One good thing about having a common name

One good thing about having a common name is you get an incredible amount of people checking your profile on Facebook and Google+.  I mean I feel a low residual pressure to have something relevant posted. But my logical self recognizes that people pop out just as quickly as they pop in.

It will be interesting where social media stands after five years and the natural shaking and sorting is done. There will also be some convenient little etiquette advisories in time. I can see the question popping up "Are you ticked off?" that will delay a post for a few hours. Another will be, "Do you know what that word means?".

One year I had a student who would raise his arm, slap his hand on the inside of his elbow and throw the lower portion of his arm in the air. I had the urge one day to do it back at him. I let the urge go. Later I noticed other students reacting in shock at him. So I took him out in the hallway and gave him the choice to stop or demonstrate it to the principal. He stopped.

Most of you know what it meant. It was the same thing as "the bird" or "Hawaiian Peace Sign".

I'm not sorry that I was so slack with the discipline of that kid. His anger spilling out revealed how difficult his life was. I'm sure he made it to adulthood intact. Sensitivity is a two edged sword that wounds you and gives you understanding.

The funniest interaction I had with a class is they thought I was drinking beer everyday. At the time green tea was purported to help you lose weight. So I made about a quart to bring to school with plenty of lemon and artificial sweetener. It was so funny when Martavius asked me if I had beer in my glass at my desk,

I told him to smell it. He approached it gingerly, smelled it and somberly reported to the class that it was tea. One more student asked me if he could smell it. I said yes. He made the same announcement to the class. I did not think about it until later that it was good I told them to smell it. It did look like beer.

I know everyone has heard about the reporter who used a racial slur. I don't know if it was a mistake or carelessness. The female vice-president of Sony has certainly resigned since her racist and catty emails were revealed by a hacker.

For the reporter, I would give her the benefit of the doubt. She is around thirty and she may have heard people use the word and not know it's origin. I thought it was a local slur. I have a very dear friend who didn't like the "n" word but the "j" word was much worse. For the executive, she was sophisticated enough to know to not put anything unattractive in writing.

I've noticed that blogger is giving a warning that hosting sexually explicit material on your blog will be cause to shut down the blog or change access to the blog to the owner only. I guess that nips my porn career in the bud.

Of course, my second childhood has not begun. By then I will not be able to remember to write down my passwords. However if your computer identifies you by DNA, be careful world. You thought your mama and grandmamma taking over Facebook was bad. Geriatric porn spam will be worse.