PATHETIC CHALLENGE

Yes, I look pathetic, but, trust me, I'm not.

My birthday is the Fourth of July. Growing up I always shared my birthday with barbecues and with my dad, whose birthday was the following day. No, I never thought the fireworks were for me. As a matter of fact, I love fireworks ... from a very long distance. Sparklers are a firm YES, but anything that goes BOOM is a no-no. 

Ironic, I know. Still not pathetic, though.

I fully expect that my family and friends will do something fun over the long weekend, especially since the holiday officially falls on a Saturday. They are all very thoughtful -- trying to change plans, alter routes, or invite me along to family gatherings. I'm not trying to be a martyr. Honestly, I grew up understanding that my birthday is also the biggest and most glorious of summer holidays (and sharing with my dad, as I said), so I feel guilty when people just hang around with me at the price of missing THE summer event. 

Go do your thing. For real. I might walk the zoo. I might take a drive. I might go out to eat. I might read a book. I might watch a movie. I will definitely watch fireworks on TV (maybe Boston, but probably the ones over the Hudson).

This solitary behavior might look pathetic, but it's not. Trust me. I'll be ready to party on Sunday, on the 5th. Part of it is learned behavior, and some of it is that I truly don't care for crowds. Going anywhere on July Fourth? Crowds. People ... everywhere.

I'm in the store the other day, buying groceries for a visit from one of my siblings and thinking ahead for the Fourth. The store is also not one of my favorite places because, well, people. On my list are several things, but the last item is small bouquet of flowers. Nope, it's not because I have any great need for flowers; I am too lazy to climb above the refrigerator to put a crystal vase into the cabinet, so I'll fill it with flowers.

To my surprise, all of the colorful bouquets, even small ones, are $12 and higher. I want to stay under $10. I mean, this is just a bouquet of grocery store flowers to fill a vase I am way too work-averse to put where it belongs. I spot the red and white roses. A dozen. Oh, those sure are pretty and would go well with the July Fourth holiday, but I sure don't want to spend the ... Wait a second. These roses are only $9.99. Yes! Exactly what I want to spend.

At the register, there is a casual question about the flowers. For anything special? Yes, for my birthday, I say. Before I realize I've said it, the cashier wishes me a happy birthday. The woman behind me wishes me a happy birthday. I take my few groceries and the flowers, push my cart forward, and then the bagger wishes me happy birthday. 

As I roll my carriage toward my car, I wonder how pathetic I sound and look buying myself flowers, and birthday flowers, at that. It wasn't my intention, but, now that the petal is planted, I'm kind of digging the whole idea. Might even make it a tradition -- a ten-dollar tradition. 

Pathetic Challenge accepted!

ON THE FIRST DAY OF FREEDOM ...

On the First Day of Freedom

The roofers said to me:

Wake up and check out

Our booty!

I am so tired from finishing up the last few days of school that I am dead asleep by 8:45 p.m. Yes, I realize that I can sleep until whenever I want the next morning and that I may end up wide awake at 3:00 a.m., but I am just so damn exhausted. I finally decide that falling asleep on the couch and at the kitchen table and across the counter and waiting for the shower to warm up are all really bad ideas, so, I join the elderly and go to bed right after the sun does.

To my utter surprise, I only wake a couple of times and end up sleeping eleven hours. That's true -- I wake up all snuggled in my bed with the sun and some shadows dancing in my room through the open window.

Wait. Dancing shadows? Oh, I've woken up, all right, but apparently I am NOT alone.

Today is the day workers will be replacing the roof on my apartment building. I awaken to voices and people -- men -- in my windows, and by IN my open windows, I mean that the ladders and scaffolding are set up against my window sills and screens, and there is at least one giant male spread-eagle against my living room's bay window.

Thankfully, I have a weird fear of people in the parking lot being able to see into my bedroom, so the window that actually faces my bed always has the blinds drawn at night. But, the window next to it ...

I mentally pat myself on the back for wearing yoga pants and an old cut-up t-shirt as pajamas. My hair is falling out of its ponytail, and my eyes are only half-open. However, I appear coherent and decent enough that perhaps this is my "I've been up for hours having breakfast" look and not my "It's asinine-o'clock a.m. and you just scared the shit out of me" look.

I check my email to discover that this job is supposed to take twelve hours today and possibly more tomorrow. Now that the workers are all in place in the windows and on the roof, the banging starts as they rip off the old shingles and start doing whatever it is that they are doing with the nail guns.

So, I do what any sane person would do on the First Day of Freedom from Work: I text my sister two states away and inform her that she will be having unexpected company in less than two hours. Oh, sure. I could go to a mall, a library, for a walk or three, or do any other number of silly, time-wasting things. Heck, I could go spend the day at work and pretend I hadn't already shut the entire room up for the summer. But, I know my sister will think this is as frustrating and funny as do I, so I head north for some card games and fun.

By the time I get home, the workers have packed up, and it appears as if this part of the massive roof has been completed. If they do come back the next day, I'll be ready. I have to be up early for an eye exam and a hair appointment, anyway, so there will be no more strange men spread-eagle in my windows, or, if there are, I won't be at all shocked nor surprised. Maybe a little disappointed, though. Now that I'm prepped, I kind of hoped that I might scare the crap out of them, instead. Probably better that I don't. If one loses his balance from fright and lands on my car, I'll be stuck here all day, and that simply won't do for Day Two of Freedom.

(Obligatory picture of Helen -- It's not a true Maine trip without one.)

WILDEBEEST WONDERS

 Our school year doesn't end until this coming Wednesday. As one of the final projects, the students must put together a visual totem pole on paper. The object is to choose animals based on a chart of traditionally associated attributes and characteristics, or to choose animals to which they gravitate or that gravitate toward them. (Don't panic -- We aren't appropriating; this activity goes with the novel we read in class.)

This seems simple. At first.

I use examples based on several animals that I randomly choose from the chart and show students how to create the visual product. We focus on personality traits, such as being clever or helpful or funny or wise. 

Then, we veer away from personal human characteristics and start talking mystically. 

I tell them that I like to see the big cats at the zoo: jaguars, panthers, leopards, bobcats, tigers, lions. I like watching the way they move and the look of constant disdain in their eyes, while their faces seem as if they want to be petted. Yes, I like the big cats and even those pesky housecats, though most housecats seem to find me far less interesting.

I tell them about the girl I know who attracts dragonflies. Seriously, all she has to do is hold out her hands, and dragonflies flock out of thin air and land all over her like she is some kind of dragonfly royalty.

Several students nod with understanding. Then, it starts to get weird.

Are there animals which, for absolutely zero reason that makes any sense to the universe, they are drawn to and seem fascinated by? Recur in dreams? Seem to always catch their eye in books or movies or just out in the world?

Like a Spirit Animal of some kind.

Apparently, my Spirit Animal is the Wildebeest. Formerly known as a Gnu, this animal is mostly unremarkable, travels in packs, and is relatively butt-ugly. Wildebeests are preyed on by other animals, and they hide in plain sight around zebras and giraffes so the bully animals (lions and hyenas) might not notice their existence and pick them off the menu for dinner. 

I have no reason to be fascinated by them. They've never saved my life, appeared in my dreams, nor have I ever owned a stuffed Wildebeest.

As I advise my students, I decide to look up any totem-related traits of the Wildebeest: Strength; Teamwork; Strong resilience; Ability to endure tough conditions; Adaptable; Good at surviving changes; Persistence to overcome obstacles; Trust instincts to know when to move or retreat; Observe the world keenly through all senses.

I can live with those traits. Maybe the Wildebeest really is my spirit animal. But, don't tell my students, at least not until school ends on Wednesday. I don't want next fall's crop getting any ideas that might engage my Wildebeest characteristics. 

Perhaps for my own self-preservation, I will teach this lesson in the fall. Maybe then I'll know what I'm dealing with instead of being surprised by student behavior as the year progresses. After all, I might be good at adapting to changes, but I also know when to flee.

RETAIL IS DEAD

Retail is dying. As former retail management, I've been watching the signs for years. A decade or more. Retail. Is. Dead.

The only thing keeping malls alive these days is the abundance of restaurants. It used to be big anchor stores, but no more. For years the mall near my home was vibrant and bustling. It was THE place to go, especially around the major holidays. Then, it turned into a ghost town, and walking through it became dangerous and creepy, creepier than the chase and rape scene in Lipstick. My hackles rose every time I walked through the place.

The food court is still a happening place, for sure, but even the stores around the food court were (and some still are) shuttered. Until the outside restaurants came. Oh, the restaurants won't put the food court out of business. Not even close, because these restaurants are mostly high-end. 

It's a different kind of clientele on the outskirts of the mall than there is on the inside of the mall. Outside are the spenders, the drinkers, the fussy eaters. People with credit cards to burn. Inside the mall the gangs of unsupervised school kids still roam wild like some kind of retail Lord of the Flies ... or Fries.

I went into Target today, and not some random Target off the beaten trail, but a popular one directly off the highway and along a busy industrial road. I needed a card, a few supplies, and maybe a grocery or two or three. 

Easy, right?

Not so much. Oh, sure, if I needed a gift candle, they had them. If I needed paper towels, they had them. Snacks and basics? What I found were row after row and aisle after aisle of empty shelves. Missing merchandise. And, no, this wasn't a seasonal changeover situation.

I am one of the few people left who still goes into a grocery store to shop. Pretty much everyone else I know gets their groceries shopped for and delivered. I just can't get past the idea of some youngster who's never grocery shopped in their lives after age three going into the produce aisle to decide which avocado is best or if it can be substituted with kale.

I don't judge you if that's your jam. It's just not mine, and therefore I must suffer and drive to the store, park, get a cart, and push past ever-dwindling amounts of people to pick out things that many times aren't even stocked. Or properly dated. I remember a time when I just grabbed the milk and casually checked the expiration date. Now, it's a bloody battle to find a sell-by date that is not within forty-eight hours.

Customer service is dead. Selection is dead. Retail is dead.

SUMMER BEFORE THE WORLD CHANGED

One of my Blog Friends (another blog) asked our group what a throw-back to a 1990 Pre-Technology-Boom Summer might look like. Well, for me it meant raising kids and making sure I didn't forget one at a playground. But, long before that, I fondly remember my elementary school summers.

When I was really young, we lived in a small city on a residential street across from a professionally tended but small botanical (or, botanic, if you're old-school British Kingdom) garden tucked into the woods. The only kids in the neighborhood who were my age (up to preschool) were boys. Even though I had two older sisters and an infant brother, I tended to rough-and-tumble like my age-counterparts. We had a playground at the end of our street, and my sisters walked to their school, a school that I very much looked forward to attending until we moved mere weeks before I was due to start.

Then, we moved to a very small town an entire state away. A village, actually. For months while our house was being built, we lived in the heart of town, close enough to jump when the fire department alarm bellowed out its signals to the volunteer firefighters. Close enough to hear the church bells chime every fifteen minutes and bong out the hours. Close enough to walk to the post office, where we had a mailbox (#612 -- how I remember that, I have no sane idea). Close enough to walk to the one and only village store. Close enough to walk to school and the public library. Close enough to walk to playgrounds and explore cemeteries and stare at the Civil War statue and run around the town hall building.

Once we moved out of the town square, our house was a dream come true. Tons of room for all of us (and an additional brother), and three acres of woods loaded with climbable trees and huge boulders to fearlessly scale. We had two different swing-set areas -- one smaller for the boys in a fenced yard off the house, and one larger for the older kiddos just off the driveway. We built trails through the woods to ride through in the summer and to sled and ski through in the winter. Yes, we insanely downhill-skied through cross-country trails and slopes, and yet never crashed into trees. Eventually, a pool went in, as well. 

It was like living in the middle of the world's best kids' camp.

We often used the phone (connected to the wall) to call friends, but we more often just showed up at each others' homes, knocking on the door at all hours (nothing was too early nor too late) just to get together and play. Radio was AM via an old-fashioned spin-dial system. TV was five channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, and channels 38 (WSBK) and 56 (WLVI), and the only way to watch TV was to fiddle with the rabbit ears or move the monitor that would whomp-whomp-whomp the aerial antenna on the roof. My dad had an old typewriter, a Smith Corona, and that was the extent of our access to technology: phone, TV, transistor radio, and a typewriter with a moderately-inked ribbon and slow metal keys.

We played outside all of the time. It didn't matter if it was a heatwave or sub-zero with negative wind chills. In the summer, we sweated and scratched endless bug bites (I still have scarred legs from it). In the winter, we simply waited until frostbite set in because once we were numb, who cared. (This explains my Reynaud's Syndrome, of course.) If we were inside, we played never-ending board games (Risk, Monopoly, chess, checkers, Life, Stratego, Operation ...) or cards (Rummy, Hearts, Go Fish, Cribbage ...) or dolls or dress-up or hide-n-seek, or we drew, painted, colored, or wrote stories. We played school. We played rodeo on the fence posts (giving one brother the smaller gate that he named Breckody because he couldn't yet say Black Beauty). We played baseball and softball and tennis and badminton and basketball and hopscotch and jump-rope (Double Dutch, Peppers, and Chinese). We played Cat's Cradle and sewed and knitted.

And, yes, we drank from the hose, but only after letting the water run cool. Otherwise it was fire water from the sun. We drank from the hose because being caught in the house was like a death sentence -- someone might assign us a chore or tell us to clean our rooms before we could be released back into The Wild. No one wanted that to happen.

I am now close to retiring. Every time I think about the world being my oyster, think about all of the wonderful things I will be able to do if I stay healthy and manage my money, all I really want to do is go back to the woods, the laughter, the camaraderie, play a game, kick a ball, jump off a swing (without fracturing a hip). Maybe have a little fun, live a little, before I'm watching the world go by from the glass pane of a nursing home. 

You know, drink from a garden hose before it's a feeding tube.

COLOR-CODING SMALL VICTORIES

Continuing last blog's theme, I am both wrapping up this school year and looking ahead to next year. I will have about twenty-five to thirty percent more students next year, which isn't an unusual number. This year's numbers were unusual because it was an exceptionally small class overall. 

Friday I arrive at work at my regular time, which is about an hour before the kiddos arrive. I'm not a glutton for extra work. Leaving earlier makes my commute easier as I generally beat the school buses and, most of the time, do not have to stop every three feet so a random bus can pick up children. (People complain that no one uses bus stops anymore. With the per-student bus fee, I'd demand door-to-door service, too.)

Something at work has been bugging me for a few weeks: the location of my desk. I have moved my room around dozens of times in the last few years, so this isn't that off-brand for me. However, I have been doing the geometry of trying to fit thirty desks back into my room. It helps that I have donated two bookcases in the last year, but still. Thirty desks is a lot considering that we use large desks with wide-based chairs.

So, I do what any normal person does on a Friday before students arrive: I start moving furniture. I drag bookcases around, scoot my heavy teacher desk across the room, and haul text books from the windowsill to the other side of the teaching area. For now, I leave the desks in groups, but the children are still thrown off by my desk and me being completely on the wrong side of the room.

At the end of the teaching day, during my planning period, I shove desks into six rows instead of five. I throw my extra desks into the mix until my room magically transforms from a space equipped for 20 into a space equipped for 28. That's all the desks I have, but I still have room (if I move the remaining bookcases around) to fit three more desks, if necessary.

Now, though, the fun starts. 

With three weeks left, the students will be getting new seats. These are the first newly assigned seats since September. I cannot wait to see the mayhem on Monday morning. After all, just moving my desk on Friday caused major angst. The multiple rows, extra desks, and new seats? These kids will be on fire. (Apologies in advance to my teammates.)

All that is left is to color-code labels for the desks and tape them down before students arrive. Then, the children get to play Scavenger Hunt as they first find their class's color and then figure out where their names and desks are. (Surprise: It has zero to do with the alphabet this time.) The real joy happens when they realize two things: They are not near their friends; The studious ones have been moved away from behavioral issues. 

You see, teachers can be fair and also a tiny bit petty. Sometimes we just ignore behavior because no one supports us, anyway. And sometimes we manage it ourselves with extra desks, new seats, and color-coded index cards that silently plot our small victories, even if those victories last mere weeks until the next crop arrives.

LUCKY 21 AND ITS FRAGMENTS

21  =  This year's Magic Number . . . 20.5 to be exact. 

Although it's a magic number, it has been far from a magic year.  

People who work in education right now will tell you that the system is collapsing. Actually, it has been collapsing for quite some time. Has already collapsed. Crashed and burned. The fallout has been so hazy that the proverbial dust is just now settling. That means that once the cloud clears, everyone will see what those of us on the front lines have been seeing for a long time.

The system is broken.

No, that's not quite right. Let me try that again.

The. System. Is. Broken.

That's better. Fragments. The system is fragmented. 

The bureaucracy, the initiatives, the oversight, the lack of support, the loosened consequences, the constant need for data that no one cares about nor will ever interpret nor even examine, scheduling inconsistencies, contract violations, top-heavy administration, creative budgets, tax demands, low test scores. 

Disrespect. The ingrained, bone-deep, exhaustive disrespect.

And yet, still, we teach. 

Still, we light up when students "get it," when their brains are on fire and their eyes grow wide with wonder. When they're sent on a wild scavenger hunt through a text to find clues and evidence. When they tackle a difficult assignment with rigor.

21.

This year's magic number. Not my magic number. Mine is 388. Maybe 204. If things get much worse, then maybe it truly is 21. The real tragedy is that I'm not the only one counting down. I'm not the only one watching the retirement chart. The real tragedy is that teachers even have to entertain the magic number. We should be slightly sad about the end of the year. The end of our careers.

But, we are tired. Tired of the systemic disintegration. Tired of the pompous and inauthentic oversight. Tired of the exhaustive disrespect. Maybe we'll recharge over the summer. For now, though, it's the Lucky 21. 21 more days of hopeless wishing that the system will magically mend by September. 

I'm not betting on it, but I still believe in magic, 21 or otherwise.