We’ve reached the end of another May, the sixth consecutive one I’ve written daily posts. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I chose this month way back when I started this since it’s so close to what can feel like the longest and most stressful month of the school year. I figured forcing myself to write something new each day would both distract me from anything unpleasant I had going on that would be better off left at school, and would add just enough positive pressure as I struggled to keep up with the pace to keep it moving along.
I’m happy with how this month turned out. First, some statistics: Over the course of these 31 posts, including the carefully-worded one I’m composing right now, I will have written a total of 25,000 words. Not yet including anything that happens with today’s post, the May blog posts have had a total of 2,866 page views. By comparison, the first month I did this had a total of 681 page views, which was less than my four most popular posts from this month combined. In fact, the top three posts from this month made it into the top 10 most read posts, for a blog that has existed since 2009.
I’m happy to see the month as successful as it was. After all, one of the reasons I spend as much time writing these posts is the hope that people will read them. In a lot of cases though, the motivation for doing this is to get something out of them myself. I’ve got one of these weird writer brains going on, where the words and ideas never seem to completely find a way to shut themselves off. It can become bothersome at times, so writing a blog has been a useful outlet when it comes to unloading and sorting through all of that. Sometimes you just need to clean house a bit, you know? If it works out that doing that ever gives someone else something to consider, all the better.
And all of this is said without mentioning the primary reason I started the blog in the first place — to practice my writing. Looking back and comparing some of the earliest posts to the most recent ones, I think it was a good idea.
A lot of what I’ve written here this month has been birthday centered, which probably makes it difficult to convince people that I truly don’t get wrapped up in my birthday all that much. I do, however, spend a lot of time reflecting on my place in the world and where I am in life, and reaching a landmark birthday like fifty seemed like a natural time to do that. This doesn’t mean I necessarily figured anything out or reached any grand conclusions, or even have any better idea of what I’m supposed to do with life after fifty than I did with life before. It does make retirement start to seem real. And it makes me wonder a little about how much time I have left, and what the time will be like, and what I’ll be able to accomplish with it.
Starting with June though? I’ll probably just start looking for a new dog.
I found something online yesterday that I couldn’t quite figure out — a video from Weezer featuring a cover of the 80s song “Africa,” by Toto. Listen for yourself if you haven’t heard it yet:
"Africa" by Weezer
My question was, “Why?” Is Rivers Cuomo a huge Toto fan? I'm not saying I would blame him. I like Toto a great deal, thanks to the influence of several of my cousins who are true lifelong superfans. They’re a group of great musicians I’ve been listening to for a long, long time. I might even go as far as to put their 2014 live album “Live in Poland” on my list of top 20 live albums. But a Weezer cover of “Africa?” Was there a demand for this? In all honesty, it’s never been one of my favorite Toto songs, even if it’s reached a level of ubiquity that probably makes a lot of people think of Toto as a one-hit wonder.
Turns out there was a demand. I guess some high school kid out there has been working at making this happen since last winter, and his Twitter followers have been growing ever since. For whatever reason, Weezer finally obliged. The recording isn’t bad and stays fairly true to the original. I even kind of like it. Maybe it will eventually bring back my appreciation for the original song that dried up back in 1989 or so.
I don’t listen to the radio a ton, but I’ve noticed a run of recent cover versions appearing on the airwaves lately: “Zombie” by the Cranberries, covered by Bad Wolves; “Gone Away” by the Offspring, covered by Five Finger Death Punch, and “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel, covered by Disturbed. The Disturbed cover reminded me of how they had released a cover of “Land of Confusion” by Genesis ten or so years back. Back then I was listening to Nephew #1 and his middle school buds talking about their favorite songs at the time, and one mouthy little punk started holding court on how Disturb's "Land of Confusion" was the best song out there. I had an overwhelming urge to poke a tiny hole in his self-perceived musical omniscience, so I innocently asked the group of them, “Have you guys ever heard the original version?”
This momentarily threw off his swagger. I could tell his first reaction would have been to challenge me that an original version didn't exist, but since he couldn’t say that conclusively and recognized I was old enough to know better, he pulled back a little. “There is one?” he asked. I nodded. “Yep. From Genesis. Came out in ’86.” I’m sure to him 1986 seemed like pre-color television history, so I just let him digest that. It didn’t take long for him to shrug it off, though. “Whatever,” he replied. “The newer one is still way better.”
I desperately wanted to point out there was no possible way he could judge this if he had only learned an earlier version existed ten seconds earlier, but having taught as long as I have I knew better than to try and logic my way through making a point with a kid who thought the apex on the good idea pyramid would be to ride a grocery cart downhill without a helmet. Besides, I had made a similar argument back in 1982 with my cousin Eric, when there was no way I would bend on the idea that “Crimson and Clover” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts was a better song than the original by, I believe, Tommy James and the Shondells…whatever the hell a Shondell was supposed to be.
To this day, I still hold true to that opinion. In fact, there are several covers out there I probably like a lot more than the originals, and likely for as many different reasons as there are different songs. I loved Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer” in high school, and I still do. There was a cover of it by the post-millennial band The Ataris that was also really good, but not better. That didn’t happen until another 80s act, The Hooters, covered it in 2008 on an attempt at a comeback album with a heartbreaking reinterpretation. If you’ve never heard it, you owe it to yourself to track it down and give it a listen someday.
My family is made up of dozens of music fans, and we like to put together a lot of musical quizzes / challenges / games / lists on Facebook, just to stir things up and share opinions through the comment conversation. For anyone reading this, especially if you’re coming here from the Facebook link, I’m going to challenge you to list at least one cover song you really like, or one that you simply can’t stand. Or hey, go for one of each if you want, or even a Top 10 list if you feel so inspired. If we get a few people sharing some ideas here, I might even put the work into thinking up my own top 10 list.
I’m pretty sure Weezer’s cover of “Africa” won’t be on it, though.
Memorial Day has come and gone, so we are officially in the homestretch leading to summer break. Depending on how one chooses to look at the calendar, our district either has seven or eight days left. I’m going with seven (even though it's technically eight).
My terribly generous Secret Santa gave me a cube of Post-It Notes for one of my gifts this year. I’ve been saving them for the summer, knowing it was likely I’d once again be turning my refrigerator door into a summer To-Do list. In the past I’ve organized my summer tasks and sorted them by color. I have five colors to work with this year, but I’m not sure how to categorize things.
One color will have to be devoted to procrastination jobs, the kinds of things that really need to get done and I always put off until the summer because there’s more time: getting the light above the kitchen sink fixed, cleaning out the garage, going to that dentist appointment that doesn’t require taking a half day off and calling a substitute, getting the oil changed and tires rotated.
But what about the other four?
Do I list the books I want to read or the movies I want to see? That kind of makes them feel like homework assignments, and ones that aren’t so hard to accomplish if I’m planning on doing them anyway.
Do I set the paces for long-term goals? How many trips to the Y each week? How many words written or pages revised daily? How much time spent each day practicing my new guitar? These ideas make me wonder how much I want to set myself into a full routine when I’ve been looking forward to having so many wide open days ahead of me.
Should I list school-related projects? I always intend to do some because the end of one school year seems like an exceptionally fertile time when it comes to thinking of ideas I want to try implementing when the next one starts, but I know myself too well. Truly ambitious school projects simply won’t get done in the summer.
When I start planning out my summer fridge list. I always think back to a kindergarten teacher I know who once said she was starting her summer break with one goal in mind — figuring out the perfect recipe for a strawberry daiquiri. She told people this like it was the punchline to a joke, but I really think she meant to do it. To me, it seemed like a near-perfect summertime goal (at least for someone who really liked strawberry daiquiris). It wasn’t so ambitious that there would be a lot of room to fail. It would leave her with plenty of time to just enjoy the slowly passing days. She’d have some fun with it, no matter what, and probably would have something to show for it at the end.
This year, turning 50 sits in my head a little. I was given a pretty landmark gift for a landmark birthday -- a brand new electric guitar. I love the guitar and have always felt a hole in my life from not knowing how to really play it, and 50 seems like a great age to finally dive in to something like that. Why wait longer, you know? What could I be missing out on that I don’t even know I’m missing out on? Who knows how much time any of us have left to do the things we’d like to try?
Maybe one of my Post-It color categories should be used to list personal challenges or new experiences. Not a bucket list so much because I imagine I have at least a few more years left in me, but things I haven’t tried before, because maybe it’s never even occurred to me to try them. What better time to do things like this when I get a blessed seventy-nine days off from work?
Now it’s just a matter of thinking up what should go on that list.
Years ago I was in a brainstorming conversation with a colleague, talking about what we would do to create the ideal school from the ground up. It was an engaging thought experiment, and ultimately not unlike coming up with a wish list of gifts you’d hope to receive.
There has been a lot in the news recently (and for the past several years) about how the public education system in America is broken. It’s hard to argue this is at least partially true, especially speaking as someone who has worked inside the system as long as I have and has a fair understanding of how it all works. Today I’m going to present some ideas about how to fix things. Some of these ideas might be a little outside of the box, and I'll admit many of them are not financially practical, but every idea is meant to ultimately benefit the students.
*Each classroom should be staffed by two licensed teachers, one taking the role of instructional lead while the other offers support. They would rotate those positions throughout the day with each specializing in different content areas. This would cut the planning time for teachers in half, and allow more time for planning and bringing new approaches to their instruction while pursuing the curricular areas they prefer and playing to their strengths. It would give each classroom two consistent adults for the students to bond with. Each pairing of teachers would involve one experienced teacher and one newer to the profession, to help establish a mentor-mentee working relationship.
*Social promotion would end. This helps no one. Addressing the problem through other accommodations as a collaborative team of school staff and the student’s family would hopefully achieve more.
*The curriculum would be based on addressing the same standards for everyone, but would be structured in ways that would address different student ability levels and learning styles. Clustering students by need and establishing magnet schools are positive steps in that direction, but these opportunities should be widely available in each building.
*Schools could promote stronger character education by awarding monthly-themed citizenship awards (something our school has started this year). Once this is in place, the school community should go all in on it, making these goals a constant presence throughout the day and actively promoting them.
*There should be a team of two or three people in the building in charge of everything to do with standardized testing. They’d be tasked with creating workable schedules, analyzing and establishing building goals, presenting relevant student data to the teaching staff, and serving as a resource throughout the year.
*Community involvement would be an active part of the school calendar. People would come in for special events or presentations to help the students see themselves as a part of a wider community, or communities, instead of just being school kids. This would also give them opportunities to be more active in their community, and give community members a greater awareness and appreciation of what things are happening in the schools.
*The arts have been woefully minimized in the overall curriculum. This needs to change.
*Instead of having a school social worker, each building would have a Community Outreach Specialist, since too often that’s what the social worker ends up becoming anyway. This person would be responsible for organizing whatever resources are necessary to meet student needs beyond the academic. They’d have a team of social workers, psychologists, police officers, doctors and nurses, behavioral specialists, and county representatives who might not be permanently staffed in the building but would always be on call and readily available. The ratio of students to available health staff should be close to one adult per grade level.
*Discipline problems for behaviors that endanger students in any way would be dealt with immediately and consistently. The students affected negatively by the behaviors would have their distractions minimized, while the students with the behavior issues would be held accountable for what they had done wrong while being counseled to change whatever they need to about their personal mindset to find ways to improve future decisions.
*Intervention teams — people who collaborate to decide whether or not a student would meet eligibility requirements to receive some kind of special education service — would have the resources necessary to move quickly on their decisions. All of the assessments would take place within a week’s time. Any enabled modifications and progress monitoring would begin right away, with the follow-up happening as soon as the modification cycle had finished. Students would have their needs isolated and addressed in weeks instead of months, or years.
*All school staff members who interact with students would receive regular professional development to address whatever capacity they work with the students.
*Elementary school recess would have a permanent staff, sized to greatly reduce the student-staff ratio. One of these people would be a licensed teacher, in charge of providing loosely-organized options for student participation, keeping them active and prevent the explosive social drama that can damage focus for the remainder of the day. Having recess as a fun time and a more positive part of the day for everyone would make it more worth the time.
*Each grade level or department should have its own secretary. Our building has a group of valued parent volunteers who sort all of the weekly flyers being sent home into “Wednesday folders” for the students, which is an incredible time saver. Having someone to take care of the non-instructional organizational things like this (i.e. collecting money, scheduling field trip buses, completing inventories, making copies) would give teachers more time for planning in-depth lessons and focusing on instruction.
*More should be expected of parents. I expect this will be one of the more controversial points I'm making here, and I swear I’m not passing the buck; most parents are supportive and helpful partners with the schools, and are legitimately concerned that their children are doing the best learning they can. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the outliers; I’ve witnessed parents picking up their children at school without knowing the name of the teacher, or even what grade their own child is in. There needs to be some level of agreement, either a more rigid social contract or a loose version of a written one, that establishes the importance of family support in the success of the child. In just the same way parents can’t solve all of the problems themselves, the schools can’t, either. If this kind of communication became an even better established norm than it is now, it could lead to fewer parents and families having adversarial relationships with the people who teach and work with their children, which I'd like to think is what everyone hopes for.
*It is possible for a class to be either too small or too large to be effective. K-1 classrooms should be capped at 18 students, with 2-5 classrooms capped at 24, and secondary classes limited to 28, with exceptions for larger group activities like band or choir. If classes are too small the dynamics can shift to something unproductively casual. I’ve taught classes of anywhere from 15 to 35 students in my career, and at different age levels. From what I’ve seen and experienced, the numbers I’ve proposed are pretty close to the sweet spots for each grade.
*Each school should have multiple cafeterias instead of one big one. Tables should seat no more than six people. All fruits and vegetables would be fresh. Smaller tables would lead to less shouting and less chaos, and would be easier for cafeteria staff to monitor. Fresh fruits and vegetables are simply more appealing than the stuff that comes in enormous cans, and its availability would encourage healthier eating habits.
*Breakfast has to be a choice at each school, if not a requirement like lunches. There would be unbreakable, strictly defined rules forbidding junk food to be brought for daily snacks. Healthier snack choices would be made available from the cafeteria for students who need them during the day, or will need to have one to bring home if they aren’t sure they’ll be able to eat when they get home that evening.
*There should be one non-student work day for school staff each month. Depending on the needs dictated by the time of year, this day would rotate between preparing for term grades or parent conferences, professional development opportunities, collaboration meetings between departments or teams based on what each team feels they need to meet about.
*Mandatory team building activities should be summarily abolished. So many more productive things could be done with this time that would have greater impact on the children.
*Each physical plant should be organized for maximum efficiency. Every school building that exists right now should double it’s number of bathrooms.
In retrospect, a lot of the things on this list could be boiled down to “Take the knucklehead stuff off the teacher’s plates.” This could understandably be taken as me making suggestions about what should change for my job to become easier, but it’s not about things being easier for me. It’s about making things better for the students, and the overall community. If that means I think it’d be better to have someone else pass out the hockey flyers and put together my spreadsheets for me, and for me to spend less time settling hours-long slow-burn arguments about who said what about which friend in the bathroom, so be it.
I’m a teacher. I just want the chance to do it the best I can.
My sister has a big wooden swing in her backyard. It used to be more accessible than it is now, since the tree it rests under has grown into something enormous, hiding the swing to the point it can be easy to forget it’s even back there.
Not many years ago, I used to occasionally hang out in the swing and talk with my cousin’s wife when she was in town. Usually we'd talk about the things happening at the schools where we taught, how they affected us, and how we felt about them. This almost inevitably led to a fair amount of griping, because even though we’re both very committed to our jobs and we’re pretty good at them, there are unavoidable stressors that come with being a teacher, just like there would be with any other job. Having jobs so similar meant we were able to understand and appreciate each other’s complaints about frustrations and grading and social politics at a level many other people couldn’t.
Eventually we’d get fired up after sharing these stories, which was counterproductive to sitting in a big wooden swing in the spring or summer or fall and just relaxing. When we realized how we were letting our frustrations encroach on our time away from school, one of us would cut things off, settle back in the swing, and say, “Just look at the clouds.” It became a code after awhile, reminding us to move on from the complaining, let the problems exist unto themselves for the time being, and to take advantage of the opportunity we had in the moment to recharge.
I have eight days of school left this year — I’m counting it as eight because I typically don’t count our work days, when students aren’t at school and I can get things done without trying to manage the behaviors of 30 kids, most of whom would prefer to not have their behaviors managed in the final days before summer vacation. Those final days can be a time when all emotions are heightened. This is especially true for the students, who can be feeling anything from excitement over a summer vacation about to begin to a pervasive fear of facing three months with not having the daily security and routine in their lives that school provides.
For anyone starting their summer with a laundry list of unknowns, or struggling through the final days of a school year, or really experiencing any kind of a trial that might bring on unnecessary anxiety, today’s post is just a friendly reminder. You might not have as much control over every aspect of your life that you’d like to, and there could very well be things going on that are difficult for you right now or will be in the near future. Just remember, you have it in you to decide how you will manage a lot of what you’re feeling and how you react to things.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just pause for a few moments, and look at the clouds.
There's a very good chance you haven't heard of Steven Wilson before, so you'll have to take my word for it that he's awesome. In fact, I plan on wearing my recently-purchased Steven Wilson 2018 tour t-shirt to my 50th birthday party tonight.
I first discovered him on Radio Paradise, an eclectic internet streaming station listed in an older version of iTunes that supported internet radio. I listened to it during my prep time at school, and soon became hooked enough to start playing it at home as well. Steven Wilson was still with the band Porcupine Tree at the time and they had just released their album, In Absentia. Radio Paradise featured the song “.3” in their rotation, and after hearing it a few times I was curious enough to buy the CD. It turned out to be an amazing rock album. I began digging into their back catalog and discovered much of their history was a bit too psychedelic for my taste, but I still loved In Absentia and the albums that followed in relatively quick succession: Deadwing, Fear of a Blank Planet, and The Incident. The last one eventually became one of my favorite albums, and containing one of my favorite songs, “Time Flies.”
When Steven released his first solo album, Insurgentes, I was a little concerned it signaled the end of Porcupine Tree, since they had become one of my favorite bands. To this day I don’t know if the band has officially come to an end because there are perpetual rumors floating around online about possible reunions, which always seem to be scheduled to happen in another year or two, regardless of what year it is. If they are still together, they’re on one heck of an extended hiatus. In the meantime, Steven Wilson has put together a pretty impressive set of solo albums.
His most recent album, To the Bone, came out a year ago. It’s deceptively upbeat with a wider diversity of songs compared to his other solo work, although much of his career has been defined by genre-hopping, covering everything from metal to psychedelia to progressive to pop throughout his many different projects.
While being essentially a rock album, he's credited some of the songs being influenced by ABBA and Prince. He’s talked about how he had been such a huge Prince fan growing up, which makes a lot of sense considering the path his career has followed: A self-taught multi-instrumentalist making music with his friends as a kid, covering a lot of musical genres in his catalog, writing and producing songs for several different artists, periodically reinventing the live band he plays with but playing much of the music records by himself. No matter what direction he pursues or which sonic palette he works with for an album, it wouldn’t be a stretch to make the comparison that Steven Wilson is to progressive rock what Prince was to R&B.
I saw him perform earlier this month. It was a marathon of a show, coming in at close to four hours when you include the opening act (Ninet, an Israeli singer who has occasionally recorded with Steven and played a pretty great set herself). The show, much like his musical repertoire, covered a lot of different genres and even a few personal favorites: “Pariah” from the new album, and a twelve-minute Porcupine Tree epic called “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here.” There were a few others I would have loved to have heard him play, but there were also a few I didn’t expect that were nice surprises.
It was kind of a bucket list moment in a couple of ways, not just to see him perform live for the first time but to attend a rock show in a sweaty Seattle night club that went late into the night. In the weeks since I’ve found myself going back to revisit a lot of solo Steven Wilson as well as Porcupine Tree. I suspect that’s going to be something I continue throughout the summer months.
I stopped on the way home from school to pick up a sandwich for dinner tonight. After I placed my order and was digging through my wallet, someone back behind the counter called out my school’s name in that loud, slightly alarming way that tells me I’ve just been spotted. I traced the voice and saw a smiling face looking my way. “Do you still teach there?”
I ran the kid’s face through my mental database, aged it down several years and brought his name back up, first the last name — which was easy to do right away since there were four kids in his family and I taught all of them — and then a moment later his first name. He grinned widely, obviously happy to be remembered. “Good memory!” he said (a nice thing to hear after you’ve just turned 50). The manager, who was also standing right there, gave me a respectful nod and said, “Impressive.” Then he spontaneously went ahead and knocked a few dollars off my bill, which was a nice way to end the school week.
I could have gone deeper. I could have told him how I remembered him being one of the kids on the broadcast team, and on the school patrol. I remembered a few weeks of the winter when, for some reason, he was answering to the nickname “Pizza Man Joe” even though his name isn’t Joe, and he was the first person to take up what had been my standard challenge for kids who claimed to not have ideas for Halloween costumes, and came to school dressed as a box of cereal — a brief Lake Emily reference that was my private joke for a good number of years. Of course I remembered him. He was an awesome kid. Even though he’s a working man rocking a full beard now and I remembered him as someone I wasn't sure would ever have it in him to develop any facial hair at all, I still remember how smart and quick and funny he was.
A few years ago, I had what was nearly an opposite experience. I was out to eat again, not just in the takeout line but meeting someone. I felt the stare of recognition settle on me from one direction and turned to see a vaguely familiar face. I smiled, looked at the rest of the family at the table, recognized her mother, and politely waved, thinking that was the end of it. I ate most of my dinner in peace until the family was on their way out and the girl stopped by our table to say hello. I greeted her, said it was nice to see her, blah blah blah blah because for the life of me I could not recall her name. The whole time we spoke the only thought I had was “You were good in math. You had a proficient score on the state test.”
It bothered me I couldn’t bring up her name, because I’m usually pretty good at that. I was internally humiliated that the only thing I could remember about her was the range of her test score.
To a too large degree, schools in 21st Century education have become data factories. I can think of students I’ve had this past year who have taken standardized tests no fewer than six times in three trimesters, to say nothing of the unit tests they take in math, the regularly scheduled tests they take in reading, and the sporadic formative assessments intended to tell us if they are making progress toward grade level performance. Teachers meet regularly to analyze this data and make determinations about who needs to participate in two or three week small group intervention cycles and to what degree these cycles were successful. On staff development days, teachers usually have an option on a training session of how to analyze and manipulate student data. I’ve even heard recent rumors that during some job interviews, teachers are being judged on the test performance of their students, straight by the scores with little to no regard considering any of the seventeen other factors that could affect how successful any one person could be on a standardized test on any given day.
Two weeks from this very moment, I’ll be sitting at home enjoying the first hours of summer break after closing out my twenty-sixth year as a classroom teacher. I think that’s an important distinction to make, too — classroom teacher. There are a lot of roles and positions people take on in education, but to be someone who can take on a room filled with kids who are only there because they have to be, then find a way to make them want to be there, then get them to learn the things the state has dictated people their age should know, and to do this while following a curriculum that you may or may not agree with and trying to safeguard the emotional well-being of an incredibly diverse group of anywhere from 16-34 students with just as many differing abilities and needs? It’s like playing three dimensional whack-a-mole with your eyes closed and your dominant hand tied behind your back.
The day will come in a number of years when my last day of school won’t be followed by the first day of summer vacation, but the first day of the rest of my life. As that day gets nearer with the closing of each school year, it makes me think about what I hope to leave behind when I’m done. I know I don’t want to be thought of as the teacher who made a big deal about test performance and lived and breathed the almighty spreadsheet. I’d be okay remembered as the teacher who picked awesome books for read aloud. I’d like to know the kids I worked with remembered at least most of what I’d taught. I’d be perfectly happy knowing they had gone on into the world with some sense of value I’d at least partially instilled in them, whether they recognized or acknowledged it had come from me or not. I’d hope not too many would think of me as that a-hole who was always after them about something, although I’m sure there are some who feel exactly that way.
Ten, fifteen, twenty years ago it would have been important to me to be remembered well, and to have my efforts acknowledged. Now, on the down slide portion of the bell curve of my career, I’d be happy knowing I had done or said something, either over the course of a school year or in what might turn out to be a particularly defining moment, that gave my students a fighting chance to become the best versions of themselves.
And hey, if doing that means I might get some free food when I eat out every now and then, all the better.
I started playing video games in the late 1970s, when one of my elementary school friends had an early version of Pong at his house. From there I evolved to text-based computer games and simple games of skill, to the arcade to consoles to even a brief (multi-year) flirtation with next-generation desktop gaming. These days my game playing usually happens on the iPad, or, when I have the time to invest, in something far more complicated on the XBox. Yes. I’m 50, and I own an XBox, and I make no apologies about this. Nobody who has ever played Bejeweled or Words with Friends or Candy Crush or any kind of casino slot game on their phone gets to look down on me.
Video games of today involve problem solving, math, and have evolved to the degree that they’ve enabled the publication of thousand-page strategy guides. Sure, some are needlessly violent and yes, there are a lot of them kids are playing that kids shouldn’t even need to know about. But not to acknowledge them as legitimate is just wrong.
As the games I’ve played have become more intricately plotted and complicated, I’ve learned some things from them, both about myself based on my strategic choices and reactions to certain situations, and how to apply certain skills used in the games to daily life. Before anyone dismisses all of this as a trite defense of a time-wasting pursuit, allow me to share some truths about life I’ve learned from gaming, in one way or another:
*Take the time to develop fundamental skills for something you want to do well. The time you invest will eventually pay off.
*Don’t foolishly charge into problems well beyond your skill set and expect to succeed.
*When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge, isolate the weak spots and approach it from unexpected directions.
*Think divergently when what seem like obvious solutions aren’t working.
*Manage your inventory, in whatever context this might mean. Only carry the things you’ll need and use.
*Choose your allies carefully. Find people who will compensate for your deficiencies and value what you have to offer.
*Don’t throw your money around. It’s a lot better to have enough when you really need it.
*Save your strongest arguments for when you’ll need them the most.
*Don’t let a pretty face make up your mind for you.
*Sometimes the quiet and subtle approach is the best way to get things done.
See? Not a complete waste of time. (Also, if anyone reading this has any recommendations for must-play console games I could tackle — and learn from? — this summer, I’m all ears.)
Last week I experienced one of those moments that gets in your head and lives with you for a few days.
It happened during a very short pick-up conversation by the school office, after dismissal was over and the hallways were empty. Somehow the subject of how people interact with each other came up, in the context of how each of us has our own relational ladder, comparing how close we ever feel with other people or how well we get to know them to how high up they would get. I don't remember the exact wording of what was said, but as this conversation pod broke up, someone said as an addendum, while I was walking the other way, something along the lines of “Tom’s ladder is not easy to climb.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about hearing that, especially since this was coming from someone I know well and trusted. Was that really how people saw me? The idea seemed ridiculous since I tend to believe almost the opposite — not so much that people are clamoring to position themselves on my ladder, but curious as to why anyone would want to in the first place. I don’t mean this is a low self-esteem, “woe is me” way, but just that once people reach a certain stage of adulthood, it seems like the people who make up your closest circle of friends and family has already been set, and there aren’t a lot of auditions being held for available openings. To continue the ladder analogy, once you reach a certain age, most of the higher rungs are already occupied. How willing are any of us to accommodate newer relationships that ever reach beyond the superficial?
I’ll admit that when it comes to how I interact with people, I probably at least give the impression of being complicated. I’m a hardcore introvert, which means I don’t feed off a need for other people. This isn’t at all saying I’m anti-social; I still have the same need for relationships as anyone else, I just tend to fill that need in concentrated doses and focus more on the people I’m comfortable with. All classic introvert things here. On the flip side of that — and I know I’ve brought up this point with people before and they’re usually dismissive about it as though I don’t have an argument to make — I basically feel like if I’m not in someone’s direct line of sight, I’ve basically fallen off the face of the Earth, as far as they’re concerned. Again, not a self-esteem thing at all, just more of a “What reason would you have to pay me a passing thought when you have the complications and joys of your own life in front of you?”
Outside of family, the majority of relationships I’ve formed in the past several years have come from the people I work with, which isn’t surprising since these are the people I see the most. Tricky thing about collecting friends in education these days though; the profession has become far more transient in the past decade than I suspect most people outside of it would realize. You can work with people who become friends for short periods of time when you see them daily, but when situations change, as they do more often than not, most of those friendships eventually fade off. There are people I’ve worked with closely in the past who might only be a hallway or two away from me now that I barely speak to anymore. I can think of half a dozen others who had become and remained good friends, until they left the job or moved on to a different school, and whatever friendship had been there immediately began to diminish. Someone once told me in a goodbye, “You aren’t getting rid of me that easy,” to which my unspoken response had been, “We’re going to get rid of each other EXACTLY that easy.” And things changed. It took awhile, but the level of emotional intimacy that came with that friendship eventually faded. We both had other things happening in our lives that became more important than each other.
Of course the flip side of this is how you navigate the uncomfortableness of valuing them enough to seek some kind of connection and discover later that need or want isn’t reciprocated. No one wants to know they’re on that end. Being as highly introverted as I am, I tend to take the hint and walk away, and perhaps more quickly than I should. Knowing that about myself and knowing that there could be any kind of perception that my ladder isn’t easy to climb makes me wonder how many times I’ve been seen as off-putting or aloof by someone else without even realizing it.
It all makes me wonder what my relationship ladder is really like: How high is it? Who do I have in my life climbing up to stay for the long term? How much more space is available for anyone daring to climb on? Who is on there already, but will soon be jumping off as their life takes them in directions that won’t intersect with mine anymore?
If you’ve followed the May blog posts over the years, you know what to expect here. Although with a title of Q & A, you could probably figure it out anyway. Here we go:
Well, what if Pooh didn't covet honey? How much scarier could the Heffalumps and Woozles get depending on what Pooh covets?
I’m guessing this is a musical theater thing, and my background in that is limited. Therefore I have no idea. Logically though, I would answer, “proportionally.”
If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
The easy answer is “Watership Down,” since it’s my favorite book. But there are a lot of ways to approach this question: Something that would take a long time to read? Something to appreciate as an art form? Something with a layered story that allows you to discover layered nuances each time you read it? An engaging story with heavily descriptive language? A dark adventure with life-or-death stakes? I guess all of those would still be “Watership Down.” So, boom.
Which musicians challenge and inspire you, as a drummer?
Neil Peart is the standard. The Mikes, Portnoy and Mangini, are the left and right hands of greatness — Portnoy more of a loose and creative player, Mangini the frighteningly skilled technician. Lately I’ve noticed how Travis Barker from Blink-182 plays deceptively complicated parts with impressive fluency.
What are the top 3 things you feel parents should be doing at home to aid their childrens progress at school?
*Teach them to be accountable for their decisions. This will help them own their learning and accept responsibility.
*Be seen reading in front of them, for pleasure, on a regular basis.
*Provide a variety of life experiences to ignite their natural curiosity, but maintaining a careful balance so they don’t feel overwhelmed by activities or family field trips. Give them time to just be a kid.
If you could have an hour of someone's time who would it be and what would you ask them?
I’m hedging slightly here because instead of picking one person for an hour, I’d pick ten or fifteen people that historically I’ve had a hard time trusting. I’d want a couple minutes with each so they could truthfully tell me if my distrust in our relationship was appropriate or misplaced.
Who is your favorite cousin?
It wouldn’t be which is a favorite cousin, but why are each of the ones I’m closest to so individually important to me. I could say Kelly because our ages had us mirroring life experiences the most closely; Paul, because he is the closest thing I’ve had to a brother; Sue, because she was a combination of a parental figure/older sister to me, and my sisters, for most of our lives. Chris, because he can make me laugh more easily than anyone on Earth. I could keep going and list reasons for almost everyone.
Cat or dog and why? Oh wait you're allergic to cats. Which dog breed is best?
Spencer was quite simply the greatest dog to ever live. I know almost everyone will say that about their own dog, but I also know I’m right. I think that had more to do with him than with his breed, though. Overall smaller breeds that don’t shed all over the world would be my preference.
If you could talk to someone in Heaven what would you want to know?
I wouldn’t want to know “Are you happy,” but “How are you happy?” Also, what can I know about what to expect out of an afterlife? What things in my life am I doing wrong right now?
Meditations on tacos.
Honestly, I kind of got rolled into the whole taco thing. For the most part, and I couldn’t mean this more, I could take them or leave them. I mean, they’re fine, but I don’t even think they’d make my top ten foods for real.
Why is there not a channel number 25 in the Comcast line up?
There is at my house. ESPN.
Beaches, Mountains, or Plains?
Mountains by a long shot. All three have potential to offer perspective, but mountains have a quality.
Plain or peanut?
Caramel.
What day are you getting your dog?
Preferably sometime between June 8 and June 30.
As things stand right now in education, if you were deciding on a career now, would you do it again?
I would. As hard as things can suck, it’s still very fulfilling and one of the most important (if not the most important) job in our society. It was never a choice for me; I was called. Nothing I ever considered doing in college felt genuine until I landed on Elementary Ed. Once I decided that, everything resonated so clearly I knew what I was supposed to do with my life. And I say this even in the context of feeling so completely done with both of my classes by the end of today.
Where is the one place you would like to visit that you have not been to before?
I suppose I’d like to see the Grand Canyon before I die. But travel isn’t a big thing for me. Who I’d travel with would be more important than the actual destination. Going to see something without having someone you want to spend that kind of concentrated time with would be empty.
If you had one decision in your life to make differently that maybe would have changed the course of it, what would it have been?
I would have fought harder in my junior year of college to convince Jennifer I was more than just a rebound, and I would have put aside my ridiculous Seinfeldian excuses for being okay with letting her go.
If you were allowed to rename the primary colors, what would you name them? Keep in mind you have the opportunity to make golden portmanteaus when mixing the colors.
Red: Volcano Power
Blue: Hooshea
Yellow: Maybe Lellow, since that’s what half the little kids in the world call it already.
Would you rather join a cult or a gang?
Ooooh…between those options I’d have to say gang, because that’s how everyone else has answered this. Right after they say, “Oooooh….”
If you had to re-do your life with all the knowledge you currently have, what would you do differently?
There are too many hundreds of specifics for me to list here. Generally, I would say I’d like to know that opportunities are not unlimited, and they need to be taken advantage of when they arrive in your life.
You know, it really doesn't feel all that different.
Twenty or so years ago I was working on what would be my first full-length manuscript, something that most people reading this post have never seen and likely never will. Back then all I knew about the publishing industry was how small the chances were of ever seeing my work in print. About ten years back I was trying to get through the final weeks of a school year knowing a literary agent in New York was looking over something I had written. She eventually passed (it wasn’t even close to ready), but just by requesting it she gave me back the hope I had pretty much abandoned. I kept writing and continued querying. About half of the agents I queried requested to see my work, which, looking back, is actually a darn good percentage and should have made me more optimistic than I ever allowed myself to be.
Eventually I broke through and signed with the agent I’m with now. When that happened I figured things were going to come together quickly, and it was only a matter of time until a book was sold and my career was launched. I started making rough estimates about how many years of writing and publishing it would take before I’d be able to take an early retirement from teaching and begin to write full-time without having to worry about a mortgage or health insurance payments.
That was four years back, and I’m still at the same place.
Am I frustrated about this? Yes and no. Yes, because of course I’d love to have a book on store shelves with a collection of great Amazon and Goodreads reviews. I know of other authors who found their agents after I did and already have multiple books published, and that inevitable envy still tweaks at me sometimes, no matter how hard I try to fight it off. No, because I now know how much work is involved at this level, and how much time it can take. It’s already taken me a lot longer to even make it this far than it has for a lot of other people, because I had spent so much time, decades really, of assuming the attempt wasn’t worth making since the goal seemed so impossible. That worked out for me in a way, because it gave me time to work myself into the writer I am now. It’s also given me a lot of time to think about exactly what I want to achieve with my writing, and what kind of legacy I want my career to leave behind.
There were two events in the past week that had me thinking a lot about legacy. About a week ago, author Tom Wolfe died at age 88. I’ve only read about half of his books, which is more than enough to appreciate his capacity for brilliance. I think it would be fair to say that any list of literary titans from the past fifty years would rightfully include him. Last night I watched HBO’s adaptation of “Fahrenheit 451.” It wasn’t great, but revisiting the story got me thinking about how the prevalence of technology and the toxicity of social and political climates that favor the lowest common denominator have gradually detracted from literature as an expressive art form and a source of compelling and potent ideas. The problems that defined the society portrayed in that story aren’t so different from some of the problems our country is facing right now.
I’m turning 50 tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ll be writing well into my 80s like Tom Wolfe did. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be writing anything that future generations will consider important enough to memorize and preserve as one of humanity’s finest works. However, the informed perspective that comes with age and experience gives me some ideas about what I hope to accomplish as a writer in whatever time I’ll have to accomplish it:
*I want my name to be recognized equally for the strength of the storytelling and the consistency of the written voice.
*I want my writing to matter. I want to know it meant something to the people who read it. It gave them things to think about, and maybe influenced how they see their world.
*I want to feel pride in everything I do, knowing it was the best I was able to produce.
*I want to produce something more than the kind of books people finish reading, set down, and stop thinking about an hour later. I want to know people were transported by something I wrote, that they reached the end and felt slightly disoriented as they tried to re-orient themselves to being in the real world.
*I want to produce a few of those touchstone lines, the ones that people latch onto, mediate on, and apply in their own lives.
*I want to look back at the decisions I made regarding my career without regret or doubt.
*I want publication to arrive in a time window that will let my parents enjoy seeing it happen.
*I want to eventually produce a warts-and-all piece of literary fiction that shows a true depiction of education as a profession.
*I don’t expect I’ll ever be earning the kind of money that will enable me to build that 200-seat movie theater in the basement of a brand new house, but I want to reach a level of professional success that would allow me the choice of retiring earlier than I normally would, even if only by a few years. I would like to know I had reached that benchmark.
Will I achieve all of these goals? Probably not. But it’s okay to hope and dream about them, and to use them as motivation. I’m at something of a crossroads with writing at the moment; without getting very specific, I believe steps are being taken that are at least in the right direction, whether they result in any kind of dividends or not. I hope they will. I’m fairly optimistic they will, actually. However, there’s no way to know for sure.
For the time being I’m just ready to keep moving forward, knowing I have good people helping me and supporting me as I work toward my goals, and continuing to hope for the best. Everything else will take care of itself when the time is right.
Not long ago, I had a friend tell me, in an unsolicited and unexpected manner, that I didn’t have joy in my life, and it would be good for me to correct this. “Teaching can’t count because you do that for a living,” she said. “And writing can’t either, because you work at that with a goal in mind.” These are both fair points, because both teaching and writing are endeavors that require a lot of effort, and, as much as I love them both, they each come with TREMENDOUS amounts of frustration and usually from nine different directions all at once.
Now, to be clear, I wasn’t at all offended when this topic was brought up. Clearly I spend a lot of time immersed in self-reflection, so to be able to have a conversation like this was kind of a thinking-out-loud treat. That this person had even thought about the subject long enough to form any kind of conclusion was touching, and also surprising, considering my general belief that people tend to forget I exist unless I’m directly in their line of sight.
The thing is, I didn’t really disagree, although in retrospect I’m not entirely sure we were exactly thinking about the same thing. From her point of view, she wasn’t criticizing me for having a joyless life, but thinking more of how I could benefit from having that something else, that something extra that could provide me with emotional highs just for the sake of doing something and loving it. From my point of view, I was thinking that, yeah, my emotional spectrum is pretty leveled, and doesn’t really reach into that high register very often. I suppose this isn’t great, but it’s okay. Joy is an extreme. I think anyone claiming to feel constant joy would be purposefully oblivious to the horrible things going on in the world, and consequently might not be equipped for the harder times and disappointments that will eventually come to pass. I also think that to truly experience moments of pure joy, they can’t happen too frequently. Joy is an extreme, and like most extremes, having too much of it would be diluted.
Infrequent joy isn’t bad. If you felt it constantly, it wouldn’t mean as much. To really appreciate how powerful joy truly can be, you have to be familiar with what life is like in its absence. I don’t think most people walk around existing in joy clouds, but are more likely generally happy with how life is, or, even more likely, are just comfortably content. I’d put myself in that last category, and I’m generally fine with it.
Maybe a little more joy wouldn’t be so bad, however. But this begs the question: How do you get there? What or where are those extra things that can be pursued to enhance life? Every pursuit needs a starting point.
I think a good starting point, at least as good as anywhere else, could be the Mall of America.
Don’t get me wrong; I do not see the Mall of America, or MOA for the locals, as any kind of Taj Mahal of Joy. I’m not crazy about shopping, and even if I were, going there just to buy things would barely be worth the opportunity cost, if at all. MOA is more of a destination itself, a place you go to intending to spend time, and often if you have out of town visitors who haven’t seen the place dozens of times and would still be impressed by it.
Walking laps to cover all four levels would be fairly strenuous; trust me, I’ve done it before. There are over five hundred places to spend your money there. Each one of those businesses was opened with a specific target audience in mind, so somehow they are all meant to appeal to a specific type of potential joy. Do you have a need for imported Alpaca clothing? Prefer high-end electronics? Looking to turn a day of crayon shopping into a full-fledged experience? Shop for dog-exclusive gourmet products? Have you read “The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe” enough times to be curious about what exactly is so great about turkish delight it would make Edmund sell out his brother and sisters? The good folk at MOA have got you covered.
So why start a Joy Pursuit there? The way I see it, almost every imaginable interest is being addressed in one of those more than five hundred businesses. I think it would make perfect sense to walk past every store, kiosk, restaurant, or amusement found there and mentally list the things that caught your attention, then afterward look back over the list and think over why each item was included. Somewhere on that list could be the beginnings of a new interest, or hobby, or joy. If I make my way out to MOA this summer, I might just do that. It could lead to some discoveries about myself I may not have otherwise ever realized.
Or, maybe I’ll just adopt a dog.
In 1980 and in the handful of years that followed it, the ultimate form of school rebellion was to sing the chorus of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” at the top of your lungs as an entire class choir during a field trip bus ride. At that age we still had no idea what dark sarcasm was, but we mumbled through that part of the lyric to make sure we could yell “HEY! TEACHER! LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!”
I was only familiar with Pink Floyd as a radio act for the several years following. In the anemic Twin Cities radio market, this meant some of the classic songs from Dark Side of the Moon, which I thought were unnecessarily weird at the time, and a handful of singles from The Wall: Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell, and occasionally Hey You, along with the aforementioned Another Brick in the Wall — usually only part 2 was played, but if you were lucky, you could occasionally catch the version that included Part 1. I was never that impressed with Roger Waters’ voice — he always sounded like he was trying too hard to emote. Pink Floyd purists originating back in the seventies would consider it heresy for me to say I didn’t really become a fan of the band until 1987’s David Gilmour led “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” since Roger Waters was out of the band by then, but I’ll still stand by that as a strong album of the time. And ultimately, it made me curious enough about the band to go back and revisit The Wall in its entirety.
The student union at St. Cloud State University, known to the populace as Atwood Commons or Atwood Center or, most commonly just plain Atwood, had a smallish movie theater tucked in the back of it, large enough to hold maybe one or two hundred people. It wasn’t big enough to show first or even second run movies — we had a theater a few blocks away from campus that did that for only a buck fifty (earning the moniker “the buck fifty place”) but campus did dig out some older hits or lesser-known cult films to show on the weekends. One Friday night in the winter of 1988, the posters went up declaring The Little Theater would be showing “Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” on…wait for it…Laser Disc. It was the eighties, and this was still a big deal.
Undoubtably this was coming on wave of popularity following the recent success of A Momentary Lapse of Reason, but my roommate Steve and I didn’t care. Neither of us had seen the movie but had heard all the stories: The dude who shaved off his nipples, the Nazi symbolism, and, of course, the urban legend of how the movie had been purposefully made so the only way you could truly understand what was going on was to watch it while you were high. I think that came legend came more from the frequency of Pink Floyd’s music being used as the soundtrack for so many of the laser light shows held in planetariums around the nation back then. Steve and I didn’t bother testing the theory, and walked across the snowy campus only under the influence of a shared Domino’s pizza.
I made the mistake of buying into the rumors and hype before seeing it and spent the movie thinking way too hard, convinced that each scene contained multiple layers of symbolism meant for me to unravel. Ultimately the story was little more than a non-narrative telling of a little boy who never got over losing his father in World War II, grew up to be a rock star, then reached a popularity that led him into a brief flirtation with military fascism before he went completely crazy. This is the kind of story that seems pretty deep when you’re twenty years old. That winter it became a favorite pastime of ours to turn off the dorm room lights, plug in the Christmas lights we had hung up around our lofts, put my A Momentary Lapse of Reason CD on Steve’s massive stereo, turn it up loud enough for the entire floor to hear or feel, and then just sink into our dorm room furniture and tune out. It was almost like accidental mediation.
I started keeping an eye out for The Wall during my music store visits, but hesitated to buy it each time I found a copy. After all, I was a college kid. These were the days when I could carry a $50 dollar balance in my checking account and feel totally secure with it. And The Wall was a double album, which meant twice the price. I only finally cracked when I found it in a version I had no idea even existed, and probably didn’t exist that far beyond a band like Pink Floyd offering a special cash grab mini-boxed set release: A CD set with gold-leaf plating on the discs. According to the box, which of course would have been completely truthful, the gold on the discs was only going to increase the sound fidelity, revealing unheard nuances of the music.
Total nonsense, but it looked cool. The case secured the discs with some hard plastic lever in the center and would only release the disc if the tray was raised a certain number of degrees (such was the importance of protecting the precious metals). It was soon after this that Floyd put out a double live album, “The Delicate Sound of Thunder” featuring several songs from their Momentary Lapse of Reason tour and classics from The Wall, as well as older standards. Because of the louder recording, that started getting more airplay from me than the original “Wall” discs did.
I felt proud of myself in a way, for connecting with an album that was so widely viewed as a classic instead of the usual hair metal of the day; it made me feel like I had an extra layer of depth. I could appreciate the music and began to understand the story better, but I didn’t really take ownership of the album until January of 1991.
A month earlier, while visiting my grandmother’s house at Christmas, I heard bits of a conversation regarding how my cousin Kelly was being deployed to Iraq. Kelly was in the army, and eligible for activation if the need ever arose. The closing days of 1990 and the opening days of 1991 saw the onset of Operation Desert Shield. Soon after that came Desert Storm.
The world had been waiting on the brink of war for months, so even though it felt like an inevitability when it happened, it was still something of a shock. This was war, after all. Real, honest to God war. America hadn’t been engaged in a full-on war of this scale since the Vietnam era. Sure, there had been military incursions around the world, but this was bigger than any of those. And in the dawning days of the twenty-four hour news cycle, this was going to be the first war of our time that would be televised.
I had been at work in my afternoon job at a Boys and Girls club. Our site closed down at 6:00 PM, but we usually only had to stay as long as the last kid needed to be picked up. I drove home, parked my crap-colored 1983 Dodge Colt in my rented parking space, walked up three flights of stairs, opened the apartment door and was greeted by the sound of explosions and the sight of green tracer fire lighting up our living room from CNN’s live broadcast out of Iraq. My roommate Greg caught himself before throwing the Nerf basketball at the hoop we had mounted on the door and looked over his shoulder at our other roommate Chris, who looked back and me and said with a stone-cold sober face: “It started.”
Back then, we had no idea that the active combat part of the war, in earnest, would be over in a matter of months, with only the years of messy clean-up to follow and the Shock and Awe sequel to follow in the wake of 9/11. That night there was nothing to latch on to, no guidance to be provided as to predicting what could happen what impact it would have on our country or the world in general, or how long it would last. All we knew was that things were different now. The three of us stayed there in the living room, quietly watching for the most part with exclamations of surprise or bits of commentary at some of the facts being revealed. After a half hour or so, I realized I only had a quarter tank of gas in the car, and quickly got up to drive down to the convenience store a few blocks away to fill up, just in case something was going to happen with the worldwide oil reserves and gas would cost ten dollars a gallon the following morning, money that I didn’t have because I was a college kid and just as broke as you would imagine. I got home in time to discover that the knock-off Hamburger helper Greg had made for dinner hadn’t turned out to the level of quality he expected — even now I can’t help myself but to laugh when I think of the number of times he said “Hamburger Italiano” that night while mocking it — and our fourth roommate Dan had gotten home from his job. The four of us nervously spent the evening watching TV together, mostly CNN since that was the only serious 24-hour news channel in the game back then, occasionally flipping over to network broadcasts to see what the anchors and reporters we were more familiar with had to say on the matter. Real life intruded, and one by one we peeled away and back to our respective bedrooms to take care of whatever homework assignments we had to deal with, periodically taking breaks throughout the evening to check in on the TV on that evening, even when nobody was in front of it.
And even though I never said anything, I kept thinking, “She’s over there somewhere, in the middle of all that.”
Kelly was, and still is — spoiler alert, she survived the war — two years younger than me, and was also in college at the same time. Her degree was pharmacology, which led to the joke of how it wasn’t enough that she was in college to get drunk but to understand what was happening to her body when she did. She spent most of her deployment a fair distance from the fighting in a M*A*S*H unit, but not always so far that she completely avoided ever hearing sirens warn her to put on her gas mask on the off chance a SCUD missile might find its way to her hospital.
I don’t know if there’s something wrong, or possibly right, with my brain, but I have a deep archive of songs in stored memory that I can have the most random thing trigger an ear worm that will be stuck in my head for days. This predilection is one of the reasons why I’ve built an inescapable and lifelong relationship between Desert Storm and “The Wall.” Even when I wasn’t parked in front of the television on that first night and was back in my bedroom trying to focus on whatever remnants of homework I had to deal with before starting my student teaching experience two months later, it was impossible for me to stop hearing the barely minute-long interlude of the half song from the second disc, “Bring the Boys Back Home.” I hadn’t picked that song to play through my head on purpose, but there was no doubt about where it had come from.
I felt guilty and helpless in the first weeks of the war, knowing Kelly’s whole world was what was going on there. I tracked down her address through the aunt, uncle, and grandparent grapevine (this was all before Facebook and email and cellphones, remember) and started writing her letters regularly, thinking if the one thing I could do was send her occasional bits of distraction from home, I was going to do it up right. I’d tell her about whatever mundane things were going on in college life, what it was like to live through the last stupid weeks of winter in comparison to the desert, what music I was listening to, which sketches were the best ones of Saturday Night Live that week, and any stories that came up of funny things that happened with the kids at the boys and girls club. She replied when she could, telling me about the people she had met, the experiences of desert life in the military, and relieved me quite a bit as I came to understand that being in Saudi Arabia didn’t necessarily mean that chemical weapons and bullets were constantly flying at her head.
Combat ended and she made it home safely, after staying longer than it seemed necessary. She wasn’t the last of my cousins to experience war, but since she was the first she was the template for me.
To this day, whenever I hear something on the news about military engagements or human atrocities taking place around the world, and if I sit in front of the television for more than ten minutes watching the coverage, my mind begins shuffling through the songs on that album.
I don’t remember where I saw them first. I didn’t order a lot of magazines as a kid, and they showed up a lot as magazine inserts, those non-glossy pages a little thicker than all the others that invite themselves to be torn out just to preserve the slick continuity of flipping through the rest of the pages.
Maybe it was the Sunday paper, which my family had received from my earliest memory and I still receive today just because it’s become ingrained in me that you’re supposed to get a big newspaper on Sunday for it to be a Sunday. Maybe they turned up in the subscription my parents had to Newsweek magazine for so many years, which would have made sense because they were so ubiquitous at the time, they would have even been in Newsweek.
They were so hard to avoid that it was all too easy to breeze on past them without a moment’s consideration. Each one featured the freshly-scrubbed face of some happy person trying to wrap their arms around what you were led to believe was their newly-acquired stash. The person shown was always an adult, though not too old of an adult to have their coolness ruled out by age, because we were supposed to think that, yes, this was the kind of thing even responsible adults habitually did, even though no adult with a modicum of common sense ever would have allowed themselves to get locked into this kind of backward pyramid scheme.
They were filled with multi-colored images, displaying the most recognizable icons of the day, almost cultural watermarks themselves in how they chose what should be the most prominently displayed. All it took was one of those pictures to connect with you and get you curious enough to spend a few minutes perusing the sampled list shown on the single advertising page, the whole time your eyes being drawn back to the literally too-good-to-be-true promise parked at the top of the page. Of course, somewhere on the page, because it was about to become part of your legally binding agreement, there was a small circular space left blank, other than the fine print telling you that was where you were supposed to actually tape your penny to the order form before you stuffed it in an envelope and sent it in.
And this was how you were able to buy 13 records or tapes for only 1¢!
Thousands of seventies and eighties kids like me fell for this marketing scheme over and over. Just imagine the excitement that came with the arrival of that package in the mail! At our house it was one of those days when I’d get off the school bus, dig my key out of my pocket since my sisters and I lived the life of early-eighties latchkey kids, pull open the storm door and find there was a huge cardboard box tucked in there! It had size and depth and weight and substance! It was like a personal Christmas morning, if Christmas morning was the type of holiday when you celebrated it by yourself and your sisters were slightly hopeful you had bought thirteen albums that didn't suck and your parents tried to hide how ridiculous they thought the whole thing was. Actually they didn't try all very hard to hide that. I cannot, for the life of me, ever remember having a conversation with my father like the following exchange:
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD ME: So, Dad, you know those record and tape order forms? I’d really like to send one in and get my thirteen new albums for only a penny. I’ll still have to buy another eight or nine albums from them at full price to take advantage of this, which means I’ll be paying a few bucks more than I would if I bought the exact same records at Musicland at the mall, but hey, what’s a few bucks when I pool all of my money from my allowance and the few ten dollar bills I receive annually from my aunts on my birthday? I just have to make sure I send back the order form each month when they send me one for a new album, and tell them I don’t want it until they have one I like. And sure, I’m kind of hyperactive and forgetful, but of course I’m going to remember to take care of this one thing and I’ll never procrastinate or miss the cut-off date! Right? How funny to think that would ever happen! So you see how this is the kind of once in a lifetime opportunity it would be foolish for me to pass up on. Anyway, you’re cool with me taping on this penny and committing myself to this unforgiving enterprise, right?
MY DAD: Yep. Go for it.
At face value, there wasn’t anything wrong with these clubs, as long as you were more capable than me of remembering to do things like find stamps to put on return postcards that have been sitting on the bedroom desk for three weeks. My music collection began to grow rapidly. I ended up with a good number of albums I wouldn’t have otherwise bought, but the problem was that living out in the most rural of rural areas made it difficult to ever arrange for the return postage. And I had to use return postage, because I didn’t have the savvy at the time to simply write “REFUSED” or “RETURN TO SENDER” on the boxes I didn’t want. I'd crack them open to see what they were, and often would open them and listen once or twice just to check. Which was always the mistake, because I once I did that, there was no way I’d ever get around to sending it.
Does this sound at all like addictive behavior? I wouldn’t blame you if you thought so.
I don’t remember exactly when I finished my love/hate relationship with the world of Columbia House and all of its bastard siblings. Time moves on I guess, and the day came when the flyers showed up in the Sunday paper less often, and the inserts didn’t appear in magazines anymore. Online music stores were still decades away, to say nothing of pirated evildoers like Napster or Limewire, or even the legit streaming services of the modern day. If one of those flyers popped up now, it’s entirely possible I’d join a club just for old time’s sake.
It still might be kind of fun.
At least at first.
I saw a stupid clickbait article tonight called something like “16 Things Guys Need to Stop Doing Right Now.” Since my self-esteem isn’t fragile enough already, I decided to give it a look and find out how I’ve been offending the rest of society without even realizing it, and in how many different ways I’ve been doing this. It’s all in good fun, right? Wheeee! Here are the items on the list, and how I measured up, or not.
1 - HUMBLEBRAGGING ABOUT WORKOUTS.
First of all, I think everyone needs to stop using the word “humblebragging” immediately. Secondly, hah. My workouts these days aren’t much more than long walks, depending on how you define long. I’m safe on this one.
2 - TAKING PICTURES WITH THE BEARD LOOK.
I wasn’t even aware The Beard Look was a thing. From what the article says, it’s a facial expression some dudes use in selfies because they think it enhances the awesome of their beard. I am not big on selfies so I feel I get a pass on this one, plus my beard is usually kind of a progressively graying mess that I only keep because I recently shaved it off and discovered that, after having it for ten years, my bare chin makes me look and feel uncomfortably prepubescent. Since the only “looks” I give during pictures are either (a) making a face to cover how badly I expect my normal expression to photograph, (b) smiling sarcastically, which often ends up looking genuine since even my facial sarcasm is finely tuned, or (c) a dead-eyed moment of discomfort frozen in time since I can’t use one of my other go-to poses in that situation. Never do I give my beard a second thought when getting a picture taken. Two for two.
3 - POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA ABOUT EXTREMELY MINOR HOME REPAIRS
I don’t I post much about home repairs because I usually am not the person making them. I might show pictures of something that I paid someone else to do because I have no faith in my ability to do anything related to home improvements correctly, and I'm just so happy to have a stressful problem solved. If I have to do something as minor as change smoke alarm batteries, I feel like several bullets were dodged in the process if the roof didn’t fall in.
4 - WEARING MUSCLE SHIRTS IN PUBLIC
Honestly, I thought they only made these for little boys now. I’m sure I haven’t owned or worn anything like this since perhaps junior high.
5 - REFUSING TO LET ANYONE ELSE TOUCH YOUR GRILL
The only grill I own gets plugged into the kitchen counter outlet and has George Foreman’s signature printed on it. If anyone ever wanted to use it, I sure wouldn’t stand in their way.
6 - FLASHING CASH
Seriously? And bait some hoodlum into stealing my wallet? No thank you.
7 - CATCALLING
This is almost funny. I am WAY to tentative about approaching women I’m legitimately interested in, so I can’t imagine just yelling something out at a random woman crossing my path. What’s the end goal for something like this? I don’t get it. Plus I live my life at least trying not to be a giant a-hole.
8 - BRAGGING ABOUT COMPLETING MINOR PARENTAL DUTIES
Exemption. The only thing related to parenting you’d ever hear me brag about is not being one.
9 - WEARING ATHLETIC SHOES TO WORK
….okay, fine. Guilty. But I have to walk a lot. And through a lot of nasty stuff on the floor. To say nothing of having to supervise recess more days than not. And my feet are almost 50 years old and don’t feel like being jammed into something uncomfortable and stylish. Plus at this point if I tried to wear anything other than athletic shoes at school, several people from a wide range of age groups would make fun of me for the attempt.
10 - ASKING WOMEN IF THEY’RE “UPSET”
I see dozens of women at work each day. I never have to ask if they’re upset because we’re all teachers, and upset is kind of our default state.
11 - WEARING FEDORAS
Not a once. I mean, can you imagine?
12 - PERFORMING IRONIC ACOUSTIC COVERS OF RAP SONGS
I don’t know any rap song well enough to invest the time it would take to do this. And what kind of hipster doofus uses anything to do with the music someone else loves to create an ironic moment only they and their other hipster doofus friends will enjoy? Come on, everyone. Let’s just think positive and put the music snobbery aside.
13 - DRINKING PROTEIN POWDER
I remember being on a kick of going through a lot of those Carnation Instant Breakfast drinks one spring many years ago. Does that count? Otherwise, I’d so much rather get my protein from far more delicious options.
14 - POST PHOTOS WITH CRYPTIC, PSEUDO-INSPIRATIONAL HASHTAGS
I’ll admit that sometimes my photo captions might be a little cryptic, but that’s only because I’d rather try to evoke a feeling and share that than say something like “Great time at the beach with the fam!” I don’t do pseudo-inspirational, or even purely inspirational, hashtags, though.
*15 - ONE-UPPING
I don’t think I do this, but I often worry that I do. I don’t think I’m much of a braggart; in fact, if anything I tend to go the other direction since my sense of humor is often self-deprecating. But you know how when you’re trying to participate in a conversation and you find a connection to whatever the topic is, and you bring that up? I’m not very comfortable with that. I imagine doing that too often would make people think I’m always trying to steer the conversation to be about me. Which is hardly ever the case.
*16 - ONE-UPPING, THAN WALKING IT BACK.
I do this exact thing SO MUCH LESS than other guys….
