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.

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 18: Post-Pandemic Redefining, Part 1

 I've been back at school for about a month now, give or take a day or two. Before that first day back, I believe it's entirely possible I went an entire year of my life wearing t-shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, and shorts. 

The thing is, if you threw a few pairs of jeans into that mix, you'd basically be describing at least 85% of my wardrobe. Fine, let's not kid ourselves - the number is higher than 85%, but 85% seems like the highest number I can list without openly humiliating myself for dressing like a 15-year-old. (Yes, I've used that line before in describing my wardrobe, and yes, people have commented that making that comparison is insulting to 15-year-olds.)

Since I've been back to school, I've been sticking close to the jeans-and-sweatshirt aesthetic, mostly because I'm housed in a classroom that isn't known for its warm temperatures. This has mostly worked out because it hasn't been a terribly warm spring so far, at least not until this week, but since the room I'm in nearly all day is still cold, the sweatshirts are totally justifiable. And comfortable. Kind of like walking around in a nice cozy blanket, which I did more than once during The Winter of Isolation.

However, things definitely seem to be on the upturn now, at least as far as the pandemic goes. I mean, even TARGET, for crying out loud, has lifted their mask restrictions. I don't know if that means I'll stop wearing mine in public, but maybe if Target isn't super busy? Anyway. The day is coming when things will return to some semblance or normalcy again. Probably a new version, but definitely a recognizable version. 

One of the things I pondered most heavily during The Winter of Isolation was what I wanted life to be like once that somewhat normal returned. It was a deep list of thoughts I'll be exploring later in the month in a different post, but one thing I felt pretty set on was how there were so many different aspects of my life that I had grown to accept as good enough. I have an old car. My bath and hand towels still do the job of drying, but they aren't super comfortable. There's nothing about it that's fancy, but the mileage is low since my commute is short, so that's good enough. My kitchenware is starting to show its age, but it still keeps my food off the table. Although I don't know if I still need to keep using the same Coca-Cola glasses I won playing Whiffle Ball Tic Tac Toe at some low-rent Wisconsin county fair in 1988....

Hopefully you get the idea. Things were good enough. Does life need to be just good enough? Good enough seems like a compromise, and one thing I learned during the pandemic is that maybe there are aspects of my life and my world where if I don't really need to compromise, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I could push for things to be at least little better. 

This take us up to today, and one serious truth I know about myself after living through the Covid Months: I am so tired of sweatpants. One of the best things about going back to school was how I really had to wear actual pants again. So, I've been thinking a lot (I learned yesterday that's a phrase that scares my principal a little when I say it, incidentally): My wardrobe needs an overhaul. The follow-up question to that, though? What direction to go? I mean, I ain't James Bond, or a professional football player walking in front of the media on the morning of game day, or some YouTube Clownshoes dying for attention. I feel that somewhere there is a true core Tom aesthetic, but maybe one that can be even gradually upgraded out of the 15-year-old realm. I mean, one of my teaching partners literally laughed out loud last year when she tried to visualize me wearing a button down shirt, and I totally understood where she was coming from. 

So, my question tonight: I'm solidly an adult be any working definition. What items do people feel should be found in the closet of any self-respecting adult male? If I'm going to make a wardrobe upgrade this summer, what suggestions are out there about where I should begin?

Just so you know, giving up my concert t-shirts is totally a deal breaker....

Day 15: Why Do We Love Our Music?

How much influence would you say music has had on your life? Would you say that the person you are at your core has played a role in how you found the music you love, or do you think it’s more likely that the music you love has played a role in you being the person you are, and are still becoming? Maybe some of both? Why are there so many people who claim to enjoy “any type of music, except country,” when others live and die by country music alone? How are there people who have memorized not just individual show tunes but can recite every song from musicals upon musicals? What makes someone live by thrash metal bands instead of obscure alternative artists, or the other way around? 

I think, at least to a degree, any music fandom we have is initially the product of our immediate influences. Growing up in our house, most of what was played was Barry Manilow, the Carpenters, old Broadway soundtracks, and folk music heavily featuring the banjo. While I enjoyed some of that at the time, and wouldn’t take away anything from people who enjoy it now, none of those were things that stuck with me as I grew up. I started regularly listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 weekly radio show when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, mostly because my older cousins did and they were my most immediate guides as far as what I was supposed to be like as I grew older. Since a lot of my cousins were hardcore Top 40 music snobs by the time their ages reached double digits, those songs became important to me very quickly. Occasionally my mother’s interest would intersect with the top 40 hits: “Oh, that song ‘The Best of Times’ by that Styx group is so pretty’ or ‘I really like that nice song ‘Open Arms.’” Then she’d buy the album, and I’d have access to the the deeper tracks on “Paradise Theater” and “Escape.” I usually found songs I liked more than those initial radio hits.

But where does the passion come from? Why did I have favorite songs I followed, week after week, on Casey’s countdown? What brought on the change years later when top 40 music didn’t mean that much to me anymore? 

The more I think on this, the more I believe that the music people eventually adopt as their own, whether it would be specific songs or artists or genres, becomes important because we seek out the music we hope represents a reflection of ourselves. Maybe I became such a Bruce Springsteen fan in high school because I wanted to believe that I understood him when he wrote and sang about the virtue of a broken heart: Imagine first encountering a lyric like “I’m no hero, that’s understood / All the redemption I can offer is beneath this dirty hood / with a chance to make it good somehow” when you’re a typically confused sixteen years old. How could that not affect you? Even if my girlfriends were few and my dating sporadic, he allowed me to believe that I still could have something to offer, even if the girls at my high school weren’t exactly lining up to give me the chance to prove it. 

How did modern progressive rock become so important to me in adulthood? If anyone were to ask what I value about it, I’d readily say it’s the virtuosity in the performance and the songwriting, and in a musical genre (rock music) I grew up loving. But why? There are so many people who love so many songs just because they have a catchy hook they can dance to, or a recognizable lyric they can sing along with. I can like that too, but I’d much rather listen to a Dream Theater song filled with Olympic-level time signature gymnastics than chant along with the “na na nas” in “Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band for the 87,000th time in my life. 

In that example, I think it’s aspirational. Instead of just enjoying the music coming from ridiculously talented musicians and songwriters, I believe a part of me wants to identify with it. Maybe if I can spot a quality that not everyone else will recognize or appreciate, that will feed the idea that as someone working to be creative myself, there could be a quality to what I do that still escapes the notice or appreciation I hope it will find someday.

If I ever consider the idea of trying to write a song with my friend Dax, it starts with what kind of a song it would be. Since I’m the writer and he’s the musician, our contributions seem practically predetermined, so I think about lyrics. Almost every time I play with an idea, I start thinking about someone like Bruce Hornsby in the later, post-top 40 part of his career. Most of his songs play out like cinematic storytelling, and they make me stop what I’m doing to listen, even if I know them by heart. If I ever do really try to write a song, I at least know what bar I’ll be reaching for. 

It feels like I could go on for a few thousand more words on this topic, but I know I have to pace myself since the month is only half over. I think this will be something I pay more attention to, at least in the coming months — not just what music and songs and artists I enjoy, but why I value them as much as I do, and where that comes from. I think it could be an interesting exercise in self-reflection. Maybe if, or when, I do ever take the plunge into songwriting, or even just continue with my own fiction writing, it could give me some perspectives on the choices I make. 

However, it still goes without saying that I’ll turn up the radio in my car every single time Def Leppard’s “Photograph” comes on. Because that song rocks just as hard as it did thirty-eight years ago when people played it loud on their boom boxes in the junior high cafeteria at lunchtime. Sometimes a catchy hook is all you need to say whatever you need it to.

Day 8: Van Weezer

Back in the fall of 2019, I was driving somewhere and a song I didn’t recognize came on the radio. It seemed odd I wouldn’t recognize it, since it had a dated 80s hard rock guitar-driven pop melody sound that was very similar to a lot of the music I grew up with through junior high and high school. The song turned out to be “The End of the Game,” a newly-released song by Weezer. I don’t know how much I’ve ever considered myself a Weezer fan, even if I liked a number of their songs and had a couple of their albums in my music library. I wouldn’t go see them live if they were headlining their own show, but if they were touring as part of a package deal with some other bands, then yeah, they might be fun to see.

I liked this new song quite a bit. I was based around the kind of guitar hero histrionics I was drawn to growing up, but was all presented in a way where you couldn’t really tell if the band was going for that sound legitimately or in some kind of sarcastic hipster way, which is kind of Weezer’s wheelhouse for all of their music to start with. 

It wasn’t long until I saw they had a new album on the way. They were calling it “Van Weezer,” which, when paired with the sound of the new song, seemed like a direct reference to Van Halen. Weezer trying to put together a Van Halen era album was intriguing, but the release date was far off in the future. This was still fall of 2019, and the album wasn’t scheduled for release until May of 2020. I thought, okay, kind of way into the future there, but it’s not like I’m eight years old and a new Weezer album is my equivalent of Christmas morning. Hopefully it will come out with a good “drive with the windows down” summertime sound and that will be that. 

Then I remember getting to May of 2020, looking up the album again to see exactly what date it was coming out, and saw it had been pushed back to May of 2021. We were three months into the pandemic then so things like this happening were becoming too familiar, but it was still perplexing: Most music is either bought online, downloaded, or streamed, so they couldn’t be delaying it because stores were closing down. The only thing I could think of was their tour had been cancelled, and releasing a new album at least a year before they’d be able to support it on the road wasn’t optimal. I thought that was a stupid reason if I was right; after all, there are lots of musical acts that tour without new albums, and it made more sense to give the fans some new music while they waited for the tour. I’m not one of Weezer’s touring consultants though, so things happened as they did and I settled back to wait for another entire year. It was beginning to feel like this album would have to be the Holy Grail of 80s tribute rock performed by a 90s band struggling for relevance or it would be a sour disappointment. 

Fast forward a year. The album came out yesterday. 

First off, it’s no grail, holy or otherwise. It still absolutely sounds like Weezer, with the same awkwardly-constructed lyrics, vague Beach Boys quality of the backing harmonies, and the somewhat incongruous loud guitars. In a lot of ways, it sounds like an up and coming band tried hard to emulate Cheap Trick, and put together an album that wasn’t as consistent as the one the real Cheap Trick released themselves in April. It does have an old-school hard rock flavor that I appreciate, which will probably keep it in rotation a little longer than a typical Weezer album might have lasted, including one song that blatantly builds itself around the riff to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” to the degree they could have just sampled it.

I guess in the end I expected more and hoped for and got a little less than I imagined. It’s an amusing album, but there aren’t many songs on it that stand out and announce themselves as potential favorites. I’ve even wondered a little if I would have liked it more had it been released on it’s original date a year ago. I guess if I was a Weezer megafan I probably would have liked it more. As a classic rock fan, I probably like it more than I may have otherwise. I suppose the biggest thing about it now is that as a music fan, at least my patience has finally been rewarded. I don’t have to speculate anymore what it will be like, and I can appreciate the things I like about it the most. 

Day 3: Building a Mini-Bucket List

During an early morning Target run this past weekend, I bought a new package of Post-It Notes to use on my fridge this summer. If you’re new to the idea, I’ve spent most of the past few summers turning the front of my refrigerator into a massive To-Do list of summertime activities, with each note listing something else to do, which I peel off and throw out as I complete them. Hopefully by the time school starts again in the fall I’ve finished off at least most of the things I had listed. It’s a good cure for the days when you can’t think of anything to do.

I didn’t do it last year, because the options of what to do seemed so severely pandemic-limited and the only thing really on my list was stay home and not die. However, the world seems to be regaining some of its equilibrium. Even though Covid is hardly resolved (and seriously, if you think it’s gone or will end anytime soon you have some real self-searching to do), life does feel slightly less dangerous than it did a year ago. I’ve gotten pretty good at managing a safe lifestyle, and I’ve had both of my shots. Maybe the occasional measured or controlled risk wouldn’t be completely inappropriate? After all, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph — I did actually go inside a Target store, and buy things. Clearly I’m ready to live on the edge.

In all seriousness I have no plans on going crazy with the “open world” idea. But I love my vaccines and the increased security I’ve learned to feel with their 95% efficacy. I think getting out and doing a few things might not be so bad under the right conditions. After a year of isolation, there are a lot of things I’ve always enjoyed, particularly in the summer, that I missed after holding back from doing them.

There are things I’d like to do that I’m not ready to yet, and even some bigger, more adventurous things that I’d like to try someday. But in the short term? There are the things I’ve missed being able to do. There’s stuff I’d like to try, projects I’d like to attempt, things about my life I’d like to work on trying to change, for real. People to see. Skills to develop. The kind of unremarkable but still unusual and potentially memorable experiences to be collected that would be worth the investments of time and effort. 

I think a lot of people might see life this way now, divided between Before Covid and After. Speaking for myself, living through an existential threat (shut up, science deniers) gives you a watered-down version of the perspective that I imagine people who’ve experienced near misses with illnesses or injuries probably feel. They survived, and come out the other side with an appreciation of the opportunities, the potential, and the promise life still holds.

I’ve never really had an official Bucket List so much as some things I hoped I’d get to do or see someday. I’m not thinking in terms like that here, at least not exactly. Instead of putting together a checklist of things like exotic places to visit, I’m thinking of smaller things, sort of like the things that really I could have done at almost any point but never took advantage of the opportunities to do. The smaller things. It seems to me as I start thinking about another summer with my fridge hidden beneath a layer of Post-It Notes, this might be a summer to try and accomplish some of those things.

For example: I’ve never been big on spending a lot of time in the city. Really, it’s just not my thing. I was brought up in small towns, and I’m relatively comfortable here in the blandness of the suburbs. But I’ll admit I can enjoy the energy of the city when I’m there, at least if I'm not trying to steer a grade level through a field trip. Maybe taking the commuter train downtown to meet up with a friend for lunch sometime could be a nice little fun-sized adventure. Of course I’d have to feel comfortable about riding the train, which is far from a lock right now, but we’re really just throwing around hypothetical spitballs here, so why not consider it for the list.

I’d like to give my dog a chance to see more of the world around him than he has; he likes exploring the neighborhood, so he might like getting out a little further. I have friends with dogs he could meet. It could make for a fun evening to go visit with some of them some summer evening, and maybe sit outside for dinner. I’ve been a writer for so long, and my best friend is a professional musician. We’ve talked for decades now, literally, about trying to collaborate on writing at least one song. I know he’s game for it and is just waiting for me to have an idea. Maybe this could be the summer to really try. A few years ago a friend of mine and I joked about making a day trip up North to visit a mutual friend with an alpaca farm and shop. That could be fun. I'm almost certain it would be.

The way I see it right now, I have a little over a month to really zero in on what would be the things that could both enhance my summer and help me fill in some of the overall life gaps I’d like to close while I still have the chance. Even if I only managed to address some of them in the end, I think it'd be worth the attempt.

After

 February was a horrible month this year. It was long, dark, depressing, and deathly polar, to say nothing about how school hadn’t exactly been a ride around the lake. Another February with the kind of stress this one brought and I think it could steal the title of My Least Favorite Month right out from under January.

The nightmarish weeks of deep freeze eventually came to an end though, and soon after it felt like the world began to open. The days warmed quickly. The remaining winter snow gradually faded. Each day brought a few more minutes of blessed sunshine into our lives. Spring and the mental cleanse it promised sat on the horizon, patiently waiting for us to catch up. All of these things together made it seem like maybe it wasn’t completely foolish to entertain the occasional feeling of optimism. 

As the world began to feel more open, society took steps toward opening again for real. President Biden announced that regardless of how many people thought his goal of 100 million doses of Covid vaccine administered during his first 100 days in office was over-reaching, it was achieved some forty days ahead of schedule. Even though the pandemic is far from over and people are still fighting the disease, the media has taken to keeping tallies of how many people have been vaccinated along with the number infected.

Of course all of this optimism comes with knowing there are still contagious new variants circulating through an American population with large pockets of ignorance and entitlement that was never as reasonably cautious as it should have been. The traveling for Spring Break throughout March, amplified by astonishingly irresponsible governors making poor decisions in those destination states, could turn up the heat on all of us again very quickly. 

But what if it doesn’t all go that way? What if, somehow, we’re actually on a Covid decline instead of a weighted pause between surges? What if all of the mitigation and the vaccinations makes not just a difference, but the difference? Could we actually find ourselves back in a world where a new normal will at least approximate the better aspects of the previous normal? 

We will someday, and what comes next when that happens? Will we slip back into the familiar roles and routines we had chosen or been assigned before the pandemic? Will returning to all of that after pausing life for over a year feel like nostalgia? A return to our familiar routines would certainly be a comfort, since the human brain is always seeking out recognizable patterns. But what if there were routines that weren’t working? 

I don’t think society will experience any immediate overall change, at least not anything positive, and I really don’t want to focus on that here anyway. When I think about what comes next, I mostly think about what it will be like to rejoin the world, personally. I have been extremely cautious this past year, and have isolated myself to a degree that I’m certain that many people, particularly the anti-mask crusaders struggling to navigate their personal realities, would ridicule. Right now the idea of taking even tentative steps back into the world leaves me feeling anxious.

One year of my life has gone into developing a proactive and defensive mindset of avoiding other people to minimize the potential they could pass the virus to me. However, the day will eventually come when I’m going to be all vaccinated up. When that happens, I’ll be protected as I can reasonably expect to be. You’d think I’d be pretty pumped up about re-entering society, and picking up where I left off.

I don’t know, though. Do I really want to pick up where I left off? Has there ever been a truer opportunity for people to re-evaluate the direction life is doing than after a time we’ve more or less forced to spend an entire year on the couch? That’s a perspective I keep struggling with. This has been time used up that I won’t get back. One year of my life is gone, out of how many years do I even have left? Ten? Thirty-seven? Five? No one knows.

So what is there to do about it? What parts of my life had evolved into routine, just to fill the empty spaces left by the absence of the things I wish I had, or had pursued, or had the courage to pursue, but instead I accepted the default ease of routine? Once this pause is over, I feel certain there will be a lot of things about life before that won’t be enough anymore.

I think about returning to school, and honestly, I feel like it’s going to be weird. I believe in some respects I’ve been seen as a leader in my building for some time, mostly because I’ve been teaching there since the middle of the Jurassic Period. I don’t know if that will be the same anymore. I don’t mind that so much, but it makes me speculate what will change in how my professional roles will be defined. The people who have worked together through this Covid year will have formed a unique bond because of that; this is an undeniable truth. As strong as that bond will be for all of them, I wasn’t there to be a part of it. There are literally people on our school staff that I’ve never met before. Whenever any of them refer to everything experienced during the Covid year, I’m always going to carry an asterisk related to that because I worked remotely. What will my role be now, for however many years there are left in my career?

So how do I take advantage of this perspective? It’s almost like Ebenezer Scrooge waking on Christmas morning and realizing he’s been gifted a second chance. One thing I know for sure is that once I feel safe enough to enter the world, I sure as hell don’t want to continue molding the couch and recliner cushions to form with my body, and as comfortable and warm as they are, I’m pretty much over sweatpants. What do I want different in my life if I still have the chance and the time and maybe even the motivation to change it? 

I’ve actually started a list on my phone’s Notes app of things I’ll want to do when I can. Some involve the normal, mundane things I’ve been deprived of doing to stay safe. I don’t think a return to the comfort of the familiar is necessarily a bad thing, as long as it isn’t defining. I’ve also listed some things I’d like to do that I think I’d enjoy, or would maybe bring new kinds of happiness to my life. I’ve even added a few things to do that might be considered “bucket list” items. I’ve always said I don’t really have a bucket list so much, but even a tangential proximity to facing mortality makes one realize there are aspects of life that could lead to regret without even trying to experience them. 

It feels like now, in this season just before we can all hopefully exit our bubbles again without worrying about existential threats, is the time to start putting together a conscious idea of what life can be in the after. Then it’s only a matter of waiting until nature determines it’s time to begin.

Pandemic Narrative Part 16: The Beginning of the End

I started writing these narratives back on March 14th, intending to give myself a way to trace how the pandemic changed the world around us throughout its duration. I wrote up a list of ten thoughts on that first post. It seems appropriate on this one, the last post of the year, that I should do the same.

1. Since I’ve included statistics in each pandemic narrative, I feel I should keep that going. Worldwide: 81.5 million cases; 1.78 million deaths. America: 19.4 million cases; 347,000 deaths. This means approximately one out of every one thousand Americans has died from this. If that count been the result of a war, I’m pretty sure that both politically and socially we would be much more united around the idea of working against it than we currently are. However, I’m now able to add a new statistic to the tally: So far, there have been 2.1 million vaccines given. A start.

2. I don’t like this about myself, but I’ll own it: I rarely start a new year with optimism. I think it’s fair to attribute this to losing my sister: When the new year rolls around I always carry at least a small suspicion that there’s going to be a day when I’ll be expecting everything to be normal, and life will put up a serve that resets it in a darker light, and everything will be about trying to survive and process the experiences that follow. Vaccine production aside, there’s still a pandemic going on, and there are still reasons for all of us to begin 2021 with active caution. On the plus side though, at least the most incompetent, self-centered, ignorant, and corrupt president in all of American history, whose foolishness is largely responsible for the predicament we’re in, will be out of office in a few weeks.

3. I honestly feel like I’m one of the few people left on Earth who still bothers to live with any precautions. Cars pass my house all day long like they always have. On the rare days I go to Target for a curbside pickup, all of the parking lots are full. I have filled my car's gas tank twice since March. Granted, I have no metric for what the outside world is like, other than the way the selfish, headstrong few will broadly paint social media with proclamations of their bold stands against anything they’ve been asked to do in the name of public health. Feeling like I’m one of the 0.0004% of the population still striving to adhere to anything but the bare minimum of staying safe is disheartening. It only compounds the isolation. Even if it’s mostly imagined, it feels just as real when you don’t have any evidence in front of you to prove it’s wrong.

4. What will it be like when the world begins to once again take the shape of something recognized as normal, whenever that might happen? How long until the world is safe again? How difficult will that transition be, to rejoin the world? Being an introvert has helped tremendously as far as the isolation goes, but introverts are not, by nature, antisocial. I don’t mind wearing masks, but my God, I can think of maybe five times in the past nine months I’ve even touched another person. 

5. There’s no way this isn’t taking a mental toll on me beyond what I immediately recognize. Many people who’ve known me have heard me say how I feel like I drop off the face of the Earth for someone else unless I’m directly in their line of sight. That’s never been more real now, feeling tucked away like stored human surplus that society has found a way to manage without.

6. I also feel a sense of wasted time, which is probably a reflexive response since I’m always so ready to be self-critical. I haven’t baked any bread or learned any new languages online. I haven’t read a fraction of the books I could have, or caught up on classic movies or developed a yoga routine or painted any rooms or learned the ukulele. But then I remember the time I put into revising a new book, and how difficult that was, and I’m quite proud of the accomplishment. I feel this one could be my best shot at publication, at least as far as middle grade goes. I still think it’s a weird story, but it’s thought-provoking, it’s original, it’s fairly well-written (if I’m allowed to think that about my own story), and I’m anxious for more people in the world to know about it, even if in the immediate that only amounts to a handful.

7. If I were to go back to school and earn another degree, just to pursue an interest, I think I’d study sociology. Because of that, I’ve often wondered exactly what the tipping point was for America, when we went from agreeing to shelter in place and behave in ways meant to preserve the greater good, then shifted over to so much more of a “Well, I’m not sick/This is a free country, don’t take away my rights” ethos. The idea of “we’re all in this together” that was so prevalent back in the spring has worn away to nothing but a faded platitude. I fear that perspective, as well as the reactions to it, will make it much harder for our society to recover and reunite. I’m afraid things will continue to get worse before we see any significant social healing.

8. How much longer is this going to go on? The vaccine is here. When will I be able to get it? When will the rest of my family be eligible? Which one will it be? What will be the circumstances of its availability? Everything about this is still new; there’s no way to see past the next turn in the road when no one has ever traveled the road before. 

9. Do I really want life to go back to what it was before once the world comes back together? Honestly, not in every way. I’m not sure if this is a reaction to the beginning of a new year, but I feel like the pandemic is still going to be around long enough to use this as a transformational time. How could I take steps, even tentative ones, that would develop over time to replace the things in my life I’m dissatisfied about? How much of that thinking is my own motivation, or coming from subtle pressures of what society has to say about what I should be, or what other people in my life expect of me? God knows how many years I have left. Ten? Twenty? Twenty-five? Six? There’s no telling. What do I want that time to be like? What would make it the best, the happiest, version of a life I could build around myself? Has there ever been a more appropriate time for that kind of self-examination? I keep falling back to the idea of where my priorities should be, and why (or if) the things I've held as important are necessarily things that should even be considered priorities. 

10. Like I said, I rarely start the year with optimism. However, there’s always that flicker of hope that refuses to die. We all have dreams and aspirations. We all have anxieties we’d like to banish from our lives. Could 2021 be the year when things drift to the positive, and things will go our way? Will we be gifted with small pieces of individual balance to reward us for what we’ve endured? 

I suppose we’ll start to discover that in a few more days. 

The Challenges of Opening Schools

One of my biggest gripes about teaching has always been how so much of the general public thinks they understand what goes into it: “Well hey, I went to school! I did the worksheets and used the flash cards and watched the filmstrips! I saw what those teachers did all day!” And so on. I think this past spring brought an awakening to a lot of people when they took on distance learning for their children, and perhaps speculated what it would be like to do that with twenty-nine other kids at the same time.

But now it’s summer. It seems much of that perspective, and the grateful sentiment that came with it, has evaporated. The stir-crazy feelings of sheltering at home became too much for some. States began opening with the virus still in circulation. People were irresponsibly encouraged to go back out and act like things were normal. Some decided the risk was worth taking, just so they could “feel like it’s summer.” Ignoring social distancing guidelines and refusing to wear masks became a divisive political issue. Anyone with a passing awareness of how COVID-19 has been progressing knows these decisions have only made both the spread of the virus and the negativity of the social climate even worse.

Which brings us up to now, when planning for a return to school in the coming weeks has emerged as the newest national argument. Now, I wouldn't claim to be an expert on education, but I know a few things about it. I’m about to begin my 29th year in the elementary classroom. I’ve earned a masters degree and an additional sixty credits beyond that. I’ve taught in four different grades, I’ve held building leadership positions, I’ve worked under more extra service agreements than I would want to take the time to tally. I’ve tutored students at home when they were too sick or injured to attend school. I’ve written curriculum. I’ve delivered professional development, more than once. Heck, I’ve even won an award. Because of all this, I think it’s fair to say I know as much as anyone about what would need to be considered for schools to open safely during these times. I’m not claiming to present any solutions here, but only sharing my insights with some of the issues I’ve been thinking about.

Full disclosure: I absolutely believe schools should return to distance learning this fall. I’m hoping to live long enough to see at least another Thanksgiving, and another birthday, and not have to worry about who will take care of my dog if I die. I’ve already given my life to education, metaphorically. I’d rather not do it literally as well.

So, breaking the issues into categories, here are some of things that would need to be considered:

School Atmosphere:

As a teacher, my top priority has always been that each student feels safe when they’re in my classroom. Coming back to a school with social distancing mandates where everyone is wearing masks and everything about the familiar routine of the school day has been reimagined will not make them feel safe, even if that’s the intent. It’s going to feel at least slightly dystopian. Even if they have enough time to get used to their new school normal before the first round of distance learning inevitably begins, they’ll never be completely at ease, which will make it harder to learn. They won’t have the chance to be themselves. Plus, since I’m calling this category “atmosphere,” let’s also briefly acknowledge how the current air circulation systems in even the newest school buildings likely aren’t engineered to prevent the spread of a virus we didn’t even know existed a year ago.

Long Term Goals and Standards:

One common refrain these days is how we don’t want the kids to fall behind. My question: Fall behind what? What’s more important here? To preserve the social order of the agrarian calendar education has traditionally followed for over a century, or to keep people alive? 

Grade level standards don’t even align between all of the states. Content isn’t delivered with the same fidelity between districts, or even buildings, or classrooms. All teachers try, but we have different approaches, different strengths, and different weaknesses. Here’s a thought experiment for you: What would happen if all three school options — full open, hybrid open, or distance learning — were all set aside because the pandemic raged undeniably out of control, and every citizen of the United States was completely on board with closing schools for an entire academic year? Would anyone technically be behind anyone else, or would they all still be at the same level as others their age? Would kids learn less if they ultimately graduated at nineteen instead of eighteen for a generation? Wouldn’t such an event be a perfect chance for schools to look at alternative schedules, and even working through the summer as several locations around the country already are? Maybe once we were safely to the other side, all kids would take a placement test to determine which grade they should be in as things start back up. What really could be a better reason to enact such a drastic step then a lethal virus spreading through the population? I’m not advocating this plan, but just pointing out there is no hard deadline on when learning ends, or any one educational model that has to be followed.

Student Behavior:

I work in elementary, but this is true for all K-12 students: They’re kids, and they will not always do what’s expected of them. It’s their nature. They are still learning about the world. They are never as well-behaved as the kids you might see in a back-to-school commercial, trying to get parents to buy new shoes and backpacks with choreographed dances and singing Kidz Bop knock-offs of old Whitesnake songs. How many kindergarteners would wear masks all day long without playing with them, or trading with their friends, or getting frustrated enough to throw them away? How many fifth graders will find creative things to do with their masks to get a laugh? Which students will refuse to wear their mask as a willful act of defiance? I mean, come on. You’ve probably seen some of the videos circulating online of the tantrums adults are throwing if a cashier politely asks them to mask up. Swearing, throwing things, intentionally spitting and coughing on people? Again, these are ADULTS. Now think about the seven-year-old who has yet to learn self-control, or the twelve-year-old carrying so much emotional trauma they don’t have the skills to process how they feel. How will they react when they reach breaking points?

Supporting Student Needs: 

People tend to think of school as primarily what happens in the classroom. We have speech students. We have English Language Learners. We have students receiving reading and math support. We have social workers, psychologists, and clinical therapists. How will all of that be managed? Most, if not all, schools will have students dealing with homelessness, or poverty, or enduring more kinds of abuse and neglect than you care to imagine. There have been several years when I’ve seen kids spending their first day of summer vacation riding their bikes in the school parking lot, because it lets them be near the place they feel safest. I’d argue these are the kids who need to be in school more than anyone else. Right now, a lot of these service providers are lucky to have a semi-private table to use, which they use several times each day, and will have to repeatedly disinfect. How will social distancing work with that?

Socializing: 

One of the most common reasons people say they want kids back in a normal school environment is so they can be with other kids. Yes, this is a powerful reason. The most common thing I heard on video chats with my students in the spring was how they were bored and wanted to see their friends. However, keep in mind: In this vaguely dystopian hybrid education model, even socializing is going to look different. How many kids would be allowed to sit at a cafeteria table? They’d likely all sit on one side, if they went to the cafeteria at all. How many would have “bathroom emergencies” to squeeze in a few minutes of chatting with friends from other classes? (And yeah, of course they’ve learned to coordinate these times.) Soccer, football, tag at recess? I honestly don’t know what recess would even look like. Everyone standing in a marked-off square, six feet on a side? This would be like walking past the windows of the bakery: They could see the donuts through the glass, but wouldn’t even get to smell them. They won’t get to work in small groups or play games with partners, unless they do it online.

Shared Materials:

Textbooks. Paper. Clay. Notebooks. Sticky notes. Meter sticks. Omnifix cubes. Markers. Library books. Gymnastics mats. Crayons. Glue. Lunch trays. Tape. Science trays. Jump ropes. Paint and paint brushes. Calculators. Maps. Chromebooks. Drinking fountains. Hockey sticks. Tissue boxes. Silverware. Notecards. Chairs. Basketballs. Game cards. Puzzles. Bowling pins. Pencil sharpeners. Game pieces. Plastic bins. Terrariums. Containers full of condiment packages. Scissors. Paper towel dispensers. Highlighters. Pencils, for crying out loud. This is a partial list of the things students share daily. You might be thinking, “But what about that list of supplies families buy at the beginning of the year?” 1) Not every family buys everything. 2) Supplies run out, more quickly for some kids than others. 3) Things break and get lost.

A lot of kids learn best and are most engaged when they work with their hands. If there are not necessary materials in the classroom to work with, someone will miss out on a chance to do their best learning, and might feel a little ostracized every time they need to get out their calculator and they’re one of the few who does not have one. There are already a boatload of issues that come with trying to manage common materials without being vigilant about keeping them disinfected. Those issues will inevitably compound each other.

Transportation:

A typical bus holds about seventy kids, if they sit three to a seat. Most bus routes won’t fill a bus to capacity, but will still be over half full. Social distancing? Impossible. For that we’re talking one kid to a seat, with each seat separated by an empty one, in a best case scenario. How many more bus routes will this require? How much longer will some of these bus rides be? How many more buses will be needed, not to mention the drivers needed? And how much fuel? Transportation costs will be five times higher. How could these changes affect the length of the school day? How many times daily will the buses need to be disinfected? Take everything that would make this more difficult, and double it. At least.

Health Services:

I’ve heard some of the more ignorant officials in the federal government say it wouldn’t be such an undertaking to take the temperature of each student as they arrive. Are you kidding me? How many thermometers will be needed to get that done with expediency? Will temperatures be taken more than once a day? Will we need extra nurses or paras fully PPE’d up to float around the building for temperature checks, who would then escort sick kids to the health office so they don’t cough on the several dozen lockers and classroom doors and drinking fountains they’ll pass on the way there? What happens if we find ourselves in the beginning of a spike? The health office in my school has two cots. We can’t always rely on parents being able to pick up their children right away. Also, let’s not forget about all the other normal reasons the health office stays so consistently busy each school day to start with. What happens to the ones with strep throat? Lice? Pink eye?

Sanitation:

First, let’s frame this topic by highlighting how an elementary school is the kind of place where, while infrequent, it’s not completely out of the ordinary for someone to sneak off to the bathroom and take a crap on the floor just because. I’ve seen random pants left in the hallway. I’ve had students leave small plastic containers of ranch dressing in their desks for so long that they grew into something unrecognizable. I’ve had students cough into my mouth at such close range I could taste it. I’ve seen a boy walk past a bank of twenty lockers in an empty hallway, plant his tongue firmly on the first, and lick each one in succession. Schools are big-time disease vectors already. 

Each night my classroom is swept, the wastebasket (which is usually spilling over by the end of the day) is emptied, and the recycling bin is dumped out if it’s more than half full. If I have an extra mess to deal with, I email the building supervisor and tell the night custodian, then cross my fingers he’ll have enough time that night along with everything else he has to do for it to be addressed. Will the plan be to disinfect every surface in the building that could have been touched by someone that day? Will that job become yet another expectation for the teachers? A lot of teachers probably will do extra cleaning on their own out of self-preservation — I know I would. What else would teachers be asked to do to keep their rooms clean, and how much longer will it keep them in the hot zone of their classroom? Or how many extra cleaning staff will need to be hired just for the daily disinfecting alone?

Nutrition:

There are kids who will not have the chance to eat healthy meals if they don’t get them at school. At our school we serve breakfast, we allow for snack time in the schedule, and we serve lunch. Our social worker will provide snacks for students who are unable to bring them from home themselves, and he goes through a LOT. I know our school district has a program in place to make grab and go meals available throughout the summer. Yes, this is a big reason to get the kids back to school, but there’s a reason why so many restaurants are at 25% seating capacity, or closed from indoor dining completely. If we get kids back in the building, how is lunch going to work? In the classroom? Shorter shifts than the already have? A menu with less variety? Something will have to change. 

Drills: 

Each school is required to run a certain number of fire drills / severe weather drills / active shooter lockdown drills during an academic year. How will these work? Everything done normally will take longer. How will that happen with distancing? If the call was made to say it just isn’t practical to run the drills, then why are we doing them in the first place? How do I get my whole class into the safest corner of the room during a lockdown when they have to be spaced? How do we get everyone out of the school as fast as possible when they can’t be near each other?

Lockers: 

They are all right next to each other. In some schools, they’re literally on top of each other. If we opened and managed to stay open into the winter because things were improving so much regarding the pandemic (AH HA HAA AHA), our students are expected to have jackets, snow pants, boots, hats, and gloves to go outside. Lockers are not six feet apart. Where do they keep this stuff? How much learning time is lost at the beginning and the end of the day, not to mention before and after recess, when they have to take turns putting stuff on over three different shifts on the hallway to make sure they’re distant enough from each other?

Substitutes: 

As ambitious as I was during the year I worked as a substitute teacher back in the Jurassic period, even I wouldn’t have taken a day job in a building where there could be a virus that might kill me. A need for subs doesn’t end with teachers, though. Don’t forget the paraprofessionals, cafeteria staff, custodians…the number of people needed to make the system work goes on and on. 

With that being my list, you might have noticed: I didn’t even touch the challenges that would come with the actual teaching and learning in any of these scenarios. It’s easy to break down the available opening options into three general categories, and calling something a hybrid model could literally mean one hundred different things. From my point of view, if all options end up being equally flawed, why not go with the choice that will keep the most people alive?

I’ve bought a school yearbook every year I’ve taught. Occasionally I’ll dig them out and look them over. Most memories are good. Not all, but most. I would never want to see a yearbook for the 20-21 school year including a memorial page that lists the names of the staff and students taken by COVID-19 because we went back too soon or unprepared. I’m afraid that scenario is far too possible. 

May 27: Back to School

Today was the first day I’ve spent working in my classroom since halfway through the week before distance learning began. If we go as far back as the last day I’d spent in there with my students, it’s been approximately as long as a summer break. Today was one of the designated days for us to take care of some year-end wrap-up jobs, like cleaning, removing things from the walls, and taking care of some inventory. It was odd being back.

My fob still worked, so that was something. I walked in the building at about 8:30, and it felt like I was the only person there. The whole place smelled of humidity and floor wax, just like it does every year when we start back in August, after it’s been empty for so long and cleaned so thoroughly. After a few minutes I heard a child’s voice from far down the hallway, probably one of the first responders kids being taken care of during the day. The first person I saw was one of my team members. Even though I’d been on a video chat with her for nearly three hours the day before, it was a little jarring to see her for the first time after so long in real life.

The bells in our school are still scheduled to ring at the same times, whether students are in the schools or not. (Right now I just wondered if they still go off all through the summer.) Bells ringing in an empty building, with not even the voices of my colleagues talking in the halls feels like something out of a Walking Dead TV show or a Fallout video game. All of the student chairs are stacked and pushed to one corner of the room, with the desks grouped anonymously, much like I had left them. The math calendar we updated each day stands paused at March 12, the last day my class and I were all there together, seventy-six days ago, which is almost exactly the length of a typical summer break. The calendar triggers a thought. I look around the room and notice more detail, seeing that everything there is dated in the past, as if time had stopped at the onset of a calamity. Which isn’t far from the truth.

I made mental notes throughout the day about which personal items I’m touching that I’ll be bringing home, and which ones will need to be disinfected upon my return. Stopping every half hour to wash my hands eventually starts to irritate my hands. I feel certain they’ll be scaled and peeling and bleeding tonight. Hypothetically my classroom should be one of the safest places in the entire county, since the only people who have been in it during the past two months have been the ones coming in to clean and disinfect it. All the same, I remain cautious, perhaps too cautious, but unapologetically so. We keep hearing how the virus is primarily transmitted from person to person, with different theories about how long it could survive on different surfaces. I don’t want to be the person who leads to the discovery that the coronavirus is able to exist for thirteen weeks on whatever kind of metal pencil sharpeners are made of, so I’m trying hard not to take any chances. 

Luckily I don’t have much work to do. Because of the humidity, the blue painter’s tape I used to mount the posters to the wall surrenders its hold almost willingly. When I pull down a list of vocabulary words meant to prepare the kids for state testing, it gives me pause. With everything up in the air about how school will start in August and September, I realize I haven’t thought much about October, November, December, and so on. State testing was bagged almost as soon as distance learning began this year. I wonder how altered from the norm the next school year would have to be for that call to be made again. I smile a tiny bit, trying to imagine how panicked all the educational data jockeys of the world would be if that were to happen. 

I’m seeing constant traces of things that don’t just remind me of the people in my class, but of who they were as a class and all the things I really miss about them. I randomly think of one kid who had a day back in the winter when he wore five pairs of pants and nine shirts all layered, just to get a little extra attention. He would not enjoy the humidity filling the room that day, but that particular self-appointed class clown he would still dress that way, and pretend it didn’t bother him.

I finish everything I need to in just a few hours. That’s still less than what I normally would want to do. That’s a little difficult to reconcile, but, not knowing what the fall is going to look like, there doesn’t seem to be much point to doing everything I normally would. The idea of being able to begin a school year with a clean slate might elude me for a few years.

There’s really no emotion involved in picking up the things I decided to bring home and walking out to the parking lot. I can only hope there will be more closure to this weird and stupid year when the staff comes back in the final days to wrap it all up, and I get quick glimpses of my students when they drop off their books and computers, and I get one last chance to spend distanced time with my friends before we all retreat to our own versions of self-protection for the summer. There definitely won’t be any goodbye hugs being exchanged this year, which is too bad. Because I wouldn’t mind a few.

May 5: The Dying of the iPod and the Fear of What Follows

The first record I ever bought was a TV offer double album of the Monkees greatest hits. My sisters and I watched the show every day after school, and I had cleared just enough with my first communion money to order it. I loved it, even after leaving one record on the turntable during the wrong part of the afternoon and warping it in the sun.

I bought my first cassette in high school. I don't remember what it was, but I'm sure I bought it after I had started driving. There must have been a point when the practicality of it made sense: Why buy the record when all I was going to do was put it on a blank tape to listen to in the car? 

I bought my first compact disc during my freshman year of college. My roommate Steve had a CD player, and I lived with him for two years. We mostly liked the same music so it made sense, especially since I knew CDs were the next step of music technology, and I would eventually have my own CD player. 

Compact discs probably had a longer staying power in my timeline than records and tapes. It would have been somewhere in the early 2000s when I took the plunge into digital music, iPods, and the iTunes store. I’ve never taken any illegal drugs and I’ve never been drunk, which is good because I’m convinced the iTunes store revealed that I have an addictive personality. I wouldn't try to estimate how much money I've spent on downloads since it wouldn’t do anything but depress me. I had to continually update my iPod every few years because my music library kept outgrowing my iPod storage capacity. 

Then iPods changed. They became more about apps than songs. I couldn’t understand this, because why would you want to use up precious storage space with apps that you ultimately wouldn’t use as much? It didn’t matter though, because I had my standard iPod, one with far more storage capacity than the first five computers I owned combined. I was covered. 

Then Apple stopped making iPods, and repairing them was no longer an option. To quote Neil Peart, I felt a shadow cross my heart. I ran to Best Buy that day and bought a brand new iPod Nano, much smaller than the one I had but at least a decent backup for emergencies. I took care of my main iPod like a Faberge egg, really only moving it between my bedroom and living room, so it was doing well. 

Then Apple killed the iTunes store. The Apple Music streaming service became their music flagship and there wasn’t much reason to keep it around. This is the reason I won’t update the operating system on my laptop, since the system I have now is the last one that allows access to the leftover ghost of what the iTunes store has become. I want to hang on to that as long as I possibly can. 

That old main Classic iPod has been showing its age lately. Even though it sits in charging ports almost constantly, I can see the battery indicator quickly fall off if I leave it sitting unplugged for more than a few minutes. Sometimes it will randomly stop playing, or suddenly power down and restart itself for no reason. I have to believe it’s on its last legs, and sometime soon the day will come when it powers off for no reason and simply won’t boot up again. 

My music files are backed up on a laptop and on two separate external drives. I have two iPod Nanos that could get me by. The problem is my home speaker and my alarm clock, which both have ports for much older iPods. Once the big one goes, I’ll be facing a forced systematic upgrade. New bluetooth technology, finally deciding on a streaming service, all the other things that come with that paradigm shift I’ve resisted for so long, since I still love what I have now. I’m feeling like that weird uncle or older cousin everyone in my generation had who refused to give up his 8-track tapes. 

I almost feel like I should start to switch over pre-emptively, so when the iPod finally ends its long term of service, I won’t be left without access to the music I need so badly. 

The problem is, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Pandemic Narrative, Part 1

I’m writing this in the minutes following the government declaring a national emergency in regards to the spread of COVID-19. So far this event has progressed at such a frightening rate, it occurred to me today that it might be a good idea to document the things that are happening to keep track of the pace. Of course, since this is my blog, much of what I write about here will be filtered through my own point of view. Not all of us will have the same experience as all of this rolls out. All I can offer is my own perspective.

Since I’ve done a lot of Lists of 10 here on the blog before, I think that might be a good format to follow for this as well — 10 points of what is either happening in the world in the moment or what I’m doing in my best efforts to cope and survive. 

So, here are 10 observations or comments, in no particular order: 

*To start off…I’ve been walking the face of this godforsaken planet for a wee bit longer than half a century now, and I’ve never seen anything like what is going on with this pandemic, and the worst part of it all is how it’s only getting started here. No wait, the worst thing might be that all the toilet paper and hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes are sold out across the land. (I’m starting to think toilet paper might become currency when the virus apocalypse really kicks in.) No, hold on: The worst part of it is how our government is being operated by an incompetent collection of clown-shoes-wearing bumbles when we need experts in charge more than ever.

*A few weeks ago, I had won a pair of VIP tickets to see the Lumineers at Xcel Energy Center. I was excited because I really like the band, and have yet to take in a VIP experience of any sort. I even worked on growing out my beard for a few weeks, so it would be scraggly enough to have proof I was the fan of a band who played the kind of music Mumford and Sons would have if they’d grown up on the western plains or the Rocky Mountains instead of the UK. I’d hoped the virus spread would be slower and it would make sense to take the chance at going, but it didn’t work out. I was ready to give up my tickets right when I found out the concert had been postponed until September. Yay! Now I just need to stay alive until September. And I can get rid of the beard, which frankly is probably a trap for virus-tainted droplets anyway.

*On the subject of getting rid of the beard: The whole idea of not touching my face, which is proving a challenge, makes the simple act of washing my face feel like a spa day. Not that I know much about what a spa day would feel like, because what am I, Ryan Gosling? But face washing has never felt as luxurious as it does when you’re trying so hard not to touch it during the rest of the day.

*I started spring break today, officially. I have a doctor’s appointment this week — which was set pre-pandemic — and other than that I have no legitimate reason to leave my home. I mean, I’ll go outside to walk the dog and get the mail, but to go to a movie or a store, or meet someone for lunch? I may not go anywhere until I have to return to school at the end of break. Unless….

*Yesterday, Gov. Tim Walz declared a statewide peacetime emergency. He did not, however, close the schools. About ten states have, but we aren’t one of them…yet. It’s my hope that by the time my spring break ends, he’ll wise up and rectify this. You see, I know what it’s like in a school. It isn’t, “Oh, it’s just a bunch of kids and they aren’t the ones getting sick.” It’s the parents who come through. It’s ALL OF THE ADULTS who work there, many of whom travel from building to building, sometimes during the same day. And as for those kids, even if they aren’t typically getting sick, they’re very effective carriers. Generally, I like to think my immune system is pretty robust; for example, I’ve only had about one week worth of colds in the past two and a half years. But this new virus is a big unknown, and I’d rather not try taking it on. As strong as my immune system might be, I spend my day with coughers and wipers and scratchers and pickers. I’ve been coughed on in such close proximity I’ve been able to taste them. I know how bad the disease vector of the public school is first hand, so I know how much potential difference it could make to get it off the game board for a few weeks. Because social distancing? In a classroom? No. It’s not possible. 

*There is more food in my house right now than there probably ever has been during my entire adult life. I usually shop a week at a time, which can leave my kitchen not unlike Tyler Durden’s by the end of the week. I am fully stocked now though, and I plan to ration. Not down to anything ridiculous like three Cheez-Its per hour, but a whole lot less snacking and a whole lot more of respecting serving sizes. I could even wind up dropping some weight because of this, which would give me a nice self-esteem boost to enjoy for the three weeks I’d have until the virus kills me off. Until then, I’m fully prepared to settle in and let my introverted superpowers carry me through as far as they can. 

*I’m filling time by watching TV, which is becoming a trigger. I often have news on as background noise, but there’s nothing about that right now that isn’t scary. Even normal TV is scary though, when you see people touch their faces, or shake hands, or hug, or high five, or fist bump, or sneeze, or cough, or wipe their nose, or not wash their hands long enough…I’m sure you get the picture. I also plan on reading a lot, which will be easy since I have a formidable To Be Read pile. This is a part of it (full-disclosure: I’ve already read about 25% of these, but just don’t have anywhere else to keep them).

*I’m also going to use the time to get some writing done. I’ve got one book I’m starting and another I’m preparing to revise. I have to say some state-mandated weeks off from school would help quite a bit with getting things done for the other job.

*I’m honestly torn between wanting to keep myself as hyper-informed about what’s happening as I can so I know what we’re all up against, and wanting to just watch The Office and rock out to old Styx albums to pretend the world is still a normal place. It makes me wonder what it will be like afterward, however long it takes us to achieve afterward, when we’ll be able to put all of our previous concerns into a new perspective. 

*Today I plan on dusting off the Xbox and starting an open world game I’ve never played before but have had lying around for the longest time. An open world game is one where you just kind of wander around through the expansive setting of the game, interacting with different characters, completing missions and quests, and just living your game life. 

I’m pretty sure there won’t be any scary viruses in there.

An Open Letter to Nephew #3

Dear Nephew #3:

I’ve written one of these for each of your brothers. As I looked back at what I shared with them, I found a lot of general going-to-college advice that would apply to you as well, so I’m recycling the ideas that seem the most useful. However, we all know that as similar as you are to your brothers, there are also things that make you very much an individual. Your experience will not be theirs. So here is my abundant wisdom, tailor-made for you, from which I am certain you’ll benefit if you take it to heart. You’re very welcome.

*The first 48 hours I spent on campus were some of the most intimidating of my entire life. Things will likely feel very foreign at first. I promise it won’t last. If I was given the chance to revisit any period in my life, I’d go back to any random month I spent in college. The learning, the newfound independence, the constant discovery, the emerging self-definition, the failures and successes, the hundreds of casual friendships, the evolving relationships — both long-term and temporary; it’s an exhilarating time. I’m a tiny bit jealous that you’re about to be immersed in all of that. 

*The blank slate is a beautiful thing. You'll settle in, meet new people, and spend the first few weeks being whoever you want to be. No history, no baggage, no labels; everything completely neutral and waiting for definition. You'll live in glorious, intoxicating anonymity for awhile, and even after you establish your new circles of friends and acquaintances, that's how things will be most of the time. Enjoy it.

* Many people go to college because it seems like the next step they’re supposed to take in life. The truth is college isn’t for everyone, and by no means does it guarantee happiness and success. Happiness comes from getting to do what you want with your life, and hopefully with enough security to avoid any severe and constant worries. Having a degree will result in more choices and opportunities being available to you. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to occasionally reflect on why you’re in school and what you hope to get out of it. Having said all that, I have no doubt that you belong there. You will love the experience of it and will greatly benefit from everything it has to offer.

*Some of the best memories I have from college were the results of the chances I took, while all of my biggest regrets were from the ones I didn’t. Try to imagine how different high school would have been if you weren’t involved in your list of arts and activities. I’m not saying join every club or try out for every activity you hear about, but be open to possibilities. Don’t let hesitation ever choose your path.

*When you throw yourself into doing your best and things don't work out, let that be okay. You'll make mistakes, or things will take a wrong turn of their own accord, or even a combination of the two might happen. Just pick up the pieces and move on. Don’t make it bigger than it needs to be, and learn what you can from the experience. In the end, remember your GPA will only wind up being one line on your resumé. It's important, but it shouldn’t define you. Today’s trials are tomorrow’s footnotes. 

*The time might come when you’re tempted to blow off some of the classes that seem easier. Don’t give in. The grades you get in that first year carry a lot of weight when it comes to establishing a baseline GPA. Trust me, you don’t want to find yourself hundredths of a point away from graduating one level of honor higher than you will, especially if it means knowing it would have made all the difference if you’d just gotten a B instead of a C in that one freshman class where you spent half your time playing with the light reflecting from your watch onto the ceiling instead of paying attention. That kind of thing can stick with you.

*Set goals to work toward. Plan for ways to work around any patterns that become obstacles, and take advantage of the ones that work. Find a routine to get your class work done, and seriously, get your class work done. It won’t be just completing assignments; your goal isn’t the grade anymore, but the knowledge. You have a SWEET work study gig; use that as an opportunity to learn how to prioritize and manage your time.

*Give everyone you meet a chance to show you the best version of themselves.

*College is a great time to get the stupid out of your system before you have to officially join the real world as a full-fledged adult, but you will still be held accountable for your decisions and actions. You’ll hear people frequently using excuses like “Dude, I was so wasted,” or “Oh crap, I totally forgot” as reasons for not getting things done or making complete asses of themselves. But: Teachers won’t care. Employers won’t care. Police won’t care. (Not that I expect you to have any run-ins with the police, but still.) People will see your actions as a result of the decisions you make, and they will take that as a representation of who you are. 

*NEVER walk into a dorm bathroom with bare feet. Never, ever. There’s more awful going on in there than even the CDC could categorize.

*You’re 18 so you could probably nutritionally absorb cardboard without experiencing so much as a stomachache, but there’s going to be an extraordinary amount of pizza in your future. Walking all over a huge campus will help you maintain a respectable step count, and having a bike on campus won’t hurt either. College is a good time to begin establishing good habits. Maintaining even minimal exercise routines will make a big difference in how you feel, both physically and mentally.

*When you feel insecure about things, remember that everyone around you will be insecure as well. Everyone is just trying to get by. Everyone is looking to define themselves and figure things out, even the people who either seem like or act like they’ve already figured it all out. They really haven’t.

*The teacher in me has to get this out: In high school it was the job of your teachers to teach you. In college it will be your job to learn. If you don’t find a way to do the learning, you can’t blame anyone else for it, and it’s not always going to be a ride around the lake. Professors won’t care about which clubs people were or were not in, who took advanced placement or had IEPs, who had a letter jacket and who didn’t. To some of them you’ll be nothing more than a face in the crowd, a name on an assignment, or most likely a number on a list. Some will recognize and appreciate what you have to offer, but be ready for that to be the exception. It’s just the way the machine works, especially in the early years.

*You’re going to be surrounded by a lot of people who have awful taste in music, and yet they’ll feel as passionate about their music as you do about yours. Resist the urge to point out how misguided they are. You’ll only come off like a fifth grade boy dramatically covering his ears and complaining about how much BTS sucks. 

*It’s always good to try and get along with your roommate as much as you can. Not all pairings turn out great, but most are at least workable. Agreeing on some ground rules can help. My roommate in the dorms was different from me in a lot of ways, but we lived together well because understood each other. 

*If you have a professor tell you there are multiple forms of a test and you’re using a bubble sheet to mark your answers, pay very close attention to which form you have and where you should hand in your answer sheet. That way you can avoid studying really hard the night before and scoring an 11 out of 50 because you put your answer sheet in the wrong *&%@! pile, and then you won’t have to miss attending Game 7 of the 1987 World Series because you can’t afford to have another failing grade on one of the only three tests given during the term.

*Respect the people, and especially the women, around you. Luckily you and your brothers all have strong relationships with your mother, so that’s going to give you a head start. Demonstrate that respect in ways that will help you earn it from others. At the same time, remember that you can’t control how other people think and feel and act, and that no one has the right or the power to marginalize you.

*The people you'll know and the friends you'll make will come from three groups: The ones you live with, the ones you learn with, and everyone else. How big Everyone Else is completely depends on how involved you decide to be in campus life beyond your dorm room. I cannot emphasize this next part enough: These coming years will be the very last time in your whole life when you will be almost exclusively surrounded by people your age. Take advantage of that. One of my clearest college memories was a day I was cutting through the student union and I saw a girl I knew from a class sitting with a cup of coffee and studying. I stopped to say hi and we talked for a few minutes. The reason I still remember this is because it was a such a perfectly representative moment of what so many days of campus life were like. Soak up and enjoy all the minuscule details that make up college, whatever that ends up meaning for you. I’m not saying to forcibly embed yourself into every aspect of the campus community, but dip your toes into something new once in awhile.

*Text your mom sometimes, just because she’ll miss you.

*Take advantage of this time to discover who you are and to prepare for the life you want to have. Learn to recognize the importance of small events as well as the big ones. Pause and occasionally allow yourself half a thought to appreciate what’s happening to you in the moment, because, believe it or not, these next few years will absolutely fly by.

*Remember there are all kinds of us who want to see you succeed and are cheering you on. Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you ever feel it’s becoming too much. We’ve always had your back, and we always will.