If You Can Read This, Thank a Teacher

My friend Sandy, a fellow teacher and world traveler posted the following as her status update on Facebook today:

Remembering a time in Goa...a girl I passed everyday on my way to the library (yes there was a library there.)...asked me "what was it like? " and I didn't understand...."Reading...what is it like? " as a female child in a poor family she was uneducated and never had that joy....I tried to explain it ....but to this 18 year old with three children it only sounded like a dream world....

If that isn't a reminder to be thankful for what you have, I'm not sure what is. It reminded me of a time when I was teaching at a rehabilitation center. I had a young man in my class whose life's desire was to join the Army. He wore camouflage to class every day and preferred to be referred to by his last name. He was very able bodied (due in no small part to the fact that he subjected himself to an Army style fitness regimen), but had some significant learning challenges. He was unable to meet the education requirements.

He was a difficult student to work with. He had so much anger and frustration and while I never saw him take it out on a person, he was constantly flying into a rage and punching walls, doors, desks and other inanimate objects, usually accompanied by loud interjections. He made the other students nervous. Truth be told, he made me a little nervous. But I did work with him and we did make some slow steady progress. His will to learn was as strong as his temper.

Another professional opportunity opened up for me along with the opportunity to relocate. I took it. My students held a little going away party for me. After the party, I stayed behind to pack up my things. It was bittersweet, as most endings are. As the song says, "every new beginning comes from some other beginnings' end". I was alone in my classroom when he walked tentatively through the door.

"Can I tell you something?"

"Of course." I was a little nervous. This was a strong, volatile guy and I'd never been alone with him before. I started taking a mental inventory of who might be left in my wing of the building.

"I don't want you to go."

"You'll be fine - the new teacher is great."

"She won't be you."

Panic started to creep into my throat. He was stepping towards me. I was twenty-three at the time - only five years older than him. He punched my desk. I jumped back. "I don't want you to go."

And then, something unexpected: He raised his head and I could see that he'd been crying. I softened a bit, always a sucker for tears. "You don't understand," he continued. His voice was breaking now and he didn't look like a big scary man at all any more. He looked like a sad, vulnerable kid. He enveloped me in a hug - and that should have scared me, but it didn't. He was crying openly now, this strong, muscular, angry, military obsessed kid. Crying in my arms, because at this point I had returned the embrace. "You don't understand," he repeated, "You taught me to read. People have been trying to teach me to read since I was six years old and no one ever could. You did. And now you're leaving me."

Now let me stop right here and tell you that I don't believe this was due to any superior teaching skills on my part. I think it's more likely that he was just ready. I just happened to be the teacher who was in his life when that key turned. And it was the singular happiest moment of my teaching career.

As I gently extricated myself from his embrace - fearing a sexual harassment charge just as I was headed for a new life - he said, "I love you." I think he meant it. To Sir - er - Ma'am - with love.

I responded, "I'll never forget you." I meant it, too.

So. If you've read this post, you're lucky. You're luckier than Sandy's young lady friend. You're luckier than my student. You're lucky. Don't forget it. Show your appreciation by reading something wonderful today, and maybe by sparing a thought for the teachers and parents and caregivers in your life who saw to it that you could.

Time Tick Tick Tickin' in My Head

My family plays a game wherein a word will spark one of us to sing a quick clip of a song containing that word and the rest scramble to sing other songs that contain that word or phrase. Some words and phrases are easier than others. 'Love'? Forget about it - you'll never get 'em all and it isn't even a challenge. 'Rain' and 'Money' are easy words to play. Another easy word? 'Time'.

We could start with my title and easily get to: time is on my side, time for you to stop all of your cryin', if I could put time in a bottle, what time is it? (4:30), time after time... you get the idea. (and if you want to keep it going, far be it for me to stop you...)

Concerning time, there seem to be two schools of thought. There are those who think their time is more important than everyone else's and there are those who think everyone else's time is more important than their own. I fall pretty firmly into the second camp. This manifests in my full blown need to be prompt. If I tell you I will be somewhere at a certain time, it is very likely that I will be there fifteen minutes earlier. I have been known to sit in my car waiting to go in somewhere because I don't wish to appear too eager. I have very successfully instilled this value in my children - so much so that they don't refer to being prompt as being prompt - they refer to it instead as 'being Howardly'. This isn't to say I've never been late for anything ever. Of course I have. Things happen. But I feel genuinely bad about it. I hate the thought that I might be keeping someone waiting - that I might be wasting their time.

I'll make no apologies for that - I think it's a good way to be. It's respectful.

That being said, just because I put a high value on the time of others doesn't mean that I put a low value on my own time. I used to. I used to not mind waiting because I figured anything anyone else was doing was more important than anything I might have wanted to do. Not so anymore. I find myself becoming more and more impatient with people who do not value my time. While being prompt is respectful, taking your own sweet time while someone is waiting for you is rude. I'll wait my turn, certainly. I don't allow myself to become frustrated by long lines. But waiting for a scheduled appointment? That frustrates me much more quickly. It's one thing for me to think someone else's time is important and to respect that by being prompt. It is quite another for them to (essentially) come right out and say that their time is more important than mine.

Time never flies in the waiting room.

A stitch in time saves nine, time waits for no man, everything in it's own time... it seems that lyrics aren't the only place that themes of time are prevalent. Why are we so caught up in time? Is it because we all only have a finite amount of it?

Whoa. I hadn't meant to swim into the deep end. I really just wanted an excuse to use an Anthrax lyric as a post title. That song has been a recurring earworm since the first time I heard it. I hope the time I took to write this post won't push me to be late. I hate to be late (for a very important date, it's late it's late it's late but not too late, it's too late baby now it's too late...)

Mother of the Year

I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake. It's a tale as old as time. I'm not boldly going where no woman has gone before. Why yes, I probably could squeeze a few more pop culture references in here, if I tried. Thank you for asking.

Every woman who has ever called a child her own has had a moment or two (or a thousand or a million) when they felt unworthy of the task. Today's mother of the year moment? Well, it involves shoes.

Liv has always had an interesting relationship with shoes. As the second daughter, she wore hand-me-down shoes from her sister for the first three years of her life. As fast as kids grow out of shoes at that age they were always in really good shape and I never gave it a second thought. Then one day - right around her third birthday - someone - probably my sister - bought her a pair of shoes. Her eyes lit up and she said "My own shoes? My very own shoes? Just for me?" I vowed that day to never make her wear hand-me-downs again. I had no idea. She never complained.

That was around the same year she discovered The Wizard of Oz and, along with it, Dorothy shoes. She, like so many toddlers before and since, NEEDED red sparkly shoes. And she had them. She had them through three size changes. She rarely if ever wore anything else for the next couple years. She wouldn't tell us when they started to get tight, because she didn't want us to take them away from her. I don't know if she just couldn't quite grok the fact that we'd buy her a new pair, or if she just didn't want a replacement because it wouldn't be the same. She had an unnatural attachment to those shoes.

Fast forward to last year. She found a pair of Iron Maiden Vans. That's right. Vans adorned with pictures of the iconic Eddie. To say she loved these shoes would be a dramatic understatement. She alternated them with her equally beloved knee high combat boots. I think it would be safe to say, wearwise, that she wore them for six solid months. Canvas shoes weren't made for that kind of abuse. They started to tear. She wore them like that for awhile, right under my oblivious nose. When I noticed, we started shopping for new shoes, but there was no satisfactory replacement to be found. And if Liv doesn't like it, Liv isn't going to wear it. I opted not to waste my money.

This morning she came downstairs to breakfast with her shoes wrapped in duct tape. Part of it was functional - where the upper had started to separate from the sole in the front - but then she'd repeated it on the back for purely aesthetic reasons. She was clearly thrilled to have Eddie back on her feet and was all ready to head out the door to school.

"You can't go to school with shoes held together by duct tape."

"Well, I can't go to school with ripped shoes."

Those were not the only two options at her disposal and I told her so. She didn't fight with me. She didn't say a word, actually. She went upstairs for a few moments, then came back down and finished her breakfast. When she left the table, I noticed that she'd changed her shoes. I also noticed that she'd been crying.

"What's wrong?"

"I was just trying to be creative."

"I know - put them back on if you want to."

"I can't."

"Yes you can - you still have a few minutes."

"No. I can't. I ripped them up. Duct tape won't fix them now."

I resisted the urge to say, "Oh, sweetie! Duct tape can fix ANYthing!" because it was time to head for the bus.

I hate that I made my baby cry.

I hate that I squelched her creativity.

But more than anything, I hate that I let my own class issues hurt her. I was more worried about what people would think than about how she felt.

I'm going to spend the day trying to forgive myself.

Right after I order a new pair of heavy metal kicks.

The Great Gray Beast

Ok, I think I've showed amazing restraint. We are thirty hours into February as I write this and I have not once quoted Clive Barker. Yet.

The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive. Here he was, buried in the belly of that smothering month, wondering if he would ever find his way out through the cold coils that lay between here and Easter.

He didn't think much of his chances. More than likely he'd become so bored as the hours crawled by that one day he'd simply forget to breathe.

Ok. Now I've done it. Now it's February. This passage opens Clive Barker's 1992 book, The Thief of Always. It is actually a children's book, but it holds a great deal of adult appeal, as so many children's books do. Besides, in 1992 I was still firmly entrenched in my Clive Barker period, and if he wrote it, I was going to read it.

This particular passage resonated with me and, from what I've been reading, I am far from alone. It doesn't feel like February until I've quoted it to someone. Not that 'feeling like February' is such a good thing, I suppose. But February it is.

I held the great gray beast at bay for a couple hours yesterday. I hadn't meant to. There were errands that needed to be done, but there was also laundry and that pesky couch whose ability to remain on the floor couldn't always be trusted to gravity alone. I can assure you, I did NOT want to do those errands. It was warm and cozy here in my cave. But Liv had some books on hold at the library and they weren't going to hold them any longer. I sighed. It had to be done. But I didn't have to be happy about it.

I got dressed, but I didn't feel cute (laundry day - which was being blown off - remember?). I ran my errands - library, groceries, drop things off, pick things up - you know - a typical errand day. I was doing it with all the enthusiasm it merited (which was, you know, none). I drove through McDonald's for my lunch (oh, like you don't eat drive through on errand day) and when I opened my window, it was surprisingly not cold. To say it was warm would be an exaggeration, but it was not cold. Relatively. I left the window down till I picked up speed. It felt good - fresh.

A little sunshine, a little fresh air, and I felt the first stirrings of a smile. Of course the beast isn't done. I know that. It's just resting a bit. But that little taste of what was to come was enough to see me through the day.

Suck it, beast.

Happy February.

The Lovely Susan

My mother - and probably your mother and maybe you and almost definitely Carol Brady - always said: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. As I have no desire to (further) disappoint my mother (or yours, or you, or most definitely Carol Brady) here is my review of the movie The Lovely Bones.

Susan Sarandon rocks. She rocked as Louise. She was a bangin' Banger sister. I worship at the altar of the virgin(ish) Janet Weiss - A Heroine (and slut).

And she brought Grandma Lynn to life in The Lovely Bones. She represented everything I - as a girl only slightly younger than the lead character in this movie in the early '70's when it took place - found glamorous, sophisticated, and wonderful. She wore furs and huge sunglasses. Her hair was ratted to the sky. She smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey, neat. She cussed and talked frankly about sex. And she turned out to be the glue that held her family together. I love her so much. Wait - you might be asking - who do you love? Susan Sarandon or Grandma Lynn? But that's acting, isn't it? Because they became one and the same.

Also, Marky Mark is still very cute.

Oh - and a lot of the imagery was very pretty.

And that's about all the nice things that I can come up with to say about the movie The Lovely Bones.

Ask me about the book upon which it was based and I will wax rhapsodic.

Now, I'm gonna go back and watch that clip from Rocky Horror again. And yes, I'll be commenting to the screen. But I won't throw rice at the laptop (again). I learned THAT lesson. Skip The Lovely Bones. Rent Thelma and Louise or The Banger Sisters instead. Better yet, buy The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mom might not approve, but I for one always left with good things to say.

Same Time Next Year

When I was a freshman in college, I subscribed to Cosmopolitan. It made sense. I was, after all, a small town girl who had traveled almost forty-five minutes to attend a state university in a rural area. If that doesn't scream 'cosmopolitan' I guess I don't know what does. Yep, I was a Cosmo Girl, all right. And not just because I slept with a lot of foreign exchange students. That's not really true. I didn't sleep with a lot of foreign exchange students till my first year of grad school - a year my roommate and I fondly referred to as 'Around the World in Eighty Lays'. That might not really be true, either. But it might. I don't know. There was a lot of tequila involved in my first year of grad school. But I've digressed.

Cosmopolitan. Ahem.

So I enjoyed my subscription for a year - learning how to please a man and new sex positions and recipes for seduction and stuff - stuff that would come in handy when I went to grad school. When my subscription came to an end, I renewed it. I figured there was probably a lot more to learn. I figured wrong. I found that the second year was very much just a rehash of the first. Same resolutions, same Valentine's Day secrets, same getting into bikini shape for summer... same, same same.

Tom had a subscription to Men's Health when I met him. That's right. When I met him, he was well on his way to rock hard abs and was privy to many secret ways to please a woman in the bedroom. Men's Health. Plus he had that helpful monthly reminder to 'Eat This, Not That' .

As I grew up and my interests shifted, I subscribed to many more publications and experienced very much the same phenomenon. Fun for a year - good ideas for a year - slight variations on the same ideas for the next year. I will still subscribe to a magazine when one comes along that looks interesting for whatever stage of my life I happen to be in, but I rarely - no - never extend them longer than a year.

I chalked it up to lazy journalism.

Until I passed the year mark on serious blogging. I find myself not only returning to the same seasonal themes, but sometimes even coming up with the same phrases I used a year ago and feeling like they're original thoughts until I read through the archives. Archives sounds stupid and a little pretentious. Past issues?

It's hard to avoid. Hard like Taylor Lautner's abs. Not that I've looked.

I promise that I shall endeavor to come up with fresh thoughts and ideas. When that fails, I might introduce a new feature: 'Drink This, Not That' - a monthly feature on which spirits will get you where you want to go and how fast. Perhaps throw in an article on how drinking till you puke can contribute to rock hard abs. Helpful phrases for seducing exchange students. I don't know. Stuff like that.

Winter Fashion? No Thank You.

I do not have a good winter wardrobe. I don't even think I have a passable winter wardrobe. I live in Ohio, where we have relatively miserable winters (I say relatively because I've lived in places that are worse. But it's still bad. Just sayin'. Relatively). I do not own snow boots. I have a couple pairs of fashion boots, but they're not easy to come by (thick calves, dontcha know) and not fun to buy. I've had the same couple pairs for years. I don't have a proper winter coat. I have a leather swing coat that was handed down to me by my mother when she got sick and lost a lot of weight. That's right. A hand-me-down. From my mom. It has neither buttons nor a zipper. That's right. It doesn't close in the front.

None of this is, by the way, because I cannot afford to buy clothes. Just so you know. Things are tight, but not quite that tight. I just don't want to use what little fashion budget there is on ugly winter ugliness. Buying snow boots would acknowledge the snow, and I have no plans to do so. A coat with a closure would acknowledge the cold, something else I have no plans to do. If I ignore them, perhaps they'll go away. (fingers in ears, lalalalalala)

I have a lot of scarves. I have a few hats. I have a pair of gloves somewhere...

I realized that if the opportunity suddenly arose for me to go somewhere warmer for a couple days I would be in the store buying all kinds of cute things for my vacation. Even if it was only for a weekend. But for winter? Which lasts a good three months? Nah - I can get by. I don't need to throw any money at THAT.

I was thinking that it's a similar mentality that drives us when we have a special occassion. We'll spend money on a special occassion dress that we'll only wear once - and accessories for same - that we would never dream of spending on clothes we'll wear over and over and over. Why? Special occassions are fun! We need to adorn ourselves appropriately - give the special occassion it's due. Everyday is not fun. We don't want to invest in everyday. Winter is not fun. I don't want to invest in winter.

I used the plural tense (predominately) in that last paragraph - was that presumptuous? Is this just me, or is there something to it?

We're supposed to get a wintry mix tonight - whatever the hekyll and jekyll that is. I'll be greeting it in mesh sneakers and a T-shirt. And maybe a scarf. Probably a scarf. If I don't fully acknowledge it, it isn't really there, right? RIGHT?