Ten Things About My Father

It's Father's Day tomorrow, the day I imagine is known as "Christmas in June" within the necktie and after shave industries. For today's post I'm going to tell you ten things you may not know about my father. He can be a quiet sort, but he's been around long enough to become a fairly interesting person:

1. He plays the banjo. In my childhood home there was a chair in the living room that always had a music stand and a banjo beside it. As dramatic as my sisters and I (with an emphasis on the "I" part) were about expressing our distaste for banjo music and how loud it was, he was undeterred and played on for the joy of it. He let it go for awhile, but in recent years has returned to it and taken lessons. And once again, there's a banjo parked beside his favorite chair in his living room. Not two months ago he asked me to change the settings on his phone so he could use the new "Dueling Banjos" ringtone he had found.

2. He's very community oriented. He's been a member of the church choir in at least three churches. He was involved in my Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops, and even led his own troop after I had decided I was far too cool to be involved in Scouts anymore. He's coached soccer teams, even if his knowledge of the game was limited to what he picked up from the sidelines while watching my sister and I play on our summer league teams. When he opened his drugstore, he was a catalyst behind a local business association starting up in downtown Elk River. He's been an active member in the Lion's Club for a long time now, and I mean active: After heavy involvement in his local club, he worked his way up to becoming a district governor, which is very much of a big shot thing in the Lions world. I know of people who have dropped his name with members of the Lions Club and got quite a reaction.

3. He's extremely proud of his Irish heritage, and has traveled to visit Ireland...three times, now?

4. Even though he went on to become an incredibly knowledgeable pharmacist, he almost didn't go to college. The only reason he took his college entrance exam in high school was to ditch a class.

5. He's a car guy. If he's out driving and spots a car that could, in any way, be described as a classic, he'll simply announce the make, model, and year of it as if it's a casual observation, while I'd need ten minutes of Googling to even make a best guess.

6. He's a big reader. Our house had so many crime and spy paperback novels, my sisters and I just referred to them as "Dad books."

7. He's always been a Do It Yourself kind of guy. He completely finished the basement of my childhood home and landscaped the entire yard, with little outside help other than things he read in different books and a minimal amount of physical labor from a young teenage son who could not stop complaining about how heavy each wheelbarrow full of landscaping rock was.

8. He loves musicals. His record collection had a good number of Broadway cast recordings to plays I had never heard of.

9. He has certain comedy triggers that will leave him laughing uncontrollably until he's red in the face.

10. Back before he retired and still had his drugstore, WCCO-TV did a human interest story about him: He saw too much of a conflict between being a pharmacist who tried to help people preserve their health, and being a retail businessman who sold all variety of cigarettes and related products, so he stopped selling tobacco. (This was all back in the 1990s, about two decades before national drugstore chains did the same thing and made national headlines for it.) He explained his reasons to the news crew as they showed footage of him standing at the front cash register in his pharmacy jacket, talking to a customer who was expressing her appreciation for what he was doing. The story wrapped up and cut back to the anchors all sitting at their desk, and Don Shelby, one of the most popular and respected newsmen in Twin Cities media, turned to his co-anchor and said, "Now, that is a man of character."

Happy Father's Day, Dad!!

Constructive Summer

Several years ago, a group of teachers from my school were having a get-together at someone's house to celebrate the last day of school. While we were there, the conversation steered toward what each person was planning on doing that summer. One woman said, "I'm going to find the recipe for the perfect strawberry Margarita."

All kinds of chuckles followed, but I think she meant it. And that's part of the beauty of summer vacation as a teacher -- there literally is enough time to take on some project exactly like that, whether it's just for fun or something more substantial. I don't know if she ever found her perfect mix, but if she did, she had only invested one summer worth of time into the quest, and had something to carry with her afterward forever and ever.

I know a lot of teachers who will take on less than mentally taxing summer work just to stay busy and make a little money. I know one guy who works at a golf course in the summer just so he can play for free. I know people who make big projects of home improvements, working out, family trips or activities -- any number of things. I even know a few who teacher summer school (I'm sorry, but -- BLEAH). Having this much time off during the best weather of the year almost makes up for the fact that we only get paid for three-fourths of the year (try to keep that little fact in mind the next time you make a comment to a teacher about how nice it is to have summers off).

Now as for me, of course the writing starts, in earnest, tomorrow morning. It absolutely is hard work, but I'm very much looking forward to it. Summer writing has a more serious feel to it now compared to ten or fifteen years ago when it was just a hobby. But as I'm getting ready to tear into a new project, I'm reminding myself to keep some balance between the work and the fun, and to make sure that even though I WANT to devote a lot of time to the writing work this summer, I have to push outside of the classic introvert comfort zone a few times and see what else is going on in the world. That's where a lot of the stories come from, after all.

Now that Summer Vacation 2015 has officially started, I plan on spending tonight pretty much sitting on the couch with a book in one hand, the iPad in the other, and a movie on the TV in front of me. Tomorrow morning the revisions and the writing begins. After that, it's just a matter of taking whatever highs and lows the coming eight-one days will bring and making the best of it.

Now let's get out there and have some fun!!

The Complete Listing of 3rd Grade Zen

After a over two years of posting Moments of Zen on Facebook, I thought it might be a good idea to look up the word, read the definition and discover if I’ve been using it correctly. Part of the description in my dictionary app read, “The aim of Zen is to achieve sudden enlightenment... often using paradoxical statements to transcend rational thought.” I admit, I kind of cherry-picked my favorite parts, but you probably get the idea. Achieving sudden enlightenment through paradoxes and transcending rational thought would not necessarily be an inaccurate way to describe spending the day with 3rd graders. Here is the complete listing of all of the Zen moments experienced during this school year. (I’m hedging my bets some by publishing this list now since our last day of school is still two days away. But since the last two days of the year are usually more exhausting than amusing, I think I’m safe. Plus, I can always come back and edit later if I need to.)

**********

*During our bus safety lesson we discussed why bus windows should not be opened all the way. One student's response (only slightly paraphrased): "Well, because, it isn't likely but it could happen, but there are like some insects like bees or something, and they could fly in through the window and get on the bus, and then there are some people who are allergic to some insects, and that would be dangerous if they were bit, or stung if it was a bee, and if the window isn't open all the way it would be harder for bees to get on the bus. It isn't impossible."

*One tiny little girl raised her hand and told me, with a noticeable tremor of distress in her voice, how her water bottle had leaked and there was a huge puddle on the floor beside her desk. Four other students hopped into action before I could even respond, collecting handfuls of paper towels from the sink dispenser and mopping up the spill for her.

*It seems there's an unspoken rule saying all staples found on the floor should be presented to the teacher for immediate disposal, and need to be handled with a level of care usually reserved for dangerous explosives or Faberge eggs.

*After I finished reviewing directions for a group activity, I asked if there were any questions. One girl raised her hand. "It's not really a question," she said. "It's more of a comment." That's fine, I said, and asked what her comment was. She pointed past me toward the courtyard. "There's a grasshopper on that window right there," she said. "And it's really distracting me."

*During math one little guy was having trouble trying to work out the number of feet in a yard. "I can't answer this," he said. "I don't know how many people are playing in the yard, so I can't figure out how many feet there would be." (This one is my personal favorite.)

*Me having to actually say, "Okay, yes, all boys, girls, pumpkins, AND robots need to get out their math journals now." And that it worked.

*You really don't want to know. (I can probably tell you this now: One boy came up to my desk with a question. This was after recess, after lunch, and about five minutes after our bathroom break. I was fairly certain he hadn’t washed his hands in at least twenty-four hours. While asking his question, for reasons unknown, he decided to plant his hand right on the open nozzle of the water bottle sitting on my desk. I spent ten minutes scrubbing it at home that night.)

*Every Monday morning we take a few minutes to talk about our weekends. Today one girl shared this highlight: "I saw underwear in the street today. It was Spider-Man. Our bus ran over it."

*I forgot to give this to you this morning," a boy said, handing me an envelope with lunch money. "That's fine," I tell him. "We're going to lunch soon. Just put it in your pocket and bring it with." He walks away but comes back moments later with the envelope hanging out of his pocket. "It doesn't fit," he said. I take it from him, fold it in half once and hand it back. It now fits perfectly. "Oh, wow!" he says, the expression on his face reflecting his complete surprise at what just occurred.

*A girl with a concerned look tells me another student had just said the "K" word. I still have no idea what that would be.

*We were playing a new math game, and one boy was stuck in a long losing streak. When he finally won a round, his excitement was so complete he spontaneously broke into jumping jacks.

*I'm catching up on some grading today. We gave the students the writing prompt, "What new things did you learn during our field trip to the planetarium?" One girl's response: "That I had Chuck E. Cheese tickets in my coat pocket." Hold on, it gets better. A different girl: "I liked when they talked about Mars because my favorite singer is Bruno Mars."

*My students have started stacking the chairs at the end of the day to create a throne. This way one person can feel like they reign over the classroom, and everyone who didn't get the throne has one more thing to argue about before we walk down to the bus lines.

*During the chaos of dismissal, my teaching partner walks into the room holding a boot she found in the hall, then calls out to see who lost it. One boy waves to her and says, "It's mine!" She looks at him and smiles gently. "But you're wearing your boots right now," she replies. He looks at his feet to confirm this, then looks back up, smiles sheepishly and says, "Oh. Yeah."

*We didn't have much time to put materials away at the end of math. I told the class, "If you can get everything back where it belongs in under a minute, everyone gets three invisible Gummi Bears.” It worked.

*"I've always got a party in my head, and sometimes I just have to dance!"

*"I'm not crying. It's just that sometimes water comes out of my eyes."

*One of my girls walked in this morning wearing a shirt that showed a french bulldog with a yellow ribbon on it's head blowing an enormous pink glittery bubble, along with a ruffly black skirt over donut-patterned leggings and brown boots that nearly reached her knees. The expression on her face told the world she KNEW she looked good.

*The math assignment was to fold a strip of paper into 6 equal parts. One boy proudly showed me his work, but when we checked it we counted 8. I told him to think about what he could do differently to make it into only 6. He came back a minute later, having torn away 2 of the original 8 sections instead of doing any refolding. I started laughing and said, "This is easily the most creative solution I've seen all day."

*“Anything in your desk can be a toy if you just decide to play with it."

*One boy walks into the room in the morning and notices several people are dressed up. "What's going on with all the fancy?" he asks. "Today's picture day," I explained. "They want to look nice." He looks at me, completely baffled. "I thought that was two days ago." "You were here two days ago," I reminded him. "Did anyone take your picture?" "No, that's my point," he says, then pauses to think and says, "Wait a second...." then wanders away to think some more.

*A boy spends three minutes sharpening his pencil and grinds half of it down to nothing. He finally takes it out, shrugs, and says, "I'll just use my other pencil."

*While in the computer lab practicing how to use some online tools, one girl brought up the notepad and typed "I love pancakes" twelve times.

*This breakfast conversation: "Chewing with your mouth closed is just polite." "Yeah, but I'm not that polite."

*One of my girls raises her hand so I walk over. Her nostril is leaking bright red, and she has enough sticky crimson wipe marks on her two hands to pass for a minor character in a horror movie. She looks up at me and asks, completely straight-faced, "Am I bleeding?"

*We watched a video on how mummies were made. One boy says, "I wish I had one of those. Mummies are so cool." "You caught the part where there's a dead body inside of it, right?" I asked. The kid thinks a moment and says, "Never mind then."

*We were learning about things invented in Ancient China. For one activity, the kids had to choose an invention and list positive and negative things about it. One boy chose paper. One of his negatives: "Paper cuts hurt."

*We all my white board would be covered with birthday greetings for me today. My favorite was the kid who wrote "I love pizza."

*A girl walks up to me first thing in the morning and says, "I'm going to bounce myself like a ball." She then puts a hand on top of her head and begins jumping around the room as if she's a basketball being dribbled.

*We finished discussing Ancient China in social studies not long ago. During a small group activity, one little girl was talking and laughing and generally making a lot of noise. The little girl next to her looked across the table at me and motioned with her arms at the space between the two of them, saying, "We need another Great Wall right here."

*More small group action. One boy spends the first five minutes making a series of odd noises. I finally look at him and ask, "Are you a cartoon?" He thinks for a moment and responds, "Probably."

**********

Happy summer, everyone! Let’s hope the next three months are filled with happy times.