Tony Brewer View

Teri and I like to get our Christmas shopping done early as much as possible.  However, there are certain people that you just cannot shop early for because chances are pretty good that if you buy something for that person too early in the year that you think they will like for Christmas, that they will have bought it for themselves by the time Christmas rolls around.  So as much as we hate waiting until after Thanksgiving to do our Christmas shopping, sometimes that just cannot be helped, it has to be done.

We enjoy going to the various shopping malls during the Christmas season simply to enjoy the seasonal decorations – everything looks so festive decked out in its Holiday dressings!  The twinkling lights, the sparkling glitter and tinsel and the smells of freshly cut Christmas wreaths and garlands and trees while listening to the Holiday music playing in the background are all very spirit rejuvenating experiences.  However, actually SHOPPING at the malls during Christmas season is another matter completely!  That’s enough to sour our moods pretty quickly! 

That’s why I’m glad we found the iblackfriday.com website.  The website has a comprehensive list of Black Friday specials that you can buy online from our favorite stores, such as Sears and Best Buy.  You can use the site to sign up for email alerts when new listings appear, and to create a shopping list from the offerings you can find there.

This morning I was reading an article on Time.com titled “Should Kids be able to graduate after 10th grade.”  I found the article of great interest because there are several young people in my family that are extremely intelligent and could have (in fact in my opinion SHOULD have) been allowed to graduate from high school early and gone on to college at an earlier age. 

One of my nephews, for example, the last two years of high school was so advanced that he was given “independent study” and in his senior year accomplished two years of Latin.  Why he wanted to study Latin, I’ll never understand, but I hear that is a popular thing to study now.  At the same time he was taking Spanish (which I DO understand because that language is alive and well!)  This young man is now going to Princeton (go JB!) and we expect wonderful things from him.

Another nephew, for example, has ADHD but is also well advanced in his studies.  His last two years of high school were difficult for him because the classes could not keep his attention.  He would have been much better off being allowed to graduate from high school early and go on to college where the subjects would have kept his attention better.

So I think that kids SOULD be able to graduate after tenth grade if the situation warrants it.  This business of being forced to stay in school through 12th grade (unless you become a drop out) is baloney.