Things I Left in My Classroom Over the Summer

1. Photomosaic Darth Vader. Which isn't literary at all, in an English classroom, no less, unless you approach Star Wars through a monomyth archetypal lens, or examine composition and film techniques to uncover the film's appeal, or take a historical approach and research the 1970's political and economic situation and analyze instances of those influences in the movie, or uncover characterization, or plot, or explore how Mr. Vader has affected the presentation of villains in the sci-fi genre, or in film, or wherever. Apart from all that, it's just a cool poster.

2. This juice box. I am looking forward to drinking it, but I'll probably give it to a study hall kid with low blood sugar, or one who's thirsty.

3. A Shadowy Figure in the Corner. One fourth hour a girl, a girl with troubles I can't begin to understand, looked up at me with real fear in her eyes and asked what the man in the corner was doing. I laughed and shook my head, and she pointed quick, because she didn't want the apparition to see her, and she started shaking, and I wonder how many people would know how to deal with a hallucination, a terrifying demon in the corner, in such a way that protects her and maintains her dignity in a room full of fourteen-year-olds, and that helps her improve her writing skills and score well on the standardized test, and that gives her some sort of hope that she'll be able to find food tonight, and for the rest of her life. That fourth hour I tried my best. I don't know if I succeeded, but I tried my best.

4. $40,000. Because I get paid what I got paid in 2007, and I get it, I get it, tough times, we all had to tighten our belts, but my belt is still tight, and I just need to know when I get to loosen it. You showed me a grid full of numbers when you hired me, full of what I was supposed to be paid, and if that deal changed, if you're never going to hold up your end of that deal, you need to let me know, because I work hard and I get better every year. You need to let me know because then I can try to understand how schools work best with lowest bid teachers, because these aren't roads that can be repaved, these are kids, these are lives, these are investments and I'm how you get a payout and if you think freeways and business subsidies are a better bet, that's fine. That's not fine, but that's fine, and I just need to know.

5. A Dust Globe. It's the most incredible project student project I've received. We read Of Mice and Men and everyone made a museum artifact from the '20's and a girl made this, with her hands, with her mind, and it's impressive and creative and it never would have existed if I didn't type up the assignment sheet and set the due date. I can't take, would never take any sort of credit, but I played a role in the creation of this cool thing, of a thousand cool things. Tens of thousands of cool things.








6. A birthday card from my kids, a rock from my trip to Korea to visit my brother, and a small glass from my high school English teacher's funeral. These things mean something to me.
















7. Fifteen tables, thirty chairs, a white board, and a podium. That's what I will need to take 150 teenagers and make them better at important things like reading and writing and speaking, and thinking, and avoiding the pitfalls of advertising and working with others, and using technology and researching. There's other stuff too. We start tomorrow.

A Summer Story, For My Daughter

Note: It occurred to me that for someone trying to publish fiction, this blog is notably light on fiction. And my kids keep pestering to put something on here for them, with their pictures. So, two leaves, one giant giraffe tongue.

My actual daughter, feeding an actual giraffe

The story starts as most stories involving giraffes do. A little girl and her family visited the zoo, stood on the wood platform, and fed the animal carrots out of a paper cup; after posing for a few pictures, the girl looked up at the creature with just the right angle of smile that bonded them instantly; the animal circled its enclosure a few times to build up speed, jumped the fence to follow the family to their car, then followed the car down the side of the highway to their home. It ran the whole way to keep up. When the car crossed a bridge, and the giraffe stayed on the ground to run across the train tracks or road or stream, it felt to the family like they rose to the giraffe’s head level. When the opposite occurred, the giraffe racing up a hill that bordered the highway and the car staying on level ground, the impossibly tall animal grew impossibly taller, and the family looked up at it like they were seeing a skyscraper for the first time.



When they returned, they faced all the problems families normally do when giraffes follow them home. The giraffe cleaned the leaves off of all the trees in a few days, then had nothing to eat. The giraffe wanted to follow the girl to the park, but animals weren’t allowed. The family cat’s tail puffed up to twice its size and never went back down. The giraffe wanted to contribute, but it couldn’t work the lawnmower, or the dishwasher. One day, it nudged the windows to all the upstairs bedrooms open, found a brush and roller, and repainted all the walls. The family appreciated the thought, but the yellow it chose was the dad’s fifth favorite color, the mom’s fourth, and the brother’s third to last. The girl liked yellow second best, but she would have preferred pink. The family said thank you to the giraffe many times, but it knew they didn’t mean it.

Recreation of a giraffe lunch

The family did what all families do with their out-of-place giraffes. They called their friends to see if anyone needed any Frisbees retrieved off their roofs. They called the men and women who worked for the city to see if they needed any help hanging Christmas lights, and they did, but not for another four months. Then the family came up with a plan that worked great for a few weeks. The giraffe walked around the neighborhood, and neighbors gave it their cameras, and it would take pictures of what their houses looked like from above. Some of the neighbors found the pictures delightful. Others wished they were from even higher up, but there was no way the giraffe would fit in a helicopter. It only took about three weeks for the giraffe to get to everyone in the whole southern half of the city who wanted a picture. Then it was back to laying in the girl’s yard, sighing a lot, and looking up whenever passing dogs started barking.


In most giraffe stories, this would be where the girl says goodbye to the giraffe, maybe with a tear or two, and it walks back to the zoo. Maybe a few years later, the family comes back to the zoo, and the girl is older and she doesn’t care about giraffes anymore, but when she sees the giraffe that repainted her room she remembers what it was like to be a little kid for a moment, and she gives the giraffe a big hug, much bigger than when she said goodbye all those years ago. That’s a sweet ending.


But this giraffe story ends a little different. On the night before the girl’s first day of kindergarten, she walked out to the back yard, after she put on her pajamas, but before she brushed her teeth. The giraffe laid in the yard, and she patted its neck, and it lifted its head to face her, trying hard to look happy, but the girl could still tell how it actually felt.


“You’re not very happy, are you?” asked the girl.


The giraffe shook its head, as if to say, “No I’m not.”


“I know you’re bored, and I know you feel out of place.” The girl scratched the giraffe’s neck. “But I think the real reason you’re unhappy is because all anyone focuses on is how tall you are.”


The giraffe squinted and looked up at the fading sunlight, as if it was unsure if that was the real reason, or as if it had never thought about it.

Giraffe and five-year-old, to scale

“All the jobs we gave you were because you’re tall. The reason the cat’s tail puffed up is because you’re tall. Everyone who walks by with their dogs talks about how tall you are.”


The little girl paused. “There are a lot of other good things about you.”


The giraffe shrugged.


“You can paint really well. You take really nice pictures.”


The giraffe tilted its head, as if to say, “Thanks, that’s nice of you, but that doesn’t change anything.”


“You’re a great friend. You followed us the whole way home from the zoo. And you’re so caring. You really wanted to help the family out, and I think you did a good job.”


The giraffe licked the girl’s cheek with its impossibly long tongue, and she giggled.


“Stop it,” she said. “You should know that people will like you for whatever you want them to. If you want them to like you for your painting, you just have to paint some amazing pictures. If you want them to like you for your photographs, all you have to do is take incredible photos.”


The giraffe tilted its head, the other way this time.


“If you want them to like you because you’re such a good friend, you don’t have to do anything. Because you’re already a great friend, and that’s why I like you.”


Giraffes have a terrible time hugging little girls, but it did the best it could, and the girl hugged back as hard as she could.

The giraffe had to go back to the zoo, because that’s how all these stories end. Giraffes can’t live in the city. It would never work out. But back in its pen, in between paper cups full of carrots from little girls, it painted some astounding pictures. They were so good, everyone forgot how tall the giraffe was.

A Letter to Myself as a Smoker, One Year Ago Today

Hey man,

You don't know this, but tonight you're going to go outside for a cigarette, and that will be your last one ever, or if not ever, at least for a year. Tomorrow morning you’re going to wake up and decide to skip your morning smoke, because you’ve been telling your wife for weeks that you mean to cut back, and then, when you’re sitting at your kids’ swimming lessons, you’ll decide to be done smoking for good. Believe it or not. Some crazy and irreproducible brain chemistry formula, some unexplainable pinball of synapse firing will finally accomplish what you’ve attempted for seventeen years.

My old smoking porch, now just a porch

So, dude, enjoy that cigarette. Have two. Finish the pack. Because smoking is three minutes of pleasure, 40 cents a cigarette, 4 cents a puff, lit up as many times a day as you can afford or as the guilt will allow. It’s stinky, dirty, toxic pleasure, no doubt. Some people get a little spurt of dopamine from running down squirrels in their cars, some people get a kick out of beating up nerds or grandmas or nuns or whatever. It’s all perverse pleasure, but it’s pleasure nonetheless, and there have been plenty of times, many many times, where I watched people smoke this past year and thought of you, you lucky fucker, with one more cigarette in your future, and thought about how you better appreciate the ever-loving, honest-to-goodness shit out of it. It’s all we’ve got.

One year from now, you’re going to sit in a café, a few pounds heavier than you are now, and watch two ladies smoke at one of the tables on the sidewalk, and you’ll suddenly understand what they mean when they say addiction is mental illness. Up until that moment, you won’t care. What the hell difference does it make what addiction is? Addiction is an affliction of the weak or unintelligent, unfortunate and sad, but ultimately a decision, an act of free will that carries rewards and consequences to be weighed and factored.

I used to set my pack on that shelf next to this taxidermied squirrel, then I'd come outside and say "Hey squirrel buddy, mind if I bum a smoke?" It was awesome.

You’ll start to figure this out tomorrow morning, and understand it more and more over the next 365 days, but that’s not how it works at all. It’s mental illness because you are not yourself. You believe things that are not true, that feel real because of broken circuitry. Yes, you chose to smoke every cigarette you ever had. You chose to smoke in front of your three-year-old, even after he asked you what that white stick was, and if he could try it. You chose to step outside during naptimes, playtimes, during your wife’s labor because you purposely “forgot” something in car that needed retrieving. You chose to excuse yourself from the hospital waiting room while your dad was in surgery to have part of his lung removed, the cancerous part, because he chose to smoke an uncountable number of cigarettes. You chose to have that first one in the mall parking lot behind the store where you worked in high school, just like a little kid chooses to jump from the tree that he climbed, it doesn’t look so bad, you can handle it, it’s no big deal. You alone made all those decisions, but the tool you used was broken. The first time you smoked, it was broken because eighteen-year-olds are stupid. Every time after that, your brain was damaged by nicotine, which made you feel deeply and forever that smoking was good and important, and life without it was simply unimaginable. Picture life without your legs, or your ears, or your junk. Do you want to live that life? Would you choose that? Of course not, so please, please, slide out another Marlboro and step outside and suck it in. The shaking won’t stop until you do.

A Wisconsin smoker's view, most of the year. Why did I quit again?

Sorry man, you’re all nervous now. My intention is not to make this any worse than it will be. Quitting smoking is about as hard as winning an Oscar, and deserves it’s own little thank you speech, so here is what you’ll be grateful for this year. Your wife, because quitting weighs about a thousand pounds, and the most you can carry is five hundred. She’ll shoulder the rest, which is downright saintly, because she can’t understand how your sick and broken brain works and what it tells you about smoking. She’ll just keep offering backrubs and sympathy and rewards. Your parents, and your dad especially, because he fought hard and lost some big battles with cigarettes, but he hasn’t smoked in over a decade. Your own kids will give you some powerful reasons to quit. A handful of students will provide some unexpected reassurance, your coworkers will too. Some British guy named Allen Carr and his materials will make a huge difference, as will everyone on the r/stopsmoking Subreddit. And green tea, because making it is a little ceremony much like stepping into the garage, and it’s got antioxidants and caffeine and just enough placebo power to make it seem like it’s helping.

So, wow. Tomorrow man. It’s going to be a big day. Lots of people, smokers and non, won’t recognize how monumental, how incomprehensibly huge tomorrow will be. They don’t matter. I matter, and trust me, you got this.

Now smoke up, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Eric

The Life of a Mechanical Idiot

Evidence #1: I don’t remember if I was 6 or 18. The older I was, the more pathetic this story is, so let’s say 8. It was probably 14. My father, his father, and I stood in front of the garage across the road from the family’s cabin up north. Something needed building, and it was a three-person job. I fetched tools, and when I didn’t know which one it was that had been requested (for a big chunk of years the whole pliers/wrench division was pretty hazy for me), I brought an assortment. Then, the thing being built required two pieces of wood nailed together, and my dad looked at me and said, “Why don’t you take care of that.”

Well, holy hell.

That's not a bad looking basement. Wonder who did that?

This was not just the bonding of two pieces of wood with a sharp piece of metal. This was a pivotal opportunity to prove my manhood to my dad, and to prove to my grandpa how good of a job his son had done in raising a strong, skilled boy who was more than capable of hitting a nail firmly in a downward motion so as to drive it into the wood. I found a hammer and squared my shoulders. Dad crouched down next to me, and grandpa leaned forward with his hands on his knees. I breathed deep and visualized my stroke. I kept my eye on the nail.

I missed with the first hit, and hit my thumb with the second. I finally made contact with the third and bent the nail sideways, and kept hammering until dad wrestled the hammer away from me. He asked for a needle nose pliers. I brought him a vice grip.

That accent wall looks like it took a lot of skill.

Evidence #2: My wife and I bought a house, and I wanted to make my mark, a tiny mark, barely noticeable, but something I could point out to all the friends and relatives who would eventually stop by for tours. I tried installing a shelf. “Oh yeah, you see that shelf? That was me. I put that up.” It was a glass corner shelf in the bathroom. Screw the two metal pieces into the wall (which had to be level, for all of you who have never installed a shelf), then slide the glass piece into the slots. Can’t get much easier than that.

Except one of the screws would not go into the wall. I tried my drill, and then a screwdriver, then swearing, then throwing things, then squinty-eyed rage. Behind the wall was either the chimney or some ductwork or an undiscovered vein of pure titanium. I got so mad I had to take a walk.

I would like to sit in that well-crafted basement.

When I got back, I pushed the glass into the slots, one side with only one screw. The bastard held lotion just fine until we moved.

Evidence #3: I am smart, and I can learn, so I just needed practice. Right? Careful thought and analysis can solve any problem. So when the guy at Sears asked if I wanted them to install the new garage door opener, I laughed. “Are you kidding? Do I look like one of those types of guys? No, no. No no no. I can handle that myself.”

I got the garage door opener installed. And it worked. It only took me eight hours, the first day. Seven hours the second day. And three hours the next evening to get the stupid little sensors aligned. Totally worth it.

Conclusion: I was bad at mechanical stuff. I did not possess that type of intelligence. My dad tried to teach me, and I was a terrible pupil. When I was a kid the Star Wars universe books offered far more excitement than learning the difference between a “nut” and a “bolt.” But I know that now. Bolts are like screws, but flat instead of pointy. Nuts are the round things that screw onto bolts. Try me. I know what washers are, too.

The bathroom. I installed those mirrors, too.

There are throngs of dudes and ladies out there who are like me. They get their first houses and all of sudden choosing a choir class over a tech ed class in high school becomes the stupidest decision they ever made, if you exclude the choir trip to Winnipeg on the big coach bus where they sat next to so-and-so and played you-know-what and it was AWESOME. Just to be clear, I am not offering to help with anyone’s projects. To all of you, staring at your tilted shelves and loose wires and leaky faucets and exposed studs, I just want to say, you can do it. Check Youtube and take a deep breath.

My project this summer was to update our basement. I installed laminate flooring on one wall, painted, replaced the light fixtures, built a department store storage cube piece, hung the pictures, picked new furniture, and it looks frickin’ amazing. Next week I’m going to install some gutters. I’ve replaced toilets, faucets, outlets, installed laminate tile flooring, and I’m still a home improvement novice, but I’ve got a solid pile of mechanical skill points chalked up, and I can name every tool in my workbench. Okay. Most of them.