snoburbia, the blog

but i do know 1 and 1 is 2

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Let’s talk about math. In snoburbia, it is crucial that you do Algebra 1 as early as possible, certainly by seventh or eighth grade. (If you do algebra in ninth grade, you are ordinary. You might as well live in... no, it’s too horrible to think about.)

To get there, it doesn’t matter if the third or fourth grade teacher speeds through the basics at breakneck speed, leaving a class of dazed kids who cry over homework. Why look at the multiplication tables for more than two days? Division? That is so last week. We must move on!

What’s important is that you can do AP Calculus in 11th grade. If an Honors Pre-Calculus teacher has to stop class and re-teach long division, that’s okay. It’s what keeps the tutors of snoburbia happy. What matters is that we are advanced.

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Nationally, only 25 percent of students take Algebra 1 by eighth grade.

the right stroller

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If you have a baby and you live in snoburbia, you are not a good parent unless you buy a Maclaren stroller.

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not a flea market

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In overclass snoburbia, your town has not made it until you have a farmers’ market. You get bonus points if your market is organic, and even more if it is held at a quaint Victorian train station.

It must sell things with names like “tea tree oatmeal soap” or “Mission olive oil with hot chili flakes and a blend of Mediterranean herbs.”

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Our local farmers’ market would not let me in to sell my t-shirts that make fun of people who go to farmers’ markets. We, my dear, are not a flea market.

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bloody volvo driver

 

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Today when I was driving through the snoburbs, a Volvo actually passed me. And... it was going fast.

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I know, right? Must have been the teenage son.

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all men are created equal

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I was speaking with a young man who recently was graduated from the University of Virginia, which is loaded with students from snoburbia. He was telling me that he and a bunch of his UVA friends were teasing a fraternity brother about that guy’s high school.

Why? I asked.

Because he had gone to public school. He was the only one.

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The public school he went to? Bethesda, Md.’s Walt Whitman High School, which is thought – mostly by people who go there – to be almost a private school. (It's one of Montgomery County’s rarefied W-schools.)

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common application

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On an overclass Bethesda, Md. high school’s listserv, there is a call for people to join a support group to help “cope with the challenging college admission process.”

Who is the support group for? Parents.

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more cowbell

 
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It’s September in snoburbia, where back-to-school means dawn-to-dusk activities that enhance our children’s already keen intelligence and coordination – and ultimately, their Bowdoin and Stanford applications.

In the overclass, not spending every moment on academics or scheduled extracurricular activities is simply unacceptable.

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When I was a kid, my brother and I basically ran loose for hours a day after school, as we had virtually no homework or formal activities. We went all over the neighborhood (get ready) … without cellphones. My parents didn’t know where we were for hours at a time. We got dirty, climbed tall trees, cut open our feet on pop-tops, and fell off our banana seat bikes – without helmets. We built Evel Knievel jump ramps. Unless we had an injury requiring hospitalization, we went home only when my mother rang the cowbell that signaled dinnertime.

And I turned out okay, right? Right??

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cliché-ism

 

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A Washington, D.C. area private school encourages parents to join SEED, a Wellesley program designed to encourage discussion. SEED participants at this $30,000-a-year school discuss racism and “ableism” (“conversations between people with and without disabilities.”)

On the brochure, a SEED participant said: “I was oblivious to this thing called white privilege until joining SEED. Once I became aware of it I became angry.”

Quoted on the back of the brochure? Martin Luther King and ... Alan Alda.

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jet set babysitter

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Overheard at a party in snoburbia:

It’s impossible to find a babysitter around here. Our last sitter was a high school girl. She was never around because she was always on a European ski trip or in Hawaii – or some other thing we can’t afford to do ourselves.

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