life. it happens.

Humans learn foreign languages just because they can. Humans bake cookies. Humans knit sweaters. Humans ask permission to pet other humans’ dogs. Humans argue over whether ghosts are real. Humans write stories they’re too embarrassed to show to anybody. Humans eat food so spicy it makes our noses run. Humans do google searches to find out what kind of bird is making that noise. Humans build pyramids, or travel thousands of miles to look at other humans’ pyramids.

My mom gave me and my sister two days every semester that she called “mental health days.”

Those were days, that for ANY reason, and without having to tell my mom the reason, we could skip the day of school. We’d just tell her we were taking a mental health day and she’d call the school and let them know we were not coming in. 

#1 This helped keep our grades up by lowering our stress levels. I never got a C in any grade school class. The majority of my classes I received A’s. I also took 4 AP classes and they were not weighted. Trust me, it made a difference.

#2 I never felt the need to skip school. I knew if I ever wanted to or needed to my mom would help me. 

One of my math teachers in high school had a policy called The Red Beanbags of Don’t Bother Me. He kept a pile of red beanbags on his desk, and at any time of the day you could go over and take one. From that point on, as long as you were in his classroom with a beanbag on your desk, no one could bother you. He wouldn’t call on you to answer problems, no students were allowed to talk to you, and perhaps most importantly, no one could ask why you took a bean bag that day. The only caveat was that if you used the beanbag more than three times in a semester you had to go talk to the school counselor about it.