The Calvesgrit had an appointment at 6:00 to get haircuts.

I had just come home from work — still had my car keys in hand and my backpack [read: “briefcase”] over my shoulder. Cowgrit and Calfgrit8 were sitting at the kitchen table working on CG8’s homework. Calfgrit4 marched into the kitchen and announced, “I just cut my hair.”

Now, let me take you back to when my brother and I were around 8 and 4 years old:

We were sitting on the curb in front of our apartment building with a pair of scissors. We both had straight hair, long all around, down to our eyebrows and over our ears — think Davy Jones from The Monkees, (or maybe Moe from The Three Stooges with it long around the ears). I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, but I took the scissors and cut an inch-and-a-half-wide lock of hair right off the middle of both our foreheads.

I only vaguely remember that event, but our mom has a school picture of each of us with that missing lock of hair. It was obvious, and I can imagine her embarrassment with having to live with our hair like that until it grew out.

Back to this week:

So you know the thought that immediately ran through my head at CG4’s words, “I just cut my hair.” A little touch of “oh no!” tingled up and down my spine.

Turns out all he did was wet his hair with the spray bottle we have in the boys’ bathroom for fixing morning bed head, and combed it. Pshew.

Even so, I can hear my mom laughing anyway.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit8 told us today that he stuck the eraser end of a pencil into the classroom electric pencil sharpener, and he thinks he might have broken the device. He did it in the morning, and he said he thinks the teacher discovered it in the afternoon right before school let out.

This is one of those things that parents always wish there was an instruction manual for. Talking with CG8, he did it to see what would happen; he didn’t do it to intentionally damage anything — the possibility of damage didn’t enter his mind. So how should a parent respond? What kind of punishment for this?

Well, we decided to not really “punish” him. We made him write a letter to his teacher telling her what he did, and we decided that if the sharpener is, indeed, damaged or broken, we will buy a new one for the classroom. He will have to work off the expense with us somehow (“how” to be determined).

But if it’s not damaged or broken, there won’t be any repercussions beyond just admitting what happened to his teacher.

When I asked him why he did it, and he admitted to just curious to see what would happen, I asked him, “So, what happened?”

He answered, “It just grinded and I think the pencil sharpener broke.”

“Now that you know,” I followed up, “will you ever do it again?”

“Probably not,” he said.

“Probably not?” I said. He didn’t get the hint, so I added, “How about surely not?”

“Yeah,” he got the point.

So he’s got to own up to the action, and will have to work off our replacing the device, but he’s not really getting a punishment. We want him to be honest and forthright with us — if he makes a mistake or breaks something, we want him to tell us rather than keep it a secret. We want him to know if he breaks something, that he has to make things right but he won’t be punished for simple, honest, poor judgment.

This is our stance for now, for this incident. But if he does something like this again, having now seen what happens when you misuse a device, he’ll get a punishment.

I wish I knew if we were handling this correctly/properly. We may never know until he grows up to be a well-adjusted man or a destructive psychopath.

Bullgrit

My post for today was very badly written. So I took it down.

I set my posts to publish in the midnight hour, but I don’t get to check them until around 7am. So this post was up for over 6 hours before I reread it (after having written it) and realized just how horrible it was.

It was a mash-up of two related topics, but the mash-up was more of a mix-up. The paragraphs were disjointed; even sentences within some paragraphs failed to relate to each other. One paragraph in particular really jolted me as being very badly organized and worded, even possibly insulting to the person I was referring to.

Since I don’t have time this morning to properly edit it and repost it, I’m writing this apology in its stead.

Bullgrit

Continued from yesterday.

Staying on the USS Yorktown overnights for the whole weekend changed the ship from a museum to a home. Having full and free reign for exploring the ship any time (outside of the 11pm to 6am lights out) and anywhere made the experience much more intimate than a simple museum visit.

The ship is freakin’ huge (that’s a scientific adjective): the flight deck (top) is equal to about 3 football fields placed end to end. The hangar deck (right below the flight deck) was wide open and looked the size of being in my hometown mall.

(The interior photos I took don’t look good shrunk down to a size to fit this site. You have to see them full size — considerably bigger than this page — to appreciate the scale of the ship. The above photo shows about a third of the flight deck.)

There are about a dozen WWII era war planes in the hangar deck, and about a dozen Vietnam and later era planes on the flight deck. And even with all these planes, the areas are not crowded in the least. Heck, a B-25 bomber hangs from the ceiling over the snack bar.

The bow-end of the hangar deck houses a theater, and the aft-end has the snack bar. Above both are the crew quarters. Below are at least five decks, and in the island on the flight deck is another several levels. Delving down to the engine room, five stairs down from the hangar, was like entering the Earth’s crust; climbing up to the bridge, five stairs up from the flight deck, was like being in a New York skyscraper.

The most fun of the whole Yorktown adventure was the exploration. Wandering about the ship, up, down, around, finding new passages, new rooms, new information. We were on the ship for almost 48 hours straight, and I don’t think we explored everything. (We also spent a couple hours exploring the neighboring submarine and Coast Guard cutter.) We saw some areas of the ship that normal visitors don’t get to see because we were allowed access to areas as campers.

Calfgrit8 was excited one morning when he, (exploring on his own while I showered), found a new passage through three rooms we hadn’t discovered before. He was a trailblazer.

But all the exploration took a toll on this old body. The up and down stairs (more like ladders), and the stepping over and ducking under to get through small portals between passages and rooms played hell on someone not used to working out every minute of the day from 6am reveille to 11pm taps.

Exploring an aircraft carrier is real exercise. But it was fun. A lot of fun. (And exhausting.)

Bullgrit