Miss M

I am both tickled and mortified (in a long-ago, distant way) as I sit in the center of an unfamiliar classroom and try to lose my oh-my-goodness expression as the oh so young woman in her I'm-a-grown-up suit begins to address us parents with a shaking voice.

I have so been there. Not quite in my element, not quite making any impression save, "Wow, you sure look young!" As I said, it's been a while. Now the kids who were my first 7th grade students are some ridiculous age-- twelve plus eighteen, or so I figure: potential colleagues, more-or-less peers. My memories of that time are as vague as something near half a life ago should be: I can see a few faces, recall a few names, feel the dread that curly-haired kid in 4th hour inspired. My strongest recollection of that gig, save the paltry paycheck, is that when it ended I gave all my materials away.

Did I think I'd never again be a teacher? Was I just running from junior high? Though it seems a key life decision, I can't remember the timing or my intent. It's true, however, that after turning down a high school job the next fall I didn't reclaim the big desk until nine years, four states, a dozen jobs, and a master's degree later. Perhaps by then I was ready. I was certainly no longer the same girl I saw peeking over her notes at me tonight.

party

The duranguence is blaring but only the lime and white balloon arches sway across the dance floor: soon the space will be filled with cowboy hats and tight ponytails, boots and strappy sandals, but for now the night is too young. At the surrounding tables,teenage girls in short dresses and their coolly untucked boys drink cans of Bud as they text and pose for pictures,and none of the grown-ups says a word as they pass the time until the cake and the last of the quinceanera rituals by mentally tallying this party against the last and the next; they're all different, they're all the same. Only the middle school girls are in a hurry as they flutter between the ladies' room and the corner back by the kitchen where they circle, and bounce to the music, and imagine their turn.

I blame the running

A week without a post? This does not make me happy. But neither does the thought of declaring an official hiatus, de facto as it now is. What to do, what to do.

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

I'd been meaning to watch this for months. So here ya go.

comment of the day

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's coverage of Favre's purple press conference:

"Words truly can't explain how I feel right now. I am so glad my wife said no 3 years ago when I wanted to name my first born son Brett!"

of all people

And there she is again.

The rules haven't changed but the secretary has, and thus a girl two years removed from my class stands framed in the doorway as I wait for what's-wrong-with-this-picture to register. Civics interrupted again.

"What are you doing here?" may be my first words, but she ignores any lack of welcome and claims a once-accustomed seat as I focus on my class. Until I realize what she's saying, where she's been, what it may mean.

"Now, wait," I say, my hands spread in a gesture meant to focus the attention of this presumed distraction. "Who did you talk to? What did he say?" And twenty more questions, give or take a dozen, that try to transform into truth her account of a friend's supposed enrollment in a community college the law has officially made off-limits to the paperwork-challenged. It doesn't add up in the way her stories never do.

But while I see the holes and feel the doubt, I have no choice but to believe, or at least hope, or at least make a wishful effort because so much depends for so many: a way into college is the grail. Recognizing my frustration with her something's-missing tale, she offers me her phone to hear the first-hand story, and I take it, despite the audience, intent on trying to understand the unofficial reality. For a few minutes I interrogate some nameless stranger, and his less-embellished account rings true. In his version, nobody says, "If you don't have a social security number, that's no problem," and yet he seems to have a Spring schedule. But as the call drops I still have only the vaguest hunch about how he slipped in and some guesses about how he'll be thwarted, or if. It's inconclusive. Her attempt to attend will be the test.

I rush through the boilerplate: "I hope this works out for you. That would be a good thing." I slow down and enunciate as if scolding a beginner: "I need to know exactly who you talk to, what they say, and what you do. You have to tell me what happens." Her nod reflects none of my urgency. I push my card into her hand and picture it lost or discarded as she claims she'll text me about going to college. We'll see if it comes to that.

the introduction

"My grandfather's name was Melvin,too."

His response, after a pause, is a surprised, "Really? That's cool," and I've a hunch that his hesitation was some unspoken variation of, "Was he from Puerto Rico?" Either that or he was just double-checking: his English is just on the verge. I affirm that he is, then, the second Melvin I've ever met, and I tell him that makes me happy because it does. I rarely have opportunity to say that name aloud; repeating it now almost feels like a talisman, and I'm pleased by the feeling it conjures.

But mostly I'm pleased for the student who has been but a name on a list to finally be coming to life. I've anticipated the arrival of this freshman class in a steeling-myself-way for months: they outnumber my sophomore through senior roster combined, they have a laundry list of special needs and issues, they've mostly been in a middle school program I call, for cause, Lord of the Flies. But, as always, "they" don't really exist, despite their preceding reputation. Instead of a group to confront I've got indivduals to meet and figure out how to teach; as they appear, I remember. So far there's this not-really-a-namesake whose helpfulnes is so-far endearing, an unfocused, outsize Junior; a Dominican ballplayer (football, too) who carries himself with that self-assured, big league ease at the age of 15; the smirking boy who will not speak. There is, heaven help her, a fourteen year-old gonna-be teen mother and her possible polar opposite, a wanna-be doctor who's been out of Ho Chi Minh City less than a week. There are dozens more, counting both the old and the new, and much learning to be done on both sides of my desk.

the benefit

It is not the mythical, may-be-a-figment runner's high: my weeknight miles aren't long enough for the endorphin flow. But each pound of the pavement seems to shake loose another care of the day until all I can do is breathe and wipe the sweat from my face as I bargain myself up and down the hills. As I race the sunset into the driveway, my shoulders slump: there's no tension left to hold them tight. It'll creep back in, even as I loosen my laces and look towards tomorrow, but for a while there, I do forget.

planning

I sit in a meeting, out of my element, surrounded by ninth grade teachers brainstorming ideas for some not-exactly-a-study-hall class, and amidst the talk of panel discussions and get-to-know-you games and parent contacts and syllabus, I feel a vague sense of shake-my-head wonder drift into my expression: how simple to plan what they'll all understand, at least in the most basic, bottomline way. When at least they all speak English.

Not that I have any interest, really, in teaching what we try not to call "regular" classes. "Content," we try to say, accent on the first syllable, not even, "mainstream," avoiding some kind of presumed insult. I prefer a different standard. And as soon as I figure out how I'm going to do something productive for the mishmash of needs --have I mentioned the six language disabled? the new Vietnamese girl? the 14 freshmen and 3 transfers? the selective mute? -- that populate my ever-growing class lists, I'm sure I'll remember why.

broken

My seventh grade daughter was in kindergarten when my grandmother died; to remember the year, I have to count back, do the math. Every time, the answer is a surprise. And so are the feelings that welled up when the handle of that depression glass plate snapped off as it slid off the loveseat and hit a stool on the way to the floor. That's what we get for dusting.

"That was my gradma's," I said more quietly than the girl frozen with "Am I gonna get it?" expected. I may not have replied to her meaningful, "Oh," though I managed to laugh at an offer to get scotch tape that may or may not have been an attempt at comic relief. But I could cry, easily and right now, for no reason at all. Except one.

It's not as if I picked out that tray as a token; my aunt sent it over with the companion bowl that I keep filled with napkins on the kitchen table. They aren't rare pieces, far as I know, and, once glued, that plate will still serve as well as it ever did as a candy dish, or tray, or collector of end-table detritus. It's not as if I'd ever sell it. And it's not as if she'd have cared, either, about its new flaw, especially one caused by her only great grandkid. It's just that once upon a time, long before the Alzheimer's that really took her away years before she died, my grandma filled it up with Christmas fudge and that awful fondant and set it out on that antiqued green buffet and, I've been reminded, I miss her.

Friday Afternoon Copy & Paste: Bill Maher

New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country
from the HuffPo

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"

place holder

I wish I could remember how to write.

In my mind's eye I see half-formed phrases stacked up in ragged piles, the words too fuzzy and vague to decipher. I type and delete, type and delete, type and delete: none of it is what I meant or how I intended it to sound. I click back in time to when I had the hang and find no clues or instructions, just a barely familiar voice. I can't decide if it's a comfort. Meantime, the blank page is a bane.

$15K

8 years later, books.