TeenPact

Back at the beginning of the school year, I signed Ben up for something called "TeenPact". This is an excellent program, where students go to the state capital for four days and meet with their state representatives and learn about making bills into laws.

Pardon me for a moment while we have a musical interlude:

"I'm just a Bill. Oh, I'm only a Bill and I'm sittin' here on Capitol Hill."

Anyway, I signed Ben up back in, oh, September or so, and promptly forgot about it because it wouldn't actually happen until April and that was forever away.

And I forgot to tell him about it.

Then last week, I finally looked at all the information that had been sent to me and realized Ben had homework.

And lots of it.

And Ben was not happy with me.

He had to read an entire book about the government (it was thin though he complained mightily). He had to memorize a Bible verse. And he had to look up five pages of terms and vocabulary words using the 1828 version of Websters dictionary.

And he had to write a sample bill of something he would like to see become a law. He chose banning protesters from coming within a mile of a private funeral including the funeral home, church, cemetery and route to and from all places where the deceased's family may be.

Then he had to write a "humorous" bill. He wrote the "Don't Pull My Finger" Act which banned all public farting. He even included a tax on broccoli and beans.

And he got it all done last week.

Then Sunday night, the night before TeenPact started, he looked more carefully at the instructions and realized he was not supposed to just write two short bills...........he was supposed to look up three real bills currently in the the Hawaiian legislature, research them, and answer four pages of questions on each one.

And Ben was not happy with me.

My bad. I admitted it was my fault I had not given him the assignments sooner and had not read the requirements carefully.

So Kerry and I kicked into high gear with Ben in between us. Kerry found various bills on the Internet, ran through them quickly with Ben and let him pick three he had the most information on. I researched terms and definitions. We all typed. We managed to get it all kicked out and talked through all of it with Ben to make sure he had a full working knowledge of the bills he would be presenting to TeenPact.

Oh. And he had to wear a suit and tie.

And Ben was not happy with me.