If I were a butterfly...

I just worked a long eight hour day, which turned into a nine hour day, without a break. I ate a plum. As in one piece of fruit. And didn't have lunch. Or dinner. And gimped around with my stupid back injury, with nothing but good old fashioned NSAIDs and a lot of "let's play make believe that my back doesn't feel like someone is thrusting knives up my vertebral column and hip."

Nice day. (Actually, patients were lovely, and it wasn't a shit day, other than the fact that I DIDN'T EAT AND WAS IN CONSTANT PAIN.)

Any way, I just had a Catholic School Days flashback. I went to parochial school for a few years (unfortunately the formative ones, although my sister went to the exact same school and never quite developed the neurotic guilt complex I did, but then, she was never a nun's favorite pupil, whereas I was.) We used to have singing/film days on Friday afternoon. We watched some really old school films, on real film projectors, like Rikki Tikki Tavi and some weird film with a kid who follows a red balloon around the neighborhood (WTF?). And sat on lime green shag carpet. O tempora! O memoria!

We also sang a lot of songs about Noah's ark ("Who built the arky-arky? Noah! Noah!" or something like that) and another one, which I actually found the lyrics to on the internet: "If I were a butterfly." (No, I have no idea who Brian Howard is, or what the Sheep song is, but you can purchase his cd at the Butterfly Store mentioned on the same website. I don't endorse the website or anything, in case you clicked on the link and was just as frightened as I was that adults actually know the entire lyrics. And I'm not so sure the song is "sung around the world" as the site claims, either, because, well, it's in English and I somehow don't see Mongolian sherpas singing about crocodiles and Jesus, do you?)

For second graders, though, trust me, the song was very cute and endearing and not scary Maude and Ned Flanders like it sounds when lauded by adults who, apparently, make cds of said song.

Other fond memories: being able to erase the black boards and clap the erasers clean at the end of the day was like, a big deal and everybody fought over who got to do it. However, I was always distressed that they punished us by making us copy out of the dictionary, because I liked the dictionary. The dictionary was my friend. I read the dictionary in my spare time as a kid. Why on earth would copying out of a dictionary be made a punishment? Shouldn't we teach children to cherish correct spelling, pronunciation, and word meaning? Especially now that their moldable little minds are being forever corrupted by internet chatting (or should I say 4ever corrupted)?

I've turned into a sad, illiterate grown-up, though. Years of punishing graduate school has given me PTSD when it comes to classic texts, even though I should read more instead of salivate over Vincent D'Onofrio on Criminal Intent or invent fanatical theories about the next installment of the Harry Potter phenomenon, because I feel I'm getting stupider by the day, and it's probably true. I really want to read, but then I get some weird unfounded fear that I'm not going to like the book, and then I'll have to resolutely plow through it any way, because I've started it. Oh, the neurosis. Oh, the humanity!