After I posted my last post, I got to thinking. It reminded me about an old TV show. If my memory is wrong, you are welcome correct me. If I am right the series was The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis with Dwayne Hickman. In the show, Bob Denver plays a hippie, Maynard G. Krebs.

One of the on-going gags is that any time someone mentioned the word “work,” around Maynard, he went into a falsetto voice and repeated, “Work,” as if he were horribly afraid of it.

Then too there is the old joke about the hobo who was asked if he was afraid of work; to which he replied, “No sir. I can lie down next to it and sleep all day.”

As I say, I don’t like work, but I am not afraid of it. I did work all my life. I never drew one day of unemployment. I continued to work until I was in my seventies and I have continued to think of even go back at 76. It just is, right now, my job is taking care of my wife, which takes a lot of my time. It is difficult for me to leave her alone for extended times. So we subside on Social Security.

However, all else aside, any time I do work, I’d really prefer it be for a good reason. I would really like to be able to say I am truly accomplishing something. If I had the chance, I would teach people how to read. Every day, I hear the professional teachers give all kinds of excuses for failing to teach their students how to read. If they can’t do it, I would like the opportunity to try. My guess I can. My guess is, the teachers either don’t know how or don’t have the desire. Before a student reaches the 4th grade, it is the one most important thing a teacher can teach. If their students can’t read then they are failures.

Then again, they just might be like the old hobo. They can sit all day in those classrooms and never teach a thing.