The stores are a weird mash up of everything - clothes, candy, farm stuff, fishing and hunting stuff. Think Walmart but for rural types. I buy my 2 kg tubs of Bag Balm for my hands there, as well as milk filters. (Note: Bag Balm and cotton gloves are literally the only thing that keeps my hands from becoming desiccated…

THIS. This lady gets a barely disguised eyeroll from me. So THIS was your line in the sand? Not the attacks on human rights, the kids in cages, the homophobia, the racism?

As an actual PhD in Early Childhood Education professor person, I say No. Roll that sad ass argument back up and place it into whatever victim trailer you are toting around. ECE can help lots of things, but being a basic asshole who doesn’t respect other humans isn’t one of them. I can’t fucking fix that.

“YOU GOTTA THINK MORE POSITIVE! YOUR POSITIVITY CAN WILL IT INTO BEING” - people who think your mood state can cure Covid and cancer.

We slow blink. That’s the totality of our emotional reaction. My millennial kid doesn’t get it when I say that I had resigned myself to dying in a nuclear war when Reagan was sworn in as President.

As I noted in a response above - I grew up in Vermont. My mom married into the very, very old Upstate New York money families. You would have never known from the family pictures that there was the type of cash in back accounts.  But we did summer on the cape. Or in Maine. 

Truth. I grew up as the child whose mom married into very old upstate New York money. This was the gin and tonic set - the ones who had the odd Picasso in the guest room that no one mentioned because it would be gauche to do so, and whose children married into low key royalty. You know the family that always has the…