Who She Was and How it Happened

 Life is always moving forward and changing around us, even if we don’t take the time to notice. The people in our lives don’t seem so different day to day or week to week. new parts of our communities or our physical surroundings can pop up suddenly but are only surprises at first, then become the backdrop to our lives. Even the seasons change with gradual measure. Time doesn’t stand still.

Years ago our school district opened two new elementary schools, and very suddenly some of the people I was closest to were moving on to different workplaces and stepping out of my daily life. Seeing each other each day turned into occasional text check-ins or Facebook likes, and maybe getting together to catch-up every year or two. They were relationships both sides held important enough to maintain, but even doing that meant redefining what they once had been. 

New times and new faces come along to fill the holes left behind in our lives when shifts like this take place. Maybe it’s brand new people coming in, maybe it’s the people who have always been there coming together to share closer friendships than they once did. When I was thinking about what to write this year to commemorate October 5th, the date of my sister Erin’s far too early death, it occurred to me that most of the people in my daily life now have no idea about her. Only a handful of those around me would have been around during that time, and so many people I’m close to now wouldn’t know much of anything about what had happened, or who she was. Today I’d like to take steps toward rectifying that.

Erin was the third child in our family, the youngest, three years younger than me, almost to the day. She shared a bedroom with our older sister. She played the trumpet in high school band. Whenever we took family trips, she rode in the middle of the back seat. She played Star Wars with me using our shared collection of action figures. The days and evenings we spent playing soccer in the yard helped her develop into a player skilled enough to be a captain of her high school team.

She worked a short stint as an EMT, then worked as the activities director for an assisted living community after finishing college. She loved being around the seniors there; it’s ironic now that she never had the chance to see what she’d be like as a little old lady herself. As much as she loved her seniors, she loved dogs even more. As shy as my boy Freddie is after whatever scary misadventures he endured in life before he came to live with me, she would have won him over and made her love him through sheer force of will.

I suppose she was around thirty when she developed a persistently annoying cough. Her friends convinced her to get it checked out, and after a time we all learned she had a slow-growing cancerous tumor the size of a racquetball in one of her lungs. The lung was removed, and after her body had adequately recovered from the surgery she began a long series of radiation treatments. After that was done, she had a grace period lasting one entire follow-up appointment of being declared in remission before tumor spotting began to appear on her remaining lung. Her doctor put her on a brand new medication and set an appointment at the end of the summer to see how the tumors responded. Holidays and parties were more frequent during those months, with guests traveling great distances to see her. The drug did nothing to deter the tumor growth, and by the end of that summer we knew it was a matter of when instead of if that her life would end, and the cancer would be responsible.

Our family was suddenly thrust into that position of oncoming tragedy, the kind that when it happens to other people is easy to feel both pity for what they’re going through and relief that it isn’t happening to you, except this time it was happening to us. There was nothing we could do to change things, so we relied on the smaller ways we could help her that we had control over instead. There were many weekends when I would have her energetic dog Milo staying at my house. I promised myself I would try my best not to treat her any differently than I had before, as much as the awkward darkness of the situation permeated our every interaction. I began writing her eulogy more than a year before her funeral, and revised it more times than I can remember. 

Erin outlived her oncologist’s expectancy prediction by several months, which may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things but was precious time for us. She worked with a deacon she knew from the church across the street from where she lived, the same church we’d grown up attending, which connected to the same elementary school we’d gone to. She planned out every detail about her funeral, down to selecting her pallbearers and choosing the shirts they would wear. In her final days we were all there, staying in her home, grabbing hours of sleep when we could. We were at her side in her final moments, when her body, which had been contorting itself to struggle for each fraction of a breath it could draw, was finally at peace. 

My sister, our parents, and I have all gone through personal struggles over the years as we learned how to adapt to a life without her. I even got a novel written out of the emotional purge that became so necessary. Even though it’s been seventeen years now, the emotions never completely fade; you learn to make them part of who you are. Because of that, after all this time, she’s still a part of our lives, and, in what would be a great relief to her since it cancels out her greatest fear about dying, she has not been forgotten. Hopefully today the memory of who she was still spread just a little wider.

Back to School: What Would Ted Lasso Do?

School starts for real in just over two weeks. The Delta Variant is still making its presence in our lives widely known. Too much of society seems intent on using school as a catalyst for inventing new varieties of division to make everyone feel as angry and uncomfortable as possible. This isn’t really the environment anyone wants to see in the schools as we start another academic year. In the words of one particularly wise songwriter, “We all need some light.”

One of the most currently recognized sources of light, optimism, and comfort is the TV show “Ted Lasso.” Yes, it’s on Apple TV+ which not many people seem to have. It’s a little tragic that more people aren’t able to enjoy this show, because it takes a fairly typical fish out of water premise and turns it into something remarkable. Since the character of Ted Lasso is a coach, and with a little imagination it’s easy to see the connections between being a coach and being a teacher, I’ve collected some moments from the show that I think would be good things for teachers to keep in mind as they begin this potentially hairy, but still possibly great, school year. 

For the uninitiated: “Ted Lasso” is a show about a college football coach who was hired to coach a professional football/soccer team in England without any knowledge of the game. I won’t go into much more detail about it since I’ll be spoiling a few things along the way as it is. I’ve listed ten points because ten has always been a good round number to fall back on for lists since the days of David Letterman. As always, in no particular order….

(1) “Biscuits with the Boss.” Ted brings team owner Rebecca shortbread biscuits (cookies) every morning as an icebreaker. As he says, “We can’t be good partners unless we get to know each other.”

Everything about success in education begins with relationships. This goes for both teachers and students. Students won’t learn as much from someone they don’t know or respect, so it’s important to win them over by demonstrating they’re important to you. Find a way to connect so you can be good partners.

(2) “Be a goldfish.”

Sam, one of the players, is down on himself for making a mistake at practice. Ted points out that a goldfish is the happiest animal in the world because it has a ten second memory. He tells Sam to be a goldfish.

Don’t dwell on the failures and mistakes. They will always be a part of what you do, and overthinking your way through them won’t change what happened, whether it was a kid who did something foolish or a test that went poorly, or a time you lost your temper. Take what you need from the situation to move forward and find a way to try again. 

(3) “One of eleven.” After one of Ted’s first games, he calls his best scorer, Jamie, into the office to talk. Jamie’s expecting to be dressed down by a new coach he doesn’t respect. Instead, Ted calls him the most talented athlete he’s ever coached. Jamie’s caught slightly off guard. Ted then tells him the one thing he can do better is to remember not to think of himself as one in a million, but one of eleven, and how much of a difference it would make if he played as part of the team instead of trying to be the star.

Teachers work on several different kinds of teams. Looking ahead this year, I’ve got a grade level team, my class, language arts teachers, math teachers, building leadership, special education, English language learners, specialists, and that’s off the top of my head. Each team works toward the same goal of achievement. If minimal professional respect for the people you work with is the best you can do, fine. Not everyone will become best friends. If you’re able to become friends, even better. If you’re bossy or arrogant or aloof or refuse to listen to anyone, you won’t get as far as you otherwise could. Communication and collaboration are important parts of making any team work effectively. If the team is working, as Ted points out to Jamie, “the sky’s the limit.”

(4) “Wins and Losses.” Ted says while being interviewed by a somewhat contentious reporter that he doesn’t care about wins and losses. He later clarifies that it’s more important to him “to help these young fellas be the best versions of themselves.”

Wins and losses do matter, often more than they should. Pro sports? Yeah. Student test scores being used to measure some aspect of progress for the student, the teacher, the grade level team, or the building? Hell yes. Student progress has to be monitored so learning needs can be addressed and serviced effectively, but at the end of the year I’m usually happier to reflect on the personal growth my students made than worrying about how many percentage points above or below a dictated proficiency level they were. Outside of the overdone data jockeys that are too commonly found in 21st Century education, I’d speculate most teachers would feel the same way. 

(5) “Na na na na na na na na Dani Rojas.” Dani Rojas, a player injured for the first part of the season, makes his first appearance. He’s so consistently joyful that Ted compares him to a golden retriever. He even turns his own name into a song, and somehow there’s nothing arrogant about it. He’s respectful to the coaches, friendly with his teammates, and it turns out he’s incredibly talented.

Dani is that student who loves to learn. The one who always raises their hand, gets everything right and still works hard. The one wants to know what else they can do after they finish the test they just completed with a perfect score. Every teacher loves having a Dani Rojas in class, but if you have a class made up of other challenges, it can be too easy to set Dani aside and figure since they’re going to take care of themselves, you can devote energy to the kids who need more of your attention. That’s not really true, though. As a teacher, you can either waste that drive or find a way to encourage it. What could Ted do to make Dani the best version of himself when there’s already so much about him that’s good? What can you do as a teacher to bring more learning out of that student, at a level with appropriate challenge?

(6) “We can’t change the past. We can choose to honor it.” The training room is cursed, as everyone on the team knows. It's said to be haunted by the ghosts of four hundred WWI soldiers who took their military physicals in that room. Ted’s solution for breaking the curse is for each player on the team to sacrifice something personally important as a tribute. The team collectively and verbally rolls their eyes at this until Roy Kent, captain of the team, stands up and yells, “We’re all gonna ________ do it!” (Roy swears so much in this show he owes his eight-year-old niece about one thousand pounds each month in her swear notebook.)

Every class has an effective leader somewhere in the group, someone who has the respect of the others. If you get 25-30 kids spending ten months together, chances that leader will emerge. I had a Roy Kent in my class last year. He didn’t swear like the character Roy Kent, but he was absolutely a leader, and acknowledged by the others as such. He didn’t aspire to lead; it’s just who he naturally was. Luckily my Roy Kent was an incredibly positive influence on the rest of the class -- I suppose he was more like half Roy Kent and half Dani Rojas. Unfortunately, some leaders can also bring negativity to the group and drag the class down. It’s important to try and recognize who these kids are and to win them over for the good of the class.

(7) “Football is life.” The mantra of Dani Rojas; he says it at least five times an episode. Any of us would be lucky to find something in life we love as much as Dani loves playing.

Teaching? Oh, wow. It is far too easy for teaching to become life. Too easy to get pulled into the wins and losses and dramas that define a school year. Too easy to lose sleep over at-risk students. Too easy to bring three stacks of papers home and tell yourself you're doing it just so you can keep up. Too easy to get lost in so many different rabbit holes that you don’t completely emerge from until a week after the last day of the school year. Teaching can’t be life, and this is coming from someone who has let that happen to him far, far too many times. You have to find a balance between what you are and what you do. 

(8) “Be curious, not judgmental.” Rebecca’s ex shows up at the local pub with a date, mostly to push her buttons like the a-hole he clearly is. He and Ted decide to play a game of darts with reasonably high stakes. They think they’re each hustling the other guy. Before winning, Ted gives a little speech based around the aforementioned Walt Whitman quote, explaining why it’s more beneficial to be curious instead of judgmental.

What assumptions do you make about your students based on first impressions? As time goes on, are you looking for ways to reinforce those assumptions, or do you let your opinion evolve as you learn more about who they truly are? What about the people you work with? Our school is in the unique position of having experienced nearly unprecedented staff turnover in the past three years. That’s a lot of new colleagues trying to figure each other out at once. I’ll be the first to say there are still a number of people I don’t know well enough to have a normal conversation with that would go beyond simple “How was your summer?” small talk. This should be more of a long-term project instead of something done during a twenty-minute team building, ice breaking activity in the middle of a staff meeting.  

(9) “It’s the hope that kills you.” The last game of the season is an important one for the team. The players, and the fans, all subscribe to this philosophy, feeling that getting your hopes up only to have them dashed away on the rocks is a bad thing. Ted, unsurprisingly, disagrees. He thinks it’s the lack of hope. 

How do you approach teaching a new skill? Or reviewing one before an assessment? Are there students you habitually write off because you don’t expect them to accomplish anything? Sadly, most of us probably have. We hope they’ll do well, but things don’t always work out that way. It’s important to remember that blind hope is nothing but a joke people play on themselves. However, hope with action behind it always stands a chance.

(10) “Tear it Up.” Jamie returns to the pitch in Season 2 after events have led to him having a contentious relationship with nearly the entire Richmond team. In the scene when he returns, “Tear it Up,” a particularly rocking song found as the second track of Side 1 on Queen’s 1984 album “The Works” is used as the soundtrack to his return. It’s a perfect fit for the tension and drama that we see taking place. It’s also one of the songs that much younger Tom actually listened to while getting pumped up before soccer games in high school. 

This, in my view, is easily a good enough reason to include that moment on this list. Maybe it’d be a good idea to have a go-to song or two in your back pocket to start the school day, even if you listen to it during your commute. Trust me, it can make all the difference.

Now go out there and get them, team! Just be sure you have your mask. And you've been vaccinated. Because you know Ted would be vaccinated, and would probably say, "Vaccines will keep me and my team safe? Well, I'd say to that the same thing I'd say to the bartender in my favorite barbecue spot in Kansas City -- I'll take a double shot of that, please and thank you!"

May 31: Adequate

Several years back, someone set up a Secret Santa gift exchange for anyone on our school staff who wanted to participate. I signed up, because I’m fun like that. It was meant to be an enjoyable little distraction, and for the most part that’s all it really was. I don’t even remember who I had for a Secret Santa, but to be fair I don’t remember anyone I’ve ever had for Secret Santas or Bunnies or Pumpkins or any other holiday-themed derivations of $10-or-less gift exchange activities from my career. I do remember the last day of this particular year though, because on the very last day before winter break when we were scheduled to reveal our hidden identities, this was mounted on the wall in the staff lounge: 

Many people told me about it before I saw it for myself. Our staff has never exactly been wacky by any stretch, but we haven’t been immune to occasional pranks over the years, either (something our current media specialist would likely attest to following events of the past two weeks). I figured it might have to do with Secret Santa, and it did: Our lead secretary at the time had drawn my name and put it up early in the morning since she had to be at her desk when the actual exchange was happening.

I decided to play along and left it up throughout the day, feeling certain there’d be a lot of people who would walk in, see that and immediately think, “Oh, for what the hell. He is? Really? REALLY?! Arrogant little chucklehead probably put that up himself....” Or along those lines. The message did not remain intact, with one of two other people making edits to it throughout the day, which thankfully I never had to see since my schedule that year didn’t allow for a lot of lounge time.

It was nearly the end of the day when I had a chance to go down and see it. At the time I fully intended to peel the letters from the wall and take it down since I thought we’d all been subjected to the message long enough, but at the last moment I was hit with inspiration to make my own edit. I didn’t want to change it to something so cutting that it would be seen as an insult, so people would be shocked to read it and think I had some dark and disturbed nemesis hiding on the staff (I actually do have one of those, but that’s a different story), but just a tweak that would downplay the original intent. So I changed it to this: 

I took a picture of it and quickly exited the room. It got some good laughs before I took it all down after school, and the whole thing probably would have died there if I hadn’t used that picture as a Facebook cover photo. Several times. Any time I would dig it out again it would get a few likes for as long as I would leave it up, which was never more than a few weeks at a time. This spring though, it seemed to catch on for some reason, to the point that it’s fair to say that “adequate” turned out to be my word of the month. It came up in a lot of my birthday wishes. It was part of an inscription of sorts that I received in being recognized for either 29 or 30 (29 really) years of an adequate teaching career. It was the word that kind of floated around me in some kind of ethereal on-deck circle, just waiting to jump into the minds of anyone talking to me when the opportunity came up to once again throw back to the ongoing “adequate” gag. 

Really, I don’t think adequate is such a bad thing. I looked it up in the bare-bones, but adequate, thesaurus app built in to my laptop to see what synonyms were listed: Sufficient. Acceptable. Reasonable. Decent. Quite good. Ordinary. Capable. Suitable. None of these are all that bad. Of course, we also get words like unremarkable and unexceptional, but I don’t know if those are necessarily bad things. How could you truly recognize something as being exceptional if it was like that all the time? The standard would change.

Like just about every other teacher in the world, especially the ones who have invested far too many years of their life into the profession, I’ve had my exceptional moments. I have my strengths, but I also have my weaknesses and failings. We all do. I think for most of us, we should feel lucky if the sum of our parts allows us to reach the end of the school year feeling capable after what we did, with reasonable accomplishments to show for our efforts.

I think adequacy can also apply the same way to life in general. After all, would you want every meal you ever eat in your life to be exceptional? Could you call every book you read exceptional or remarkable if there weren’t a few you came across that just weren’t very good? If the weather of each day was beautiful like it is today, you’d learn to expect things to be that way, and would only notice the differences when it didn’t measure up. 

Freddie and I were just out for a walk because it’s such a nice day. A lot of the time I don’t think to notice the weather unless I'm avoiding how unpleasant it is, but today really is an exceptional spring day. While we were out walking, we stepped off the path for a bit to talk with one of my neighbors, who was sitting on his patio under a huge patio-sized umbrella, enjoying the day and working through a book of crossword puzzles. That could have been everything he needed to have an exceptional afternoon, even if it sounds fairly boring, or adequate, to a lot of other people. There he was though, comfortably relaxing, doing something he enjoyed, taking in a nice day without any immediate cares in the world. That seems like the kind of day most of us would aspire to have. 

I absolutely believe it’s fair to describe my life as adequate. I think it’d be difficult to come up with anything about it I’d go as far as describing as exceptional. Sure, there are times when a little more exceptional would be appreciated, but a lack of that shouldn’t necessarily detract from what my life is. Speaking as someone with an adequate and unremarkable life, I think of fair descriptor of how I feel about it would be, for the most part, content. 

I’ll admit though, sometimes a few more aspects, or even moments, of the exceptional wouldn’t be unwelcome. I have to say, the closer we get to that last day of school and that first day of summer break, especially coming off of The Dreaded Covid Year When Everything Sucked So Much, it feels like any direction I’m even casually thinking about pursuing this year will somehow work toward encountering some of those exceptional moments. Maybe a few moments would be enough. Or maybe I’ll end up redefining what I think of as content, and adequate won’t seem to be enough anymore. 

Or maybe adequate will be the highest level I’m able to reach. And if that proves to be the case, well, things could be much worse.

May 30: The Tree

It was my birthday not long ago. Among the birthday wishes shared with me over social media was one that came in from a former student from long, long ago. She was a member of the very first class I ever called my own, one of my original first graders from 1992. 

That was nearly thirty years ago now. I have a lot of memories from that year, both because it was the beginning of my career and because any teacher is going to hang on to memories from any class they teach. Despite how many moments from that year still stand out for me, I know there are hundreds of others that haven't stuck as solidly, but may have been important to other people. We all have our own ways of perceiving how events unfold in the world around us and define the important parts of our lives. 

One thing I didn't remember was how my team of first grade teachers had passed out tiny baby pine trees to our students to celebrate Arbor Day. Maybe it was just our first grade team, maybe it was the entire school; even after being reminded of this, I still only have a vague memory of it happening. I know enough about myself as a teacher to construct a narrative around that, even if most of it would be false: We'd get the word we were passing out the trees; my first-year teacher self would have been taken with the feel of school community that would have surrounded such an endeavor, since that had been something I'd been richly anticipating since I started looking for a job; the actual day would have arrived and there would definitely been something mildly annoying about making sure my 26 first graders at least got the new trees they already loved so dearly safely into their school buses. After that accomplishment, a feeling of relief would have followed. I'd know everything had been taken care of, potential crises had been averted, and it was time to direct my attention at whatever the next job on my never-ending To Do list would have been, and any thoughts I had left devoted to baby trees would have quickly evaporated. 

That wasn't the case for at least one little girl, though. She took her tree home to her incredibly supportive and loving family (that's not part of my constructed narrative; I remember this family and that was absolutely true) and they made space to plant that baby tree in the yard. Maybe they were simply being indulgent for their enthusiastic little girl, thinking that all eight inches of that thing would be done in by the elements after a season or two. It didn't turn out that way, though. 

Arbor Day falls on the last Friday of April; I looked it up. That means the baby trees would have been sent home in the spring of 1993. This is what that tree looks like now. 

This little girl is now a mother of two boys. From everything I can tell through social media, she is just as involved in the happiness and well being of her children as her parents were in hers. She sent me this photo as part of a birthday greeting, reminding me of how its backstory was traced to Arbor Day in first grade. It left me astonished and humbled.

I've thought about this picture and the story behind it several times in the week since it was shared with me, looking for some kind of metaphor to take from it that wouldn't be simplistic or trite. I could relate the growth of the tree in a parallel to this girl herself, and say something about how planting the seedling was just the beginning, and how the care it received made so much difference in its growth and development. I could reflect on how elementary teachers eventually send their students out into the larger, greater world when they either go off to middle school or move away and we rarely, if ever, see them again and usually never get to know how they turned out later in life or whatever difference we might have been able to make for them. I could think about the soil where it was planted, and what nourishment the tree received from that as it grew into this enormous not-at-all-a-baby-pine we see in the picture.

Maybe because I have the end of another school year at the forefront of my mind, with only two more calendar weeks left in the school year and only seven more instructional days with my current students, but I've come to see this tree as something that could represent teaching, instead of just a result of it. After all, it was planted as I was finishing the first year of my career. Even though I made more than my share of mistakes in that first year, I still got through it successfully enough to establish the beginning of what has turned out to be a rather long career. Depending on the conditions of the surrounding environment, that tree, like any other, likely had periods when its growth seemed stunted or threatened, as well as times when it thrived and grew tremendously, just as I, and every teacher in history, has had good years and bad years. 

Then there are years like this one has been. I can't think of a single person who is ready to close off The Covid Year and call it a success. We've experienced challenges none of us could have anticipated, hopefully doing the best we could with the situations we've been given but too frequently knowing that it wasn't going to be enough. We all would like to think that the decisions made this year about what could lead school to be successful were at least well-intended, but such decisions are only made by people trying to do the best they can, which means at least parts of them are inherently flawed. Inconsistent learning models continually adjusted to avoid a deadly virus, the exacerbation of mental health issues in both children and adults coming from the uncertainty of the world, and a growing awareness in society of the social turmoil that too many people have already been dealing with for so long -- it's been a year with more than its share of the kind of obstacles that are unavoidable detriments to what should be anticipated growth. As anyone who has ever seen the cross section of a tree knows, there are going to be years when the rings are much closer together. 

Right now though, the future seems to have so much promise. Even the most consistently dire pandemic experts have been more optimistic in their recent reporting, which makes it much easier to feel hopeful that better days are on their way, and relatively soon. Will this bring us back to a school year in the fall that could reflect more of what we're used to? There are still going to be children in crisis, who take out the feelings they don't know how to process on the world around them. There is still social injustice and poverty and hunger and neglect to be dealt with. There will still be many people making the job of teaching far more difficult for their colleagues than it needs to be, even if they think they're doing the opposite. There will still be many, many nights next year when I know I'll fall asleep on the couch within an hour of getting home, because the job is so mentally and physically exhausting. 

But there are also many students who will be excited to try new things, and many co-workers each teacher will have to help and support the others around them, and many parents who will be just as excited to support their children through all of the challenges and successes they'll face, pandemic or not. 

Some of those teachers could even end up sending home baby trees with their students next year. Some of those parents will even be willing to set aside a small part of their yard to plant a tiny tree and nurture it. 

In the end, all that even the best of us can do is help to make our situations better in the moment, then watch and wait to see how things will eventually work out.

May 29: The Music of 2021, So Far

One thing I love about music is how there’s so much of it, and so many different things people can love about it. Most of the music I connect with doesn’t get a lot of widespread attention, though it’s deeply loved in certain fandom communities. I know if I were to list my lifetime top 10 albums, there would be a few on that list that many people haven’t heard of before, and I’m sure the converse would be true. Which is okay. Great, in fact. If someone has music in their life that they love, they’re lucky to have it, regardless of what gets played on the radio or what any critics have to think. 

I know that the end of May isn’t quite halfway through the year, but it feels close to that with the school year wrapping up so soon. About halfway through 2021 seemed like a good time to reflect back on the new music I’ve acquired so far this year. So here, in the order of which they were released, are my albums of 2021. 

Steven Wilson: “The Future Bites”

Steven Wilson is an experimental/progressive/rock/pop musician who I’ve followed for about twenty years now. This is the first album he’s worked on in that time that I found somewhat disappointing. There were touches of the recognizable sound I enjoy so much, but it’s a further step in the pop direction he’s recently been taking. I don’t dislike it, but I didn’t connect with it very much. 

Transatlantic: “The Absolute Universe”

This band started as a side project for a collection of extremely talented musicians about twenty years ago that they keep coming back to every few to several years. There are actually two versions of this album: They share a lot of musical themes and ideas, but they have slightly different arrangements and lyrics. It’s a good album, but for a band of this caliber, I feel like they played it pretty safe by staying so deeply in the pocket of their recognizable sound. 

Foo Fighters: “Medicine at Midnight”

Very much a Foo Fighters record, and a good one, but with a slightly funkier sound to it. Unfortunately it didn’t have that one anchor song that really got my attention and kept bringing me back to listen. Plus it came out very close to another album that overwhelmed it in my rotation. Namely….

The Pretty Reckless: “Death by Rock and Roll”

I heard the title song on our local hard rock radio station once in the winter, and it really caught my interest. I was surprised by how much I liked this, since I hadn’t known anything about the band before it came out. Nothing special about it, but it has a really solid hard rock crunch to it in a time when that sort of thing is hard to come by.

The Hold Steady: “Open Door Policy”

One of my favorite Hold Steady albums in a long time. It still had a rock sound, but not one that overwhelmed the songwriting. Craig Finn is a phenomenal narrative songwriter, and a lot of that comes through on this. 

Architects: “For Those Who Wish to Exist”

Another band I discovered from the radio. More modern rock than hard rock, but still pretty heavy. It took a few listens to really connect with it, since some of the songs get redundant, and the vocals drift too far into screamy too much, which isn’t something I’m into. I did warm into it eventually, and I've come to enjoy it as a change from a lot of the other stuff I listen to.

Evanescence: “The Bitter Truth”

Eh, you know, I gave it a shot. It’s not a bad album by any measure, but it just felt bland to me. And to be honest, it’s just hard for me to think of Evanescence as a band when it’s really Amy Lee and her current employees. I have a cousin who really likes them, and, you know, good for him for having a new album that he’s probably been listening to a lot this spring. There just wasn’t much here for me, though.

Cheap Trick: “In Another World”

It’s Cheap Trick. Either that means something to you or it doesn’t, and if it does there isn’t much more I have to say. A good rock/pop album that could be part of a perfect soundtrack for driving with the windows down on a summer road trip. The songs could fit into a mix with just about anything else from the band's *ahem* FORTY-SEVEN YEAR CAREER.

Liquid Tension Experiment: “LTE3”

LTE is another progressive side project made up of superhumanly talented musicians from other bands that have reconvened occasionally to record an album (the drummer also plays in Transatlantic). There was a falling out between some members so it took them close to twenty years to get past that and record a new album, which they did during the pandemic. They play instrumental progressive rock at what is arguably the highest level of the genre. This isn’t an album made up of songs; these are compositions (or, in some cases, slightly reworked improvisations). I think it’s safe to say that any teenager learning guitar, drums, keyboards, or bass who would give this album to listen even once, their mind would be absolutely blown and maybe even their life changed.

Manchester Orchestra: “The Million Masks of God”

Another album strongly focused on the songwriting. It’s definitely a rock album, but one that focuses more on communicating emotion than any kind of sonic attack. Grandiose in its melancholy, it’s filled with moments that could make you tear up a little without realizing if your reaction is coming from how sad the lyrics are, how painful the singer sounds, or how beautiful the moment is. I love this one.

Weezer: “Van Weezer”

I wrote about this earlier in the month. Some really enjoyable moments, but more amusing than anything else.

Myles Kennedy: “The Ides of March” 

This guy is probably the best singer that too many people don’t know about. The lead singer for Alter Bridge, which is also probably the best band that too many people don’t know about, he was invited to audition for a Led Zeppelin reunion project when Robert Plant said he wasn’t interested. His first solo album, “Year of the Tiger,” came out not long ago and honestly didn’t do much for me — it went a different direction than what I was expecting, and it became too much for me to see past that. This one, however, is a straight up rock album, and a darn good one. 

Frost*: Day and Age

Another entry in the progressive genre, Frost* (the asterisk is theirs; I have no idea why but it’s cool) is a shared favorite band of my best friend and me, so when they were releasing their first full album in years the week before my birthday, I knew to expect a copy. I haven’t listened to anything else since. I’ve even been plugged into my noise-cancelling headphones during the non-instructional work times of my school day during the past week to squeeze in more listens. There’s so much astonishing genius on display here, it’s hard to believe this music was created by mere people. It’s likely going to end up being my favorite album of the year. 

However, there are still seven months left in 2021, so…time will tell….

Day 28: Credo

 This post will be kind of a test for me. Instead of working it up on the word processor or collecting notes throughout the day to give me some starting ideas, I'm just diving right in. That's the test, though. I really want to see how this turns out with just a purely spontaneous attempt. 

I have seven days left in the school year, which is to say I actually have nine days I'll be required to show up at my school and work, but I count myself in the group of teachers that only keeps track of instructional days. Once the teaching part of the year is done, we start shedding stress minutes after that final bell that sends the kids home for the summer. I don't mind coming in to work another two days after I'm done teaching. In fact, a part of me is kind of looking forward to it. (It's worth clarifying that I have one less instructional day and one more non-instructional day because distance learning staff is on a slightly different schedule. 

The reason I'm bringing this up is because as soon as my summer break is officially underway, I plan on starting to write my next manuscript for real. I've played at it a little during the past several months, and I've collected a great number of invaluable notes, but I knew I wasn't going to be at my best while trying to wander through Pandemic Fog, so I pushed the start date back to the beginning of summer. Now that this date is so very close, I feel much more ready to begin than I did six or three or even two months ago. Because of that, I think it's time to write out my credo. 

I got this idea from one of my writing professors. I was declared as an English major with a creative writing minor once upon a time, before I switched over to elementary education. I already had enough English credits to just reconfigure them into a minor, and that included two of the three creative writing classes I was slated to take. One was playwriting, which I only took because fiction was full that quarter. Ironically, a play is the only thing I've actually been paid to write...so far. If you were a fan of Elk River Community Theater productions back in 1995, hey, thanks for coming!

Surprise! I digress. I told you this wasn't prewritten -- now you see the rambling evidence. Anyway. The idea of composing a credo as you are about to begin a big writing project is supposed to put you in a mindset of what it is you want the new project to be. It gives you a document you can refer to later that will let you reflect on what you wanted to story to be like in the beginning, what it's becoming, and how much of the original idea do you still want to preserve. With that in mind, here are ten big things I've learned during these past months about what I want out of the manuscript I'm about to write: 

1. It's horror. When I started getting serious about writing back in college, I wrote horror almost exclusively, probably because most of my fiction of choice was Stephen King. This one is a ghost story. I don't want readers to react to it with jump scares from shocking moments or stomach turns from scenes of attention-grabbing gross-outs, but I want them to get chills. I want goosebumps rippling through their skin. I want them turning more lights on if they dare to read it at night. During those last intangible moments before falling asleep, I want them speculating about what in the supernatural realm could possibly be real, and hoping it isn't.

2. I want my cast of characters to be so thoroughly and intricately developed that they could be taken out of the ghost story and dropped into nearly any other story and remain intact. 

3. I want the story I tell around the scary parts to be compelling enough on its own that it could stand as a novel without having to rely on the haunty parts.

4. At least once, I want the readers to hurt. The kind of hurt where they have to put the book down and walk away from it for a time, if not holler and curse me out for what I've made happen.

5. I want readers to have characters they either love or pity or fear, or maybe all of those things at once.

6. I want to establish a sense of place so tangible that someone reading the book and getting really into it would feel surprised to find themselves at home when they look up from the pages.

7. I want moments, either of the story or the characterization, to border on literary. It's hard to explain precisely what I mean by that. I tend to think of literary fiction as the kind of book where the structure and style of the pure writing is just as important, if not more important, than the story itself. (It's possible and super likely there are hundreds of people in publishing who would say my description of literary is completely wrong, by the way, but I'm kind of in the "who cares" camp on this. It's my credo after all, not theirs.)  I'm not looking to write literary fiction; this is legitimately the first full manuscript I'll be attempting with an adult audience in mind, and I honestly don't know if I even have "literary" in my skill set. But moments of it? I can accidentally back into writing the occasional good line, so I think I can pull it off. 

8. I want things to happen that people will not predict. I don't want to color so far outside the ghost story lines that I'll find myself working in a completely different coloring book, but I do want to steer around the more obvious tropes of the genre.

9. In my mind, I'm aiming for somewhere around 400 pages. Of course, there would be at least nine different hoops to jump through before attaining that number, even if it turns out to be reasonable for the story. But I like the idea of writing something with just a little bit of heft to it.

10. I want to write something that will make readers remember my name. Not because remembering my name is all that important to me (other than hopefully getting them interested in a follow-up someday), but because I want it to be that level of good. A story strong enough to make people pause and look at the cover and think, "Damn. Who is this guy?" 

And there we have it! Credo established, notes taken, mind organized. The real work begins in just over two weeks. It'll probably be ready for my usual circle of aggressively-recruited volunteers to read in...well, let's be honest: God alone knows how long. But someday.

Day 27: The Questions for My Future Self

 I feel like I’ve written about this topic before, but since I can’t find that other hypothetical post I think I’m clear to use it tonight.

My 5th graders, distance learners or not, are now in the single digits as far as days remaining in their elementary school careers. An activity our social worker has done with 5th graders toward the end of many past school years has been to get each of them to write a letter to their future self, in a time capsule sort of way. It gets them thinking about the person they are right now, and who they might become by the end of middle school, or high school, or later in life -- whenever they choose to read the letter they wrote. He gives them a list of ten questions to write about, then has them choose four. This year I wrote down the ten questions. I’ll be answering them tonight, thinking ahead to the day that will come in ten years or so, when all of this school business will finally reach an end for me. So here we go. Just remember these were originally questions for children, so I may go outside the lines on a few of them.

#1: List three words to describe yourself. 

The best description I’ve ever heard about myself actually came from a former principal. I don’t remember the context, but she said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone so willing to take too much credit for things and not enough credit at the same time.” I heard that and thought: Wow. That is entirely fair, and I like how complex it makes me seem.

#2: What are your hobbies?

Hobbies are interests you pursue during your idle time, so it doesn’t seem like they can have anything to do with professional pursuits. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave too much for me once teaching and writing are taken off the table. I like playing games and solving puzzles. Relaxing in front of the TV with some shows or movies to watch is pretty cool. I have a few favorite podcasts I listen to, often in the middle of the night if I wake up and want to try and lull myself back to sleep.

Other than that…walking the dog? Self-doubt? Anxiety? Do any of those count?

#3: Who are your friends?

This is kind of complicated, so I’ll explain a few things about my perspective. First off, as far as honest to goodness friends go, I only have a small circle of them — it’s an introvert thing. Beyond that, I think of friendship in three wider circles. The next closest would be those you have the most proximity with, like, in my case, people I work with and see every day and have connected with on some level. Outside of that would be the people that I still have some degree of relationship with, even if our paths have gone in different directions and I don’t see them very often (the Covid Year being an exception in the time length here). If we stay in touch at all in some real way instead of some pretend crap like social media "friendships," I would still think of you as a friend, and very likely I miss not having you as directly in my life as you once were. If you’re someone I know but haven’t even really spoken to in, say, the last three years? Well…Circle 3, aka Acquaintance Town. It should also go without saying that everyone, with a few exceptions in that tightest, smallest circle, will have to line up behind Freddie in terms of importance.

#4. What do you want to be when you grow up? 

I’m unconditionally grown up. But keeping in mind I wouldn’t open this time capsule letter until after I retire, the only ambition I’d have at that point would be to have achieved the level of working author.

#5. What technology do you think will exist?

Human augmentation, which will include direct mental connections to some new organic form of the internet once the Singularity is reached and surpassed.

#6. Who do you look up to? 

Outside of the obvious answers that practically everyone would list (parents, sister, John Petrucci), I’d rethink this one as people I admire: The musicians and writers who can bring magic moments into being and make it seem effortless when the truth is far from that; the colleagues I work with who have so much more patience than I do and display boundless compassion so easily because it’s a part of who they are, and/or keep showing up in their classroom even when it feels like the world around them has been temporarily engineered to kick their ass. People who get vaccinated.

#7. What are your hopes and dreams?

For the people in my family to have long, happy, and healthy lives. To be able to retire as a working writer, and have a happy and healthy life that stretches out long enough for me to enjoy that. To not be alone.

#8. What positive skill could you develop or behavior you could change that would help you reach those dreams?

Once the pandemic has faded into relative obscurity and my brain is no longer caving in, I really want to get back into a regular writing routine. I know I can do it. I have before, for long stretches of time. This past year though, and all the baggage that came with it between Covid and distance learning? It was too much. I allowed it to be enough that I was developing an idea instead of actively writing a story. 

#9. What are places you hope to visit? 

Top, top of the list is to get back out to the PNW. Other than that? Iceland would be interesting. So would New Zealand, I think. Really though, I’ve always felt that travel is less about the destination and more about who is with you on the journey.

#10. What advice would you give your future self?

If you haven’t yet learned to live with the idea that people don’t necessarily define you by your flaws and failings and might see worth in you that you don't always recognize yourself, you should probably start wrapping your head around that idea. You’re an old man, dude. It's seriously time to get over yourself.

Day 26: Guest Writer - Automatic Toilets and the Isolation of Humanity

 I was in a public restroom today. 

Awkward.  We just met and you already know I go to the bathroom.  But stay with me a minute.

I was in a restroom standing in front of a motion sensored hand dryer which wasn't turning on.  This made it necessary for me to use The Force (think Obi Wan Kenobi "These are not the droids you are looking for.") in an attempt to start up the stubborn thing.  I would have been self conscious about my Jedi mind tricks except that the woman beside me was doing the same thing, although with far less pizzazz than I.  

And it kind of overwhelmed me in that moment that our world is becoming touchless. 

That bathroom, for example.  The sink had a sensor, the soap dispenser automatically dispensed, the garbage can lid magically floated open and then closed again.  As for the touchless toilet flush?  Let's just say I would like to decide for myself when I'm finished, thankyouverymuch.

Our car is aggressively helpful.  As we drove to the grocery store last night, every time my husband mentioned my brother's name the car started to call him.  We wanted to talk about him, not talk to him.  We ended up hanging up on him about five times.

From our living room sofa we can change the house temperature, start up the vacuum, and choose a movie. We ask questions into the air and a disembodied voice answers them.  We no longer need to stand up, walk to the door and peek through the front blinds to see if we want to pretend we're not home. Our doorbell shows us who's there.

If typing is too taxing simply talk into your phone and it will generate the text.  Let me pause here and share a life hack: when using talk-to-text, proofread before you hit send. Talk-to-text is to blame for when I informed my dad that "Uncle Boob died." But in my defense,  I have a Minnesota accent.  And Uncle Bob was kind of a boob.

I promised myself I wouldn't mention the pandemic but... sigh... the pandemic.  Now our touchless world is touchless-on-crack.  "Contactless" is a badge of honor.  I was peeking through my front blinds the last time we ordered "contactless delivery" pizza.  The guy was wearing gloves to hold the pizza boxes, rang the doorbell, and nearly ran back to his car.  It was like a sanctioned version of Ding Dong Doorbell Ditch.  

On a loosely related note, I spend an inordinate amount of time peeking through my front blinds.  We all go a little mad sometimes.

Shopping has become more touchless than ever. I have always been an Amazon addict, but now I can go to any store and not have to go in. Curbside is a beautiful thing. Not to mention Doordash. Grubhub. Uber Eats. Shipt. Instacart. Amazon Fresh. I admit I love them all.

And we are now touchless with each other. We have to be. We have an immediate concern of surviving this virus. High fives and hand shakes are frowned upon. Hugs have been out of the question. Stay on your dot in the check out line.  The amount of apologies deemed necessary if we accidentally get too close to someone is almost alarming.  

Everyone I know agrees there will be long lasting psychological effects from experiencing this pandemic. There's no way around it.  We have been living in fear.  We are grieving our friends. We are grieving our normal.  We're never sure what's coming next. Masks block us from seeing people's faces. Strategies for physical distancing and reducing shared contact surfaces can almost make us feel leprous. In our already touchless world, now plagued by the plague, we have hit a new level of isolation.  

Hope is on the horizon, however. It seems our world is slowly starting to spin again. Medicine is catching up. It's going to be safer and safer. I still stand on my dot in line. But I am ready for the some of the touchlessness to end. I need to see a smile. I want my children to be less fearful. I've never been the one to hug a stranger at Target, but I really want to hug my dad.

So I'm okay with automatic vacuums, helpful cars, and magic garbage cans.  We can even keep the bully toilet flushers.  But I pray that we get closer and closer to a world that can move closer and closer to each other again.  And when we get there, come see me.  I'll give you a hug. After all, we're friends now. Because you already know I go to the bathroom.

Day 25: Why I'm Not That Stressed About Testing Season Anymore

 Those of us in the elementary school world, at least in the building where I work, are still finishing up our battery of spring testing. The older kids have finished their state assessments, and the younger ones are just getting started on their version. A lot of stress and anxiety comes with this time of year, both before the tests are given and after the results have been reported. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in the game for more than a few orbits now, but I don’t seem to worry about all of these tests as much as some other people, and definitely much less than I used to. In that spirit, here are some of the reasons why I think I’ve found a way to minimize, or at least balance out, the emotional responses that always hit teachers this time of year:

Tests represent how a student performed on one given day. 

Many tests contain cultural biases of which even the test writers themselves often are not even aware.

If I know the day before the test is taken that I’ve done everything I could to prepare my students to take it, I can sleep well the night before. 

Standardized tests scores from elementary school have never kept anyone out of the college of their choice.

The stress a lot of kids carry into the test can be a detriment to their focus.

It seems that each year the rules or conditions of the tests are slightly modified as the testing professionals continually strive to make their assessments as truly reflective of student ability as possible. Sometimes these modifications are significant enough to make it difficult to accurately measure the amount of growth achieved during an academic year.

I once had a girl impressively vomit on a pile of answer books stacked on my desk at the end of a testing session, and the world didn’t stop turning. 

During more years than not, I can predict with somewhere around 85% accuracy what level of proficiency each of the students in my class will reach. I know their work habits. I know their strengths and weaknesses. I know who will finish too fast because they didn’t work carefully and who will take too long because they’ll overthink each question. I don’t need a test to point these things out to me. 

Generations of us went through school successfully without being subjected to so many assessments that spring in the elementary school is commonly referred to as “testing season.”

Sometimes pandemics come along and throw all the validity of anything positive or negative about the results into question.

The biggest service that testing provides the schools is helping staff identify what kinds of support or challenges the students will need in the coming year. Often this information isn’t all that far off from what it was before.

There are so many intangible things that students learn during the school year that can’t be measured by a test. 

Day 24: Post-Pandemic Redefining, Part 2

My job is rough. There are times I don’t like anything about it. I’ve given much of my life to it because it’s a job that is crucial to our society, and personally important to me. Unfortunately though, it requires the people who do it to be the best versions of themselves nearly all the time, and it is more than willing to readily consume everything you let it take from you. Looking back from the perspective of at least the back nine of my career, I see I made the mistake of putting too much into it. Dedication is one thing, and it’s an important element of being a successful teacher, but there’s a tipping point when it becomes too much. I put in too much, and doing that was a mistake. Not just a little one either, but one of the defining mistakes of my life. If I were going to pass on advice to anyone in the early stages of their career, it would be to fight hard to maintain the balance you need between home and school if you’re going to have a happy life. 

Oooh wait, did I just subtly drop something in there to lead people into inferring that I’m not happy? Hmm, well, yes and no. I wouldn’t say that I’m unhappy. I’d say I’m content with my life more than anything else. Happy, though? That’s tough. I’ve always seen happiness as more aspirational than deserved; something that happens in fleeting bursts, the euphoric moments when everything about everything feels exactly as we’d want it to be, when fear and anxiety and stress and frustrations are minimized long enough to let us recognize and appreciate the moments for what they are. My life is full of problems, but it’s also full of blessings. I think acknowledging the power both of those have over how I think and feel means that being content with life is actually a pretty significant win. And I’m mostly fine with that. 

Is it enough, though? Should it be?

There are times I don’t like anything about my job, but there are also times I love everything about it. Either way, I come home at the end of the day exhausted. What about writing? Well, once again, love and hate. I love the process of it. I love the rush of seeing something I try to create from nothing but ideas become a tangible piece of art that can communicate with other people (for the record, I’m still mostly uncomfortable with referring to anything I write as “art,” but I’m slowly getting used to it). Outside of the process, there is little about the business side of writing and publishing that hasn’t frustrated me in some way or other. There’s that emotional pairing again — problems and blessings.

A lot has rolled through the media about the idea of self-care in the past year. I never paid much attention to it before, but I’ve come to see the value of it when I had to drag myself through the more challenging lows of pandemic isolation. It makes me think about what things will be or could be like once the world locks into whatever normal will prove to be. Happily it seems like we’re getting closer and closer to that time with each passing week.

When it’s here, where does that leave everything? The temptation to easily slip back into contentment will absolutely be there, holding up a soft blanket and waiting to embrace me with and endless loop of The Office reruns and Marvel movie re-watches as I enjoy being able to relax through the times I don’t have to deal with extraordinary professional challenges and questions about my validity. When normal returns, what happens next? Who will I choose to be in the post-pandemic world around me? What will I need to do differently to if I actively approach a more robust happiness, instead of just accepting what seems good enough when I’m not getting buckets of stress and criticism poured over me? Do I need wholesale changes? Actual post-pandemic redefining? Or maybe just a few well-planned tweaks? What would be enough to make the difference that I seem to feel I might need?

It’s seeming like something I'll have to figure out sooner than later.

Day 23: The Songwriting Conundrum

There are so many things I love about music. I can’t claim to like all of it — most of country music and a lot of what passes for modern day Hip Hop and Top 40 hits leaves me, I suppose, as perplexed as anyone else from older generations that shockingly doesn’t find any connection to music that never intended to include them in the audience to start with. 

The voice of the singer doesn’t need to be perfect, but needs to match and express the emotion of the song. It helps if the recording of the song demonstrates that the musicians involved are strong players, or, at the very least, devoted to their craft. Most of the time I prefer songs with a measure of complexity, the kind that sound either like the lyrics are raw with feeling and were bled out of the writer, or the music was meticulously composed so each note would be as thoughtfully placed as all the others, or both. Which isn't to say I can’t appreciate a simple and nasty Def Leppard guitar hook, either. 

If I think of the songwriters I respect the most, for whatever reasons, I find they share a lot of the qualities I’ve listed above. Granted, songs and recordings of songs are two different things; this is why the Grammy awards have had prizes for “Song of the Year” to recognize the songs and “Record of the Year” to recognize the performances. When I think of peak songwriting, I almost automatically think of Bruce Hornsby. I suspect most people reading this would either think (a) “Who?” or (b) “That guy who did 'The Way it Is' and maybe three other pop hits in 1988?” Yeah. Him. If you only know him from his radio hits thirty-five years ago, you’ve missed out on much of a remarkable music career. The guy is not only a sickeningly talented multi-instrumentalist (he’s likely a true genius when it comes to the piano), but his writing builds songs into living things that almost feel like novels. He may not be the only songwriter perched on the apex of any pyramid representing songwriters from the past fifty years, but he has his share of the real estate up there.

If, or really when, the day comes when I attempt to write at least one honest to goodness song, I know his work is going to be the direction I try to follow. I’d be lost faking my way through a chain of “Sha na na na Na na whoa-OH” sing-along choruses, or looking for the perfect coupling of romantic notions that followed both a syllabic pattern and a rhyme scheme. If I take a run at it for real, I want to aim for something that evokes a feeling of time and place, something that taps into our collective memory and brings back feelings that, while they may be a little different for everyone, will remind people of what they felt at one time, and maybe still wish they could feel again, if only for a moment. After all, if you’re going to try and tell a story, heartbreak is infinitely more interesting than happiness.

As for the music? Nope. I know my wheelhouse. I'll stick to expressing myself through the lyrics, thank you very much. Luckily though, I have a potential collaborator at the ready who I know could conjure up the music needed to match whatever I might have to say. It’s really just a matter of what and when such a project might begin.

Summer maybe? I guess we'll see....

Day 22: The Abbreviated End of Sammich Week

I couldn’t do it. 

I mean, I suppose I could have. I’m sure if I really wanted it, I could have made it happen. But I only made it through three days of Sammich Week before reaching a point where I could not carry on. Thursday night I felt like, I just…no. I can’t do another sammich. Plus Friday was my birthday and even though there wasn’t any kind of giant blow out for that, Day 5 of sammiches just didn’t feel right. Maybe I’ll try it again in the summer sometime, just to strive for redemption. 

Since I promised a recap at the beginning of the week, here’s how the first three days of Abbreviated Sammich Week had gone. Please forgive me of this profound failure, and don’t let it prevent you from supporting any of my other pointless endeavors of the future.

Monday

STORE: Subway

SAMMICH: Ham and Cheese New Fresh Melt

TOPPINGS: Green peppers, black olives, pickles, American Cheese, mayo

SIDE: Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips on the side

This felt like a cheat because I’ve had ham and cheese from Subway before (it was literally the first sammich I ever ordered from a Subway, and I have no idea why I just remembered that) but this was one of their New Fresh Melts, so I’m counting it as new. It was a little different than just normal ham and cheese, it turns out. They put a crapload of cheese on it, and actually put the veggies and mayo on before putting it in the toaster. My heavily-tattooed Sammich Artist warned me against water-based vegetables like lettuce and tomatoes; she said they’d make it all mushy in the toaster, and I took her at her word. The grill marks on the bread really seemed to be more cosmetic than anything else. 

I don’t know how much cheese they put on these new fresh melts, but wow, was this one cheesy sammich. The downside was the number of green peppers on it. I don’t mind green peppers (why else would I have ordered them?) but they overpowered all the other admittedly mild flavors, so each bite seemed to be more about them than anything else. Still very good, though. 

Also, why don’t I get Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips more often? They’re delicious.

Tuesday

STORE: Potbelly’s

SAMMICH: Pizza Sammich

TOPPINGS: Oil and Italian seasoning

SIDES: 1/2 a bag of Salt and Vinegar Zappo’s chips, and an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie

There’s been quite a bit of drama at school lately, and today ended with three different arguments happening between different members of the staff at the same time: (1) Whether Nirvana’s “Nevermind” or Guns ’n Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction” was the more iconic album, (2) If Panera Bread can really be thought of as a sammich shop, and (3) a throwback to the long-running argument about whether a frozen pizza should be cooked on some kind of pan or just set directly on the rack in the stove. Two of these arguments came together in my deciding tonight’s sammich would be a pizza sammich, and the only place I knew for certain offered one was Potbelly’s. 

I made a mistake while waiting in line and looked up at the sign that listed the ingredients, discovering that the pizza sammich came with mushrooms. I know there are people who enjoy them; I’ve always thought they had the texture of accidentally biting into a piece of someone else’s thumb that had been slipped into your food as a prank. Luckily there were meatballs in there too, so I knew as long as I didn’t look at each bite, I could convince myself I was only tasting/feeling meatballs — kind of a Schrodinger’s sammich ingredient, I suppose. I got chips because salt and vinegar are great, even though I know I can only stand to eat about half the small bag before my eyes feel like they’re swelling up, and I got the cookie because I believe there are national laws on the books that require the purchase of a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie whenever someone enters, or even drives past, a Potbelly’s.

As sammiches go…eh. This was really disappointing. More of a meatball sub with the meatballs chopped up into small pieces and other toppings added than a pizza sandwich. I’d never bought one before; I doubt I will again. 

Wednesday

STORE: Tono Pizzeria + Cheesesteaks

SAMMICH: South Philly Cheesesteak

TOPPINGS: Cheez Whiz, mayo, no grilled onions

SIDES: Parmesan truffle fries

Okay, I know I said if a place served fries it wasn’t going to count, but that was mostly to box me out of finding loopholes that would let me fall back on some recognizable fast food place instead of getting actual sammiches. We have extenuating circumstances here. Tono is brand new in the area, and since it has cheesesteaks in the name, and cheesesteaks are sammiches, and my three nephews all described these sammiches with great enthusiasm barely two weeks ago, I had to give it a try. When someone walked into Rm. 126 this morning and announced in the direction of the 15 square feet I’ve claimed as my distance learning classroom space that Tono was now open for business, I knew the fates had spoken. 

I passed on the grilled onions when I made my order for three reasons: (1) Generally I despise onions. (2) Even though grilling onions takes away whatever overpowering quality of chemical imbalance they have that makes me hate raw onions so, I didn’t want to take the chance they’d dominate my first Tono sandwich, much like the green peppers did at Subway. (2) Nobody ever grilled onions as perfectly as my uncle Dave did, so there was no way they were going to live up to that standard.

Since this place is literally brand new, it was sparkly clean and generally pleasant inside, the kind of place I wouldn’t mind sitting down with someone to enjoy a meal if there were no risks associated with indoor dining. Three people worked behind the counter, and they all greeted me loudly. I think I may have been the 35th customer the store has ever had. I didn’t even get a chance to completely say I had a pick-up order before one of them was holding out a warm cardboard box for me. In and out like that, and the whole shift wished me a nice day on my way out as well, even though they had just welcomed me twenty-eight seconds earlier. 

This sammich meant business. The bread was fall-apart soft, especially after soaking up the warm juices from the steak. The Cheez Whiz was an amazing kicker, especially since I think so many people tend to group Cheez Whiz in the same category of “why would you ever voluntarily eat that?” foods like Spam. Next time I’m getting extra. I upgraded to truffle fries because somehow my current school roommate and I have had a running conversation about truffles this spring, and I was curious. They were good, but I didn’t really know what flavor to look for as to differentiate truffle fries from any other kind of seasoning. So much food that I couldn’t finish it all, despite my best efforts. I hope that deep down I care enough about my health not to go back there every three days throughout the summer. 

And so endeth Sammich Week 2021. I promise I’ll try harder next time.

Day 21: Deconstructing the Horoscope, 2021

 Today is my birthday. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay. 

A year ago, here's what my "Your birthday today" horoscope from half-human, half-wizard prognosticator of times to come Holiday Mathis had to say 2020 had in store for me: 

"Your kindness radiates in all directions including toward yourself and this fortifies and emboldens you to new heights of originality. You'll fascinate, draw a crowd, sell to it and fund an enterprise you wholeheartedly believe in. How satisfying to know you're making the kind of difference the world really needs now. Sagittarius and Aquarius adore you. Your lucky numbers are 6, 10, 33, 20, and 17."

As I usually say at this point upon reflection - what a load of crap. Not to get too heavy or anything, but Level 52 was one of the loneliest, depressing, and uncertain years of my life. I would have appreciated it if Holiday had been a little more straightforward with me about what was coming from the beginning.

Anyway. Let's see what she has to say about about 53: 

"All you've overcome has made you strong -- and funny! Humor comes from the flexibility of perspective seeing different sides and extremes of life. A project will put your talents to good use, and you'll be enthusiastically endorsed, too, helping you to move up professionally and financially. Aquarius and Pisces adore you. Your lucky numbers are 21, 1, 7, 9, and 13. 

So, Aquarius and Piseces -- how you doin'?

To hedge my bets this year, I saved a fortune cookie from some takeout last week. I have not opened it until just this moment, which I'm sure means the fortune cookie magic, which I have to believe is just as valid as whatever juju Holiday Mathis brings to the table, has remained intact and starts applying right now: 

"Broke is only temporary; poor is a state of mind. Lucky Numbers: 4, 54, 39, 52, 51, 56."

I'll at least give the fortune cookie credit for correctly using a semicolon, a skill I'm not entirely sure Holiday has packed away in her grammatical arsenal. Plus I have even more lucky numbers on my side.

Though I noticed 53 was not among them....

Day 20: Q & A, 2021 Version

 Okay. Here we go….

Gardetto’s or Savory Chex Mix?

I don’t know if I’ve ever had Savory Chex Mix if it’s a store-bought product. I’m okay with Gardetto’s, even if they put in too many pretzels and those big delicious roundish flat things that remind me of the little packs of crackers that family restaurants had on the tables back in the 70s and early 80s always make me afraid I’m going to break a tooth. 

What are the top 5 Doritos?

In almost no particular order: 

*Nacho Cheese

*Cool Ranch

*Sweet Chili

*Taco

*The best kind of Dorito, tragically, isn’t made anymore. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, there was a flavor called “Jumpin’ Jack,” and they were AMAZING. If I could go back in time, I would go back to the back half of my college years, find a Tom Thumb store, and buy enough to bring back until I died.

This also seems like a good time to mention the Dorito thought experiment I came up with a few years ago, which is an offshoot of the Peanut M&M thought experiment: In every bag of Peanut M&Ms, there’s always one M&M with a rotten, stank peanut in it that ruins the bag. I’d argue that probability dictates that eventually there would be (or has been) an entire bag that consists of nothing but M&Ms with rotten peanuts inside of them. On the flip side of this, almost every bag of Doritos has at least one Dorito with a deliciously inordinate amount of flavor powder on it, which leads me to believe that there will eventually be (or has been) a bag of Doritos that consists of nothing but Doritos with way more than normal amounts of flavor powder.

5 favourite bird species (I didn't put the "u" in there)

Thanksgiving turkeys

Rotisserie chickens

That bird that they had a funeral for on The Office

Whatever species Freddie’s bird toy, which we call Bird, is supposed to be

Cardinals, since Erin sometimes uses them to talk to me.

Three things you are going to do after you close up your classroom for the year

Um…maybe I shouldn’t say this too loud, but I’ve been farmed out into another distance learning classroom since I got back, and my classroom has been used as a potential Covid triage center in my absence. So, technically, instead of closing up my room I only need to pray hard and frequently that it will be nice and clean and Covid-free and safe when we return in the fall. But to not ditch the question: 1. It is my great hope that people will be going out to lunch after all of the last day packing is done so I can see my friends one last time altogether and get some feeling of closure on the year. 2. I’ll come home and feel an odd sense of displacement for the rest of that night. 3. I will proceed to spend the following two weeks not doing a single worthwhile thing, and just being instead.

What is your favorite kind of popcorn/movie snack?

It’s changed over the years. If I was going to see a movie this weekend, I’d get a popcorn with butter and some salt, not going crazy with either, and a Fountain mixed Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke.

What is something you are looking forward to, and what is something you are glad is over?

Kind of a basic answer, but I’m looking forward to that first Monday of summer break. The frustrations have been different than usual and low-grade compared to most years, but they’re still there. I am very happy that my taxes are done. 

What would you have liked to have seen happen for the ending of Game of Thrones?

I think generally it was okay. I thought Dany going crazy would have worked if that story arc would have played out over two seasons instead of two episodes. So much had been put in motion to make Jon Snow the king that he should have been in the end, but if it went that way I would have liked to have seen him move all the Kingly stuff out of King’s Landing and either back to his hometown or beyond The Wall.

What kind of tree do you think would be best for drinking a beer under?

Not being a beer drinker, I have to defer to my cousin Paul on this one.

What are your top 5 concerts and why?

*Spock’s Beard reunion for Morsefest and a live performance of their Snow album, and not just because Dax and I are both visible in the concert video that was recorded that night

*Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on the Tunnel of Love Express Tour

*Rush on the Time Machine Tour at the Gorge in Washington

*Dream Theater in Seattle in 2014

*One of Bruce Hornsby’s shows with his whole band; they’ve all been too great to differentiate between.

Have you ever met a celebrity and if so who was it?

I’m going with Justin Cronin on this and I don’t care if there are all kinds of people who don’t recognize his name. In my eyes, he counts.

What is the most rebellious thing you did in high school?

I was a huge nerd in high school, and got all the rebelliousness out of my system in 9th grade. Maybe that time I kicked a hole in the wall of the hallway? Does that count?

What is your most favorite thing to do?

Anything that allows me to relax and enjoy the rare moments when there is absolutely nothing stirring up stress or worry in my life.

If you weren’t a teacher (or an author) what would you be/what would you do for a living?

I know for a fact if I were to ever go back to college to earn another degree to either pursue a new career or just out of personal interest, I’d absolutely want to be a sociologist. I think I could pull off being a therapist too, if I could put my own issues aside long enough.

If someone owns a piece of land, do they own it all the way to the center of the earth?

Only in Texas. Everywhere else the cutoff point is eighty-seven feet.

If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world (and not worry about COVID), where would you go and why?

The most obvious answer would be to go to Seattle to see my PNW family, since I haven’t been there in years. More bucket-list wise, I think Iceland or New Zealand would be interesting destinations.

How much would you need to win (lottery or other) to be “okay” for the rest of your life?

I am a man of simple and humble needs. In lottery terms, I’d need enough to maybe buy a nicer, but not crazy nicer house, a good, comfortable, reliable car, be able to sustain a modestly comfortable lifestyle that would allow me to live out my years with a rotation of trophy wives and subsequent divorces.

What is your all-time favorite pair of pajamas?

The blue ones. 

If you could only get sammiches from one place for the rest of your life, where would you go?

A really nice grocery store, because they’d have a really nice deli and the widest variety of ingredients scattered throughout the inventory.

Where do you start brushing your teeth, inside top, outside top, inside bottom or outside bottom?

Paul, you’ve asked this in a previous Q & A. And I already answered it. It’s time we all moved on.

If you could be any combination of two animals (varied features), what would you be?

An enigma. 

5 places you’d like to visit:

Since I already mentioned Seattle, Iceland, and New Zealand, I’ll make new choices:

*The version of New York City that exists exclusively in Nora Ephron movies

*Las Vegas, since I haven’t been there in about twenty years, but only in August when it’s 114 degrees there because that was an otherworldly experience

*The office of an editor at a Big Five publishing house after my eight-figure book deal was solidified

*I’ve heard intriguing things about this “Mall of America”

*Any performance venue in the greater Seattle area where Alter Bridge was performing.

John Carlson?

Some questions are without answers.

Day 19: Big Block of Cheese Day 2021

I haven’t done a Big Block of Cheese Day post in some time now, mostly because I haven’t done any posts in a long time, at least before May started. You can always search old posts if you’re curious about reference I’m admittedly misusing behind the origin of the name, but in a nutshell — a Big Block of Cheese Day post is when I have a lot of small ideas of things to write about, but none seem like enough to sustain an entire post themselves. So, I just throw together a collection of shorter, partially developed ideas instead. Which is what we’re doing tonight, because I don’t really have ONE solid idea to lean on, and I’m kind of tired here.

The Perfect Night

This was suggested by a well-meaning friend. There are far too many directions to go in describing a perfect night, but I’ll keep things smooth and cool here. Since it is my birthday in a couple of days, and all I really want out of a birthday anymore is a day when nothing that sucks happens, I’ll describe what I would hope a birthday night would be like. It would be a Friday, so my head would be occupied during the day and I wouldn't be thinking too much about what might happen later in the evening. Plus there are few reliefs like getting to the end of a Friday in an elementary school without some giant pile of crap hanging over your head and threatening the peace of your weekend. I’d leave after traveling through a few hallway pickup conversation pockets long enough to allow me a feeling of closure for the week, then I’d drive home with all good songs on the radio. There’d be something good for dinner already waiting that I wouldn’t have to cook or order. (Tragic side note: I realized too late I arranged for Sammich Week to end on my birthday, and damn it if I’m not already kind of tired of sammiches every night and I still have two nights to go and one has to be on my birthday.) I’d get home, bring Freddie to the park to pee on his favorite tree, then bring him home and enjoy a nice, calm, peaceful night with spring weather that’s favorable enough for me to open the windows and enjoy the breeze. I’m a man of few wants, it seems. 

Reaction Videos

During the pandemic, I discovered a guilty pleasure on YouTube. There’s a whole community of people who post videos of themselves reacting the classic songs they’ve never heard before the first time they listen. It’s like vicariously hearing a song for the first time again. If you did deep enough, you can find some favorites. At least I have.

Behaviors I Should Justifiably Be Ridiculed For

*I’ve set up everything about Venmo except connecting a bank because I’m paranoid about my money disappearing into the ether. This means I still write checks sometimes.

*I still get a newspaper delivered to my house every day, even if most of the time I only read the comics and do the Sudoku puzzle. 

*I still wake up early in the summer. 

*I don’t stream music. I listen to either the radio or CDs in my car, and I listen to an iPod plugged into a speaker dock in the house. I live in abject terror of the day that iPod stops working. 

*I have immediate access to four streaming services, but most of the TV I watch is either reruns of The Office on cable or replays of Marvel Movies on cable when I find one on.

*I keep books beside my bed even though I fall asleep every night in about five minutes.

I feel that’s probably enough for now. 

Summertime Adventure Suggestions

I have a short list of things I’d like to do this summer, provided they’d be safe. Several are things I haven’t done before and would like to try. I won’t list them here…for fear of encouragement. I’ve found that if I ever seek out advice or suggestions online, the responses I get are frequently reflections of the people suggesting them. This makes sense because they’re sharing their own enthusiasms, but I don’t know if that’s the way such suggestions should be made. Maybe if we ever give advice to each other about such things, we should think more about what the other person would like instead of sharing what we like. For example: The idea of most friends randomly setting me up with someone they know is a horrible @#%%^&! idea. Most of the time these set ups come from a place of, “Hey, your single, she’s single, why not?” I could write a book called Why Not, and chapter one would probably be about how random people don’t just connect because neither of them is in a relationship. If someone tried to set me up and had reasons why, well, maybe. But just, “Hey, you’re both kind of desperate. What do you honestly have to lose here?” No. Pass.

And Finally, The Poison of Social Media

I wish I could leave it all behind. I barely use Instagram, but really only to see what the younger people in my life are doing. Facebook is more about friends and family, especially the ones who live long distances away. Twitter is good for the news. But really, all of them, in some way, make me feel like crap. Just like life was so much better before I started carrying a damned cell phone, life was quieter before social media was a thing. I kind of miss being the holdout sometimes. 

Anyway. That seems like enough. Enjoy whatever you cut away from this particular Big Block of Cheese. (And I apologize for not having the wakefulness tonight that would be required for careful proofreading. Sometimes in May, you post just to get the post up.)