Your Humble Blogger spent a year as a classroom parent in a Waldorf-y School, and took to heart the rule that a grupp, when passively overseeing (that is, not in charge but there when necessary) his child playing in a group setting, must be engaged in handwork of some kind. For me, this is knitting; I am not terribly good at sewing, so if I took mending in to such a setting, I would have to focus on it to the point where I wouldn’t really be there for the kids. Also, not a whittler. There are those who might think that whittling would not be a good activity for a parent in a room of two-, three- and four-year-olds, but those people have not been indoctrinated into the particular mind-control scam that is a Waldorf School, and also may not have attempted to control such a group without making it clear that you have a sharp knife and know how to use it.\n
Digression<\/i>: Every time I refer to the Waldorf School as a creepy mind-control scam, I feel obliged in fairness to point out that the Montessori School is a creepy mind-control scam, as are our public schools (both whole language and phonics), and home-schooling is perhaps the creepiest mind-control scam of all. Not to put too fine a point on it, education is a creepy mind-control scam, and could be a lot worse than getting kids to play with driftwood and rocks. End Digression.\n
So, now that the Youngest Member is three-and-a-half, he is attending group activities of one kind and another two or three times a week. And I bring my knitting. And I am the only<\/i> one to bring hand work. No sewing, no mending, no crocheting or quilting or beadwork or cross-stitch or scrimshaw or naalbinding or passementerie. No, the other parents watch their kids and chat with idle hands, which of course are the devil’s proverbial.\n
Now, YHB isn’t writing this to condemn these parents, or to gripe about the decline of western whatsit—I mean, of course I am to some extent just venting. But I am wondering if it’s just that YHB fell under the control of the creepy mind-control scam when I was at a vulnerable point in my parenting career. Or if it’s that my own mother was always knitting, and never went anywhere without something to work on. But I have a sense that people do still knit and sew and so on. I mean, surely every household has a pile of mending. Is it considered terribly rude to bring a shirt to the library’s playtime and sew the buttons back on? I know nobody needs to hem handkerchiefs any more (thank goodness), and on the whole I think it’s a Good Thing that Young Ladies no longer are expected to be constantly embroidering tacky decorations on everything in sight. But still. People do handwork, right?\n
And, of course, being usually the only male parent in the room as well as the only parent doing handwork (even the historically and intrinsically masculine art of knitting), I feel particularly conspicuous. Which is all right, I am used to feeling conspicuous. I quite like it. And I can feel virtuously<\/i> conspicuous when pre-schoolers peer at me industriously knitting away. If I am not actually a good role model, at least I am widening the experience base to the eventual betterment of these kids. And I should add: I have never heard a negative comment about my knitting in these kinds of situations. I’m not saying people don’t mock me, but they don’t do so in my hearing, and probably not in the hearing of the children, who are small pitchers with big ears. So that<\/i>’s all right.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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