Saturday, January 25, 2014

NHTSA Be Darned, He's Driving this Way in the Name of Science!

While cleaning the boys' room, I found on their bookshelf this teacher's manual for a science text, circa 1968, with my aunt's maiden name neatly printed inside the front cover. (She recently retired from a successful decades-long career.)

The red text at the top of the page for the teacher reads, "Discuss various ways that people in this picture are aware that they are moving -- bumps, stops, and starts, sudden throws forward when car stops, etc. How does this compare to the movement of the earth?"

Where to begin? Nobody's wearing seatbelts and when Dad stops the station wagon, what fun Junior and Fido have rolling around unrestrained in the trunk! Then we have Dick and Jane laughing whilst being thrown forward against the seats, and the only no-funnick in the crowd appears to be Mother, who seems to have a problem being hurled toward that metal dashboard. Yikes.

This is in no small way why cleaning takes ages around here.