The amazing cleaning properties of bubbles

I read this week that the McCook School Board was presented with the task of determining how to discipline a teacher who had allowed high school students to drink alcohol in her home. I was a bit surprised to read further that the school board was split on whether or not to terminate the teacher and ultimately took no action. I am sure details about the scenario are still coming out and I am well aware of how difficult personnel matters can be in unionized operations.

The scenario got me thinking about my high school years, though, specifically whether I could ever imagine a situation where any of my teachers would have allowed us to consume alcohol.

The closest I ever came was during my 11th grade year, at the state Distributive Education Clubs of America competition.

A group of us hid a small bottle of alcohol from our instructors one evening. It wasn't particularly difficult to obtain, one of my best friends walked out of the hotel we stayed in, crossed the street to the liquor store, and made the purchase without being carded. He returned with a glass bottle of what tasted like diesel fuel and smelled even worse.

Three or four of us hunkered down in our hotel room and acted like goof balls, but otherwise the incident was pretty uneventful.

At one point during the evening, one of our instructors popped in to check in on us and I remember thinking she had to have seen the bottle of alcohol we had so carelessly left on the floor. If she did, she said nothing and we were certainly grateful at the time.

The young man who purchased the bottle did wake up in the wrong hotel room the next morning, which prompted a bit of an inquiry into our actions and eventually resulted in him being banned from Marketing classes our 12th grade year, resulting in his inability to compete in the annual state DECA competition.

I was, of course, disappointed not to have one of my closest friends with me at the competition, however, since we had no one else that looked old enough to buy alcohol for us, we fared quite a bit better at the state competition. I qualified for the national competition, an improved result over my 11th grade year that didn't go unnoticed by me, even then.

During my high school years I was lucky enough to have a relationship with my mother that encouraged open dialogue. I was able to visit with her about the DECA experience and openly discuss the peer pressures I faced and choices I had made. I hope the students attending these "chaperoned" local parties are in a similar situation.

I was no angel and there were even times during my senior year that I kept a few of my "decisions" from my mother. I carried the guilt of those experiences for many years to follow, guilt that eventually molded into a stern belief that a professional bull-rider friend of mine once worded best.

"If your actions ain't something you are willing to share with your mom, than you ought not do them," he said.

Coming from the toughest man I have ever known, a rather short fella who was feared by both cowboys and law enforcement officers throughout Wyoming, I couldn't help but imagine the grandness of the stories his mother could tell.

My daughter will graduate from the Oberlin school district in a couple of years and it will be several years after that before I have to worry about Declan facing the peer pressures associated with alcohol. I have, of course, already begun my efforts to instill in him the same openness that my mother and I shared, the same openness I believe my daughter and I now share.

Just prior to his departure for the summer, Declan was attempting to pressure me into buying him a board game one day at a local retailer. The gaming store employee witnessed our typically comical back-and-forth banter and attempted to help the little man close the deal by telling me board games were also good for the brain, because they foster problem solving skills.

The conversation reminded me of a time when I managed a territory for a bottling distributor and the local school board was voting on whether or not to eliminate soft drinks from their schools.

I was tasked with writing a letter to the school board pertaining to all the reasons why they should keep soft drinks in their schools. The owner of the company I worked for, the third generation of his family to run the business, provided several examples that I was to include in my letter to the school board. The majority of the information he provided was very beneficial, however, one reason that he was particularly persistent about, I had trouble including.

"Our soft drink contains bubbles," he said, adding that bubbles were well known for their cleaning action. I attempted to keep a straight face as he went on to explain that because our soda contained bubbles, you could derive that our soft drink actually cleaned our consumers' teeth and did not cause tooth decay as many believed.

He was a fairly sharp and well educated person, who I had a wealth of respect for, but I could in no way bring myself to tell anyone that I thought any soft drink was actually good for their teeth. I knew enough at the time about business not to argue with the owner of the company I worked for, but I conveniently left out any reference to bubbles from my letter.

I focused on the message that the high school years were a time when young adults are taught how to make good decisions. Honing their decision making skills during the high school years is critical to their development and success as an adult and eliminating options from them should only be done when safety is a concern. In the end, the school board agreed with me, and although soft drink machines were eliminated from their grade schools, replaced with water and juice machines, they kept soft drinks in their high schools.

I often compare parenting dilemmas to my words in the soft drink letter, usually in an effort to determine what is a safety issue and what is harmless enough to allow my children to decide on their own. There is obviously a vast difference between what decisions I allow the Declanator to make, compared to those of his high school sister.

When it comes to alcohol, I have attempted to stick with one recurring message, although I communicate it in a number of ways. I believe the younger you are, the more damaging and far-reaching the negative effects are on your development. I have pleaded, preached and even regurgitated statistics, all in an effort to get my children to wait, avoid, run, be afraid of, and at times just say no, to alcohol, for as long as they possibly can.

My hope is that through open dialogue they will be as educated as possible and understand that the older they are, the less harmful the negative effects will be. Maybe, just maybe, they can avoid it from ever becoming a regular part of their lives.

My concern pertaining to the recent events actually leans more towards whether or not the parents of the students involved were aware of the situation, than it does with the underage consumption of alcohol. I can't help but feel that if a teacher isn't keeping a parent as informed as possible about their children's activity, they are in essence discouraging open dialogue and directly fostering a deceptive relationship between parent and child.

I am confident all of our local teachers and school board members have what is best for our children at the top of their priority list. I worry though, like any parent, that life shifts our priority lists around a bit and we too often find ourselves mumbling about the dental hygiene advantages of bubbles.