Kaylee wore her dad's little pair of reading glasses to school today. She didn't want to just bring them and whip them out for reading, because she said she's reading all day long in school anyway, so she might as well just wear them all day. She asked me a little hesitantly if I thought she looked weird, and when I told her that they were new and that she couldn't expect the other kids not to notice or say anything, she said "Well, that's true. I would notice too." She asked me about potential "Four-eyes" comments, and we talked about how little that really means. Then she carefully put them on in the car this morning, got out her backpack, and marched into school wearing her glasses. When I picked her up from school, she was still wearing them, which I took as a good sign. Indeed, when I asked about her day, she told me all about their hot lunch and how she loves school right now and how she wants to stay in after-care more often because she can play with some of her friends. Finally I said "So how did it go with the glasses? Did they help you read today?" She let me know that yes, they did help her with her reading. I had to ask the next question of "Did you get any comments?" She replied nonchalantly with "One girl said I looked weird, but everybody else thought they looked cool. One teacher never even noticed the difference." And the potential battlefield of kids wearing glasses for the first time passes without even a shot. :)
While she was facing down public opinion by daring to wear her father's grannie glasses to school, ;), Steve was back to working on his computer problem out of town and I was purportedly taking on his morning flight at Sheridan. I had plans to go over to Kokomo afterwards, so I drove to Glenndale and took the Citabria out and over. The student never came, so after I waited over 30 minutes, I left. The winds were still up a little today, so for the fun of it I took off and landed on every runway that wasn't a tailwind at Glenndale (18), Sheridan (27 & 23) and Kokomo (23 & 14) before heading back in for a jambalaya airport lunch.
It seemed like a good day to do some crosswind flying in the T-6 too, but when I got Kaylee home from school, she didn't want to go back out and Steve was on a flight lesson until almost 7, and by then I was too comfortable and sleepy and the wind had died down anyway. Tomorrow will work. :)
It's nice when sometimes common sense wins. A woman decides to go skydiving to celebrate her birthday, signs all the waivers, goes through the ground training, and does a tandem jump with an instructor. Their chute fails to open. The instructor tried to cut the main failed chute away, and it wouldn't work, so he told her to stand on his knees and hang on tight, which she did. The instructor got the reserve chute freed up, and they floated down to a safe landing. In the process she broke two fingers. Because of these broken fingers, she sued the jump school claiming that the instructor that had saved both of their lives had wrongfully told her to hold tight to a dangerous area of the parachute he was trying to cut away and then never told her to let go at an appropriate time. This supposedly presented her with an enhanced risk not assumed or inherent in a tandem jump. The good news? She lost the case. The better news? Because of a goof-up her own lawyer made, she may have to pay the approximately $50,000 in legal fees that she cost the jump school to defend themselves against her claim. Now that is my kind of justice.
It's also a little sad and scary. She signed waivers ahead of time stating that she wouldn't sue if anything happened and her estate wouldn't sue if she ended up dead. It IS her choice whether or not to pursue the activity in the first place, nobody is making her, she is informed ahead of time of the risks, and people do the best they can to be safe, but things happen in any industry. And now this jump school spent $50,000 in legal fees to defend themselves. What if they didn't have $50,000? What are our options out here in this world? Refuse to let people do things that pose any sort of risk, even if they really really want to, know what they are getting into ahead of time and pinkie swear that they won't sue? Let them do it if they want and then go out of business if they sue anyway? Do the best you can and just hope you never end up in that situation? Yeah, basically. *sigh*
Oh, and hey, if enough people are ignorant of the proper use of a word for long enough, Webster will go ahead and make it a "real" word anyway. Welcome, "Snuck". Maybe if I'm lucky "creeped out" will be added to the list of real words next. I like that fake word. ;) (Unlike "staycation". A vacation is a vacation wherever you spend it and that is just a dumb word all around.)
Now that my brain hurts, I think I'll go read some Robin Cook and have some banana pudding...
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