Do I Know You?

A substitute walked into my room yesterday morning. "I'm here for your co-teacher," she said in a friendly and confident voice.

"Great," I answered, "but she has a homeroom of her own, so I won't see you until 8:30."

"Riiiight," she replied, "but I will see you soon!"

I was impressed again by her manner when she returned for first period. She was so helpful and engaged, both with the kids and my instruction.She also seemed very at home with me and the class. When it was time for her to go to her next period, I thanked her warmly. "Best sub ever!" I laughed, only half joking.

"I don't have a login," she told me as she picked up her bag, "so I couldn't get the announcements to work for homeroom this morning."

I nodded sympathetically.

"Was Annika on?" she asked. 

That's when it clicked! She seemed familiar, because she was the parent of a former student who is now in 8th grade. "No, she wasn't," I told her, "which is a shame, because I do love seeing the kids, especially after they leave my class."

"It's fun for me to see her when I'm here," she agreed, and I was able to nod with understanding. When she was gone, I wondered if she brought her daughter up so that I would know who she was. If so, I was grateful for her tactful approach.

Just a Sliver

"Pie or ice cream?" I asked as a simple warm-up question in keeping with the season this morning. 

The question was also a throwback to 2006 when a colleague and I started our first online writing community. In those pre-social media days, we were not prepared for how popular the discussion threads would be. Nor did we expect the robust debates that our sixth graders would have over issues such as pie or ice cream. 

Kids were on our LMS discussion board almost 24 hours a day writing back and forth to each other. They used the basic introductions of themselves as sort of home pages, posting messages and updates as replies to the original assignment. We spent hours every week moderating thousands of posts. In retrospect, if we could have capitalized on the idea, it's not that farfetched to think we might be billionaires.

But today, I was not prepared for the stomping that pie got. "What are you? Eleven?" I finally asked when the tally was somewhere around 34-5 in favor of ice cream.

"Yes!" they roared.

From then on, I began to privately view the results as a maturity test; those who preferred pie were obviously more advanced than those who blindly gravitated toward the very simple pleasure of frozen dairy. 

Which I do not dislike-- to the contrary, I love ice cream!

It's just not

pie.

Fireside

The cats were a little cranky with us when we got home yesterday. And who can blame them? We had been gone 17 of the last 23 days. We do have a good cat sitter, but although that eases our minds when we are away, it doesn't seem to make the cats any less standoffish when we return to them.

Fortunately, Heidi knows them well, and when they were tip-toeing about last night, unwilling to be the lap kitties they usually are, she suggested that I build a fire. And that did the trick! They fairly ran to the living room to join us and bask in the warmth of both flames and family.

Indeed, something there is about burning wood that kindles everyone's primordial desire to come together around the flame and let it fend off whatever darkness we may be feeling.

Thick and Flat

"Pennsylvania?" asked the woman next to me in line at McDonalds this morning. We were in a tiny North Carolina town fueling up for our road trip home from the beach.

I thought she meant the grape jelly I had just requested to go with Heidi's sausage biscuit, so I shook my head and pointed at the wife. "Nope, Buffalo, NY."

"Oh," the other woman sighed, "your voice sounded a lot like my aunt's, and she's from Pennsylvania." Her own voice had a thick Carolina drawl.

I shrugged and smiled, unwilling to take the time to correct our miscommunication. "Have a good one," I told her as I grabbed the bag and headed back to the car. 

Later as we drove north, I pondered her question and just what she might have heard in my voice that suggested Pennsylvania. Like most people, I consider my speech to be completely unaccented. Having lived in many different places probably supports the illusion, since I am unable to point to a single place that I am "from." A few years ago, I took a quiz in the NYTimes that was supposed to detect how my speech reveals where I am from, but the results were inconclusive.

Interestingly enough, I did spend some formative years right across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania, but I don't hear either Philly or South Jersey in my voice, probably because we didn't spend enough time there.

Even so, some things stick from those days. Yesterday when we were at lunch, the sodas we ordered came flat. For my seltzer, it wasn't a big deal, but my brother's cola was another story. "It tastes like, what was the name of that stuff people used to serve in New Jersey?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," I grimaced, "that cola-flavored syrup that they used to mix with water? I hated that stuff!"

"Me, too," he agreed, and we spent the next few minutes searching our memories and our phones for the name of it. 

Takaboost, or now, simply Boost!, was and is a hyper-local phenomenon, manufactured and primarily consumed in Burlington County, New Jersey, where we lived at the time. According to the press, it is either A flat, thick,weird-tasting soda you'll only find in New Jersey or This NJ-made drink tastes like flat Coke and we can't get enough of it.

Right! Just add wooter.

The Right Fit

As we are inclined to do when on vacation, Emily and I speculated about what life might be like if we lived here on Topsail Island as we walked down the beach this morning. "You could be a turtle monitor," she suggested to me, "and walk the beach every morning looking for turtle tracks. That seems like something you would like."

I nodded in agreement. "I could also look for shell letters every day, and keep them sorted into 26 piles for future spelling projects," I laughed, stooping to examine a zigzaggy piece of coral. 

"You could have a little Etsy shop and take orders for custom signs," she said. "And maybe even branch out to other collections: woodlands, fields, you know."

"That would be fun! Maybe I could source my materials from specific locations, too. Then I could travel!" I replied, turning the coral over in my hand thoughtfully. "Does this look like an S to you?" I asked.

"Maybe," Emily answered skeptically, "if you turn it the right way? It all depends on the context."

"That's very true," I agreed and tossed it aside as we continued on in companionable silence, each scanning the sand for our own sort of treasure.

Shell Games

While the weather here, for the most part, has been lovely, especially for November, as much time as we have spent walking the beach we have found the beachcombing to be a bit underwhelming. Although on the first morning, I found a whole sea biscuit and we did find those two shark teeth, the rest of our finds have been broken shells, bits of coral, and quartz stones. 

Rarely one content to simply walk, however, I set myself a project: to find broken shells, stones, and coral in the shapes of the letters of my name. That occupied one walk the other day, and I was pleased with the results, even if my brother did say it looks more like Tracky than Tracey.

This morning when we woke to blue skies and warm sunshine after the all-day deluge of yesterday, we decided to skip the parade and head for the beach instead. Today my project was more ambitious and fitting for the holiday; I searched for the letters to spell Thanksgiving. And a couple of hours later, with the help of everyone, I had a pocket full of options and optimism. 

Call it confirmation bias, but once again I was plenty satisfied with my efforts (especially after turning that e into a k), even after Treat posted Happy Planksgiving! to our family chat.

UPDATE: As if cooking and puzzling were not enough, we have also been tweaking the message this afternoon.

Fancy

"I'll have the "Fancy Grilled Cheese"," Heidi said as she scanned the menu at the sandwich shop. "I don't know what it is, but how could any grilled cheese be bad?"

A little while later we sat at an outdoor picnic table and unwrapped our sandwiches. Heidi examined hers skeptically. "Is this rye bread?" she asked before taking a bite. Her nose wrinkled and she set her sandwich down. "It is rye bread and there is also bacon and relish." She sighed. "I guess this is the grilled cheese that proved me wrong."

On the way back to the beach house we passed a place advertising fancy sushi. "Let's not," Heidi said.