She said, "Shut up and eat your bread and jam." The grubby pencil marks in my copy of the Good Health Reader indicate that yes, I washed my face hands and ears each mor- ning, and I drank milk and washed before and after play, and especially before and after playing with Baby. One would think I'd be exceptionally healthy. And mostly I am, except for last week, Must be all that bread and jam. What little boys and girls are made of People keep asking me if I have any plans for the rest of the summer, such as going on a trip, renting a cottage, learning to scuba-dive, or whatever. To each and all of them I have one answer: "I'm going into a rest home where nobody under the age of 50 can get near me."' We've just had a lengthy visit from our grandboys, the first in more than six months. If you have any druthers when your children are expecting children, put in an application for girls. There is no girl or girls on earth who could have put their Grandad through the physical obstacle course I've been through in the past week. When schooi ended in june, i thought I'd hang around for one more year before making way for a real teacher. I was in pretty good shape and another 10 months in front of the chalkboard would be no sweat. ' This week, I'vealmost decided to retire on the third of September. Somehow, I don't think either the authorities or the students want an English department head cranking _ around in a wheel chair. The bursitis in my shoulder is killing me, after throwing a baseball to a potential Babe Ruth for hours. My right foot is bruised, battered and sprained from trying to prove I canstill kick a football over a big spruce tree. y My knees are scraped, my hands are raw, my torso is thoroughly pierced from climbing trees to bring down small boys who can get up, but like cats, can't get down. My back door had to be removed and repaired after being slammed approximately 3,000 times by the boys and their buddies up the street. My face is burned to lobster-like hue from being out in the sun as long as seven hours at a stretch. The boys never burn. They're moving too quickly for the sun to hit them a single direct blow. I don't know much about girls. I had one about 28 years ago, and she was no problem until she became a teenager. The only idiosyncracy she had was wanting to go to the bathroom at the most inopportune times, such as sailing along on the three-lane highway at 60, with two turkeys tail-gating you, and not a tree or bush in sight. But I'm sure girls are not as curious, daring and dicey as small boys, who want to climb as high as possible, go as fast as possible, lean as far as they can over a dock or cliff, and hit each other as hard as they can over the head with a fist, a stick or a baseball bat. Do little girls get all cleaned up, dressed up, and then dash through the lawn sprinkler immediately and frequently? Do little girls go down to the docks with you, ask how deep the water is, then lean over at an angle of 65 degrees to look down and make sure you're not prevaricating? Do little girls eat junk food all day, then come home and gobble down enough dinner to keep a healthy lumberjack going? Do little girls plague you because everyone else on the highway is passing you, and when you tell them the other drivers are turkeys, suggest with a grin that maybe you are a chicken? Do little girls put on boxing gloves and try to hammer the daylights out of each other, no quarter asked or given? Do little girls, the moment they've arrived for a visit ask that everything be turned on: the fireplace (in July), the hi-fi, the fans, and the lawn sprinkler? Do little girls go from six in the morning until nine at night without stopping in one place for more than nine seconds, aside from the odd four-second pee demanded by Grandad? Well, maybe little girls are not as angelic as I've suggested, but little boys are just as demonic as I've intimated. In fact, my wife heard at the hairdresser's that little boys are more honest, more af- fectionate and more lovable than little girls, who of course, are practising to be big girls. That may be. However, I'm about as bruised, battered, bewildered and burnt as though I'd climbed a mountain without any ropes or crossed a desert without water. Gran doesn't take the punishment I do. Oh, she does a lot of work. The washing machine is thumping most of the day, there isn't a dry towel in the house, she's about run out of Band-Aids, and she spends hours in the kitchen, whipping up such delicacies as honey-and-peanut butter sand- wiches and strawberry shortcake. (Guess who picks the berries?) She had a whirl in the backyard one day, batting, fielding, being shot with the hose, did nobly, but hasn't been out of the house since, and spent most of the next day in bed. Thank goodness for good neighbors. John "'fixeded" the car doors when the boys, through some miracle of mechanics, had made it impossible to close them. He also "'fixeded'"' the sprinkler. (Ballind, the little guy, wants to make sure the past tense is quite clear, so he adds an extra '"'ed"). Jim, another neighbor, fixeded the door, which was just about to fly away by itself. All in all, however, it hasn't been too bad, except for the sleeping arrangements. The boys are peripatetic while somnambulant. You go to bed in one room, alone, wake up at midnight in another bed, another room, three of you, and may wind up in the morning in still another, four of you. I wouldn't trade them for all the Samanthas and Mary Ellens and Joannes in the world. But make me an offer. Wednesday, August 20, 1980, Page 5