David McElroy

Earlier this week, a friend of mine told a little story that I love. He’s a professional photographer, and he had just done engagement photos for a very happy couple. He got to know them well enough to learn their background. Here’s how he told the story:

A nerdy guy fell in love with a beautiful, beautiful girl in high school. He wrote her love letters. He told her he would do anything for her. She wasn’t having any of it and dated not-nerdy guys all through high school. Then she dated hot guys in college. Her life got vapid as guy after guy used her then ditched her. She had a kid. She kept dating hot but awful guys. Then, one day, she decided that she should call the nerdy guy who fell in love with her from high school, because these other guys were bad people and the nerdy guy was the best person she could ever remember meeting. Now she’s going to marry the nerdy guy and they’re happy and madly in love.

I thought it was a great story about the triumph of love and about how people can grow and change, finally realizing what’s most important in life. It seemed like a pretty clear-cut happy ending to me, so I posted this feel-good story on Facebook for my friends. I quickly found out that other people viewed the story through very different lenses.

“Yeah, now that’s she’s used up,” one friend commented, and he followed it up by expanding on his thought. “This woman has a bad track record and she’s defaulting to her last best option; but, people rarely change, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t have an affair or leave him for the next hot guy. Good luck, nerd, I sincerely hope it works out well for you, but keep your eyes open.”

Another woman told the story of her own bitter experience of having rejected a nerd in high school, focusing on the hard lessons she learned from her own behavior.

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I’ve rescued many cats and dogs, but some folks in Malawi have an unusual rescue going on. They’re raising a baby elephant.

Moses is almost 8 months old now, but when he was found in the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve in Malawi, he was alone and close to death. Jenny Webb, who owns the Jumbo Foundation, took the tiny elephant in and adopted him. He’s being raised with an interesting assortment of humans, dogs and other animals. If you love animals, I think you’ll enjoy the pictures.

As much as I like elephants, I’m not sure whether he’d fit in here at my townhouse, so I’m glad Webb and Co. found him instead of me. I can’t look at the pictures without hearing “Baby Elephant Walk” in my mind.

France’s Socialist President François Hollande made French students happy this week with a proposal to ban homework.

Is this just a clever ruse to win the votes of those students when they’re old enough to vote? Apparently not. It’s ideological — an attempt to make things more fair by preventing educated and affluent parents from helping their children. No, seriously. I’m not making this up.

Hollande and others who think the way he does believe that homework isn’t fair because kids from affluent families can get help from their educated parents, but kids from “disadvantaged” (poor and uneducated) families don’t get the help they need. So the solution is to make sure the kids from the better families can’t take advantage of their parents’ help anymore. According to Hollande’s proposal, all school work will have to be done at school. To be fair.

To implement his sweeping plans, Hollande plans to hire thousands more teachers and increase the number of hours that kids are in school each week. It’s unclear whether he’ll actually be able to implement the plan, but it’s what he’s pushing.

I have to tell you honestly that I don’t have an opinion about whether homework is a good thing for kids or not. I have no idea whether it helps them learn. When I was in school, I rarely did homework. I was pathetic, actually. Sometimes I’d slap out some semblance of the work during homeroom or between classes. Other times, I’d make up elaborate “dog ate my homework” lies. (I actually remember having to stand and explain to the class in the second grade why I didn’t have my homework. My story was creative, but probably not believable.)

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