Consumption

I came down with a bad cold and subsequently lost my voice. I can still talk. I just lost my voice. I sound like a 60 year old who has smoked 4 packs of cigarettes per day for half of her life, when I'm not hacking up a lung or three. At least the weekend gives me time to recuperate, because talking loudly and/or yelling all day does not exactly rest one's voice. I can't remember the last time I had a cough this bad, to be honest. I'm half expecting to see blood on a handkerchief, at which point I'll be packing my trunk for the sanatorium.

Cough. Cough.

In the meantime, I've seen half a dozen or so movies, none of which have made a particularly lasting impression (call The Devil's Backbone a light Pan's Labyrinth) and read a bit. I haven't been going out, and the idea of doing so just makes me tired.

Hack.

Something that I've been putting off is writing reports about the behavior of all the kiddos that I think could potentially have issues down the line, so the director knows what's going on, and the school has a paper trail if something should, unfortunately, go wrong. Now, if it were only a few kids, I wouldn't be procrastinating. But after I did the tally, the number was somewhere around 15.

Fifteen fucking kids who could have, or maybe already do have, either academic issues or social issues. What the fuck. Fifteen out of about fifty. Thirty percent goes beyond any kind of reasonable measure of behavioral issues...it means there's something systemic, either about this group in particular, or the school, or the home environments (which is probably a function of society - overworking parents, not much supervision...)

Coughcoughcough.

Anyway, when it gets to such a ridiculous, endemic point, it just really gets me thinking about the market the school is trying to pick up - who are so out of control, even at such a young age, but they have money so it's ok. And I wasn't conscious of growing up like that in the US (maybe I did?) so seeing how the whole situation makes these kids weird and self-centered, with the attention span of goldfish. There was a great Onion article called "Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequences" that, at the time, reminded me of the area where my ex boyfriend grew up, himself, and his friends. Now it makes me think about me what these kids will become.

Snarf.