Infinite Jest

Cold and frosty morning
There’s not a lot to say
About the things caught in my mind

I’m not afraid of ghosts, but there is a Halloween display in a yard that I pass each morning on my way to school that bothers me. Human bones are scattered across the grass, while nearby a tiny dog skeleton stands, jaws open in an eternal yap. The dog is dumb-looking; little bony ears on its head are proof that it is a fake, but the other part is different. Perhaps because of the Yorick grin of the skull, for there is certainly no merriment there, the human skeleton gives my stomach a bit of a turn every day.

Damn my education, I can’t find the words to say
With all the things caught in my mind

I’ve never seen a ghost, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard one or two. Back in 1985 my sister, my dad, and I moved into the second story apartment of an up-down triplex. My father had been given six months to live, and my sister and I were to be his caretakers.

We didn’t have much furniture at first; my dad was returning from several years in Saudi Arabia, and my sister and I were 19 and 23 with not a lot of worldly possessions. We bought a couch, a TV, and some beds to begin with, leaving the dining room between the kitchen and the living room empty and echoing. I can’t count the number of times I would be working in the kitchen and turn to see who was coming in only to find myself alone. Eventually, the sound of invisible footsteps crossing the dining room was such a persistent presence that we grew used to it. “Oh, that’s the ghost” we’d shrug when others heard it, too.

Later we found out that the tenants before us had been an elderly brother and his two sisters, and that he had passed away in the apartment, and so we assumed it was he who approached the kitchen. At Thanksgiving we got a table, and the footsteps stopped.

So don’t go away
Say what you say
Say that you’ll stay
Forever and a day

My father outlived his prognosis by over a year. Near the end of his life he ordered the As Seen on TV clap-on, clap-off, Clapper so that he wouldn’t have to get up from the couch to turn the lights on and off, but he was too weak to clap loudly enough to make it work. We left it plugged in, though, and in the days after his death, the lamp connected to it turned on and off all by itself on several occasions.

‘cause I need more time
Yes I need more time

It was just before 7 am on Tuesday when we heard the news that our friend Tom died. The last time we saw him was at our Buffalo marriage reception. He was the only guest we were allowed to invite ourselves, a fact he took such wicked delight in that he gladly flew from NYC for the weekend. “Are you kidding?” he told Heidi. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world, especially if it’s going to be as awfully awkward as you say! I’d crash it if I had to!”

Then, as ever, he seemed larger than life, and even though we knew he had a grave illness, it seemed impossible that he wouldn’t beat the odds. He was confident, and so were we. And while his death was not a total surprise, it was still a shock.

The day passed shrouded in the disconnect between what I wanted to be true and what was true, and I fell into an exhausted sleep early that night, resting dreamlessly until a loud noise woke me. It took me a few minutes to realize that the TV was on, LOUD, downstairs. Before it could wake Heidi, I stumbled down to turn it off. The empty living room glowed in the flickering blue light of the screen. There no reason for the television to have come on.

As I reached for the power button, I saw that a sitcom funeral was in progress. I stood watching as one of the characters paid tribute to a person lying in an open casket. The joke was that the two were strangers, and in an awfully awkward moment, the eulogy was refuted and the funeral crashers humiliated.

Tom would have thought it was funny.

Sure Lock

"I can't open my locker!" a student burst into my room at lunch and reported. "I keep putting in my combination and it won't open!"

"When was the last time you could get in?" I asked her.

"This morning!" she told me.

"That's strange," I frowned and grabbed my master list of lockers and combination and followed her to the hallway.

There we found a friend of hers on her knees fiddling with the padlock. "It won't open," she told me.

"You shouldn't tell anyone your combination," I said to the first student. She shrugged in a What could I do? kind of a way. I consulted my list and twirled the dial, pulling down confidently at the end, but the lock held tight. The hallway was getting busy with other students returning from lunch, but I knew it was nowhere near as chaotic as it got during those moments right before the bell rang in the morning.

"Who else was here this morning when you closed your locker?" I asked her.

"Kadin," she told me and pointed three steel doors down from hers.

"Aha!" I said. "Try your combination on his lock!" While she spun the tumblers on that one, I once again consulted my list and used his combination to open the padlock on her latch.

"Yay!" We cheered our mutual success and traded padlocks and spaces. She grabbed her books and both her locker and the case closed with a satisfying clang.

Requiem

It was a beautiful day here, loaded with every splendor October has. Colorful leaves, crisp air, and blue skies abounded, but it all seemed a little empty because of the news we received this morning that our good friend Tom had died. To us, the world has lost a little of its twinkle, and to be honest? It sucks to think we'll never spend time with him again.

I just didn't realize how much I was looking forward to comparing our Alaska adventures, all the while mocking the ulu knife craze they have going on there. Nor did I know that I was expecting years and years more movies and dinners around his annual recruiting visits here. And I'm sure I didn't sufficiently appreciate his delighted interest in all our tales of family drama.

Tom was Heidi's childhood friend, but he was the type of person who made everything a little more fun, and now that that wicked fast-talking, quick-witted guy is gone, oh how I'll miss him.

Penance

A few years ago we had a little local political dust up. One of our elected officials crossed the majority of her party and not only came out against a big transportation project, but she supported a GOP candidate in the election as well. In an outcome that rocked our tiny county, the Republican won, the streetcar was canceled, and the Democratic leadership called for the rogue politician to resign, if not from office than at least from her party. Neither happened, but she has definitely been a woman without a caucus for the last couple of years, although recently there have been rumors that she wants to repair the connections she cut back then.

Election season is upon us now, and we are being deluged by calls from this or that candidate's volunteers and reminders to vote. This evening I was cooking dinner when the phone rang one time too many. My greeting was terse as I lifted the receiver, but instead of the robocall I expected, a friendly voice asked for Heidi. "May I take a message?" I replied, and when the caller identified herself it was that board member herself, working the phone bank on a Monday night.

I assured her we both planned to vote for the Democrats she was calling in support of, and when we hung up I could practically hear the fences being mended.

Fall Back

Not only are the old books in my classroom library making a comeback, but today I dug out a stack of flannel shirts that are as old as or older than the earliest volumes on those shelves, and you know what?

They look pretty good!

Full Circle

Back when I started teaching one of my first priorities was to build a classroom library. The research clearly said that kids who chose their own books read more, and I wanted those choices to be convenient for my students. I didn't have a lot of money, though, and so I had to be strategic in my acquisitions. It was a no-brainer to buy books that I knew my students liked, and in those days the most popular choices were books in Ann Martin's Baby Sitter Club series and R.L Stine's Goosebumps collection. Even though those volumes accounted for less than 20% of my little library, they were checked out almost all the time, with a waiting list.

Twenty-three years later and that caboodle has grown to fill several six-foot shelves, and along the way, Martin and Stine were eclipsed by Riordan, Rowling, Roth, and Patterson. AND, in addition to my own library, this year our district language arts department provided every teacher with over three hundred high-interest books for students to borrow. As I unpacked these latest additions to our classroom library, despite not knowing exactly where they will go I was gratified to find that I actually owned quite a few of the titles already, and that whoever had selected them had chosen a nice variety of books that the students like to read.

Even so, I know that many of them will spend most of their time in the bins they came with or on the shelf, because this year the books that every sixth grader is waiting to borrow are...

the new graphic version of The Baby Sitters Club and, because of the recent movie, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps.

To Protect and Serve

That last class of the day was miraculously quiet when one student glanced out the window. "A kid is getting arrested!" he reported. 

One glance outside and I knew he was right, administration and our school resource officer were indeed walking a handcuffed student toward a police cruiser parked out front.

As the rest of the students rose to stampede the window I used my most authoritative voice. "Stop!" I commanded and held my hand up. It helped that I was in position, standing between them and the view they so desperately longed to glimpse, but I thank my teaching angels as well.

To appease them, I narrated what only I could see, and that was that the school personnel were heading back into the building and the police cruiser was pulling away. Their eyes were super-wide.

"They can arrest us at school?" one student wanted to know.

I was tempted to make light of it, to joke about the consequences for not doing homework or talking out of turn, but then my eyes swept over the group. All but one of these children were of color, and I considered the current debate in our nation concerning police officers and their duty, authority, and responsibility. I could tell that there was considerable alarm at the possibility of being detained, and I wasn't sure what to say.

"Only if it's very serious," I finally told them. "I've been here a long time, and it hardly ever happens." 

They seemed to feel a little better then, and when the bell rang shortly afterward, they seemed pretty cheerful as they headed off to PE and electives, leaving me alone in my empty classroom. It wasn't until later that it occurred to me that not one of us felt any safer once the student had been taken away. For all we knew he could have been a serious threat to our community, certainly there have been a number of attacks on schools and students recently, but that's not where our thoughts went.

Clearly, we need to continue this conversation.