U.E.S. F!@$#$% My Life

I started reading my last blog entry and was horrified to realize that the number of obvious, glaring mistakes was beyond atrocious. In fact, with that number of mistakes, someone should have shouted at me "hey you, where did you learn to spell? Were you even shown how to construct a sentence?" The sad answer to these questions are a) I was never taught to spell (at least in the traditional sense) and b) what's sentence construction? There's a way to build a sentence? Go figure.

I lived in Calgary from the age of 0 to 9, and for the 4 years that I went to school there, I was an experiment. Instead of one, grade one class, we had 3, with an open concept classroom, and 3 different teachers. Above the giant classroom, there were one way mirrors for the university students to "observe" us. Our teachers had to wear a microphone while teaching us our ABC's and we would routinely have to sit in the halls with these so-called observers and speak/read into a microphone. The worst part was, they would play back our recordings and make us listen to them. The idea (be that from the teachers or the powers that be) was that we didn't need to learn how to spell or how to structure a sentence. Verbs and nouns, adverbs and pronouns had no place in the four (or maybe 12?) walls of our classroom. No sir, English was something that was to be taught through osmosis. Yup, you heard me, osmosis. I'm surprised they didn't make us sleep on our text books at night for enhanced learning and extra credit points. I was always a sucker for that little gold star...

Anyways, to further add to the whole experiment, we were provided with seriously dangerous recess activities that would never pass in today's kid-friendly world. For example, the flying fox was two pieces of wood, held together by a long cable, and we would ride the cable from one end to the other, by placing our tiny feet into a triangle type thing that hung from the cable. If we were really daring, we'd have our friends push us so we'd go faster. Oh the joys of being a kid in 1989.

I tell you all this for one reason: If you happen to be reading something I wrote (and I say thank you for that) and there is a glaring mistake, one that makes your eyes hurt and your brain cringe, please let me know. I know there aren't a whole lot of you who read what I write, but for my future well being and for all those who might read what I have to say, please inform me of my spelling and sentence structure faults. All I ask is that you be kind about it. Have pity on the girl who was an educational experiment.

Good I'm glad we got that out of the way! Onto other news, I was able to extract the cookie recipe from Ms. Elaine, which means that the goods, in all their shining glory, will be coming to a blog near you. I dare you, no wait, I double dog dare you, to try and stop after one spoonful of cookie dough. For those of you who can, you're a better person than I am.