All posts in September 2015

(Written during the last school year on a cold, winter morning. )

Characters:

Mommy, a person who greatly resembles Jocelyn Turner.

Shasta, a giant, bloblike, invisible garden slug, about the size of a four-year-old human, although shaped more like a fat Buddha when she sits. Shasta loves to dress up.

Conversation with Shasta:

(Shasta and Mommy are having breakfast at Saranellos, an Italian restaurant at the Westin Hotel in Wheeling. Mommy has gone there for Capricon, a science fiction convention she regularly attends. Shasta is tagging along as usual, invisible to other diners, but resplendent in her bright purple cape and gold-sequined top-hat. Her slug body is slouched over the square wooden table as she rests and talks. Mommy has finished her oatmeal and is sipping Brahmin tea as she types. Mommy is up early and has gone to breakfast with Shasta while her girlfriend sleeps.)

M: Good morning, Shasta!

S: Good morning, mommy. Is Splenda good for you, mommy? (Shasta looks doubtfully at a yellow packet.)

M: Nobody knows. Right now, they have been investigating for half a century and they still aren’t sure if bacon is bad for you. Carbs are hurtling up to the top of the food pyramid. Who cares? I don’t eat much anyway.

S: You should eat leaves. Leaves are great.

M: Well, no one is debating that leaves are healthy. Except for the poisonous ones of course. Shasta, I did a lab this week. They were supposed to take apart lilies and identify the plant parts. Can you imagine that I felt I had to tell both classes not to eat the flowers? But they were doing such weird things as they tore up the flowers. Minions. Crazy-making. If flower abuse was a crime, maybe I could have a peaceful week while some of them worked their way through the criminal justice system.

S: You were murdering flowers anyway, mommy.

M: They were already dead. Those were autopsies.

S: You can’t abuse the dead.

M: Point taken. I wonder if necrophilia is even a crime. Necrophilia per se, that is. I see all sorts of possible infractions that might be committed while obtaining dead bodies.

S: The minions were a little crazy this week.

M: They are just kids. It’s easy to forget because twelve to thirteen is a twixt age. They can go from little kid to pregnant in a heartbeat if you don’t watch all the signs. I love this age. I get this age. But they can drive you just about bonkers. Jackie took off into the twilight, wearing a thin, worn, gray hoodie in windy, nineteen degree weather, before her mom arrived. Custodians and I end up wandering around, looking at cameras, and calling for Jackie. At first, none of us could believe she had taken off walking. But she had. Mom called me while I was driving home to tell me she was safe.

I have so much whole-child education to do on Monday.

S: Patience, mommy.

M: Don’t let me start planning next year. I have to let go. I’m too old for this madness.

S: I know. I keep trying to remind you.

M: I never was the best listener. Too ADHD, way too ADHD, although I have slowed down. Too unaware of my surroundings too. I ought to talk to Sam about that. I don’t think she is a dreamer. Non-dreamers can manage surroundings much better than their counterparts, even the attention-challenged ones, but she is working in a dangerous place. I worry about Sam. Maybe she is more aware of her surroundings than I am, though.

S: Maybe. But she is a phone loser.

M: Exactly.

(Pause. Mommy takes another sip of her Brahmin black tea.)

M: I need to quit. I get tempted by those job listings. I like teaching. I like kids. That feels like a truth. But I am losing my patience for bureaucratic bullcrap. I like Joel but some of that last interview was just goofy. I loved the part where he suggested I should not call the students minions because the dictionary definition of the word was not what we wanted our students to aspire to become. Do you think the minions have ever looked up the definition of minion? Not a chance. They know that minions are cute, little yellow creatures who bumble around having fun while working at mysterious tasks for an autocratic, but essentially lovable, adult. That definition fits my minions like a surgical glove.

S: Time to leave, mommy.

M: I know, Shasta. My patience is going. When Alex asked about the quiz yesterday, I had to laugh. I couldn’t cry. But it was one line – ONE LINE—of short, simple directions. I understand asking someone to clarify the meaning of a line. But they are supposed to read the line first, just read the line first. I can’t keep reading everything to everybody. And I can’t save anybody who won’t read. I would be so happy to buy books for readers, but as far as I can tell, I don’t have a single reader this year. How long am I supposed to wait for the next reader to arrive from Mexico? This has been a long, dry spell. At least Joelle Arizmendi works.

In fairness, the U.S. needs a DACA plan desperately. These kids lack hope and I am running out of cheery lectures about how it will all work out somehow. They need dreams. That lack of a social security number sucks those dreams dry. (Sigh.)

Well, the oatmeal was good. The tea, too. We could go to the con suite.

S: (Doubtfully) More food? Why don’t we go back to the room? We might try to pick up a program book.

M: I kind of like wandering around in a lost haze. It’s restful. I don’t feel like planning. The world’s waking up, though. We ought to relinquish this table, see what the world looks like.

S: It looks big. It always looks big. And it’s filled with details. Plus way too much salt. We could go back to bed.

M: That’s silly. Let’s go find a program book. Don’t worry about the salt. It can’t pass over into your dimension.

S: I know. I just object to it on principal.

M: Gotcha. There’s a lot to be said for objecting to inanimate objects. Salt hardly ever slips off the chain. We have it neatly trapped in this round, silver container and I guarantee you, Shasta, that salt is going nowhere while I’m here. Any slugs around here are safe today.

I’ve got this. I can handle salt.

Waiters are more complicated. I am going to have to do the whole eye-contact thing to get that check.

S: I like the guy in the Star Trek uniform behind us.

M: Me, too. Why not costume before breakfast? I spy gang colors and signs all over this room. Nothing shouts out a gang affiliation like that Star Trek red security shirt with its spiffy Starfleet emblem. Puts my Batman t-shirt to shame.

S: Well, you’re tasteful, mommy.

M: Thanks, sweetie. Waiterman is looking somewhat harried. Buffet or no buffet, the surging crowd is clobbering him.

S: We weren’t in a hurry.

M: True enough.

You want an excuse to retire?

Zombies!

Every time you walk into a crowd, you take a chance. Every time you walk into your office, you take a chance. You never know who may be walking into a cubicle down the hall. At what point does Joe cease to be Joe? While this last may be an interesting academic question, some questions are better left unanswered. And you are better off avoiding the office, where microbes may even now be swirling through Joe’s thickening blood.

If you have to go into the office, I suggest you reframe the usual morning questions. You want to force coworkers to talk. “How are you?” won’t do, since a grunt makes a perfectly reasonable and often accurate response to this question. Try, “How bald do you think Donald Trump is under that weird hair?” or some cheery political question such as “What should we do if President Obama is really a Kenyan, Islamic terrorist?” These questions require a verbal response that should reassure you as to the humanity of your coworkers. With luck, they will also send coworkers scurrying off to their cubicles, leaving you to work in peace. That last question should empty the room. If it doesn’t, you may want to think about changing jobs.

We all have our personal zombies. They may not be mindless, reanimated human corpses with a hunger for human flesh. They don’t always moan. Some may not even possess corporeal forms. What forces can eat the brain? I’ll list a few:

☻Deadlines

☻Time pressure

☻ Heat

☻Sleeplessness

☻Gaming

☻Anxiety

☻ Disorganization and Lost Stuff

☻ Crazy bosses.

I’d like to report that retirement slays all of the above except gaming and disorganization. Disorganization and his spawn Lost Stuff appear to be hardy zombies, possessed of a fair number of hit points. I am whittling away at them slowly.

The entire magnetic field of this solar system blinked.

Marianos ran free alcoholic beverage and cheese tastings last year. I don’t know if they still offer free beer and cheese, but the grocery chain posted the events in Eventbrite. I recommend looking up Eventbrite. Sushi and sake was a reasonable $15 or so. I enjoyed sampling the various free beers and cheeses.

Krankshaft above is spelled with a “K” and is a very pale but tasty brew. Our local Costco stocks the Goose Oktober Fest, heartier and mellow in flavor. The Oktober Fest will pair with many cheeses, while the Krankshaft may not do well with stronger flavors.

I present this as one more advantage of free evenings and never having to grade papers.

Zombie observation: Always remain alert when entering crowded venues, especially ones that offer free beer. How do you differentiate between someone who has had a few too many Krankshafts and someone whose viral load is pushing over the edge, as a poor soul sinks into the dark, mindless horde? Asking questions may help but as words slur and answers become less comprehensible, the wise consumer buys their cheese and gets the heck out of Dodge, Marianos, the party or the pub.

Zombie or not, incoherent people aren’t much fun.

Time runs loosely on Mars, the planet where I have chosen to retire.  An element of, “Why not?” enters life.  Why not watch The Civil War followed by Shetland followed by Sherlock Holmes?  Why not read your Agatha Christie book from the Goodwill when you wake up at 3 A.M.?

Where the lesson plans to prepare? Where are the papers to grade? Where is the latest test-preparation emergency? The emergencies are no longer emergent. I watch reruns of the U.S. Open with Albert and debate important questions such as, “Does Serena need to do more cardio and less strength training?” I take Ginger to the Potawatomie Forest Preserve for a long walk.

On the blog front: The Silas Marner post in eduhonesty.com seems to be attracting traffic. I recommend this for educators especially.

No zombies have been sighted for weeks.

I quit early. I had intended to stay longer, but teaching stopped being fun.  I don’t do well at activities that are not fun. Most people don’t and I am sorry for many teachers right now. The level of frantic where test scores are concerned leads to dubious choices on the part of people who should know better, wizards or not.  In the end, my position lacked creativity and left little room for laughs.

I keep having to stop myself from seeking employment. The job and the truth are both out there, but I’ll have more luck finding the truth if I don’t return to work. Mulder never found much at the office.

Still, what does one do when not working? Obviously one blogs.  I’m happy that eduhonesty.com, the Blog of Gloom and Doom, may break 15,000 registered users soon. I’ve decided to try to put this blog to work, too. I am theoretically scribbling away at a book on education, in part simply to put education behind me, but I need some time to process before I draw any final conclusions — other than “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” anyway.

I hope to record the journey into retirement. Maybe my efforts will be useful to someone else later. But I’ve not made much use of the undiscovered country that is retirement as yet. I’ve cleaned. I’ve organized. I’ve helped the Goodwill considerably.

If this sounds like a post written by a woman inadvertently stranded on Mars, well, sometimes I feel like that woman. Mars can be a rather comfortable place. Today I went upstairs to read and took a nap for no reason. I am thinking of taking up napping. I have taken up walking. A girlfriend and I have made many ovals around a track in Glenview. I am marathoning Babylon 5 with another friend. I am watching The Civil War and lots of British television with Albert. I’ve written a few silly poems, colored a bit, and watched too much court TV, even if those dramas were mostly background noise while I was writing. Every so often, though, I’ll stop to give my full attention to the drama of the sleazy landlord who deserved not to receive his rent or the sad saga of the girl who took the DUI rap for her friend* and wants money for her fines.

So that’s the story on Mars, otherwise known as the Blue Room. Still no zombie sightings. Unless they moan loudly, though, I may miss the undead’s arrival here on Mars. I am not paying a lot of attention to the outside world.

* They met at Alcoholics Anonymous.

My previous post makes it sound as if little child-rearing took place during my young life. That’s not true. The world according to parents was explained to me regularly. I got a few whippings when I was little. Safety issues were hot-buttons. If you were not supposed to cross the street, big people would get very excited when they found you on the other side of that street — or worse, standing in the river. What did not happen very often was punishment. A lot of fear radiated from my mother, in particular, but not much anger.  My dad might get angry, but my dad was usually at work when I was young. Mom did the parental heavy lifting.

My problem with yesterday’s post is that I barely remember being in trouble. Scaring my mom, I did that a lot. But then she talked at me. And talked at me. And talked at me. I also think I got a pass of sorts because I was so alone in elementary school, the only Star Trek watcher and science fiction reader in my grade in elementary school. When I finally found my people, mom was relieved and grateful. I could tell her I had skipped school and gone to the beach at Pt. Defiance and all she would say is, “Now, you should not do that too often, Sherry.”* I would agree that most of the time a person should attend school. We would sit down with our books, me on the fuzzy, green couch and mom in the fuzzy, beige recliner, and that would be that.

But I was honestly very little trouble as a kid and adolescent. My grades remained high. I spent most evenings reading. My mom’s main concern was my happiness and I knew that. I tried to shield her from especially wild and crazy moments, but the communication lines were open.

My mom trusted me. I trusted my mom and my environment, my simple life of overcooked meat, library books and weekends on the water. Life was good.

*Jocelyn was Sherry once.

What did you do as a child that got you in the most trouble with your parents? How did they handle it?

Ummm… did I get in trouble? I must have. I don’t remember that trouble, though. Too many years have gone by and trouble never lasted for long.

My parents worried about me. I was geeky before geeky was cool. I radiated nerd at times before nerd had a name. Socially, I suffered when I was very young. I was the only known Star Trek fan in my elementary school. Middle school got better. I made a few friends. (Hi, Cara!) I learned to ski. I started learning Spanish. In high school, I found partners in partying and life became more fun. I got to study French and Latin, and I went to Mexico for two months. Life was good.

But I didn’t get in much trouble. My mother was so desperate to help me find a social niche that she had a special note she wrote for when I skipped school: “Please excuse Sherry* because she was indisposed.” Her ethics would not allow her to claim I was ill. But she wasn’t going to let me get in trouble either. The school never pursued the issue. My best guess is they chalked the “indisposed” notes up to female trouble.

One day, when my parents left town, my brother and I were given specific orders to stay in Tacoma. Somehow, we managed to pass parents on the road to Ravensdale, far from Tacoma but close to a great barn to party in. No one got mad. My parents found the whole thing funny.

Once, when parents were in Europe, we had a party in the house, against specific verbal instructions.  In my defense, I told my brother, “No parties!” when I heard him on the phone with friends. “Just a few beers,” he said. Then I went to my waitressing job at the ice cream parlor. I came home to find my home packed with wall-to-wall beer drinkers, happily greeting me. Later that night, the screen door glass was shattered in a fight over a girl. My brother and I replaced the glass, but we did not manage to get all the blood out of the concrete. My mom refused to buy the grape juice story. Our young neighbor Kenny finally busted us. When mom asked him about the spots, he said, “That’s where they had the big fight and broke out the screen door!”

The next time my folks went to Europe, some elderly woman stayed with us, but I don’t remember anyone getting upset with me. The time after that, the elderly woman was gone and we were on our own again. If not for the beer caps under the couch, we would have gotten away with that vacation gathering, but nobody seemed to care anyway. My sense was that my parents were realists. They expected that sort of behavior from unsupervised adolescents.

My dad had a short fuse and could easily become angry over little things, but those moods blew past quickly. The big things both parents handled well. You could break a beautiful chandelier with your baton, drop a TV or shoot a hole in the ceiling and you would get a lecture, but you didn’t exactly get in trouble. I didn’t anyway. I got cautioned, which was not at all the same sort of thing.

I think my girls might say that I raised them the way I was raised. I’d recommend it. I always knew I could call my parents if I drank too many margaritas. Someone would drive me home. I’d probably be cautioned the next day and I might have to dissect where I’d screwed up, but parents are supposed to help you figure that stuff out, and my take is that my folks did a great job.

Of course, I suspect I was a pretty easy kid to raise.

*Jocelyn was Sherry once.