Metal Murphy

So i go to Walmart, the store we love to hate, to get chicken patties, sugar free vanilla syrup, cream, wheat buns and a tomato. I ended up picking up a few other items, a pumpkin etc which totaled 14. I suppose I asked for it. I went to the store at 4:45. Little did I know that 4:45 was the time that "He" was on duty.

In the beginning I chose his line because it was on the General Merchandise side. I figured that on that side I would miss the folks with groceries for the folks with dog food and hair styling products. The only other line open was the Express Lane for which I did not qualify with the 10 item restriction. I was a little relieved that there was one woman with a child current checking out and another older woman and her mother. I actually felt a little giddy at the prospect of waiting only 20 minutes in line!

I noticed the woman with the child (which I noticed was not wearing any clothes) had separated her food items. I thought foolishly that she might be OC and like boxed items with boxed items and cans with cans. As it turns out she was paying with the TX progam that provides certain foods to low income people. The program requires several separate small purchases done separately. This normally take time but the experienced cashier breezes through it. This is when I notice him, Murphy. Murphy is in his twenties. He is very slender with a long neck and bony face. When Murhpy smiles he flashes the most metal I have ever seen! His orthodontist loves/hates him.

He took such care with each of the mother's items. He carefully checked each product before placing it gingerly in the sack. This clothe less child begins to scream, not cry, not angry, just scream. He flashes that metallic smile and continues on his arduous task. The mother smiles. He smiles. The old ladies waiting smile. I swallow. I am swallow agitation at this point. But the kids are behaving and are deciding which Push Pop they want.

My feet begin to ache just a little, damn heels. The mother then purchases the rest of her items, beer, cokes, chips with a check. It doesn't run through the first three times, but then Murphy, never giving up, saves the day! The old ladies are piling their purchases on the belt now, refusing to scoot up at all. I counted 12 2-liter Diet Dr. Pepper (caffeine free!), a sack of dog food, sausage, meat, sliced meat, cheese, sliced cheese, bread and other small items. Now you know that the sausages didn't ring up correctly. Murphy smiles. The lady, I credit her honesty, insists on paying for an additional 20 oz. Diet Dr. Pepper because during the last tip she grabbed the woman's that was next in line and didn't mean to and she didn't pay for it! Murphy smiles. I clench my fists.

I am not angry because she is paying for a stolen soda. I am angry because as Murphy is slowly charging this lady for her items the older woman is now claiming her spot on the belt and putting her items on the belt for a separate purchase. My chicken breasts are thawing out and this old bitch still hasn't moved up. The grocery store line is like traffic, the more you inch up the better you feel!

Finally, after sorting through the mispriced sausage, commenting on the types of cheese slices are best on a ham sandwich and bagging everyone last one of those sodas separately it is my turn. By this point my children are everywhere. One is throwing a fit on the floor for beef-n-cheez and the other two are dying to see the Halloween customes 30 feet away. But mom!!!

The first thing out of Murphy's metal mouth is (can't you feel the excitement?), "Have you ever seen Heroes? It comes on ABC. I have to work until 11 but if you have a computer you can watch today's episode tomorrow!"

What? What the fuck did you just say? It took me 15 mother fucking minute's to drive here, park, get the kids inside, get the 14 items I needed and find your register. It took Metal Murphy 31 mother fucking minutes to finish checking the mother with the naked kid, the DR. Pepper grandma's to ask me if I like Heroes???? Murphy smiled.

How did he know?

Just kidding. I have never watched an episode. I hate fucking walmart.

Why Don't I Just Take Over the Class?

If there's really not enough venom and cursing here to qualify for a true Cunt Face post, it's because it is cross-posted from my own blog, so I'm cheating. It is full of sarcasm and bitterness though!

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Few things in life irritate me more than dealing with my son's school. My son is autistic and spends most of each day in a special ed classroom, where he (theoretically) receives instruction that is tailored to his individual needs. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will recall that I was seriously pissed off at the end of the last school year. I was fed up and livid and cursing in all caps (oh, and there will be just a little more of that today), because I spent all of last year fighting with the school district to get them to bring in additional (legally mandated) resources to address a problem that was interfering with my son's learning. They did nothing but stall, accuse me of being difficult and tell me that, in spite of my son's declining performance, the best people to address the problem were the classroom teachers under whom his performance was declining. Oh, no wait. How silly of me! I forgot. They actually did propose adding one additional resource to the classroom: me, as a free aide.

After a summer filled with down time, and work with one of the world's great amateur behaviorists and OTs (yes, me), my son and I worked out a solution to his problem. He started the school year and has made rapid progress in his former problem area, to the point where he no longer requires assistance. Thanks for nothing, school district.

Of course, a new problem has cropped up in a different subject. I received a note last week from his teacher stating that she was sending his classroom work home for me to finish with him, as he had not been doing his work but had been "fooling around" and "wasting time." I (very calmly) wrote back and said I'd be happy to help him at home, but shouldn't we, oh, I don't know, find out why he wasn't doing his work in class and figure out how to address it? She wrote back and very tersely said that any suggestions would be appreciated.

What?! Um, unless I'm mistaken, she's the teacher. She's the one with the degree. She's the one with the actual training in working with kids with special needs. She's the one whose job it is to figure out how to engage kids in learning and how to ensure that they behave themselves in class. Oh, and lest you say she's overworked and underpaid (which she is). She's also the one who was such a big expert, so perfectly capable of handling my son's needs herself, that she adamantly and repeatedly stated that she didn't need or want to bring in an outside specialist to help her with my son last year. But my unpaid, inexpert labor, under her direction, is, of course, always welcome.

So, I sat down with my son for 10 minutes, quickly determined what particular obsessions were preventing him from doing the work, thought up several ways in which we could break the task down into more manageable components for him and got him to finish the work. I wrote the teacher a note with my suggestions on getting him to complete the work in the classroom, put the completed work in his backpack and haven't heard back from her since. And to top it all off, that important classroom work we did hasn't been removed from his backpack all week; each day, it comes back home to me a little more crumpled and worse for wear, because nobody has bothered to take it out and look at it.

This year, I am going to try something new. I am done with threatening to sue. I am done with going into debt to pay for representation to force the school district to bring in someone with even more "expertise" to help in the classroom. From now on, I'm going to be a bitch in a new way. I'm going to tell the teachers how to do their jobs. I'm going to teach them all the amateur OT and behavioral techniques I've painstakingly learned through the last six years. I'm going to share the knowledge and share the wealth and maybe, just maybe, one day they'll be able to DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS! If not, I'll at least have saved some money, stayed out of blood pressure raising IEP meetings and ended up no worse off in terms of the education my son is receiving.