Eulogy for My Mom

So the stereotype of Irish and Scottish people is that they fight and drink a lot.

My mom liked to drink, but not a lot. And I don’t know how we got so wussy as a culture that we think fighting is a bad thing. So I’m going to tell you about some fights my mom picked:

If you were a student in her classroom, and you came in below grade level, she would do something she wasn’t supposed to do. She would tell your parents “Your kid is below grade level, but if I give him extra work, I can get them back to where they need to be.” You’re not supposed to tell parents this, becuase they get upset. You know what’s really upsetting? Spending the rest of your life saying “Would you like fries with that?”

If the principal called her into his office to ask her opinion on whatever the new hotness was, my mom would tell him “It’s crap. I’m supposed to spend hours filling out these forms in COLORED PENCILS, I send them off to Sacramento, I never hear anything back.” She wasn’t supposed to say that but my mom had a simple rule: All she wanted was materials for the classroom.

If you weren’t learning to read, my mom would figure out what interested you and buy a book with her own money on that subject. For one kid, it was porcupines. For another, a subscription to Sports Illustrated, because then he could talk about football with his Dad.

My mom was shop steward for her union as a result, and used to drag me to the union meetings; this prevented me from ever having any though of being in politics; another win for us all.

My mom was shop steward for her union as a result, and used to drag me to the union meetings; this prevented me from ever having any though of being in politics; another win for us all.

My mom was shop steward for her union as a result, and used to drag me to the union meetings; this prevented me from ever having any though of being in politics; another win for us all

Anyways, next month, to remember my mom, I want you to get your Irish up and pick a fight that needs to be picked. Because my mom’s legacy is from teaching kids in two of the poorest neighborhoods in Simi Valley to read, and sit still so the other kids could learn. If you want to remember her beyond that, take that giant jar of change you have at your house down to the supermarket, feed it to the coinstar machine to get an Amazon gift card, and give it to a schoolteacher. Because when my mom taught school, schoolteachers got $1,000/year to spend in the classroom in 1980 dollars and now they get $250 in 2025 dollars.

A little bit of money close to the person using it is 10x more effective than $1M spent by a bureaucrat, no bureaucrat would buy a book on porcupines.