What’s Yer Job?…

Spring break has ended and the sub-season has reopened. No call on Monday and I missed the first call on Tuesday. I didn’t mind missing the Tuesday call. I was feeling down about sending checks for taxes owed to Uncle Sam and Gov. Terminator.

I did sub one 6^th grade and two 5^th grades on Wed, Thur and Friday. The lesson plans for all three assignments were all pretty much “time killers” and not much in the way of any actual educational substance. As a result, my personal pain threshold to in class noise is considerably higher than it was two weeks ago. Maybe it’s just my personal apathy this time of the year.

The only note worthy comment came from one boy in Thursday’s 5^th grade class. Evidentially, they’ve only had “girl” subs before me.

Kid: What’s yer job?
Me: What do you mean? I’m the substitute teacher.

Kid: No, I mean your REAL job?
Me: You don’t think “substitute teacher” is a REAL job?

Kid: What I mean is…the other substitutes are “Moms”. So I just thought you took the day off from work to come in to be the substitute.

It’s a simplistic yet somehow insightful view of my job from a 5^th grader and not too far off the mark. A “Dad” with a “real job” COULD, if he was crazy enough, take the day off work and do my job. It’s not quite how I started doing this but it’s not impossible.

Substitute teaching doesn’t require any “substitute teacher” training, apprenticeship or instruction manual. It’s all OJT (On the Job Training) from day one.

It DOES help, though, to BE a Dad (or a Mom) when it comes to handling kids. But that is a different OJT job in itself.

Tax Time…

It’s that time again.

It’s the time the government starts demanding a cut for every last nickel you “earned, found, gifted or eBay’ed” this last year. The 1099s, the W2’s, the K1’s, the DoWakka2’s will all start arriving in the mail so the arduous process of deciphering the United States tax code can begin.

I have a college degree in mathematics. I have successfully designed, coded, and programmed some pretty complicated, complex computer programs over the last 30 years. But for the life of me, I have a block when it comes to filling out tax forms.

I despise the process.

Not the actual writing the check which I also don’t enjoy, but the process of trying to decode the government legalese used in the tax forms. The “combining of lines 1 and 2 to enter on form SE10$orkU line 46”, the itemizing every last lint ball that might be considered income or a deduction. The whole process. Hate it, hate it, hate it, I hate it all!!

That’s why I don’t do it.

I let my friend, Gary, do all the heavy lifting. He REALLY, REALLY loves this stuff. The plowing through all the minutiae, the excitement of new tax forms, the installation of this years version of TurboTax Deluxe (plus state). The whole ball of wax.

If you’ve ever seen the TV series NUMB3RS, Gary is my “Charlie” guy of taxes.

I’m more like the detective guy sitting at the desk in the back whose eyes start to glaze over and head tilts back in a coma when “Charlie” starts spewing chalked tax equations and explanations in the analysis of crime patterns of crazed serial income earners.

If only the answers to real world questions were somehow made available in the tax preparation process, it might go something like what I found online at Consumerism Commentary:

Q. This year, I’ve been taking bribes to keep the caviar smuggling ring off the FBI radar. Do I have to report this?
A. Yes.

Q. I found an abandoned car and kept it while the person who lost the vehicle presumably wept. Do I have to report this?
A. Yes.

Q. I hosted a party to sell products to my friends (and use my social circle for multilevel marketing from some corporation), and my guests brought me gifts. Do I have to report this?

A. Yes.

Q. Do I really have to give the government a cut of my estimated $0.65/kid/hr substitute teaching job where I get to deduct absolutely nothing?
A. Yes

I can hardly wait till April 15 when it’s all over.

…until next year.