Yesterday marked the first time I have received an Incident Report for an altercation involving one of my kids. To make it a banner day, I got one for each of the boys.

Now, in both cases our kid was the victim, but the differences between the two reports reveals the inanity of trying to use a single administrative procedure in dealing with the acts of children.

The first report had to do with Gilby, who is in the first grade and is as sweet and sensitive as can be. He was playing with his friends at recess and the pocket on his sweatshirt got ripped. Normal stuff that happens with boys and physical play. I was greeted by the Chairperson of the school and Gilby's friends who apologized to me. Seems to be an somewhat over-the-top response and I shook both boy's hands and let them know that everything was fine and thanked them for their apologies. Gilby wasn't sad or mad and even told the boys that "my Dad can use a string and fix it" (Cheffo's gots teh skills!).

Complete administrative overreaction.

On the flip side, the report involving Kevin was the 17th such report involving violence for the offending student since March 2nd, when he was allowed to return to school after being expelled for similar behaviour.

17 incidents of violence in less than two months!

That boy wasn't made to apologize to me (which I expect would have been far more effective than the two days of recess that he has to give up) and there is no reasonable plan to remedy the situation going forward. The same old administrative routines haven't worked and, I would suggest, have likely contributed to his bad behaviour. Somebody is going to get seriously hurt.

Total administrative failure.

Maybe it is time to get this kid some help ... or his parents some help ... or at least keep him from wreaking havoc on the other kids.

Administrators need to learn that kids are not appliances and that the rubber-stamp-and-form approach is just silly -- the kids understand that -- why can't the adults ?

I haven't updated in a long time -- due entirely to work/$$$/space constraints.

I don't have the time, cash, nor space to entertain another coin-op project.

What I do have is the entire run of GameRoom Magazine in digital format.

It is the sweomes!

While I have every print issue of GRM since I started subscribing, which was prior to Kevin Steele's reign, I haven't been able to get back issues for all of the backs that I have wanted. I did get some of the more interesting series of articles, like the two-parter on Exidy (can you say Crossbow !!!!) and the two-parter on myriad Star Wars games, as well as past articles about Tron (man, do I need to get my butt in gear and get that running before December!).

What I had missed, even with my digging into the back issues, were the initial articles by industry vets like Dick Donlan. If I had read those articles when I first started out, my life since would have been easier and my games would be the better for it.

I've been reading and re-reading and, while there are different generations of the magazine that will appeal to people with different interests (Jukes, Pins, Vids, Vendings), the fact remains that I absolutely, relentlessly have to have GRM in my collection of coin-op reading material.

So should you.

http://gameroommag.com

You know you want it ...