The Legend?

I was cooking dinner when my phone buzzed.

AND what I didn't say?

I did win that t-shirt for trivia on the Alaska cruise!

Banking It

I was making sub plans this afternoon because I'll be out tomorrow. Heidi is having a minor surgery on her foot, and it's my spousal privilege to be there for her. 

Over the years, I've developed a template to make sub plan writing quick and easy: I keep all the old documents and edit them for the next job. That means I have a record of all of my planned absences, and with the exception of my mom's illness, I've been fortunate that, over the last 29 years, they have all been planned. I've accrued myself quite a bit of leave since 1993, knock on wood I never need it. 

For instance, this will be only the third day I've missed this school year, which is pretty good for February. Say what you want, though, about virtual teaching, but last year? I had zero absences. And that's a record.

A Long Way Around

We were talking about the Lunar New Year in homeroom this morning. Most of the sixth graders are tigers, too. It's a fun coincidence that sixth grade is the year when most kids turn 12, and so that year is always their year. "I'm a tiger, too!" I told them in the spirit of connection and community.

"What tiger are you?" asked one particularly savvy celebrant.

"Water," I answered.

"That's this year, too," she noted, and then paused. "But don't they only repeat every 60 years?"

"Wait, what?" another kid interrupted. "Does that mean you're 60?"

"Almost," I admitted.

"I can't believe it!" several students said.

"Me neither," I told them. "Me neither."

The Inner Groundhog

Since tomorrow is Groundhog Day,  I decided to ask the sixth graders to make a prediction. Most were willing, if not eager, to play along, but not all were. "Oh, I can't," said one this afternoon. "I don't celebrate that holiday."

Fortunately, I anticipated gaps in the students' knowledge and understanding of the day, and so I had a short video that detailed its history and traditions. One of the many interesting facts that we discovered was that statistically? The groundhog is only right anywhere from 30-40 percent of the time. A coin toss is more accurate.

Asking a group of sixth graders what they predict has proven to be more accurate as well. By the end of the day, they were evenly split on whether the weather would bring us six more weeks of winter or if, maybe, spring was right around the corner.

Time will tell which half was right, but at least half of them will be right. Take that, Punxsutawney Phil!

A Tiger in Your Tank

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Lunar New Year starts today. But what I didn't say was that this year? Is my year! 

Not only is the Year of the Tiger for me and everyone born in 1928, 1940, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, and 2010, but it is also the year of the Water Tiger, which only comes every 60 years. 

According to Feng Shui Web, we water tigers like to take part in a wide range of activities and are always willing to experiment with new ideas or satisfy our adventurous personalities by traveling around the world to distant lands. We are adaptable, perceptive and have a humble nature about us. 

We will remain calm in a calamity but can sometimes be very indecisive. We communicate very well with others and through our vast range of capabilities and convincing nature will usually achieve what we want in life. We are highly inventive and are often extraordinary writers. 

And while your own year may be unlucky in Chinese tradition, a tiger year generally favors the bold. Any who are ready and willing to move forward with passion could be well rewarded this year. Go big or go home, Tiger.

You Must Remember This

When the scholars in my class need help remembering things I often advise them to set a reminder on their iPads. It's a strategy that I use myself, admittedly with varying degrees of success. Most recently, I set an hourly reminder when my homeroom and I were trying to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in ASL. Whenever my watch chimed, I paused to practice the signs. Well, most of the time, and definitely enough to become pretty familiar with the gestures.

A few days later, I reset the app to remind me to practice daily, but I must have tapped something wrong, because I started getting 2 reminders every hour. Even so, it's easy enough to ignore them, although that does defeat the purpose. 

A few months ago, I set a daily reminder to "Plan the big 6-0" so that I would stop procrastinating on finding and finalizing a place for our family to gather at the end of June this year. It gave me a bit of pause, though, when Siri read the reminder out loud. Plan the big six-nil, she intoned, reading my coming age as the score of a soccer match or something. What does that even mean?

Probably the oldest, continuous reminder I have on my phone is from the summer of 2018. Then, my mom gave my a gift certificate to a restaurant downtown. Reservations were notoriously elusive, opening at midnight on the first for the month to come, and I set a daily reminder to try to book it. "Did you get one?" Mom would ask when we talked, but I never did. Six months later, my mom got sick and our time and attention were otherwise occupied. And then she died, the pandemic came, and, well. 

I don't even have the gift certificate anymore; I have no idea where it went. But every now and then? I still get a reminder to make that reservation. 

Year of the Which?

This Monday is the start of the Lunar New Year celebration for 2022. As kids we were fascinated by the "Chinese Zodiac" printed on so many placemats in so many Chinese restaurants. In between nibbles of fried noodles we would lift our little cups of tea and read the tiny descriptions for each of the 12 animals that represented the cycle. 

I was a tiger, "aggressive, courageous, candid and sensitive. Look to the Horse and Dog for happiness. Beware of the Monkey." 

My brother was a dragon, "eccentric and your life complex. You have a very passionate nature and abundant health. Marry a Monkey or Rat late in life. Avoid the Dog."

My sister was a horse, "Popular and attractive to the opposite sex. You are often ostentatious and impatient. You need people. Marry a Tiger or a Dog early, but never a Rat."

My mom was a rabbit, "Luckiest of all signs, you are also talented and articulate. Affectionate, but shy, you seek peace throughout your life. Marry a Sheep or Boar. Your opposite is the Cock."

And my dad was a boar, "Noble and chivalrous. Your friends will be lifelong, yet you are prone to marital strife. Avoid other Boars. Marry a Rabbit or a Sheep." 

Even though we grew bored of reading the same information over and over, we liked it that the placemats confirmed our parents' compatibility; it seemed to verify their accuracy. 

Years later, after my parents split up, my brother and sister and I were on a road trip with my dad from Virginia Beach to Raleigh, NC. We had gotten an early start, and stopped for breakfast in a tiny diner somewhere on Rte 58. It was January of 1987, and my dad's birthday had recently passed. We got to talking about the next year being a leap year and how all of our birthdays would be 2 days later in the week instead of just one. 

"Not mine," my dad said with  his trademark, know-it-all, smirk.

"What do you mean?" I asked, and then I gasped, because I got it. His birthday was before February 28, and so it wouldn't skip a day until the year after leap year. My mind? Blown.

We started to tease my dad about it. "That's got to be unlucky!" one of us said, and the silly mantra "Unlucky, born before leap day," intoned like a mock chant, entered into our idiosyncratic family lore. 

My dad didn't live to see another birthday; he died that March. And it was many years after that, when I was considering the Chinese Zodiac, probably staring at a red, white, and black placemat waiting for my meal, that I realized that he wasn't a boar at all. My dad was born before leap day and the Lunar New Year. He was actually a dog, "Loyal and honest you work well with others. Generous yet stubborn and often selfish. Look to the Horse or Tiger. Watch out for Dragons."

Maybe.