Yesterday was suppose to be my first day on the job teaching my kids.  With the courts basically shut down and the cops tasked with merely keeping the uprising of the citizenry at bay, there isn’t a whole lot for the West Michigan Defense Team to do at this point.  I did have a court hearing scheduled for tomorrow that I was hoping would remain on the docket but was adjourned indefinitely.  I wasn’t sure who to feel more sorry for in this teacher pupil scenario, me or my kids.  That being said I was awoken to find out from Shirley that Whitmer was shutting down the state at 9am.  Holy shit I thought to myself, I only have until 9am to shop for everything I need to keep myself from going insane.  What those items were primarily revolved around me painting our entire downstairs.  I sped off to Repco Lite (they carry Benjamin Moore products) and picked up 6 gallons of paint and a pair of 18 inch rollers.  Midway through my paint purchasing trip Shirley informed me that that press conference was actually at 11am my thought was good that will buy the businesses that have not completely shuttered yet a couple more hours to remain open.  I like to think of myself as a free thinker, and I like to think of all the governors who followed one another into implementing this remain home policy as the opposite of free thinkers.  Granted, maybe it is necessary in some states, but for the most part Michigan, from what I can tell is taking this seriously and there really isn’t a need for an executive order requiring everyone to remain home unless you are essential (pool cleaners are deemed essential).

Part of me wanted to go to the grocery store because we were out of milk and a few essentials, but I thought better of it due to the fact that word had probably gotten out to the hoarding community (I”m pretty sure they have their own message board) and they were all likely at the store making sure they had 8 weeks worth of fresh chicken and a 3 month supply of kitty litter. The reality was hitting me hard, I needed to go home and teach my kids, and by teach I mean yell at them.   Upon my return home they were already on their first recess and playing on electronics.  I made a few phone calls and quickly realized the only word that comes out of my mouth that my kids pay attention to is fuck.  I dropped an F bomb on the phone and Parker immediately proclaimed to Aiden that I had dropped an F bomb.  A few minutes later another one came spewing out of my mouth garnering an identical reaction by Parker.  This has led me to believe that when I want them to do something I need to get their attention by first dropping  the F bomb “Listen here you Fucking maggots…..”

Will there be a day where I end up telling them I just like to say the F word and I say it a lot?  Of course that day will come, but until then I am quite apologetic about it when they overhear me cussing like a sailor.  The first problem I encountered in my new role as teacher was that my kids have no respect for me as a teacher, look they have little respect for me as a parent either, but at least they have some, I was telling them what they needed to do and they flat out told me they weren’t doing that, I don’t even think throwing a few f bombs in would have helped to get them to obey my commands.  Both kids have lesson plans that they need to get through and then when these are completed it is my job to fill in the blanks for them and teach them about science (I know nothing) Language Arts (I’m learning on the fly) and one that was not on Shirley’s schedule (she actually made a schedule for them) Social Studies (I was a history major in college).

The schedule is in half hour blocks and a bit aggressive if you ask me, it has them in school from 9 to 4, which is easy for Shirley because she is busy all day running Spectrum Hospital (it’s the impression I get when I over hear her on the phone, there is no way we could ever work together).  Aiden was good about picking up where he left off after recess was over but Parker claimed he had nothing to do, turns out he was full of shit and that he had a slate of lesson plans the he hadn’t even touched.  With Aiden working away on his own, Bible was the only thing that I could free style and that was our subject to tackle before lunch.  I read the story of David and Goliath and asked Parker how many stones David pulled out of the river in anticipation of his take down of Goliath with his sling shot.  Parker responded with the number 5.  Teaching was obviously becoming second nature to me and I was really starting to get through to my most problematic student.

Five Tacitos and an hour of screen time later it was time to reconvene.   Aiden had completed all of his online work so it was up to me to create the curriculum for the afternoon session.   Language arts was on the calendar from 1pm to 1:30.   Unfortunately my kids are in Spanish immersion leaving me at even more of a disadvantage than parents trying to teach their kids who are in an English speaking curriculum.  So, instead of pulling out Rosetta Stone (Shirley was going to learn Spanish once upon a time) I decided language arts was going to be taught in English.  I took two years of Spanish in high school and the only thing I remember is my Spanish teacher having the hot girls in my class (I think there were one and a half) Salta Alta (jump up and down).  Parts of speech were on the table, initially I thought there were four parts of speech but there are actually 8, possibly 10 depending on who you ask.  However, there are a couple that could easily be done away with if you ask me.  I went over all 8 of them and discussed them with the kids until I felt like they had a firm grasp on verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.  Pronouns were fairly easy to explain but prepositions were akin to what Spanish is to me.

One of the tricks to this whole teaching thing is attempting to determine where the kids are when it comes to learning.  Parts of speech and diagraming sentences may be a bit beyond a 9 year old and are definitely out of the reach for a 7 year old but I need to start somewhere.  With language arts out of the way the remaining schedule looked like this:

• 1:30-2:00 Art
• 2:00-2:30 Science
• 2:30-3:00 Recess
• 3:00-3:30 Gym (aren’t recess and gym basically the same thing?)
• 3:30-4:00 Music

One thing was obvious to me, art and music aren’t real subjects so the kids and I could turn our backs on art and music for the time being.  So, I decided to fill the void created by those two items on the calendar with a social studies lesson covering early explorers.  Parker refused to engage in a social studies lesson so it was just me and Aiden learning about the Silk Road and Marco Polo, this lead to questions about Christopher Columbus due to the fact that the Silk Road was eventually shut down by the Chinese (as if there wren’t enough reasons to hate the Chinese right now) leading to explorers seeking alternative routes to the Far East.  Columbus thought the Bahamas and eventually Latin America were actually China, hard to believe we have an annual holiday for that guy that in some areas of the world actually entails parade.

After we concluded social studies I decided it was time for gym class so we loaded up and headed to Cascade Township park.  I told the kids to head over to the playground while I shot hoops by myself trying to keep my game tight so that I would be ready to play again in August when they reopen everything.  Eventually my kids grew tired of the playground (after roughly three minutes) so I let them take my phone and watch it in the car, I still had to work on my left handed layups and corner 3″s.  Initially we were going to play tennis but there was water on the court and the windchill made it feel like it was still early February.  Instead I went to D n W to finally get some of the essentials we were out of (including beer) followed by a trip to Home Depot to get a quart of paint and check out their electric chainsaws.  I know, electric chainsaws?  However, the reviews are quite stellar and I had my eye on a Milwaukee due to the fact that I already had two batteries for it.  Not only would it come in handy for cutting up firewood it would also be great for the impending and inevitable  zombie apocalypse, instead of struggling to start my gas chainsaw to ward off would be pursuers I could get right to dismembering the attackers by just hitting the throttle.

I assumed the executive order put in place would shut down every retail business but grocery stores and pharmacies.  However, reading my email when I returned home from gym class told me otherwise.  Greenwell sent an email to it’s subscribers indicating they were still open for delivery and take out with the email also laying out some of this upcoming week’s specials.  That morning I had hustled out to get paint under the assumption the stores would be shut down for 3 weeks but I was probably wrong about that.   I had glanced over the executive order, but didn’t actually go in depth enough to determine what the consequences were for disregarding the executive order.  My second read through revealed that willful disobedience of the executive order will result in a misdemeanor.  So, for those of you who wish to keep a clean record but also maintain some level of sanity here are some helpful hints:

• One can leave one’s home to exercise, I’m paraphrasing, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep a tennis racket or a pair of running shoes in your vehicle and claim that you were going to go exercise should you be pulled over by law enforcement or the National Guard.  It wouldn’t hurt to be wearing sweat pants either, I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t wearing sweat pants, one of the few benefits of this pandemic and the resulting quarantine.
• You can also leave home to acquire essential supplies.  Always have a bag of groceries in your car containing eggs, bread, toilet paper (if you have some) and a fifth of liquor.  If you are pulled over point to that and tell whoever pulled you over that you are returning from the store.
• There is also a clause about leaving home for the welfare of others.  This seems to be what we in the legal business would call a catch all.  If you really get into a pinch just tell whoever pulls you over that you were 30 seconds from dismembering your family and that you had to leave home to clear your head.

Typically, I take the approach that what is good for me is good for everyone. Unfortunately, the powers that be have not taken that approach in handling the Corona Virus and I have no choice but to step in line in the hopes that this will all be over in the three week time frame laid out by the Governor.  I realize that the there will still be cases of the Corona Virus, but my hope is that this quarantine will allow the medical industry to catch up and be prepared for whatever happens once things open back up in three weeks(Yeah right).   While this will likely be the longest three weeks of my life, the one good thing is that it didn’t happen in the middle of January because in all likelihood my kids would have stumbled upon me with my car running and the garage doors shut.