My Middle School Vocabulary

**edit**

Ok, this is turning out to be one of my most linked to posts...and it was just a rant. It's right up there with "fried cornbread" So even though I don't understand how people are landing here because I'm not on google's first page of listings for "middle school vocabulary" I feel obligated to provide you links to what you are really looking for...

Middle School Vocabulary Practice Tests


vocabulary.com There are great tools here!

101 Middle School Vocabulary Words from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


Your Vocabulary Building & Communication Training Center
Vocabulary Improvement Resources for Parents, Students & Professionals


Quizlet.com--flashcard sets

word search maker



Recently I was accused of having only a middle school vocabulary and it was suggested that I increase said vocabulary starting with children's books. Growing up I don't think I ever read a single "children's" book. We read Tolstoy, Sarte, Hemingway, Faulkner and the like in my house. When I was thirteen I tested at third year college level for reading and vocabulary.

When I had the boy I managed to keep my sanity through all the chaos by reading to him every children's book I could get my hands on. We loved Dr. Seuss the most, but we read everything from The Chronicles of Narnia, the Beatrix Potter series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, we loved the Indian in the Cupboard and the Velveteen Rabbit, just to name a few.

My accuser doesn't know my history and only passed ever so slightly through here long enough to get ammunition to use against me to justify their own shortcomings. The whole thing is just sad.

It's sad that I didn't take Reas's word for it that the post made her angry and just leave it at that. I should have and I will from now on. :)

It's sad that I freely admit to only having a middle school vocabulary now and believe me I'm grateful for it. I think I do alright with what I have, considering what I went through. There was a time when I couldn't speak or write at all. I'm grateful the vocabulary loss is the only noticeable result of that terrible time in my life.

But the saddest thing of all is what I read that made me speak up with all my middle school vocabulary would allow me at that moment. What I read was a post from an ER nurse that was so filled with hate and racism I can not even link you to it for fear you will go read it. If you feel you must, go to Reas's page and you can find it there. Instead of blaming the system where the blame should be, she blamed the victim. It was also sad the number of comments she had that totally agreed with her and along with bashing me, invited me to take a walk on their side and then see how I felt.

I don't have to take that walk. I've lived it. I've lived with the disdain from doctors and nurses in the ER that write off the very idea that you might have any semblance of intelligence simply because you don't have insurance and have nowhere else to go to be treated. I've lived with "free" clinics that are filled beyond capacity and I have lived with being treated about as well as cattle going to slaughter.

What is not sad is that somewhere along the way I did manage to come across doctors and nurses and therapists with compassion and an understanding for me and my situation and they treated me with respect despite my circumstances. For these practitioners I will be forever grateful because were it not for them I would not have pulled myself out of the battered wife with a newborn syndrome. It was their strength of character and their compassion that made me believe there was light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel.

I know I would be dead by now and so would the boy if all we had encountered were judgemental, biased, racist practitioners.

So I say to them...Take a look at how you really feel...maybe it's time to get out of the ER and go to a less stressful area of the hospital...maybe wherever it is in your hospital that the "insured" go.