Sprung from Cages Out on Hwy 9

My breath was the only thing steaming as I waited in my 37 degrees car this evening. My battery was dead, but I knew it was coming (it's been a lazy cranker all week), and honestly? Things could have been much worse. As it was, I could see the bright lights of my warm classroom from where I was, and roadside assistance was on the way.

As I waited, I thought back to other car troubles in other times. In my early 20s, I lived at the beach and my brother, sister, and I drove a succession of beat-up Hondas and VWs. When they wouldn't start, we would get whichever of our friends were around to roll them onto the flat feeder road that ran parallel to the shore and while everyone pushed, one of us would sit in the driver's seat, pop the clutch, and floor the accelerator to get the engine running. Then, with a toot and a wave, the driver would speed off to charge the battery on the wide boulevards of our resort town. It felt like a magic trick every time.

I guess cars were less complicated then, and it seemed like everything else was, too.

You Have Not Because You Ask Not

We were discussing the theme of a short memoir in reading class today. The basic plot line is that a dad takes his six children into a department store where they happen to be selling baby chicks. One of the kids utters the words we have all spoken, most of us more than once. "Can we get one, Dad?"

This dad says, "Sure."

The oldest brothers in the story look at each other in disbelief. "We can?!" one asks.

And then, when the half-dozen of them are bickering for picking rights, their dad tells them that they can each have one.

At this point, I always pause, and look out at the class. They are generally wide-eyed, because, they, like the kids in the memoir,

can
not
believe
their
ears!

Later in the story, their mother is also incredulous that her husband would think such a thing was a good idea, and one of the chicks dies and the oldest brother offers to share his with his grieving little brother, but through it all, when asked what they take away from this tale, the students always come up with some version of It never hurts to ask. Like today, they offered my favorite yet: Expect the impossible! And they mean it in the best possible way.

And it is the charm of such childish optimism, especially at this time of year, that is one of the reasons I'm going back tomorrow. (But after that? I'm going to take a couple weeks off.)

The Old-fashioned Way

What advice to give a classroom full of sixth graders with brand new iPads?

Well... in addition to the pages of acceptable use guidelines and possible consequences for misuse (I had my group do charades), in the end the best guidance I could give was this:

If your iPad makes the job quicker and easier, then use it, but if not? Don't.

And so it was that in reply to several complaints that dictionary.com was inadequate for the current assignment needs, I finally held up one of the twenty-five volumes we have in the classroom in exasperation. "Try this! It's called dictionary dot BOOK!"

A Last Time for Everything

I changed into sweats and a hoodie when I got home from school today and then ran out to the grocery for a few things. At the register the cashier asked for my ID before scanning my six pack of beer.

It's been a while since that happened.

The Sidewalks of Life

The list of classic childhood injuries is mercifully short if oft-repeated. Skinned knees and elbows, mosquito bites, stubbed toes, and crushed fingers top the list. As we grow older those maladies are replaced by pimples, paper cuts, sunburns, and hangovers; our earlier mishaps become nostalgic novelties. Later still, we are beset by those prosaic aches and pains accompanied by lingering suspicions of more serious indispositions.

Is this progression or digression? Hard to say, but I can tell you from personal experience today that it still hurts like hell to get your fingers closed in a door.

Found Poetry

A friend's daughter posted the following on Facebook:

I want to tell a something.

I am miss my older brother,

He is moving to heading to new Colorado in today, And He is time new a chapter of his life but he will learning more a adventure new a place like beautifully, A cold in there. And I hope He will be safety in the Colorado and I know that is dangerous is big road because of ice and snow as I am sure.
I want to thank you for long time you and I are taught know many years be though we are know each other a close big brother and little sister. And also I am always love him as my brother and I know he is good guy and good rough of man. He is always used care of me because I am his little sister.

My Brother,
I hope you be safety in new Colorado and I am sure you will love photography in there a lot as more and also hope you will see visit to us again. Merry Christmas.

The author is deaf, and so perhaps her writing is shaped by ASL, but regardless, I am captivated by both the powerful prose and the surprising syntax, and I find it quite beautiful.

O, Christmas Tree

Each December the Lions Club takes over a little corner of a grocery store parking lot not far from our home. Staffed by friendly volunteers, they offer a nice selection of firs and balsams, and it is there that we usually find the perfect tree for us. Every year jolly men in parkas and boots assisted by pink-cheeked high school boys carry our find to the front of the lot, give it a nice fresh cut, bind it in plastic mesh, and tie it to the roof of our car.

This evening when we pulled up after a busy day of shopping and errands, we were greeted by a whole different staff, comprised mostly of teenaged girls in fuzzy pajamas, thermal shirts, down vests, and knit caps. Their leader was a woman of perhaps sixty with a bit of a harried air; she manned the electric saw as most of the girls chattered by the binder. As we waited to have our tree trunk trimmed, another customer called over to her. "I see you have a new crew here! Are they any good?" he asked with a wink.

She looked at the assembly maneuvering a Fraser fir toward the parking lot. "They're very," here she paused, "energetic," she finished diplomatically.

"We heard that!" The girls shouted back, and then they giggled as they hefted the tree onto the roof of the waiting car and neatly tied it in place.