hello you person.

There’s the stereotypical story a grandfather may tell about walking to school. He may claim he had to walk 3 miles in the snow… uphill both ways. What has happened since then? We have school zone speed limits. We have blinking yellow signs with a graphic of silhouette children crossing the street. We have crossing guards. We have speed carts set up by police to let us know how fast we’re going. One thing you don’t see is… kids crossing the street.

Almost every school playground is completely surrounded by fencing. (All that’s missing is the barbed wire and guard towers.) So there’s nary a chance you’ll see a child in the street during school hours. And kids that walk to school are few and far between.

Every morning I drive by a middle school and see two children, a boy & a girl, waiting for the bus. I’d estimate they are in 3rd and 1st grade respectively. They wait outside for over 15 minutes, a bus comes and picks them up and they ride it for 30 seconds to the school. They live three houses from the school on the same side of the street and there’s a sidewalk that leads straight to the school. There’s the school, two houses, and then their house. Their next door neighbors have the “End School Zone” sign in their yard.

Every morning I try to fathom why they aren’t just walking to school? Their parents will occasionally wait outside with them. Wouldn’t it be faster to walk them there? Or would it be so dangerous for the kids to walk half a block? They do have to cross the street to get on the bus. I would think that poses a slightly greater danger than the chances of someone kidnapping the kids in the 2 minutes it takes to get to the door of the school (this is in no way a bad part of town).

Anyway, this has been bothering me all year and I had to get it off my chest. Also to prove I’m not a total hypocrite, I biked over 5 miles to work today.

So I manage a blog for a manufacturer (which I’ve been asked not to reference on my personal blog) of [objects]. This blog gets lots of praise for being well written, interesting and generally awesome. Every day I get six or so email notifications of blog comments from folks that just love reading my work. Oh how I loved getting these comments. They gave me the warm-fuzzies of appreciation. But then one day something changed.

I came to realize that these comments were full of hollow praise. The attaboy comments had turned me bitter. I now resent these unwarranted compliments. I know I deserve them. I know I’ve earned them. I know I’m generally awesome. I’m just slightly tired of being reminded of these facts. Here is some of the praise I have garnered.
*On a side note* Arrrrghhh! Windows XP and your stupid Automatic Updates! [Restart Later]

Hi Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so! really good post.

Hi Generally I do not reply to comments, but I would like to say that this comment really forced me to do so! really good comment.

Sooooooo awesome post, i adore some words so much and may i quote a couple of of them on my blog? Also i have emailed you relating to would it be possible for us to exchange our links, hope hearing from you soon.

I have feeling you’re lying to me. I don’t like to be lied to. I would like to exchange links with you, but you need to email me. Seriously.

Great post. I’ve been looking for this exact info for a while now. I’ll bookmark it in the public bookmarking sites to get you more views.

I am eternally grateful. I will make $0 more because Google Adsense says I already have an account. (on an email address that I have deleted)

You may have not intended to do so, but I think you have managed to express the state of mind that a lot of people are in. The sense of wanting to help, but not knowing how or where, is something a lot of us are going through.

It’s so touching to finally be appreciated.

This blog is great. How did you come up witht he idea? 1 9 3

Your mother gave me the idea. 1 9 3

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Nobody likes a brown-noser Mr. Automated Poster.

Read on for more well written comments. (more…)