Goodbye, South

My junior high burned down today. My brother and I joked about it when we found out, but as the night rolls on, I’m starting to feel the loss.

I’d have to double-check this, but I think South Ogden Junior High is the only school that all of my brothers and sisters attended, and I was always living in their shadows. My science teacher asked me on the first day of class which brother or sister I was going to be like. Thankfully, I said Tracy, which turned out to be the correct answer. It took Ms. Bertleson, the crusty old history & adolescence teacher, several weeks to realize who I was. She had encouraged me to join the yearbook committee, but then one day she caught me doodling on my desk with a pen. She snatched the pen from my hand, and as she used it to fill out a detention slip, she said, “You’re Jeff's brother.”

From then on, I didn’t hide my joyful derision when she would mispronounce the word puberty. “Today,” she would say, "We’re going to learn about poo-berty.”

I only attended South for two years, which has left me a little bitter, since I never got to experience having a locker in the coveted ninth-grade hall. But, looking back, I don’t know why it was so coveted. The seventh graders had much better real-estate on the second floor—the entire second floor, in fact, including the “lounge” at the top of the stairwell, which had built-in carpeted benches along the wall. Even though the skaters and stoners took over the lounge after the first few weeks of class, it was still a source of pride to know that no other grade had anything like it.

The eighth graders resided in the nether-regions of the school: that weird strip of mismatched lockers between the cafeteria and the wood shop. It was a high-traffic area, not just for students, but for teachers and staff, since this was also where history hall and English hall converged. I was perpetually late for class due to severe traffic jams. Merging into the fray was easy enough, but then it became a mosh pit. Sometimes this was just fine, depending on who I was smooshed against. But most days, by the time I got to my locker, I was missing a shoe and feeling violated.

Ninth-grade hall, really, was just a slightly smaller version of seventh-grade hall, directly beneath it on the first floor. It had its advantages, I suppose. It was darker, since there were no windows, and there were fewer classrooms, which resulted in fewer teachers milling around. And the bathroom had full-length mirrors. I always used this bathroom, even though it often required a lengthy detour, so I could make sure my pegged acid-wash jeans and neon-green T-shirt were working for me before sauntering out, clutching my Trapper Keeper, to rub elbows with the ninth-graders. I couldn’t get over how grown-up they were. These were the big dogs. The boys had muscles and facial hair. And the girls. The girls! They were practically women. My twelve-year-old heart could barely take it: bangs two-feet high, black eye-liner, and purses—not just backpacks, but purses. And they all smelled so nice, like perfume and body spray, not like the seventh-grade girls who smelled the same as they did a few months ago in elementary school, like strawberry lip balm and jelly shoes.

But I never made it to my glory days as a ninth grader at South. I moved to Sun Valley and spent my ninth-grade year as low-man on the totem pole at the high school.

As I look at the burned-up shell of South Ogden Junior High, I wonder where all of those teachers have gone. The middle-aged ones are probably retired now. The old ones are probably dead (except, of course, for Ms. Bertleson, who—I’m sure—is in her nineties, sitting on a front porch somewhere yelling at every neighborhood kid that walks by.”You don’t fool me!” She’s saying, “I know who your father is!”). I think most of all I wonder where Mr. Lewis is. He was still young when he taught my eighth-grade English class, probably in his 30s, and I saw him occasionally at the local gym, where he worked as a weight trainer and wore leopard-print Hammer pants and a purple tank top. He had hair like Uncle Jesse from Full House, and he would stand, unashamed, in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom of ninth-grade hall, flexing his biceps and running his fingers through his hair (I always wondered who he was trying to impress—Ms. Bertleson?). One day when he was calling role in class, a certain kid, I think his name was Eric, wasn’t there, and Mr. Lewis took advantage of the moment to make fun of Eric’s lisp, thinking it would make us laugh or make him seem cool. “Oh no,” he said. “I hope Eric’th not thick.” We all looked at each other, silently, wondering what in the world he was thinking, and his face flushed. From the back of the class, someone whispered, “That’s not right.”

What has become of you, Mr. Lewis, and where will you go now that your school is gone? Have you lost your hair? Are you on part-time disability with a bad back and a pot-belly? Do you still make fun of eighth-graders with speech impediments?

Help Wanted

I struggle to explain to people what exactly UNH pays me to do, other than sit in my office and try to look busy a few hours a week. My boss gave me a small assignment this week which has resulted in a lot of busy work: mostly things like removing staples and scanning documents--all the things that my master’s degree failed to prepare me for. In exasperation yesterday, I asked my boss if I could hire an undergraduate as an assistant to do my busy work for me so I could focus on my real job (not tipping my hand, of course, that I’m not sure what my real job is). To my surprise, he said that I could hire an assistant. Apparently there’s money in the budget for that sort of thing. I’m excited. Finding something for my assistant to do so he or she looks busy will give me something to do so that I can look busy too. I love academia.

Future Professors

Griffin asked Laura and I if Harvard was a college or a high school. When we told him it was a college, he asked if it costs a lot of money. We told him yes, and he said he's going to start saving his money, because he's going to Harvard.

Later, Griffin told me he wants to be be a paleontologist, so he needs to go to the best college possible so he can be really smart. I told him it isn't the college that makes a person smart, and that I knew a lot of smart people that went to crummy colleges and a lot of stupid people that went to great colleges (he asked which stupid people I was referring to, but I assured him he didn't know any of them).

"But if I want to be smart and go to a great college," he said, "I can still go to Harvard, right?" I told him yes--that's what his grandfather did.

Miles then declared that he wants to go to Yale to become an archeologist. I proposed that someday all of us could be professors at the same university. "Yeah," said Miles. "We can eat lunch together and talk about our cool discoveries. Well, Griffin and I can talk about our cool discoveries, and you can...what do you do again? Do you just teach? You can talk about that, I guess."

Chip off the Old Block

Griffin hasn’t quite picked up on what a nerd his daddy is. He’s always asking me about the sports I used to play. A few weeks ago he asked me where I played college football. I laughed. “Boise State,” I said. “Where else would I have played?”

But when Laura’s within earshot, I have to be a bit more honest and tell him I didn’t actually play any team sports, per se. On the way to his baseball practice, I told him the only real sport I did was track. I did my best to make it sound cool, leaving out the polyester micro-shorts or the fact that I only made the team because I had a valid student ID. Kids don’t care about those details. I told him I used to run long distance.

“And then what?” He said.

“And then nothing. We ran. Really far.”

“Oh,” he said. “Like a race. That’s cool.”

He didn’t sound convinced.

I told him how I won a high-jump competition, leaving out the part where there were no other competitors or that the bar was literally as low as it could go without actually touching the mat, and even then I kept knocking it down.

“But when you played soccer,” he said, “you were on a team with a coach?”

I told him it’s a gray area. I had a friend who used to play soccer. His mom was the coach, and sometimes we would play in his backyard and she would make us Kool-Aid, so it was kind of like I was on the team.

I bought Griffin a contraption the other day—my brother had one growing up and we called it a “pitch back.” It’s like a vertical trampoline you throw a baseball at and it bounces back to you. I felt nostalgic putting it together, thinking of our old house on Woodland Drive and my brother, Jeff, spending hours pitching the baseball at it (and myself spending hours bouncing He-Man and Star Wars figures off of it). Griffin crouched next to me and helped string the net in place, and it was one of those proud moments when I saw so much of myself in my little son.

But then Miles came outside wearing a pair of goggles, knee-high socks, and a light-saber tucked into his belt. “Cool,” he said. “This can be our spy base.” And I remembered Miles is my son, and I have no idea where Griffin came from.

Recital

Few things embarrass me more than watching people perform live, especially when music is involved. I attended the kids’ piano recital last week, and I was a nervous wreck the entire time. The first performer played a few notes and then froze. She looked at her teacher who encouraged her to continue. That’s it, I thought. I’m going to have a stroke before this thing is over. The girl started over, and I had to put my head between my knees and take deep breaths.

It isn’t just that I’m embarrassed for the performer, but I also feel like I need to apologize for how embarrassing the situation is. When the teacher announced that the next performer, a twelve-year old girl, would be singing a Taylor Swift song, I wanted to turn to the folks behind me and say, “This really isn’t my fault. I didn’t know there would be singing.” She belted her way through “Love Story” with the off-key gusto only a lovesick pre-teen can muster, and I sunk lower and lower into my seat. I felt like the whole audience was staring at me. What would compel this girl to actually sing in front of a gymnasium full of people? Did she even consider my feelings when making this decision?

She finished. People applauded. I started breathing again.

The next kid to get up was five. His first song was one note played six times. It literally went, “Bom, Bom, Bom, Bommmmm, Bommmmmm, Bommmmm.” He still found a way to botch it, but the crowd applauded furiously anyway. I think—like myself—they appreciated his brevity.

Surprisingly, though, I wasn’t embarrassed when Miles and Caleigh got up to play their duet. I knew Miles would be fine. A few weeks ago, when we loaded our out-of-tune piano onto the U-Haul, he stood there for an hour and played every song he knew as loud as he could. As neighbors walked by, he would hail them over with a dramatic arm-gesture, like a circus ringmaster beckoning folks into the big-top. I don't even know where he got the tip jar from. I offered to drive around Farmington while he played, and he was genuinely bummed to find out I was kidding. Knowing that the kid has no shame, I had no reason to feel embarrassed for him, no matter what happened. And, as it turns out, he did great. So did Caleigh.

After the twins performed, I thought I might actually make it through the rest of the recital without developing any new ulcers, but then the next student, a young teenage girl, sat down, positioned the microphone, and started singing.

Back on the Grid

I just finished my seminar papers and mailed them off to my professors, which means my semester is officially over and I can return to the land of the living.

I wrote seventy-three pages and then whittled it down to fifty-six. My fingers hurt and I'll probably have weird dreams tonight.

What is my Problem?

I don't know how I did it again, but I ended my technical writing classes a week too early. I even checked the school's calendar this time when I wrote my syllabus.

Man of the People

One of our technical writing instructors had to take a sudden medical leave, and I was roped into taking over her class for the rest of the semester. The first thing that occurred to me as I looked at the instructor’s syllabus was that I don’t assign my students nearly enough homework. In a typical week she had a couple of quizzes, two or three writing assignments, student presentations, and several chapters from the textbook—compared to my typical week, which is to show a Scrubs episode, ask the students to talk amongst themselves about what the connection is to technical writing, and then cancelling class the rest of the week for no particular reason.

I had told the instructor I would try to stick with her syllabus to not upset the students, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that every assignment I give my students just means more work for me.

I was nervous when I walked into the classroom today. The students were genuinely bummed when I told them their teacher wouldn’t be returning. A student asked if they would still have to take the quiz today. I apologized to them that some of my teaching philosophies weren’t in synch with their previous instructor’s, so they would have to go the rest of the semester without quizzes. This cheered them up rather quickly.

I put my new course schedule on the overhead, and a student noticed that the reading and affiliated writing assignment were no longer due on Monday. I explained that I wanted them to focus on their big team projects (which they’ll be working on for the rest of the semester), and I didn’t want to distract them with busy work. This elicited a few more fist pumps and whoops. I felt like a politician who was finally finding his groove and connecting with the crowd. I then pointed out that one of my conditions for taking over the class was that I wouldn’t teach on Fridays, so they would only be meeting twice a week from now on instead of three.

The whoop-whoops and cheers and high fives continued to escalate as I unfolded my vision for how the semester would end, including no more textbook readings, and cancelling a round of student presentations next week. Three girls were crying, yelling, “We love you, Mike!” I finished by revealing that I was cancelling the portfolio requirement. The crowd roared, and a couple of students hoisted me onto their shoulders. I held out my arms and fell backwards onto the rabble of cheering students. They passed me around the room, chanting, “Mike! Mike! Mike!”

It was pretty cool.

Another Couple of Weeks in Review

• Yesterday I registered for the last two graduate classes I'll ever have to take. After next semester, it's just exams, dissertating, and the job search (which, combined, will still take several years, but at least I won't have to take any more classes!).
• Laura made blueberry breakfast sausages for dinner. Not good. It'll be a while before any of us can eat blueberries or sausage again.
• Miles and Griff signed up for baseball and Caleigh signed up for softball. Between rainstorms, we've been throwing the ball around. Griff has quite an arm, but he has a hard time catching. I won't let him cry when the ball hits him in the face, so he just rubs his forehead and says that baseball is boring and he doesn't want to play anymore.
• Laura's been re-staining our kitchen table and chairs, so for the last week we've been using a giant card table with two patio chairs, a weight bench, a rocking chair, and a broken pink chair with no back. The kids love it and one of them (I can't remember who, one of the shorter ones) asked if we could keep it like that until we move.
• Miles has a girl from school who calls him everyday. They talk for a half hour or so, and Miles keeps asking, "So why did you call? Did you want to set up a play date or something?" Today she told Miles she likes him as more than a friend, but Miles told her he's not cool with that, so she said, "Okay, we'll just be friends." We're proud of Miles for holding his ground. But now Laura frets every time she calls. "I'm not ready for this," she says. "Should we be putting limits to how long he can talk on the phone? Should he be talking to girls?"
• I took one of my old suits in to get tailored. The seamstress, a rotund lady with rosy cheeks and a thick Norwegian accent, looked frazzled as she pinned up the seat of my pants. "This will have to do," she said. "You're no Versace model, but it'll look fine on you." Then she chuckled, looked around to make sure no one was listening, and said, "The secret is that those Versace models don't look that good in suits either. It's a little something called Photoshop." I took it as a compliment. A good back-handed Norwegian compliment.
• I removed a sliver from Griffin's finger. There was a tiny drop of blood, so he asked if he could put a band-aid on it. He insisted on doing it himself, and after five minutes of fumbling around, he finally got the band-aid on. "People say that band-aids make it feel better," he said. "But I think it feels exactly the same." A couple minutes later he looked at his hand and said, "Ah, man...I put it on the wrong finger."

Update

It isn't that I've been too busy to blog lately. I've just been in my mid-semester routine and find nothing particularly interesting to blog about. This is more of an update for the folks back west.

• We had a wicked nasty rain and wind storm a couple of nights ago, which I found out is a cheap and easy way to wash your car (assuming a tree or raccoon doesn't fly into it).
  
• I hit a pothole on the way to work tonight and blew out a tire. The car in front of me did the same thing, so we changed our tires side by side. The other driver had a much fouler mouth than I.
  
• I'm still teaching technical writing, but not exclusively to engineering students this semester. It's mostly seniors in nutritional science and other make-believe majors who waited until their final semester to take the course. I made them give presentations last week, and I threatened to fail them if they said "um." No one said "um."
  
• I have a third job now as a consultant for the University Writing Programs. I'm not sure yet what I do, but I put in a few hours each week in the office.
  
• I won't be teaching anymore after this semester. This summer I'm taking over as Associate Director of the University Writing Programs. Still fuzzy on the details, but my office has a phone and an air-conditioner.
  
• I used to hate peanut butter, but now I like it. Not sure what's up with that. My new favorite treat is "Under the Stars" ice cream by Hood. It has ribbons of peanut butter and little chunks of chocolate and I have to run an extra twenty minutes a day to burn it off, but it's totally worth it.
  
• Elliot has had a fever lately. She sits on the couch looking stoned with glazed over eyes and invites people to sit next to her.
  
• I find it creepy to think that while I was watching Bob Costas fly over Stanley Park with his camera-man last week, the body of Andrew Koenig ("Boner" from Growing Pains) was laying down there in the bushes somewhere.
  
• Miles accidentally locked himself in the garage a couple of days ago and he's still mad at me about it. Yes, I locked the door, but he can't prove it.
• Laura informed me I now have the physique of the Pink Panther.
  

The Danger of Weight Loss

Between meetings at church I went to use the restroom and found a turd and some toilet paper floating in the toilet bowl, which normally isn't enough to gross me out, since I've been attending a public university for nearly fifteen years (which, yes, is as sad as it sounds, since I'm not attempting to become a plastic surgeon) and I've come to terms with America's inability to flush after using a public toilet.

I reached forward to flush the toilet, and my wedding ring, which fit fine 35 pounds ago, slid off my finger and into the already-occupied toilet. It didn't fall directly in; rather, it bounced off the seat with a ping and then hopped to the other side of the seat. Three pings later, it plopped into the water, just missing the turd, and settled at the bottom of the bowl.

I stared horrified at the scene before me and contemplated my options. I bought the ring for fifteen dollars at a state fair, so flushing it really wouldn't put a financial strain on us. But the sentimental romantic in me began rolling up my sleeves, knowing what had to be done. I'll spare you the details of what happened next, but after washing my hands and arm in scalding water for the next five minutes, I decided it was time to retire my silver wedding band.

I found the gold ring Laura bought me when I was a young, skinny groom, which I haven't been able to wear for ten years. It fits great, but I think from now on I'll play it safe and just use my foot to flush public toilets.

The Importance of Sharing Childhood Memories

Yesterday, Miles and I somehow got to talking about a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal I had as a child. He had a weird case of the giggles, because what I thought was a rather sentimental and nostalgic memory had him roaring as I explained how Santa brought me a giant Pooh for Christmas, and how I wouldn't let anyone else play with my Pooh, and that Matt got one too so sometimes I would accidentally play with his Pooh instead. I told him how sad I would get when I had to eat dinner without my stuffed friend because my mom wouldn't let me put Pooh on the table. And then I recounted how, after finally growing up, I tried to give my Pooh away, but nobody wanted it.

Tonight, at dinner, Miles asked me to tell him some more about my Pooh, but Laura shut us down pretty quickly. "Your mother used to like Pooh, too" I whispered. "Back when she still had a sense of humor."