{"id":261,"date":"2023-08-09T21:55:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T21:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/?page_id=261"},"modified":"2023-08-09T21:55:26","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T21:55:26","slug":"beat-it-til-it-breaks","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/?page_id=261","title":{"rendered":"Beat It \u2018Til It Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is it about gleefully dark human nature stories that makes you <\/span>want<\/span><\/i> to look away and feel shame for taking glee at them, yet you cannot?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many years ago, near Thanksgiving, my daughter\u2019s preschool conducted a study of Native Americans, presumably under the innocent auspices of friendly Thanksgiving dealings; full of caring and sharing between the Natives and the European intruders. One of the goals of her class was to play music at their Autumn Feast (even at a mixed, fee-based preschool, one must be PC.)\u00a0 To do this, children created their own instruments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Using oatmeal tubs and paper towel rolls donated by families, the class embarked upon a craft adventure one might refer to as a \u201cCraftivity.\u201d Meaning, your craft is something you will later use to <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> something else.\u00a0 Never as popular as the \u201cCrame,\u201d combination of craft and game, it can be quite useful in a multitasking world hungry for crossover appeal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My daughter\u2019s class drew various Native designs\u2013scribbles of children wielding markers in an undirected manner\u2013on construction paper. \u00a0 They covered the grinning Quaker man with that construction paper, as his face would detract from their drumming prowess.\u00a0 After a paste-on of glue-dripping, tar-pit schematics, the drum was complete.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the paper towel tube drumstick, no construction paper nonsense was necessary.\u00a0 The children colored right onto the tubes themselves; further weight to their earthy appeal.\u00a0 My daughter\u2019s drumstick featured a few lengthwise blue and red streaks, interconnected and crisscrossed. \u00a0 A few lima beans inside, a few slapped-on feathers outside, some blue tape at either end of the tube, and the drumsticks were ready.\u00a0 This seemingly harmless design provided for the musical disaster which endured in comedic memory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Parents were not invited to the classroom performance, but the director sang its praises in her newsletter, as the performance for the younger rooms was \u201ca delight\u201d and \u201ca true example of the spirit of the season.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My daughter, never one to be passive in a musical performance, must have created a few moments of panic when her drumstick broke.\u00a0 Fortunately, a nearby teacher swooped in with the requisite gob of blue tape to clog and reseal the end of the tube.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time the drum arrived home, the broken end had been handled and reshaped so many times that it no longer resembled a drumstick as much as a hand-crafted phallus.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Call it a homemade \u201cdevice\u201d if you will.\u00a0 Just don\u2019t let my wife hear you–she was greatly displeased when I asked her exactly <\/span>what<\/b> they were teaching our daughter at this school, suggesting the innuendo created by the look of said tube.\u00a0 With the bulging end and now-creepy-looking blue and red lines running the length of the \u201cshaft,\u201d I could not have been the only parent that day to have considered it a bit wrong.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps it was just that my mind ran downhill in such ways, even if I did spend considerable effort to cover this up in front of my children.\u00a0 Believe me, holding one\u2019s tongue is not always so easy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our daughter gathered us in the kitchen for a reenactment of her performance later that day.\u00a0 She sang a song and whacked away at the drum with varying degrees of rhythmic success, finishing with a grand finale in which she wordlessly hammered the drum.\u00a0 Then there was chanting and such rapid smacks of the drum that the local cults might truly have been proud.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then again, I doubt any natives would have been shouting, \u201cI\u2019m beating it!\u201d as they hammered away on their toms.\u00a0 If only the phallic end of the drumstick she used to hammer the drum had not burst and with a violent spray of white beans, sending them skittering across kitchen linoleum.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Any restraint I practiced up to that moment died.\u00a0 If it had not, I might not have had to explain to my daughter why Daddy was laughing at the burst end of her drumstick and the blobs of beans all over the floor.\u00a0 She showed so much concern as she asked me what was wrong, why I was laughing and crying.\u00a0 With tears on my cheeks:\u00a0 \u201cUm, let\u2019s see, well, Daddy was\u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is it about gleefully dark human nature stories that makes you want to look away and feel shame for taking glee at them, yet you cannot?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many years ago, near Thanksgiving, my daughter\u2019s preschool conducted a study of Native Americans, presumably under the innocent auspices of friendly Thanksgiving dealings;…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":179,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-261","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/261\/revisions\/262"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.314stories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}