Who is Doing What to Whom?

I remember in my early teaching career that all of the students were to read the newspaper, and I provided a class copy of U S News and World Report. I would assign different articles in the magazine and there was a quiz over the reading material both in the newspaper and in the magazine. I remember reading one article and assigning students to read it. In the article, it said that the Soviet Union was guilty of espionage and spying on the U.S. military installations in Turkey across their border. The U.S. knew of this because we were monitoring and observing their action across the border. Hopefully, after reading and discussing it with the students, they were able to see that both sides were guilty of exactly the same thing. That, at least, was my intention to teach them.

At about the same time there was a parent that came to our home and said that Carl was throwing dog poop at her two boys. After talking to Carl and finding that it was true, but also finding out that the two boys were also throwing it at him, I took him down to their home to apologize to the boys and the mother for throwing poop.

Carl C. Stubbs

When we got to the door the mother came out, and there was Carl, a five-year-old in kindergarten, that had thrown the poop at her two boys. The woman was pretty embarrassed because she knew by then that her two boys had started the poop fest, and they were several years older and a lot bigger than Carl. There were apologies enough to go all around and then the opportunity to clean up the two yards.

Carl had gotten into the habit of saying “Thomas” when something went wrong. We weren’t sure why, but it continued for a short time. One day I was out in the back yard and there was Carl and the two kids next door yelling at each other through the open bricks. The neighbor kids were yelling “dumb ass” and Carl was yelling “Thomas.” The mystery was solved and Carl learned that it was not a good idea to return insults with the kids next door.

Carl didn’t really like school too much in the early grades. Sometimes he would come home at recess and tell us that school was out. One time he was found in the orchard to the south of our home. He was trying to pull in a goat that was tied to a tree. He was sitting on the rope and scooting ever closer to a very upset goat. 

He has a very active, intelligent mind. It was always going and trying to figure things out. You could almost see him feeling the emotions of a situation—like the story of the Prophet Joseph Smith being tarred and feathered. He thought about that when I got a little tar on my shoe when we were tarring our roof. He has a very loving and feeling heart.

 


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