It’s amazing what a day without students can do for a teacher.
I’ve been so incredibly productive — both in terms of the things I’m supposed to be doing, i.e. for my classes and my students, and also for other stuff, i.e. making progress on the novel — that it’s hard to believe I fit everything into an 8-hour period.
But at the same time it feels like I didn’t get nearly enough done. There’s always more work to do, always the sense that I could’ve gotten more done. I never know whether to pat myself on the back for getting things done or kick myself for not doing enough.
I came in to work today feeling good. Got to sleep in a little bit, didn’t have students in the building today, nice, easy drive in. Had myself a great little work session, got a handful of things done, then went into the main building. Checked mail, got a great little pick-me-up (a student nominated me for teacher of the month!), said hi to some co-workers — a lot of co-workers, actually. Sat and talked with some colleagues for a little bit, the usual workplace venting and complaining and resolving to carry on with new burdens. All in all, a great morning.
Got back to my building, went to the bathroom, caught my reflection in the mirror —
And there, just above the line of my mask (yeah I’m virtue-signaling, bring it), hanging off my earlobe, dried and crusted like a day-old bird turd, was a big ol’ glob of shaving cream.
This happens to me a lot, actually. Always the right ear. Maybe I’m like one of those people who gets brain damaged and can’t see the right sides of people’s faces, but only fills it in based on what the left side looks like. (Except that I very clearly noticed it in the mirror later, so I guess that’s out.)
Anyway, a bit of water and it’s gone, no big deal — except that I greeted over a dozen co-workers with shaving cream on my ear. I walked around the building for an hour with shaving cream on my ear. I had an impromptu department meeting — for fifteen minutes! — with shaving cream on my ear. Say what you will about me making it from my house to my job in such a sorry state; if we are colleagues, friends, acquaintances — I expect you to tell me when I look like an idiot!
This has to be the bare minimum we set for each other, to look out for each other and make sure we don’t go on from a given encounter looking ridiculous. We owe each other that much.
I would do it for you.
Tomorrow I’m going to put a dollop on both ears and see how long it takes for somebody to say something.
This is a cultural thing, I guess. Probably his classmates are saying it a lot. Certainly his mom and I say it a lot (or at least, I say it a lot) in mockery-kinda-sorta-not-really of the way it gets overused these days. (New rule: every time I say “these days” I shock myself with a cattle prod. I should be farting electricity by the end of the week.)
Anyway, it struck me that this is a thing my father would never have stood for, if it were me doing it to him. And doubly so if it were him doing it to his old man. It would have been disrespectful. And probably greeted with the ol’ open-palmed reminder.
Heck, I can even remember once referring to the principal at my high school as “Fred” (which was his name) — just as a joke, just in passing — and my dad got uptight about it. “You don’t get to call him that,” he told me.
And I guess I internalized that? Because I wouldn’t stand for my kids calling the other adults in their lives “bro”. I’d take a page from my dad’s book and call that disrespectful.
But me, personally? I just can’t say I’m bothered by it. It’s cute, it’s funny, and it’s not like the 8-year-old is getting crazy ideas about who’s in charge around the house. Maybe my tone would change if he were five years older.
But there’s just so many other things more worth getting upset about these days.
BZZZZAAAAAPAPPPPPPPP
(Also, a gif-search for “bro” brought me this, which I do not understand, but is heckin’ delightful)
“Upheaval” is just one possible name for a novel one could write about the events of 2020 to date. (We could have said the same back in April, for that matter, but 2020 continues not to disappoint.) I know we always say it about the times we’re living in, but these are strange, confusing, disorienting times.
More to the point, our entire working situation has been thrown into upheaval (again), and that’s why I missed my quickie yesterday. (We’re giving up on full-time face-to-face learning for all students in favor of a hybrid model.) Emergency meetings. Students and parents in a panic. Heck, teachers in a panic. Dogs and cats living together.
The best part of this clip might just be Ernie Hudson trying not to break character while Bill Murray riffs.
So I come to you this morning, and I vow to come again this evening.
Apropos of nothing at all, yesterday marking the end of “normality” in our school happened to line up with me closing the book on my latest handwritten journal. (I (try to) write about three pages every morning during the week by hand. I do this when I first arrive at work, because if my wife catches me about it at home, she teasingly remarks “dear Diary” as she walks past with her coffee, which as a man, I cannot abide.) Where, at one time in my life, I would have ascribed some cosmic significance to this unexpected alignment, I am now happy to declare it a coincidence and move on.
I tried to think of an artful way to show the end of the one and the beginning of the other, and, predictably, failed. Bonus, though: you do get to see my cluttered desktop and the bottom of my Death Star holo-lamp.
It’s still interesting, though, to ponder the symbolic possibilities of such things. Filling out the final pages of one journal and writing anew on the pristine pages of a fresh one has that lovely poetic feel of “old things finished” and “new things begun” that any writer worth his salt would do well to put a fine point on if they were writing such a thing into a novel. (Though why the novel would focus on a person’s journal, and specifically on finishing one journal and starting a new one, is a head-scratcher.)
I mention it only because it really is strange that these two things should align. By all accounts I should have finished this journal weeks ago, but for the fact that — as regular readers may have surmised — I lost a bit of gumption over the summer and neglected the daily write more than was reasonable. Further, I was certain that our schools would make this change earlier than we have.
So did the universe steer me to this moment, where pen and paper and pedagogy (yeah okay that was a stretch) collided?
No. The universe has better things to do, and certainly doesn’t care about us, and for that matter, is not conscious. These things just happen.
Here in Georgia — specifically, near Atlanta — we had a great rock and roll radio station for basically my entire childhood: 96 rock.
It played some truly great music, as anybody who listened to rock and roll in the 80s and 90s could tell you: Aerosmith, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Metallica, Ratt, Kiss … they’d even get crazy sometimes late at night and play Iron Maiden. I remember sitting by the radio ready to turn on my dual-head cassette recorder to make a mix-tape (and if you never did that, then did you even 80s?).
So it was a wonderful shock of nostalgia when I was out for my weekend run yesterday and saw a truck with a 96ROCK decorative license plate coming my way. I recognized the log instantly: big orange bubble letters like a clown’s balloon animal stock.
It was weird, though; the truck was fairly new, as far as I could tell — 2015 or so — and 96 rock went off the air in 2006. Which means this guy felt strongly enough about the radio station and his connection to it to dig up an old license plate he had hanging around his basement somewhere to put it on his new vehicle. Or maybe he found the plate at a yard sale and slapped it on the truck. Or … whatever. But why? Considering how many transplants we get here in Georgia, and especially where we live outside Atlanta, it’s likely that most people — and probably the vast majority of people — have no idea what 96 rock was.
And you certainly can’t listen to 96 rock now — outside, perhaps, of maybe a few clips on youtube. (I admit I haven’t looked.) To show off a 96 rock license plate is to show off a preference for something you can’t have, a longing for a thing which no longer exists.
I think it’s just his advertisement to the rest of us that he’s been around here. He knows the old ways. You see the same kind of thing now and then when you see people wearing t-shirts or baseball caps commemorating the ’96 Olympics, but that’s not the same — everybody knows the Olympics, they just happened to be in Atlanta that one time.
But 96 rock — you had to be there to know about it.
He was, in effect, signaling his age and solidarity with anybody else who would recognize the old logo.
Lighting a candle for the ancient ones to find their way home.
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Accidentally Inspired 