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I don‘t know that there‘s much point in writing this column. The posties are at it again, as I write, with wildcat strikes, slowdowns and whatever you want to call them. And since the column is syndicated. nationâ€"wide, it depends on the mail, erratic and undependable as it is. It would be a little expensive, to say the least, if I had to use courier service to Kamloops, B.C., and Truro. N.S.. not to mention 100â€"odd places between. However. it‘s an ingrained habit, like the Saturday night bath, so I‘ll bungle out a column anyway. â€" Something that truly amazes me is that there has been no physical response to the constant postal strikes. sometimes employing violence, often flouting the law. In my mind‘s eye, I can see some little old lady. sore as hell because she got her pension cheque a month late. creeping up behind a post office truck and hurling a bomb through the back window. Or some deserted wife, desperately dependent on that welfare cheque, taking a can of gasoline into a large post office in a large city, sprinkling herself liberally with the essence, striking a match, and imâ€" molating . But in this country, the first example would get life imprisonment, where a murderer gets ten years with three off for good behavior. and in the second, some good souls would start a fund to help her children, and within a week would have raised $482, by which time the story would be on page 24. However, into each life some sun must shine. though there wasn‘t much around this past summer. My wife had been feeling poorly. as we used to say, BILL SMILEY for some time. After six months of blandishment and threats, I got her to see her doctor and have a checkâ€" up. â€" Today she tells me that she phoned the doc and she‘s as sound as an apple. I asked her if she‘d had him take an Xâ€"ray of her head. Everything else is functioning normally. Her reply was short and to the point. Back at school after several weeks, I am beginning to wonder why I didn‘t quit teaching 10 years ago, and go to work in a mental institution. At least there you can stuff the inmates with tranquillizers. One more year of teaching Huckleberry Finn, and the best place to find me is floating down the Missisâ€" sippi on a raft, smoking a corncob pipe. I quit teaching Grade 13 because I was getting madder than Hamlet. The people who write course curriculums and adâ€" vocate the oneâ€"onâ€"one relationship with pupils are about as close to reality as the Ayatollah Khomaini or Idi Amin in his last few years. â€" | K ihey had their way. it would be like Moses walkâ€" ing around among the Jews, asking eac_-h and every one, ‘*Now., what do you think of the fourth commandâ€" ment? Do you think ass is a bad word?" Or Hitler, strolling through Germany for 88 years, querying the population about the pollutatory effects of mass creâ€" mations. * Fortunately, most teachers with an ounce of inâ€" telligence, and there are several of us, completely igâ€" nore the millions of dollars worth of ‘directives", and try to teach the kids some semblance of morality,. decency, integrity, and whatever our subject is. In 20 years? I‘ll bet I‘ve taught 12 kids to answer. when I‘ve asked if they have read a certain book, not Bungling out another one What gives in Brown case? The other chief, Syd Brown, claims there are two reasons the Waterloo reâ€" gion police commission is terminating his salary with the force. One, he says, is to ‘‘cut the financial legs out from under me,"‘ and the other is because commission chairman Bernice Adams **is under a good deal of pressure poliâ€" tically"" to end the jokes about the reâ€" gion‘s force being the only one in the world with two chiefs of police. In an interview, Brown claimed "they just can‘t operate the way they‘re operating. The Supreme Court reinstatâ€" ed me and they just can‘t fire me." The controversial police officer is back in the Supreme Court â€" Court of Apâ€" peals â€" tomorrow to challenge the local commission‘s right to hold a second hearing into his fate. Some observers have suggested â€" althâ€" ough it seems unlikely â€" the commisâ€" sion‘s tactics involve keeping the affair tied up in the courts until 1985, when Brown is due for retirement. If he ultimatey wins his case then, it will be too late for any return to active duty. â€" o s It seems the wheels of justice not only grind slowly, but may tend to flatten any resistance to obfuscation along the way. Last week, we mentioned something about the standâ€"up comic‘‘ capabilities of the former Tory finance minister John Crosbie. $ ; What Crosbie had to say in the House last week may not be very funny, but is another clear indication of his gift for gab and trenchant monologue. Hansard records Crosbie‘s parody of the Liberal government in an Oct. 6 speech: ‘"don‘t worry about inflation, don‘t worry about high interest rates, don‘t worry about the fact you are unâ€" employed, don‘t worry about the fact that you. are starving half to death, beâ€" cause after all we are fixing the BNA act ... everybody in Canada is so thrilled with this move we are making to repaâ€" triate the unrepatriatable â€" the constituâ€" tion. the BNA Act or whatever it is." Whatever it is? Actually, Crosbie‘s jest is noteworthy, because we don‘t Waterioo Chronicle, Wednesday, October 15, 1980 â€" Page 7 to say, ‘*No but I seen the movie."‘ I have taught at least 15 not to use the dangling parâ€" ticiple, ‘Riding my bicycle, a dog bit me." _ And I don‘t give a diddle. They‘ve learned a lot more than that, and I have letters to prove it. They‘ve learned not to laugh at people who are physically or emotionally or mentally slow, and to help them. > They‘ve learned that nationalism is stupid, that two wrongs (depending) sometimes make a right; that two and two don‘t always make four; that you should question things that don‘t make sense :; that emotions are nothing to be ashamed of, and so on and on and on, said the boring old teacher. If I don‘t want to get heartburn or something, I‘d better stop talking about teaching. I‘ve seen too many colleagues break down physically or mentally to take much stock in it. The kids go through the mill and emerge in all kinds of shapes: beautiful, grotesque, funny, dour. I think their genes have more to do with it than Miss Entwhistle, who crucified them in Grade 9 for spelling errors. Or Mr. Entwhistle, who taught them that: ‘"‘Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all we know and all we need to know."* Which is a lot of crap. One last cheering note. An article informs me that there is no way Canadian tourists can go to Europe anymore, because the prices are literally out of this world. Glad we sneaked in a couple of trips when they were merely exorbitant. Canadian tourist operators should be brushing up on their Japanese, German, and Italian. We‘re going to be swamped, with that pallid Canadian dollar. Canada is a steal for foreigners with a sound currency. That‘s right ... nothing to get snobby about there. Anybody can watch and apâ€" preciate just another pretty face. What with the singular success of the beauty pageant and Three‘s Company, one‘s inclined to comment ‘"look at the boobs watching the boobs on the boob tube." f The latest release from the BBM Bureau of Measurement â€" the organizaâ€" tion that reports how many people are watching what on the telly and radio â€" is substantial reassurance to any who might worry about Twin Cities people becoming cultural or intellectual snobs. In a threeâ€"week summer survey of the Kitchenerâ€"Waterloo area, BBM reports that the show attracting the highest number of viewers was the Miss Univerâ€" se Pageant. What‘s second in the ratings? The U.S. comedy Three‘s Company did very well, thank you. Suzanne Sommers can smile all the way to the bank. + Snobbery is not only out, it‘s virtually impossible to attain, it would seem, by a look at the ratings‘ indications. But just in case readers may think there‘s no interest in weightier items, such as the news, we must report that CKCO‘s Scan report and the CTV Naâ€" tional News came in a healthy seventh and eighth respectively ... after what is simply called Baseball. Following the brief respite from frivoâ€" lity, there‘s From Here to Eternity and the Dukes of Hazzard in ninth and tenth spots. % Which leaves us with ... by golly, of course! Pierre Trudeau wants to write a constitution for our constitutionless country by pretending he‘s going to claim the original from Britain and gussy it up a bit. After that comes Taxi, Quincy and the indomitable Buck Rogers. i really have a constitution as such, there is no such thing as patriation, and we can‘t repatriate anything that‘s never been here in the first place. * But, in the meantime, what is the goâ€" vernment doing about unemployment, inflation, energy pricing, high interest rates, etc., etc?