My childhood was non-standard typical in a variety of ways. Occasionally I think back to moments in my life and go "Wow, it's super weird that that happened."

I've decided that, from now on I'm going to write these thoughts down when I have them, in case they're of some amusement to other people. And, hey, maybe other people can share stories of the ways their childhoods were strange?

So here's the one that got me this afternoon:

For context, I went to a public high school in a California suburb on the edge of the Sacramento area.

During my high school years, there was a big national story about people trying to force public schools to teach "intelligent design" as an alternative explanation to the theory of evolution. One day, I arrived at my Phys Ed class, and the school's Phys Ed teacher/football coach decided to weigh in on the matter thusly: (paraphrased from faded memories).

"Pulling your lower leg forward uses a different set of muscles than pushing it back. It's much harder to strengthen the muscles that pull it forward than the ones that push it back, so most people have a big imbalance. I don't know how humans came about, but if a god did create us, I don't think that was a very intelligent design he gave us."

I didn't think much about it at the time, but in retrospect -- I went to a public high school in the US where the gym teacher explicitly politicized an anatomy lesson, out of nowhere, in order to dunk on Republicans.

How fucking weird is that?

Het Scheepvaartmuseum and replica of the VOC ship 'Amsterdam' (1749)

January, 2023