checking in

This is my Christmas bonus: a beep from deep in my purse. I fish out my phone and read the text that's waiting: "Hi. Merry Christmas." I smile. He has followed through again; I expected or at least hoped for some word, but, life happens, especially in their world. One never knows. When I reply, he asks for my e-mail to tell me what's happening. I am pleased. I try to be patient. I check my address for typos, just in case. I realize he didn't promise to write immediately, and I go back to my day. I'll hear from him eventually, I'm sure.

Although we have since been through college applications and registrations and essays together, I haven't seem this boy--this young man--since he graduated in what must have been '05, a high school generation ago. I should have him come in and speak to my current crop, to tell them about life in the world. He knows better than I.

In the meanwhile, I hope he doesn't have much of an update to give me; I hope life is drama-free. I hold out little hope that it's been easy; I'm curious, but not too concerned. Someone who can work 60 hours each week and pass 12 hours of college classes at the same time can do about anything, it seems to me. I hope, somehow, that he is. I check my in box again, just to see. Of all the kids I've known, he's the one who has most stood up to circumstances, who has refused to be defeated, who has taken his life in his hands. I hope my image is still reality; I hope nothing has changed.

dinner

"No, it's not closed. We're inside at a table."

I walk towards the front of the near-empty restaurant, talking on the phone.

"Am I looking at you sitting in your truck?" It soon becomes clear that I am. As I gather her in, my teacher friend and I tease, but not too much. I agree that the open sign is off and that the parking lot is fairly deserted. But c'mon. "Couldn't you try the door?"

"That's enough laughing!" She protests, but she's smiling. It elicits another giggle. Soon she'll know us better; I'm glad she wanted to come.

She's more or less grown up now; she runs a store her father owns, she's raising her motherless sister. She has as much responsibility as anyone. More. But she still wants to call us "Mrs.", and she's still shy to come to the door.

And thus we have adopted her, kind of. There is no overt plan. No conversation about it at all, really. Just a notion to invite her, a quick response. A teenager in gold jewelry and a cloud of perfume, waiting in her truck.

an open letter

So there we sat, your step-dad and I. The only two white people in the room. And I was so sincere and heartfelt, and he was so skeptical. But I plowed on, understanding that he and I see different sides of you, understanding that I'd known you longer, and in a different context, and really wanting--needing-- him and of course your mother to know how much I appreciated you. Wanting them to know that unlike the other kids who had just gotten older, theirs was the boy who had grown up. So gratifying, even as mere witness. The highest praise I had, my best gift to you--to tell your parents, directly, how well you were coming along even if it didn't always show on paper, and how much it meant. We were at a party, in the summer. That was Allison talking, not Ms. P.

Thanks for nothing, you idiot.

And then a year later, sitting again with your family because you asked me, because that's where I belonged, I watched you graduate with such pride and satisfaction. On my daughter's birthday, I was there without question: we'd been through so much, for so many years, and we both wanted to see it through. Good times.

Which, as I second-hand understand it, is what you're having now. I won't condescend to say, "You think you're having fun," because between the hormones and the drinking and the who-knows-what, oh, I'm sure you are. It would sound like a typical freshman year to me if you had bothered to enroll. Did we not just spend the last year getting you ready for college? Was that just not a mere matter of weeks ago that you were so excited to go? Am I missing something?

I already knew, by the way, that you had let me down. When the start of the semester passed without any contact or questions, well. That seemed to be a sign. That's not the way things go. I've got a folder full of Sent and Inbox evidence that show the contrary. And when my quick, "So, are you in school?" went days and days with no reply? Well. You know you know. Listen to yourself.

Because I'm sure, at the moment, you're not going to listen to me. Especially now that I'm serious rant mode, inspired by the news from our mutual friend that you don't even have a job. Good grief! No wonder your step-dad tried to throw you out; I should call him and commiserate. Or hear his I-told-you-sos.

I am so disappointed.

Not that this is about me. Not that you aren't smarter than this. I know you are only temporarily playing the part of the fool. Because trust me: this is seriously stupid. So far it's only a semester wasted --and, oh some goodwill of some people who love you--and money you haven't made, but you of all people should know life is hard enough without going and making it harder! And yet, there you are, doing exactly that, there on the road to nowhere.

As you surely must know. When you're ready to admit it and want to try to fix it, you let me know.

Because or ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

Example 8612 of why Facebook "Friends" are not necessarily real friends. In real life, nobody asks me, "You're a Democrat?!" And yet. Oh, Wendy and I were real life friends, back in the day. But every since our high school reunion we just play stupid word games and have quick chatty conversations that usually mention vodka and work and kids and promises to get together (I make them, she breaks them--13 months and counting). Nothing of any consequence, until I mentioned the girl went up to see Obama. And then the, "What?" and the, "Why?"

Along with pointing out to her that having a toddler and a teenager at the same time must be Republican karma, I thought Jim Leach provided the makings of an excellent reply:

From The Boston Globe
courtesy of Truthout.org
August 27, 2008

THE BEST way to watch a political convention is on C-Span. That way Americans can make their own judgments unfiltered, without being told what to think by the nattering nabobs of TV commentary. The latest "narrative" making its way around the Democratic convention here is that the Obama campaign hasn't learned the lesson of John Kerry's 2004 convention, in which the nominee failed to directly attack President Bush. CNN commentator Soledad O'Brien even asked late Monday night whether Michelle Obama's introductory speech shouldn't have been tougher on the Republicans.

Of course, if the early days of the convention had presented a more negative tone, the talking heads would be complaining that the Democrats can only say what they are against, not what they are for.

Had the commentators not been so busy filling airspace and paid closer attention to what was happening on the podium, they might have had a different take. On Monday a speech by former Representative Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican, ably set the framework for his own party's failings, besides delivering a bipartisan endorsement of Barack Obama. His address wasn't electrifying TV, but it was a more articulate critique of the Republicans - and from a former loyalist, too - than many Democrats have mustered.

More in sorrow than in anger, Leach described how the Republican Party has abandoned its core principles. "The party that once emphasized individual rights has gravitated in recent years toward regulating values," he said. "The party of military responsibility has taken us into a war with a country that did not attack us."

The litany went on: The party that championed arms control had undermined international treaties from the nuclear test ban to global warming. The party that put the "conservative" into conservation had become antienvironmentalist. And "the party historically anchored in fiscal restraint has nearly doubled the national debt, squandering our precious resources in an undisciplined and unprecedented effort to finance a war with tax cuts."

He didn't have to add that the party of Lincoln had jettisoned its historic commitment to civil rights with a cynical strategy to win the white Southern vote.

In a way, the power of Leach's criticism was precisely in its understatement. There may be more scathing critiques of the Republicans and John McCain to come - for example, when Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, speaks to the convention tonight. But there is unlikely to be anything more devastatingly true

One girl, two stories.

"They told me again today not to let anyone in the halls." This is the new attendance secretary, apologizing again for doing her job, for asking that young family to wait on the couches.

"Oh, no. I think that's a good idea, actually. I'm not trying to subvert. I'm just saying someone eventually will come and be surprised at the new rules. Just call and let me know. But I'm not expecting anyone. Sooner or later, probably. Who knows."

I cut through the commons, unlock my door. I sit down at my desk, and the phone rings.

"Are you serious?" I get up and re-lock my classroom.

At the door to the attendance office is a teenager bearing flowers and a box of dollar-store tissues. She knows I always forget to buy them. She greets me with a hug, updates me on the scant three months since graduation. Tells of new jobs, a break-up, another worrisome operation for her father. The move she did not make. The sad evidence that her sweet brother is dealing south of the border. We exchange phone numbers and say, again, goodbye.

Or.

At the door to the attendance office is a teenager at loose ends. She is not in college. She is not headed out of town. Today, she is not working, and she has cut the boyfriend free. So, here she stands, sincerely strategic, on the outside looking in.

"Let's go down to your room," she says, and starts to walk away.

"New rules," I say, holding my flowers-- her ticket in, as previously conceived. Her face falls a little when she realizes she won't be holding court, won't be seeing her friends, won't be back where she knows how to be. But, she stays and makes do with an audience of one for the few minutes I have. Promises to visit. We'll see.

I listen to her stilettos click across the lobby and to the front doors as I lean in to the attendance secretary. I have seconds to get to class, and I am holding a grocery store bouquet and a dollar box of tissues.

"This is the story of my life, " I say. I am smiling.

lunch

She's told me this story before, the math teacher. How she had immigration all figured out--she makes a cut and dried gesture--until she met one of our favorite students, one of my favorite young people, all time. Faces and names, I guess that's the difference, how it works. Having a black friend, modern era.

"It's all screwed up," we conclude, again and more profanely, my converted friend and I. And she asks what news I have about the other students we shared, and I tell her some sad stories because while they might call, while they might e-mail, good news waits until Fall.

But we have more to talk about than school. Vacations, the merits of various big league ballparks and whether Andy Van Slyke is on drugs, to start. And then we drink some more beer. Right there's an advantage of no longer being co-workers, no longer only sharing a twenty minute school lunch break. (Alcohol is generally verboten.) One of us is going on to new and different, one of us going back to the supposedly familiar, though it's never really all the same. For one thing, I'll have one less person to help me stay sane between 8 and 3, and clearly, it's a team effort. But at least this isn't goodbye. We've got August pl*ns, two summer dates down; school's now just how we met. Minus a colleague, plus a friend; that's not an equation, but to me it more than balances.

Phone call

"I'm sorry to bother you. I know it's not a school time."

"You're not bothering me. What's up?"

And he goes on, during this long distance call, to talk about a girlfriend who has really good grades and papers--she was born in Miami--and a need for a scholarship and what could I tell him about that? He says she's going to St. Louis University and maybe she is and maybe it's the community college and which one is irrelevant and I don't ask, don't try to figure it out. Instead I try to explain over the sound of his open truck door about FAFSA and spell out the URLs that I know for the government forms and the group that gives money to Hispanic college kids in St. Louis and then it's time for him to go back in to work.

"It's always good to hear from you," I say. And I can see his smile and hear it in his reply. And I remember that he would have graduated this year, too, had he not dropped out.

It's summer break, on the calendar, for those of us that live that life. But school. . . school is never out.

Media whores

I've been out of the news business a dozen years now, but I still have friends at the locally owned daily newspaper. I have a great appreciation for their plight, though I'm not often kind about their product.

One of these friends blogged about last night's gotcha debate on ABC. This is admirable when you consider that the newspaper company also owns a television station, in fact they occupy the same downtown block. KCRG is an ABC affiliate.

It does my liberal media bias good to see journalists still willing to fight the good fight.

Out

"Do you want to know a secret?" she asks as I walk in the door, on the brink of tardy for my own first block class.

I raise an eyebrow, gesture to the small gathering of ninth graders, try to keep up the pretense of school. But I am intrigued; six years later, a senior, finally, she's still not one for discretion. To have reigned in her impulse is something. So I let her tell me, later, in the bastion of illusory privacy that is the hallway. How many times for how many reasons I've closed a door, leaned against a wall. This time I'm told of a mutual friend in another school who has come out with some news about who he is, or how he will live, and while his announcement was not intended for public consumption it was intended for me. "Only the people I trust the most," he'll e-mail me later. This excitable girl is my courier.

"Can you believe it?!" she exclaims. "I mean, we always teased him, but. . I mean, I don't care." she grasps, amazed. "But he did say it might be a phase." I'd have said, "not that there's anything wrong with that," but she wouldn't have gotten the reference. She wanted a, "No way!" at least, for me to share her not-quite-shock, but she should have known she wouldn't get it.

"That says a lot about your friendship; I'm glad he can trust you like that," is what she got instead. I didn't remind her of the time we all crowded a middle school hallway after his hastily withdrawn admission of the same kind of preference led to an uglier scene. Surely she remembers. I can still see them, such kids, looking up to me to fix it as my mind raced for words that might not make it better but wouldn't make it worse. Silent panic in the school corridor; luckily, I don't think they noticed.

Or maybe they did; they're well aware of my failings and faults, and yet they keep returning with their dilemmas and successes. Some of it is necessity: we've been stuck with each other for a literal third of their lives. But beyond that, there's something. If only I'd taught this young man English he could express it more fully, but I'm thrilled with his gist when he writes me tonight, "thank you, mrs p, i'm glad that from everyone i know you are one of the most understandable people i've met in my life."

Two tickets to Jungleland

Aside from memories, stubs are all I have left from two Bruce Springsteen concerts I've attended last night and 20 years ago, to the day.

The 1988 show was in Chicago at the Rosemont Horizon. The stub clearly states "The E Street Band," but it's an uncorrected error. Bruce toured without the band, though with Patty, the other woman at the time, promoting his disappointing solo effort "Tunnel of Love." It was not Bruce's finest work, and the show didn't inspire like the other four times I've seen him. Then again, the E Street Band was playing each other time.

So it was last night at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Though Patty, having transformed herself over 20 years from vixen to caring mother, was home with their teenagers and Danny Federici is sitting out while undergoing treatment for melanoma, this was Bruce Springsteen AND the E Street Band, and it rocked! And just like 20 years ago, I was with my wife Lisa (we married 10 days after the 1988 show) and our Chicago friends Rich and Jane.

Call me a creature of habit, but there's something to be said for consistency. I take comfort in lifelong friendship. And I like knowing that when I shell money down for a Bruce Springsteen concert, I'm going to get my money's worth. Last night, I enjoyed both.

Clarence Clemens, my god! And Steven Van Zant, Badda Bing! Max Weinberg, I'd rather see you there than on Leno. Bruce, what can I say? We go back a long ways man, it's been a fun ride, but when did you start to look like Tom Harkin?

Here's this from the St. Paul Pioneer Press review: One moment said it all, when he was standing at the lip of the stage, away from the microphone with his eyes closed, singing the chorus of "Long Walk Home" joined by more than 17,000 fans in the audience. It was the sort of intimate moment that's tough to achieve and even tougher to fake.

Sunday night's 140-minute show was littered with such warm flourishes as well as plenty of good, old-fashioned rocking out. The set list roughly mirrored his last visit to the X back in November, which meant a show weighted toward his last two E Street Band albums, 2002's "The Rising" and last year's "Magic," as well as his 1975 breakthrough "Born to Run," including the show-opening "Night" and "Jungleland" during the encore.

And, sure, other encore tracks like "Dancing in the Dark" and "Born to Run" had the crowd on its feet, but much of the fresher stuff has graduated to true modern-classic status. Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt gleefully traded licks during the two manic solos of "Gypsy Biker," while 2002's "Lonesome Day" has grown to epic proportions. "Devil's Arcade" rumbles with the melodic majesty and contemporary feel of U2 or Coldplay. His show-closing "American Land" recalled 2006's excellent, and sadly under-attended, "Seeger Sessions" tour that saw Springsteen tackling classic folk numbers in a sing-along style. (And just in case anyone didn't get the point, the song's lyrics scrolled on the big screens.)

Well said. And we got "Jungleland"! How cool is that? And in case you missed it, the writer rates Springsteen right up there with Coldplay. Not bad for a 58-year old man.

Last night's show ranks third on my list. Number two was when Bruce broke my cherry, so to speak, in 1984. I bought tickets from a scalper for $75, which was a lot of money for a college student at the time, and took a girl I was trying to impress to the show at Hilton Coliseum in Ames. I think I was more impressed than she was.

Number one, the single greatest show I've seen, period, was the 2004 Vote for Change concert sponsored by Moveon. After someone called Bright Eyes opened, the St. Paul stage gave way to REM, Bruce and the Band, and John Fogerty. Neil Young made a surprise appearance. Holy shit! Even if it wasn't in support of a cause I supported, and even though I accompanied local media types who risked their jobs just to see a rock and roll show, the performances were outstanding.

And, just to be complete, #4 would be "The Rising" tour in 2002, also at Xcel (a fabulous concert venue that I suspect is great for Minnesota Wild hockey too) and #5 is the aforementioned "Tunnel of Love" tour. My friends from Chicago would agree.

not such a virtual world

They're not readers, my students, sometimes too literally, but that day the room was as silent as the story was long, and they did it-- they read. Page after page, a sigh and a struggle, but also determination to reach the end. Apparently all it takes to draw them in is the suicide of a thirteen year-old girl in a neighboring town, a cold-hearted mother, an online disaster.

What a world, the one Megan Meier's story reveals. It's one these kids both live in and don't. An address on Waterford Crystal Drive, or some other division of brick-fronted homes with ridiculous price tags and ridiculous names, might someday be an aspiration, but fulfillment is generations away. The income gap isn't the main separation between the teen in the story and the teens in my room, however, and envy isn't anywhere among their emotions.

They wonder why rich people seem to have so many problems, they wonder why 'white' kids are the ones who are hyper, and really, there's something to that, both in the culture and in the fact that the public health clinic isn't going to prescribe Ritalin or be on the look out for ADHD. They point out that their mothers aren't so wrapped up in their lives as the ones in the paper, and by that they mean their mothers are the opposite of neglectful. The expectations are so different; there is no helicoptering. Some of them want the mother who concocted a fake boyfriend to torture Megan locked up and put away; some want more responsibility put on Megan and her family. They discuss and evaluate and their insights become fodder for some pretty good academic writing. While I wish for a world that offers less compelling reading, at least it feels as if we've done something useful with it, and that, perhaps, they may have thought about their own behavior. Because these kids all have MySpace, too.

And within a week, I'm in the guidance office having a counselor call in the student who was most indignant about the virtual wrongs committed against Megan Meier. Turns out she'd posted maliciously captioned photos about her classmate, the teen mother. Ah, high school. And while I'm tempted to take matters into my own what-are-you-thinking I-know-you-know-better don't-you-see-a-connection-here hands, I seal my lips and write passes to the office and assign another reading. This time it's about the year since the suicide and the consequences of actions.

I expect no epiphany; I'd settle for an insincere truce between these girls, if it would last long enough for them to mature a little and leave this nonsense behind. Because that I do expect, and I think that they do, too. They were most apalled with the fact that it was an adult who messed with Megan Meier, not with the fact that it happened. They believe youth gives them license, a problem in itself, one that needs resolving. But, I believe the odds are exactly zero that they'd do what Lori Drew did, act like a teenager once they've grown. I suppose it could be wishful thinking, but I trust how they've been raised, trust what they've been taught. And I trust that if the instigator doesn't straighten up, like, right now, she's going to be really, really sorry.

THE Allison

"Now wait, " says my friend's boss, gesturing a pause in the happy hour conversation, "are you THE Allison?"

And I draw myself up as tall as I go, "Yes," I reply, "I am."

"Really! Well then I should give you a hug!" THE Allison is apparently welcome on a whole different level.

If you know us I don't have to tell you that later there was an awful lot of laughing about this particular exchange, but, THE Allison? I think I kind of love it. It arose because he was confused about why I appeared at the end of their extended Go Away party; I happen to know the woman who's moving to Pittsburgh, too, but I was there to retrieve my friend, the one who's apparently mentioned my name often enough that it has registered on the radar.

THE Allison, as if all the others are fakes. But, honestly, don't you think that way about anyone who shares your name? That you are the real deal and the other one is a pale imitation? I kinda think I do. Then again, Allison wasn't common in my childhood. I never got used to sharing. But that is merely a tangent; THE Allison is really about my connection to my friend, though it's hardly the first time I've been introduced through her.

A hundred years ago, when we were in college, I was introduced all over Florida, or, okay, maybe just once, as "Dena's little friend." Grandmas will be grandmas. It was kinda sweet in that annoying, oh please way, and now of course I miss her, but, finally a new phase. THE Allison. I like that so much better.