Table talk - U P D A T E D

U P D A T E D

I don’t know about you, but I have, at one time or another, experienced a yearning for a very long table. Perhaps it was whilst getting ready for a yard sale, or a Save Our Schools ice cream social, or to allow people to fill out surveys on what’s ailing District 11 or to sign petitions to recall fingerless-glove wearing board members.

My nimble-minded husband pointed out several possibilities I’d not considered. He mentioned, for instance, that a long table could be used as a wall, to protect you during snowball fights; it could be used to help line people up to receive the H1N1 vaccine; he also said it could be used as a “sex table.”

I can picture your quizzical expressions; indeed, for what could you use a long table? Whether it be for a family reunion, or selling Girl Scout cookies, a long table has practically limitless utility.

My husband also pointed out that, when used in conjunction with army tarps, several long tables could serve as durable, hard-top shelters for the homeless - er, I mean, "illegal campers” – low-cost, quasi-residential, modular tract housing, in a sense; it certainly wouldn’t be much more unsightly than this randomly-selected neighborhood near Security Service Stadium -- when did they stop calling it the Sky Sox Stadium, by the way?  And I could be wrong, but is that a school smack-dab in the middle of that neighborhood??

Now, my mother always taught us that wasting food was a sin, and it is -- especially when you consider all of the starving children out there who might just love to have a bite of the food you’re thinking of discarding.  Actually, there are all kinds of hungry folks out there...



But is it just the wasting of food that’s sinful – or is it waste itself that’s so wrong? My mother also happened to raise me Catholic, so at any given moment, I can be feeling guilty about a gazillion different things –- I’ve previously mentioned how when I was a tyke I'd felt badly for excluding my left hand so much, since I’m a righty.  Wisdom is scarcely found in anything extreme; it’s up to us to discern the difference between “waste not” and “want not.”  So, I’ll leave it up to you.

Disclaimer: I apologize, once again, for my shaky camera hand...though I am improving; by the way, did ya happen to notice all of those obstacles in place up there, impeding my line of sight? They must have taken a survey of the playground and the surrounding area, specifically to determine the positioning of their dumpsters! As for the people in the video:  I could be wrong, but the sense I get from the big guy in the video is he’s a long-time D11 employee, a family man, and just doing what his boss told him to do - judging from his pace, however, he seems a bit reluctant to do it. The guy with the white hair, I don’t know – this is the first time I remember seeing him. And the guy in the black jacket…well, he lives up the street from me; I’m not sure how he managed to cozy up to the right people at the Adams building, but shortly after being sent out on spider patrol around the campus, he and another neighbor loaded up at least five or six of those long tables into the back of their truck and drove off.

What am I, chopped liver? After all, in order to effectively hunt the spider, one must be able to *think* like the spider...to *become* the spider - something I'm damn good at, and the District isn't so much - and maybe if the District started giving me what I want for a change (like allowing STAR Academy to utilize the Adams building for their elementary school program), I’d not be spending my time videotaping and making a public spectacle of them.  I want to know: HOW MUCH MONEY HAS BEEN ALLOCATED IN THE BUDGET FOR SPYDRA ABATEMENT??

With my own eyes, I saw the District take a sledgehammer and destroy what looked to be a perfectly good, solid wood hutch/cabinet combo...and toss out at least 20 long tables - and that was just while I was watching. There are simply all kinds of file cabinets, desks, shelves, etc., that they're scrapping for money - and not all that much of it (money, that is).  Newsflash to District 11: there’s something called Freecycle.com; all you’d have to do is post a free, bare-bones ad saying there’s umpteen long tables up for grabs, and those puppies would be gone by daybreak.

When the District closed Adams, there was like a weeklong period of time when the public was invited to come in and browse through the stuff they were otherwise throwing out; thanks to them, I was able to obtain an entire curriculum - English, math and science - for kindergarten through third grade; two of every item, so that each of my kids could have their own books and not need to share.  I'm talking text books, work books, as well as the teacher's manuals; grade books, number lines, that paper they use to teach kids handwriting, and all kinds of educational doo-dads and gizmos.  That's not including all of the office supplies I scored...three-ring binders, paper trays, paper clips, crayons, glue, rulers, protractors, chalk, chalkboard, etc....

My point is that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure; what purpose is served by destroying perfectly good furniture? Wasn't all of that stuff purchased using our tax dollars in the first place? Why doesn’t everyone - all taxpayers, really, but particularly those who live in the neighborhoods where their schools were wrongfully shut down...and especially the residents of the Adams area, since we have had to suffer seeing the school that was the center of our community heartlessly ravaged and then turned into a great big gigantic shed - why doesn't everyone have an opportunity to help take out some of that trash??

Maybe I just need to cozy up to the right person and mention the sex table…