Opinion: Cool School

“C’mon, sit on it,” I said to the fellas.

They all looked at me.

I looked back.

No takers.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll sit on it, you take my picture.”

I set the camera up and handed it to one of them. He took my picture.

“I wish I had a newspaper to read,” I joked.

We were in the new Glacier Gateway Elementary School in the kindergarten bathroom. The toilet, the first I’ve ever seen, was not made for 6-foot-tall hairy ugly old men like myself.

It literally sits on the ground. It’s made for little kids. Five-year-olds with short legs.

The days of kids struggling to get up on the potty are finally over, at least at Glacier Gateway.

After how many years and how many schools, we’re actually building buildings for kids.

It’s very, very cool. Short lockers for kids. Big windows for kids. Walls for kids. Even floors for kids. I know there’s a certain amount of hand-wringing about whether the school will be ready by January.

I say relax. The school will get done and if that means waiting until spring, then so be it. It’s a really cool school and it will be worth the wait.

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This reminds me of two funny bathroom stories:

One day when my middle kid Olivia was 3 years old I was sitting on the throne and she comes up and starts banging the hell out of the door.

I opened it up and looked out. There she stood.

“I need a drink of water,” she said.

Another time, when she was the same age, she kept hollering for her mother to “wipe” her.

Well her mother wasn’t home so I opened the bathroom door to take care of her.

“You’re not my mother!” she said.

Sigh.

Olivia is a very successful designer for an ad agency today. Turns out a kid who likes to draw pictures can make a living at it. I was a little worried for awhile. She went off to Italy in college to study art in Venice and came back with a painting she did of a dragon smoking a cigarette lounging in a Venetian canal.

Not exactly the Mona Lisa.

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Last week’s story on Terri Feury’s plans to expand and improve Uptown Hearth on Nucleus Avenue still brought some howls of protest on unsocial media. There are still trolls out there that think a hometown woman investing back into her community is bad for it. One person said they missed it when Columbia Falls downtown was dumpy. I’m at a loss for words. Fortunately, most folks think Terry’s plans are a great idea. I do, too.

That’s all for now.