Long May You Run

I like to think I'm pretty flexible when I'm teaching: interruptions rarely bother me, and teachers, administrators, counselors, and students are usually welcome to come in and out of my classroom as needed. That's why I didn't miss a beat in the directions when a couple of folks from our technology team slipped in this morning. As they made their way over to my desk, I walked that way, too. "What do you guys need?" I asked.

With big grins, they waved a computer at me. 

I must have looked confused. "It's yours!" one explained.

"It's finally here," agreed his colleague.

I saw then that they had a brand new MacBook Air, and it was true that my school computer was a couple years past its replacement date. But I also looked at the set-up I had put in place connecting the old workhorse to an extra monitor and a really old SMART Board. I knew the new computer would, at the very least, require adjustments. 

"I can't have it right now!" I told them wide-eyed. I still had 2 more classes to teach.

"No worries," they reassured me, just sign in and we can configure it for you." 

Regaining my composure, I sat at my desk and began to navigate the slightly unfamiliar device. Then I looked up, gave the students their next directions in my booming teacher voice, grabbed the mouse for the other computer, and clicked over to the next activity. I scanned the new screen, and entered my user name and password again, ticked the Trust button, handed the new laptop over, thanked the tech team, and stood up to continue the lesson.

As promised? My configured MacBook was delivered to me a little while later. I needed to figure out a few things, but it's a pretty nice machine, and I'm enjoying using it right now. Fingers crossed, the transition to my teaching set-up will be seamless, and I'll hand over my old lap top on Monday. 

Before I do, though, I will thank it for its service; it has seen me through a lot in the last five years and change. I have planned hundreds of lessons and graded countless assignments on it, learned how to use our Learning Management System with it, and took it to Minnesota in 2019 when my mom was sick and used it to send my lesson plans while I was away. I posted asynchronous lessons with it every day when we went out for COVID in 2020, and of course I taught all my classes from it, first remotely, and then hybrid, for the entirety of the 20-21 school year. And in addition to all of that, I have probably written close to 2000 blog posts on that keyboard. 

That's a lot of work! At least one of is retiring.

Something for Everyone

I promised snacks for our commercial film festival, but when I went shopping the cost of single-serve bags (enough for 80) seemed a little too dear. What to do? I stood in the snack aisle pondering my options, looking at the sale items and trying to figure out a COVID-safe way to serve them without breaking the bank. 

I remembered how, in college, we used to toss the leftover chips and pretzels together at the end of a party and eat the mix all week. I had done the same thing earlier in the year after my homeroom had brought snacks for the early release movie day. So I tossed popcorn, potato chips, Cheetos, kettle corn, Fritos, and caramel corn into the cart, along with a sleeve of paper cups. 

At school this morning, I mixed them all together in a big bowl, added a scoop, and set one stack of cups and another stack of napkins on the table beside it. As the first students entered the room, their eyes widened. Taking in the big bowl, they called out each ingredient they saw, and eagerly took their seats. Before I cued up the commercials, I filled a cup with the assorted snacks for each of them. As we dimmed the house lights, they were enjoying their snacks, slipping a piece at a time under their masks. 

It was a good solution, festive and frugal at once. And? It was also gluten-free, so everyone could enjoy it together.

Inspiration is Where You Find It

This afternoon I attended the required in-person first aid and CPR training that, since July 1, 2017, teachers in Virginia must have to renew our licenses. It's been at least 40 years since I took the course, and although the basics are the same, a lot of the guidance has changed. So has the equipment; the heavy life-sized mannequins have been replaced with stylized practice figures that consist of little more than a head and torso. They get the job done, though, and they pack neatly into large duffle bags for on-the-road training, despite their distinctly unrealistic appearance.

Even so, when we knelt to demonstrate our resuscitation skills, I heard another participant across the room ask, "Annie are you okay?"

I laughed, because I had forgotten that the old dummies were fondly known as "Resusci Annie", and the second step of CPR practice, checking for response, was always phrased that way. The words also caught my ear, because in the time since I had last heard them, Michael Jackson's single, Smooth Criminal, rose to number 7 on the charts in 1988. The song has a very catchy refrain: "Annie are you okay? Are you okay Annie? Annie are you okay? Are you okay Annie?"

And according to Wikipedia? The lyrics are no coincidence. They were inspired by a first aid course that Michael Jackson took around the time he wrote it. 

It Was Personal

Once we collected our suitcases at the baggage carousel we whooshed through the sliding glass doors and out into a warm Washington evening. Rather than cross to the median and call for a ride share, we did what we have been doing at DCA for years: turned right and got into the cab line. It seemed quicker and at least comparable in price to Uber or Lyft.

The attendant put us in a Virginia taxi as soon as we made it to the front of the quick-moving queue, and we were on our way home in a just a few minutes. The driver did not have any navigation app; it was just an old-fashioned meter, ticking away the miles. He asked us where we were going and what we thought the best way to get there was. Once we were nearing our exit ramp, I gave him more detailed directions to our house. "Oh I know it!" he exclaimed. "There's a 7-11 there."

He was right, and that got him talking. He had come to the US in 1992 and worked in our neighborhood as a delivery driver for a couple years. After that, he became a cab driver in DC for 26 years, but the pandemic and the rise of ride share apps had left him unemployed. Last year he started driving again in Virginia, and with six 12-14 hour days a week, he can support his wife and four children, the oldest of whom is in medical school. 

Throughout the conversation he seemed cheerful, despite the hardships he had endured, marveling more at the passage of time and the change in the area as more and more people have moved here. When we pulled up the hill and into our complex it was dark, and a couple of inconsiderate drivers were blocking the narrow way, one slowly backing into a parking space, and the other rolling down the center of the drive right at us. 

"That guy has his high beams on," our driver reported with some agitation. "That makes it very hard to see if there are any pedestrians. It's also bad for old drivers or very young ones."

We nodded in agreement and with sympathy, because the lights were blinding even in the backseat.

As we rolled slowly past the offending car, our driver hissed. "He's an Uber!" he spat. "Fuck him! What an asshole!" And he rolled down his window and flipped the guy off. 

Our house was just down the way, and his professional demeanor had completely recovered by the time he pulled up and unloaded our bags. The fare was less than our Uber ride to the airport had been, and I tipped him and thanked him.

"Well, that took an ugly turn!" I said to Heidi as he drove away.

"Yeah, it did," she agreed.

Home Base

Our flight from Atlanta made good time; we broke through the rain clouds a few minutes later, and heading north, the ground was soon visible. Our pilot was optimistic, too. "Our flying time will be a quick hour and 15 minutes," he reported. I considered the 10+ hour road trip the same journey would take and whistled softly. 

As promised? The familiar skyline of DC was visible in less than 75 minutes. But we were too high to land, and as the airport receded, I understood that the wind was from the south and we would need to keep going and bank around to follow the river and land. we flew over our house, our school, Bill and Emily's house, and up past Great Falls and even beyond River Bend before we finally turned. 

I had the same view of Arlington as our plane descended, now only 100 feet or so above the buildings in Roslyn, the Iwo Jima and Women in the Military memorials floating by, then the Eternal Flame, Arlington House, the Pentagon, Gravelly Point rushing toward us until that ever-present bump as we touched down. We were still early; so much so that the plane at our gate had not pushed back yet, and so we taxied slowly and then waited on that runway I have been taking off from and landing on all of my life. 

Picture Day

I'm sitting amidst a sea of faces in family photos spanning 115 years, many that I haven't seen in 25 years or so. We are at my sisters going through the trove of pictures we inherited from our mom.

Looking at so many pictures dislimns the passage of time: hours fly by as the eye skips years, decades, centuries; faces long gone seem as familiar and fresh as they did back when the pictures were snapped. What is one to do with so many analog images in this digital age? 

Sift through them, sort them, scan them, split them up, store them, but then what?

When Dreams Come True

I've written before of my most recurring dream, the one where I am at the airport with international travel plans but without my passport. In those dreams I always try to make it back home to get my passport before my flight leaves, but I never make it; something always gets in my way and I either wake up or the dream moves on.

This morning as we rolled our suitcases into the airport on our way to Atlanta, Heidi turned to me and gasped. "I don't have my wallet," she reported, her blue eyes wide over her black K95 mask. "It's in my walking bag, and I didn't bring it."

The Uber that had dropped us off had disappeared into the sea of cars washing their way to and from the curb like waves on the beach. "Should I get a cab and go home to get it?" Heidi asked.

And I didn't even have to think about the answer. "Let's call one of the neighbors and see if they can bring it," I suggested. Heidi got on the phone, and soon someone was on the way with the whole bag, and 15 minutes after that, Heidi had her wallet and we were on our way to the security line. It was a little tighter than I would have liked, but they weren't even boarding our flight when we made it to the gate. Crisis averted.

As we settled into our seats, I raised the shade on my tiny window and looked out over the tarmac, considering how easily we had handled the situation, and I had to wonder if this could possibly be the resolution for my nightmares, too.