Creative answers to IQ test prompts

Me to six year old developmentally delayed Gavin: Gavin, what is a cow? Gavin: A cow is a bovine.

Me, explaining how to do a maze to five-year-old Michael: Now Michael, see this little squirrel? Put your pencil on the squirrel and take him to this tree over here. (Michael enjoys taking his squirrel all over the page, everywhere but the tree) Me: OK, very nice Michael. Let's try again. This time take your squirrel over here to this nice tree. (Michael proceeds to take his squirrel on a long and squiggly journey around the page) Me: (very firmly, but nicely) OK, now this squirrel has been all over the page. This time, I need you to take your (blankety-blank, just kidding) squirrel over here to the tree. Michael: My squirrel doesn't like trees.

Me: Trevor, I am going to say some numbers to you and I would like you to say them back to me backwards. Let's try one. "Two, four." Trevor: Rof, oot.

Me: Brooke, what does transparent mean? Brooke: That is your foster parent.

Me: What does migrate mean? Child: It's a bad headache.

The "What If Everybody Did" Therapy

I am a school psychologist in an elementary school. Recently I found a great bibliotherapy book for my little clients. It's called "What if Everybody Did?" by JoAnn Stover. On one page it shows a person tracking mud into the house and on the next page it shows the house if everyone tracked mud into it. Get the point? I thought I would try to make the point that we probably shouldn't be doing things, that if everyone did them, it would be a disaster. So we are making a "What if Everybody Did it at School" book, written and illustrated by five second and third grade boys with behavior disorders. Spencer fell right into the swing of things. He drew a picture of one kid pushing another on one page and on the next, mayhem. Brennan drew a picture of a boy bringing his dog to school on one page, and everyone bringing their dog on the next. The playground has fresh and warm looking brown piles all over it. Hey! Hold on! What is Ian drawing? He has a picture of aliens all over the playground. I asked him if Aliens are real and if everyone in the school even has an alien. He said no, they are pretend and no one really has one. I encouraged him to remain within the realm of reality. It wasn't easy for him.
With encouragement, he settled on drawing a picture of one boy throwing food and then a picture of everyone throwing food. Perfectly acceptable, within the limits of reality and actually even in line with the point I was trying to put across, that everyone throwing food would make it impossible to function in the classroom. Not too far into the process, however, it became evident that Ian was not shocked and dismayed, but delighted by the prospect of not one, but EVERYONE in the the school, pushing each other, bringing their dog, bringing their favorite alien and throwing food. The enthusiasm he displayed in completing his illustrations and the excitement on his face was deflating as I realized that the project had backfired and Ian actually thought that the school would be be a better place in all of these conditions. Back to square one.

Counterpoint

I love to spend time with Mercedes so when she invited me to the annual Counterpoint Conference, I jumped on it. I had read about Lavina Fielding Anderson, Margaret Toscano and Janice Allred, all of whom were excommunicated for publishing research on Church History. Meeting them in person was heartwarming, awe inspiring, and tragic. You would think that someone who has been excommunicated from the Church would be different in some way. They were different. They were more lovely, articulate, intelligent, empathic, accepting and peaceful than most members of the Church. Not only that but they have continued to go to Church every week, participate in the Church activities that they are allowed to, and and to maintain a testimony of the Church that discarded them. They refused to let Church Priesthood leaders destroy their Mormon identities.

There was a panel in the morning entitled "Why I Left, Why I stayed." Two of the women left because they didn't get anything out of the meetings, they felt like Joseph Smith was not a prophet, they felt ostracized even in activity, they felt they weren't allowed to express their feelings freely.

Two stayed because they love the community of their ward, they need a spiritual venue, they felt it would be too disruptive to their families to leave, and just because they feel Mormon.

I thought it was telling that the ones who left were single, the ones who stayed are married.

Lisa Butterworth, an exuberant young mother, who started the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog, spoke of the fourth wave of feminism, which would target young mothers. Those mothers need liberated and I have faith that with the help of internet free dialogue and information, that wave will come sooner and easier than the previous three movements.

The free expression of true feelings was exhilarating. I felt blessed to be there with Mercedes.

The Mystery of the Missing Lips

So, I looked in the mirror and something was missing...........my lips. Once when I was a little girl some rude child told me I had fat lips and I was crushed. Oddly enough, when I looked in the mirror and my lips were gone, I was crushed again. It's like someone poked a hole in them and they deflated in a slow leak, leaving little wrinkles around them where voluptuosity used to be. Trying to be one of those glass-half-full persons, I have dug deep and found a benefit to having no lips. Lipstick. I have saved money by using less lipstick, since I'm not one to try the futile optical illusion of painted-on lipstick lips.

One of my colleagues has beautiful fat lips and uses lip liner with the lip filled in with lipstick. Since the color in my lips also disappeared, I tried it. When I closed my mouth you could see the liner but none of the lipstick. Until I smiled. The lipsitck was all over my teeth. So there I was was, a wrinkled, lipless woman who appeared to have bleeding gums. Nice try, french fry. I suppose I could invest in some Botox treatments every once in awhile, but that would be like getting a new house. New houses make the old furniture look terrible, so then I would have to have a facelift, liposuction, laser treatments, lapband surgery, my eyes done, permanent makeup, my earlobes shortened, and a new wardrobe.

There is no greater test to having a healthy body image than aging. But I think there are some things that you can control to make up for the things you can't control. Things you can do to make up for the onset of ugly, to make yourself more acceptable in a youth and beauty-crazed society.

A. Focus on clothes. Maybe even stop shopping at Wet Seal and go more for the mature but hip look.
B. Keep your hairstyle updated. When people know what year you graduated from high school by your hairstyle, it's time to change.
C. Listen and laugh. People don't care as much if you are ugly if you are making them feel special.
D. Don't make your grandchildren kiss you. This is a carry-over from gagging after kissing my grandparents.
E. Smell good. I have a ways to go on this one since my grandson calls me his stinky grandma.
F. Look on the bright side of growing older, more money, less work, enjoying adult children and grandchildren, more freedom.
G. Don't purse your lips.

When I looked in the mirror, I also noticed that my unibrow had disappeared. But, at closer look, I noticed that many of those hairs had just relocated to my chin.

Sigh.

Don't Buy Petite

Fall Break: My Greek odyssey is over. The Reunion at Bear Lake is over. And I have a couple of days to regroup. Fall break, which used to be Utah Education Association Conference, until they noticed that the teachers were not spending UEA at UEA, is the time that teachers and faculty catch up on the things that other people do on a regular basis. Like mending, organizing the coat room and doing the dishes. It took me two and a half days to complete my list of tasks and I am now relaxing with a cup of Tension Tamer tea. I remodeled a pair of jeans today that I got on sale because they were petites. My legs (which I discover EVERYTIME I buy bargain petite pants), are longer than women who are petite. Since they were pricey even on sale, I told myself I could lengthen them, maybe even with a strip of coordinating but eye catching fabric. I found the perfect fabric and proceeded to add a couple of inches. It took me two hours to do one leg. That leg looked dorky. But maybe if I skinnied up these jeans, they would be stylin'. So the next step was to take the jeans in about 3 inches everywhere, and to get both sides even. (Harder than it sounds, especially for what I call eyeball sewers. I am one of those rare people with fabulous visual memory, so I figure I can eyeball the seams and then sew them fairly accurately from memory). That's why I had skinny jeans up to my hips and then a kind of a ballooning effect around the hips. Maybe, even though I don't have a horse, I could wear them horse back riding. I would need a long coat, black, shiny high top boots, an English hat and a whip to do that. So...........That's why it took another two hours, not counting ripping out stitches time. Well, OK. I exagerrate. That's counting ripping out stitches time. At any rate, I now have four hours into these pants. Lengthening the other leg went much smoother and before I knew it (yeah, right) I had a pair of really groovy black skinny jeans with black and white houndstooth around the ankles. They look really good, even though everyone I asked said, "Lose the houndstooth." I stayed true to my intuitive fashion sense. I'm going to my closet right now to see how many outfits I can make with them. I am so happy and not a little proud that I designed and put together these one of a kind jeans. But deep down I want to scream, "SOMEONE REMIND ME NOT TO BUY PETITE EVER AGAIN!"

Lazy

I feel like being lazy today. Friday, a killer cold brought me to my knees and jumped on me til I was pulp, then left the next day as abruptly as it arrived. So today I decided to be lazy. It always sounds so good and restorative to rest for a day, but what really happens is, you start feeling fat, you notice that your windows and baseboards haven't been cleaned since the turn of the century, and you play Solitaire. Solitaire is pathetic! It requires less than no skill. Minus 5 in on the skill continuum.

And time drags. It starts getting dark and it feels like my self esteem is going down with the sun. I have spent all day letting my mind wander to places where no man has been before. Just women. Besides thinking I'm fat, slobby and stupid at solitaire, I start feeling guilty that I wasted a whole day. Here I am 61 years old. Realistically I have only 20 years left and I have wasted an entire day of the rest of my life! I have so much I want to do before I die! Like, well, what is it I wanted to do? That's even worse! I don't even want to do what I wanted to do before I die. Haha, that's funny. No one, not even me, cares if I did nothing today. It's unpatriotic but what the hell. I mean heck.

Twilight Zone

I went to Cafe Rio with my boss. It was easy, all I did was ask his opinion a lot, because I knew he was full of them. But believe it or not, I had never been out to lunch with a man who wasn't my husband before, and I was trying to ignore the fact that I felt awkward. I do this all the time, right? That's not the point of this story, however. It was a pleasant lunch and he dropped me off at my office, and he went to his. But a sickening feeling crept into my viscera, the "where is my purse?" feeling. The last time I remembered seeing it was at the restaurant. But I called the boss and he ran out to his car to see if it was there. No, it's not there. So I got in my car and raced over to Cafe Rio before the Cafe Rio resident purse snatcher could get my bag. It wasn't at the table, nor on the floor, nor had any of the employees seen it. Dread. The purse snatcher had gotten the best of me. And now he was going to run up my credit card, assume my identity and spend my ten dollar bill. (Did you know my name is Marijuana in Spanish?) How could I tell George? He already thinks I'm a scatter brain. I guess the best way is to just call him and tell him. Yes, just be very upfront about my weaknesses. "George, guess what happened?" "You lost your purse at Cafe Rio?" "What? How did you know?" "Well, I went to Cafe Rio for lunch, sat down at a table, and there was your purse, hanging over the chair. I have it right here. " I was relieved, but wait! Isn't this the coincidence of the dispensation? I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

Well, what really happened is only slightly less coincidental than what George told me. I left my purse dangling over the chair at Cafe Rio. A friend of George's came and sat in the same chair I had just left, and that snoop looked in my purse and exclaimed, "Hey! This is George's wife!" So he dropped my purse off at George's office on his way back to work. And that's the truth!

THE RESOURCE TEACHER

He was hired on the phone without an interview. The previous resource teacher was a legend in the school district and would be a hard act to follow for anyone, but after looking back on this bizarre school year with Reese, anyone would have been better than him. The Speech/Language Pathologist, Becky, and I, were reasonably on time for Team Meeting, within a half hour more or less. Reese was Johnny-On-The-Spot every week, and we learned later from Beryl, the Principal, that we drove him nuts. However, thinking back there were some snide comments like "Oh, we're running late again. Well, we didn't exactly get started on time, did we?" We didn't take the cue.

He had been to the Special Education Inservice and actually had as his mentor, a very experienced and meticulous retired Resource Teacher, Jan. However, he did seem to be having a little trouble with basic practices and procedures. So Becky and I decided to be proactive. We retrieved the Special Education Flow Chart from the depths of our storage blackhole, and went in to give him a short inservice. We gave him the flow chart and carefully went over it with him. We left a little too satisfied with ourselves, thinking that he would have no more problem with the sequence of the IEP process. So were surprised the next day when Beryl, Becky and I each received a 30 page type written narrative of the 10 minute meeting we had with him. As if we didn't have the flow chart memorized. We should have suspected something then.

We were accustomed to having free access to all Special Education files. Reese did not want them to leave the room and actually locked his classroom to keep us out. If we got over that hurdle, there was the locked file cabinet hurdle. We had some mild verbal tussles over this issue, which were solved by Beryl having keys made for Becky and I. The next time we went in to get a file, Reese had duplicated ALL the files, about 45 of them, to keep in his office in case we lost one. He took his responsibility as Team Leader and keeper of the files, very seriously. Extremely seriously.

Reese's assigned laptop was glued to his lap most of the day, and he printed everything. Yes, he went through about 3 years supply of paper in about 7 months, and by the end of the year, we were begging, borrowing, snatching blank papers out of teacher's hands, rummaging through the garbage cans, and using other inordinate survival strategies for getting our work done. In the meantime Reese was printing everything under the sun. It reminded me of the movie, "A Beautiful Mind" and the guy pasting little papers all over his office walls.

We were dreaming when we thought we had trained him thoroughly in the IEP process, and he never really bought into the concept of teaming. All year he continued to test before receiving a signed Permission to Evaluate form from Parents. He met with them and discussed scores and we hadn't even had a chance to do our testing. He started servicing kids before he had developed an IEP and had the parents sign it. He tested students and told the parents that they were good candidates for advancing a grade. Didn't abide by that process either. He maintained to the team that some parents were fine with seeking a Special Placement for their child. We proceeded to do the hours of work to make that happen, only to meet with the parents and find out they wanted nothing to do with a Special Placement.

If a child qualifies for Special Education services, we write an Individual Education Plan for them, with very specific academic goals. Reese either used the same goals that the previous teacher had written, or used his favorite goal: Sally will identify geometric shapes. On one very learning disabled 6th grade student, Reese's goal was: Travis will write a research paper. Travis reads on a first grade level and can hardly write at all. Are you getting the point? Jan came in faithfully every week to train Reese, but it didn't "take."

I'll just interject here, that Reese was no good in a parent meeting. He never said anything about student progress, goals, test scores, nothing. At the end of the meeting he said, "I will give you a call and of course, you can call me at any time." About February we started wondering if he was an imposter and Beryl decided to tell him she wasn't renewing his contract for next year. And his behavior management skills were a joke. One little kindergartener kept escaping to the kindergarten playground. The kindergarten would call Steve and she said he would spend a half hour trying to finagle him into coming back into class. One time I saw Reese heading for the Kindergarten room so I raced him and barely made it to the playground before he did. I touched his shoulder, gave him some severe eye contact and said, "John, I need you to walk to class." I took his hand and he walked in. This is the Precision Command, a well known technique that increases compliance.

But Reese would not touch a student. At all. Not even for a Precision Command.

In March, posters started to come down from the resource room walls. All the learning helps, the multiplication grid, the word wall disappeared. Pretty soon the room was bare. Including a very expensive reading program called "Edmark." We looked high and low for it for a month or so. The previous resource teacher came in and couldn't find it. Beryl finally confronted Reese about it. Reese said, "Jan took it." But Jan said she did no such thing. She would have remembered hauling that thing out of the school. So Beryl confronted him again and told him that Jan didn't take it. Reese told Beryl that he was tired of her accusing him of taking the Edmark. The next day when I was at another school, the resource teacher told me that Reese had called her wanting her to train him to use the Edmark Reading Program. The same day another resource teacher in the district called Beryl to report that he had called her and said the same thing. Now why would he do that if he didn't have the program and if he wasn't even going to be around nex t year.

By this time Resse had called the Education Association to advocate for him. Beryl was paranoid to have him in classroom and interacting with parents. One time when some high risk parents were coming to school Beryl told me not to let Reese out of my site. And so I didn't. I followed him very closely. I tailgated him. And he was a fast walker, so I really had to scurry to keep up with him and just about rear ended him once when he slammed on his brakes. He went outside the school to greet the parents and I'm sure he was wondering why in the hell I was stalking him. And I think the parents wondered that, too. I had nothing to discuss with these particular parents and felt very awkward, but followed my orders. So in order to Keep Reese from interacting with parents and students, Beryl cleaned out a custodial closet for him to do some input in permanent files. He made a list of 62 mistakes that the secretary had made in the files. When he finished that, she had him washing windows and working in the cafeteria. And he was so OCD and confusing to deal with, that the Education Association gave up on him.

Beryl didn't know how to handle him at this point so she called the area supervisor. He told her to call the police. She didn't want to do that so she called him in and told him if the Edmark wasn't back in the school by Tuesday she would call the police. Beryl was having me be a witness to all her interactions with him by this time, and being a psychologist, I was getting nervous that he fit the profile of someone who goes postal. Fired from his job. Demeaned in front of his peers. Being backed into a corner about the Edmark. Yup, I was a little nervous.

After this last confrontation, Reese left the office, went outside and called the police to report that Beryl had him locked in a closet. The police (four patrol cars)were right there and Reese approached them when they arrived. He was obviously not locked in a closet. After they heard the entire story, they told him they were going to investigate him for the theft of the Edmark. Reese had called the police on himself. We haven't seen nor heard from him since, but I don't work on my computer with my back to the door, either. And I'm in recovery.