Ruth and I didn’t plan to have three children but we did. Heck, if you’ve read my previous story, “How About Me?”, you know that we didn’t plan to get married. But we did that too. We turned out to be pretty traditional – marriage , then children.
When we got around to talking about having children I thought that three was the right number. I expect that came from the fact that I had two siblings. I thought that having two boys and a girl would be great. In my perfectly conceived master plan we would have two boys followed by one girl. The two boys would bring their friends over and my daughter would have a chance to meet them. This would also provide me with the opportunity to review their qualifications to become my son-in-law. The “win” for the boys would be the fact that they would have a brother and a sister. (I didn’t have a brother, but my two lucky sisters had one of each. And the win of all wins, their brother was me.)
We did have two boys and a girl. Mother nature took care of the birth order and I’m happy with how things developed. David wasn’t born right away, and for a time, we thought that we might not have children. Ultimately, we determined that if we had children that would be a wonderful thing, but we weren’t going to worry about whether children were a part of the plan or not. When we reached the conclusion that we were going to let things play out naturally, they did,
David was conceived on the rainy fourth of July in 1974. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know. (Check the weather for Kalamazoo, Michigan for July 4, 1974 if you’d like further verification. The national weather service keeps track of these things for skeptics like you.)
Elizabeth was born two years later, and while we were on a roll, Michael was born after another sixteen months had passed. We had three children in forty months. (When I say we, I mean Ruth. I was merely a willing participant in the process.) After Michael was born, things came to a very deliberate screeching halt. I hung up my spurs.
And what does this have to do with cursive vs. printing? Everything! 
Flashback in time.
The junior high where Ruth and I taught transitioned to a middle school about three years into our teaching careers. The middle school concept brought about a series of changes to how things were organized, and ultimately taught, in Plainwell. We worked in teams called Pods. Each Pod had a teacher that taught one of the four major subjects: science, math, social studies or language arts. Each Pod also had an aide to assist students and teachers. We had the autonomy to create our own instructional schedules with the exception that students needed to report to lunch and their “peripheral” classes at designated times. “Peripheral” classes included: home economics, shop, art and physical education. This “peripheral” time away was the “Pod teachers” (sounds kind of like science fiction when you say it out loud) time to plan. Our common planning included the opportunity to determine a number of things: grouping of students, time allotment of classes, discipline issues, instructional practices, etc. We also had our own planning office where each of us had a designated work space and a common conference room.
The four lead teachers often discussed items of shared interest. We did out best to determine strategies that would be helpful to our students and each other. While the collection of “Pod teachers” and personalities might change from year to year, the mission was always the same – work together.
In mid March of 1975 my fellow teachers and I were having a discussion of cursive vs. printing. Some of our students were printing their work and others were using cursive. (This was long before the introduction of word processing.) We discussed the pros and cons of requiring students to use one format over the other. Our instructional aide, Sally, was with us while this discussion took place.
After several minutes of discussion one of the teachers asked me what I thought regarding the issue. As the language arts teacher, did I have any advice regarding issuing a standard requirement for all students to follow.
My reply went something like this. “I don’t care what format each student uses, but I want it to be uniform throughout the document. If they’re going to print, print the entire document. If they use cursive, complete the entire assignment using cursive.”
Then Sally chimed in, “That’s ridiculous. Printing is like using your fingers to eat. Cursive is using silverware. We must require everyone to use cursive.”
I disagreed with her analogy and reiterated my position.
She followed with a crushing blow. “You don’t know anything. You’re not a parent.”
And there it was. Parenthood was the key to knowledge.
I really can’t remember how the Pod decided to move forward. I do know that I maintained my position in my classroom for the remainder of my teaching years. Pick a format and stick with it.
I also remember returning to work following David’s birth a few weeks after this conversation took place. My fellow teachers and I were discussing his arrival when Sally entered the room. Sally offered her congratulations as well. On cue, like a message from a higher power (or perhaps the devil himself), I offered this reply.
“You know the best part of being a parent? Now I know everything.”
I know what you’re thinking. This was not a very kind thing to say. It was also a giant leap from “not knowing anything” to “knowing everything” but this was one of those times when my mouth raced faster than my brain.
That interaction with Sally in March and early April of 1975 has been with me ever since. While I maintain my position regarding “cursive vs. printing“, parenthood did change what I knew, and thought I knew, about life. Becoming a parent didn’t bring about the change but being a parent did.
The forty month period that I summarized at the beginning of this tale, followed by the additional thirty-nine plus years, have changed everything. I think the biggest single take away for me is simply this. It’s a lot easier to offer advice than to follow it yourself.
Things change when you are more immediately impacted by your own words and actions. As my career progressed I often offered up this fact to parents when they asked me what they should do. “It’s easy for me to tell you what you should do, and a completely different thing for me to do it myself.”
I owe part my belief, right or wrong, to that interaction with Sally and our discussion of cursive vs. printing in the spring of 1975.