Last week, when a student at Trinity Lutheran School in Monroe, Michigan found she was missing $42, the principal of the school assumed the money must have been stolen. Determined to find the thief, principal John Hilken ordered teachers to strip-search a group of 7th grade girls.
According to one mom, this treatment was uncalled for and she and others have filed police complaints. "Some were taken down to their bra and panties and some had to pull their tops out and shake them," said Martha Feller, whose daughter was among the stripped and searched suspects. "They treat criminals like that, not 12-year-old innocent children," she said.
In hindsight, principal Hilken realizes that perhaps this wasn't the best way to handle the situation. He has apologized, but some parents feel this isn't enough. Martha Feller's daughter is so upset about it that she hasn't returned to school since the incident. "I hope that they will take them out of that school and make them pay for what they did to the children," Feller says.
I remember an incident in third grade that made me not want to return to school. After complaining to my teacher about an itchy chest, she unbuttoned my top to have a look. Right there in front of the whole class, she opened my shirt wide and examined my body. The fact that all these years later I can still vividly recall that humiliation is a testament to just how mortifying it was. I agree with Feller and think the principal owes more than an apology to these girls. Maybe he should be strip-searched to see if his compassion and common sense can be located.
Show and tell at school is great. Kids love it because it is a chance for them to bring something personal from home and show it off to all their classmates. Choosing just what to bring for show and tell can be difficult, but favorite toys and vacation souvenirs are always good ideas. But if you are looking for bad ideas of what to bring for show and tell, look no further than this mom in Stevensville, Montana. She brought a dead bat to her kid's elementary school. And if that wasn't bad enough, that bat was dead because it had rabies.
Now, I don't know if it was really show and tell day for her two kids at Stevensville Elementary, but she did more than show and tell about it anyway. She allowed the students in one kindergarten class and four fifth grade classes to actually handle the dead creature.
%Gallery-33863%
According to Superintendent Kent Kultgen, her bad idea was well thought out. She presented the bat along with "good information" and even brought hand sanitizer for the kids to use after touching it. Maybe she thought this would be a really cool Halloween-related presentation, but clearly it was not. Although the risk of contracting rabies from touching the bat is fairly small, the school is taking no chances. About 90 kids are now receiving rabies shots just in case they came in contact with the bat's saliva.
Those shots could end up costing over $70,000, which will be paid for by the school's liability insurance. As bad as that is, the worst pain will be felt by the students themselves. Over the next few weeks, they will undergo a series of six shots to ensure that they are not infected with a potentially fatal neurological virus. Way to go, mom.
Vinnie England, of Southmead, Bristol, got the tattoo at a street stall in Benidorm, Spain. The two-inch image was supposedly done in henna, a typically temporary, reddish-brown ink that fades within 10 days. Vinnie's tattoo was black, causing speculation that the ink used may have contained the chemical paraphenylenediamine or PPD, most often found in hair dye.
%Gallery-31307%
Vinnie's mum, Hayley Shipway, 24, noticed a red ring forming around Bart's outline and took him to see the doctor. The reaction was treated with a steroid cream, but the next day it appeared to be worse. Shipway said the reaction resembled a series of pin pricks, and was red and sore.
The reaction is so severe that Shipway was warned that it may scar.
Shipway expressed her guilt over the incident, saying that she often allowed her son to have stick-on tattoos, and that she never expected he'd have a reaction to the one he got in Spain.
I have a tattoo, but I was over 21 when I decided to mark my body for the rest of my life. This poor kid didn't have a choice. But hey, if he ever decides to join the Navy, he'll be ahead of the game.
There's more to Halloween than costumes and candy. Coming, as it does, just a few days before one of the most important elections we've had in a long time, it's also a potential predictor of the outcome of that election. You see, one of the perennial favorite categories for adult costumes is politicians and what better than to pick one's favorite candidate?
According to costume suppliers, mask sales have successfully predicted the outcome of the last few elections. So which of the two presidential candidates is winning, at least in mask sales? So far, it's Obama, but there's more to it, this time around. Sarah Palin has added an unexpected twist to the mix -- she was a late announcement so vendors were caught unprepared and she is a rare opportunity for women to dress as a candidate.
Personally, if I thought the correlation at all implied causation, I'd be in line to buy a dozen or so masks of my favorite candidate, but instead, I think I'll just chuckle a bit and make sure I vote in November.
There's nothing quite like it -- dressing up as your favorite character, heading out (at night! in the dark!) to ask strangers for candy and getting ... wait for it ... a brand-new toothbrush.
Yes, friends, it's that time again.
Halloween is just around the corner and children (not to mention some adults) are counting the days until it's time to bring home a giant bag o' cavities. But not every treat in your huge plastic pumpkin is pleasing to the palate. Some of the all-time worst Halloween treats include apples, boxed raisins and old, loose hard candy.
My personal least favorite Halloween treat? That really hard bubble gum. You know of what I speak - the kind that breaks your jaw because it was manufactured in 1976 and sat on the shelf at your local Big Box store ever since.
How about you? Plastic bugs? Pencils? Play Doh (yes, I got that once). What's the worst treat you ever got?
The survey, administered yearly since 2000, also determined that in 2008, a full-time mother's annal salary would come in at $116,805, down from 2007's figure of $138,094. And just what does a family get in return for this princely sum?
Salary.com breaks a mother's job down into the following duties: housekeeper, day-care center teacher, cook, laundry machine operator, computer operator, psychologist, facilities manager, van driver, and chief executive officer.
So let me get that straight -- I am working in excess of 90 hours a week, and my salary has decreased? What gives?
The company uses a number of factors to calculate mom's paycheck, and this year added a new wrinkle: companies with fewer than 25 employees tend to offer lower salaries. Your typical American family comes in way under that "25 or more" threshold. If you think the SAHM's salary is miserly, consider this -- a working mom's job description is roughly equal to that of one who stays at home, and she only nets $68,405 for her 54.6 "mom work week."
Want to know exactly how much you're worth? You and your family can calculate your personal compensation at mom.salary.com.
"Could you be pregnant?" If you're a woman of child-bearing age, it's one of the first questions you'll hear when you need medical treatment.
But 71-year-old granddad John Grady Pippen was never asked that question, for obvious reasons, when he visited an Oregon ER. So he was surprised when his discharge paperwork carried a surprise diagnosis. "Based on your visit today," it said, "We know you are pregnant." When John started having stomach pain, I'm sure that pregnancy was the furthest thing from his mind, given his age and, oh, his gender.
An errant keystroke was blamed for the error and John was never actually treated as a pregnant patient, which means he wasn't forced to swallow any of those giant-sized prenatal vitamins or to lay on a table with a bursting bladder while an ultrasound tech rubbed goo all over his belly.
I'm sure John's getting plenty of chuckles out of his story. Did you have a surprise pregnancy? How did you find out?
I'm a big fan of finding new uses for things, and this is a great example. A two-year-old Australian girl, born with biliary artresia, was undergoing surgery to receive a liver transplant when Dr. Albert Shun found a problem. It seems that the adult-size liver was too big and was putting pressure on the girl's blood vessels -- a potentially deadly situation.
Dr. Shun came up with a creative way to solve the problem. "I rang my wife and asked her to go to Big W and buy me some ping-pong balls," he said. The doctor used the ping-pong ball to keep the liver off the arteries and relieve the pressure. "There shouldn't be any complications. We are in a unique situation in Australia because we have a low donor rate so we have to be adaptable," he said.
The young girl is now up and running about like a normal two-year-old. "She is so normal now. She is a happy kid," said the girl's mother. Sounds like a good use of a ping-pong ball to me.
The motive? He wanted money to pay for his girfriend's boob job.
See what I mean?
18-year-old Nikita Lee Weis is accused of hiring Juan Antonio Velez Gonzalez, 18, and Brandon Michael Soroka, 19, to kill his mom. The men allegedly attacked Weis' mother, Hyun, last Thursday with a baseball bat. She was taken to a hospital after the beating, which occurred at her home, but was released on Friday.
Weis is in police custody, as are Velez Gonzalez and Soroka. Also being held is Weis' 21-year-old girlfriend, Sophia Nicole Alsept. According to Fountain, CO, Deputy Police Chief Mike Barnett, Weis and Alsept were planning to sell Hyun Weis' car and empty out her checking account; the pair were going to use the money to pay for Alsept's breast implants. And as if that weren't bad enough, the suspects are reported to have discussed wrapping Mrs. Weis' body in plastic and dumping her in the desert.
The four are being held on $50,000 bail. I seriously doubt that Mrs. Weis will be paying to spring her son from jail.
Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo is concerned about the future. He's worried for the poor of his state who cannot afford the children they apparently keep having and about the quality of future generations made up of the children of the poor and uneducated. "We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out," said LaBruzzo.
His solution? Sterilization. He is looking at a plan to pay poor women a thousand dollars to get their Fallopian tubes tied. The plan would also cover other forms of birth control, including vasectomies for men (to avoid accusations of being sexist). His plan might include tax incentives for well-to-do, college graduates to have more children as well.
Before you accuse him of racism, however, he is quick to point out that there are more whites on welfare than groups and that the program would be completely voluntary. On the one hand, since it would be voluntary, those who don't like the idea can simply choose not to participate. On the other hand, it sure seems like a step closer to a world where only the wealthy and successful are allowed to reproduce.
Karen Hanrahan is a wellness educator who teaches a workshop titled Healthy Choices for Children. Her class is for parents and is intended to teach them about healthy alternatives to the processed food products so widely available today. To illustrate just how unhealthy some of our diet staples are, she carries with her a rather unusual prop: a 12-year-old McDonald's hamburger.
Before you start cringing in disgust, go have a look at her blog and the burger in question. The plain hamburger Hanrahan says she purchased back in 1996 looks exactly like one you would purchase today. It's not moldy, maggoty or otherwise decomposed. Hanrahan claims to have done nothing at all to preserve the burger other than to store it in a plastic sandwich container. She says that the burger's unchanging appearance over the years illustrates her point: McDonald's hamburgers are not real food.
%Gallery-31307%
She writes: "Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike - this is a chemical food. Not one ounce of food value. Or at least value for why we are eating in the first place."
Of course, Hanrahan gets beat up in the comments to her post, but most seem to accept her claim that the burger has survived basically unchanged for over a decade. We aren't big McDonald's eaters around here, but I know plenty of families who are. I wonder if this 12-year-old burger might impact the way they feel about their favorite fast-food stop. Does it give you pause?
"The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching to cow's milk in Ben & Jerry's ice cream?" the letter read. Someone needs to tell PETA that people don't eat Ben & Jerry's for the health benefits.
Ben & Jerry's, ever the diplomats, responded kindly: "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child."
Look, I care about cows. I really do. I want them to be treated in an ethical and humane manner, and I'm willing to pay a little extra for products that promise that. And really, we're not big milk drinkers in our family, anyway. But when I buy a pint of "Everything But The..." to enjoy while watching Grey's Anatomy, I don't want that "everything" to include another women's breast milk. But like Ben & Jerry's, I applaued PETA for making people take notice.
Sending your son or daughter off to college is sure to bring back some memories of your own college experience. And if your young adult is attending your alma mater, all the better. But a Michigan State freshman and his dad were recently surprised when the young man moved into his dorm room. Dad thought it looked familiar, and -- sure enough -- it was the exact same room that he had stayed in in 1978.
There were a few clues: The walls and floor were the same color, the phone number was the same, and the latch on the window was still broken. They turned to a university archivist who located a 30-year-old directory and confirmed their suspicions -- son would be following in his dad's footsteps, literally.
This is a great story, of course, but for anyone who's actually lived in a dorm there's a bigger message here. The window has been broken for 30 years. And apparently, the walls haven't been painted, either. Ahh, dorm life... it's not fancy, and if something is broken, don't hold your breath waiting for maintenance.
When Britain Darren Smith started collecting Legos at the tender age of five, he (and his parents) probably had no idea it would turn into an obsession. Smith, now thirty-two, has amassed what is being claimed as Britain's largest Lego collection.
The number of pieces in Darren's collection, which includes over 2,000 sets, is currently at 2,000,000--well over the previous record holder's collection of a paltry 500,000. The collection is worth around $100,000. Darren claims the pieces, which include his beloved Star Wars C3PO collection, are colorful, and timeless, and that everyone wants to see them, regardless of what they think of his obsession.
Smith also says his wife Claire doesn't mind the collection, which takes up the garage and their loft. She doesn't care for it when it starts to take over the house, however. I can concur with that sentiment--those things HURT when they get caught underfoot! Darren's wife would disagree--she says the collection is slowly taking over their house and it's driving her crazy!
Parents with no time for tradition baby books quickly discovered that blogging baby was time-saving electronic alternative to keep friends and relatives updated on their child's growth and development.
"It's an interesting model," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "Everyone can decide how much or little they want to know about a baby, which avoids the situation of receiving a few too many e-mails about someone's wonderful child, and parents can decide how much they want to share - in minimal or maximal ways."
Parents can also use the networking platforms to create a group of cyberspace peer "friends" for their infants, but one has to wonder.........why?! Is this a way for parents to now cyberly helicopter their children before the tots can even speak for themselves or is it an attempt to create the next generation's Dooce, or simply a way to lighten the monotony of caring for a sleepless infant?
Last week, when a student at Trinity Lutheran School in Monroe, Michigan found she was missing $42, the principal of the school assumed the money must have been stolen. Determined to find the thief, principal John Hilken ordered teachers to strip-search a group of 7th grade girls.
A British boy on holiday in Spain 
There's more to Halloween than costumes and candy. Coming, as it does, just a few days before one of the most important elections we've had in a long time, it's also a potential predictor of the outcome of that election. You see, one of the perennial favorite categories for adult costumes is politicians and what better than to pick one's favorite candidate?
There's nothing quite like it -- dressing up as your favorite character, heading out (at night! in the dark!) to ask strangers for candy and getting ... wait for it ... a brand-new toothbrush.
An annual survey by Salary.com revealed that 
"Could you be pregnant?" If you're a woman of child-bearing age, it's one of the first questions you'll hear when you need medical treatment.
I'm a big fan of 
Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo is concerned about the future. He's worried for the poor of his state who cannot afford the children they apparently keep having and about the quality of future generations made up of the children of the poor and uneducated. "We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out," said LaBruzzo.
Karen Hanrahan is a wellness educator who teaches a workshop titled Healthy Choices for Children. Her class is for parents and is intended to teach them about healthy alternatives to the processed food products so widely available today. To illustrate just how unhealthy some of our diet staples are, she carries with her a rather unusual prop: a 12-year-old McDonald's hamburger.
Sending your son or daughter off to college is sure to bring back some memories of your own college experience. And if your young adult is attending your alma mater, all the better. But a Michigan State freshman and his dad were recently surprised when the young man moved into his dorm room. Dad thought it looked familiar, and -- sure enough -- 
Parents with no time for tradition baby books quickly discovered that blogging baby was time-saving electronic alternative to keep friends and relatives updated on their child's growth and development. 
