Vergil’s Coffee

As we’re thinking of how to get Colin to become more comfortable with writing, we turned to a natural choice: have him write about things he likes, the things he researches just for him. And how should he do the writing? Well, it seems like blogging would be a reasonable choice.

So, I’ll be setting up a blog for him on my webserver space and probably be using a WordPress backend. Right now I’m trying out an free blogging tool Qumana (as noted at the end of this post) and seeing how it translates over to the actual site.

Beyond that, we’ll be encouraging him to write something each day (much like a daily journal) and hopefully I’ll post the url when I get things set up on this end so you can follow his progress.

Powered by Qumana

We’ve been visiting a local church and the boys are really clueless. Both Colin and Evan have eaten breakfast, but as soon as they walk into the foyer, they are eying the food (“refreshments”) on the church-length folding table. Last week, the church had a special part in their service for those who wanted to renew their vows. Guess what was served after the service? And I’m a bit irritated at Evan and Colin because they simply can’t help themselves and is it worth withholding the white icing from my sons while everyone else was eating the wedding cake?

• My boys are good at celebrating with dessert-like food.

We’re also going through this battle of what to bring on trips (even if it’s just a 3-minute trip to this particular church). Evan manages his stuff pretty well and I think he’s bringing a 3-ring binder that houses all of his schematic drawings and lists for a video game he was working on with a friend. Colin, though, isn’t as sure, but he’s been going with the Garfield at the Movies book and he’s been copying down the Garfield movie title with the actual real film title (“Catablanca” and “Scarf-face” are “Casablanca” and “Scarface”). Front and back of a wide-ruled paper, Colin has two columned his compare and contrast of the movie titles…accurately.

• My boys are list makers and they get it from their mother.

It’s not that I have an aversion to lists: I’ve used them throughout my life and though there was a time when I only made mindmaps because I thought it was just plain cooler, I will list things as a temporary noting of “todo” and “brainstorm.” Lori, though, lives through lists and I think my sons are following in her 6 1/2 shoes.

One of my earliest lists I came across one of my earliest lists a couple of years ago. For some reason, I’ve always been the type to bring something to write in or on to whatever place I may be (I’m at piano lessons now, and I’m typing on my eeePC and using my composition book as a lap surface). So I must have purchased this little blue 4 by 6 spiral notebook for an upcoming week of camp at Hartstone in the summer of 1981.

• A box score that I made while watching the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros on television when we lived in an apartment on Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa. The stats abruptly end at the top of the 4^th when the Astros got 6 runs that inning.
• Me practicing my signature, several times as “Chris S. Judson” “Chris Judson” and “Christopher S. Judson”…my cursive was, well, not that great.
• Notes from a sermon or a talk at camp. (It’s interesting that one of the more valuable things I learned at camp was that you could learn something from anyone. And I have tried to maintain that thought in life…though I found it difficult one year when the old man talked about the “Holy of Holies”… Old Testament stuff that he really got jazzed about; we were looking forward to swimming in the Eel River later that afternoon).
• A “what to bring” list for the six-day, rustic-setting camp and it was pretty typical. Here’s the first column:
• Pants (jeans and one formal pair)
• Socks (3 pair)
• Shirts (4, including one formal pair)
• Shoes (2)
• Guitar
• Underwear (3 pairs)

(and it’s at this point I wonder also at the quantity of my underpants).

• Sometimes we have these conversations that “he gets that from you” or “he cries about things just like you do” may be intended as a jovial jab, but sometimes can be an attack on those attributes we dislike in our partner or in ourselves or even more, our parents.
• Sometimes lists have taken on a “one of those things” in a relationship some call the “honey-do” list (a phrase that makes me want to punch a panda in the gut). I admit: there’s been times that I’ve haven’t looked forward to a Saturday morning beginning with a list from Lori on things that she wants done by me. She’s gotten clever and now frames the process as a question: “So, what do you want to get accomplished today?” She’s subtle, isn’t she? But I think I’ve put aside the tension response “I don’t know, maybe watch TV” and have come to appreciate and honor the list. See, I think when a list is made, that list is an etching of things that come to mind that I might not recognize or see. I think I viewed the list as sort of an accounting for my inadequacies because I was just plain too stupid for either not noticing or because her intent was to nag me on stuff I really don’t want to do on my time.
• “My time” … funny little saying, isn’t it?
• As I was glancing through my composition today, I’ve noticed that Lori has made a list which appears to be knitting code: something about Size 8 needles and “Small Thee”  and “Yarn is double stranded” and then, because I’ve glanced at enough knitting pattern books, to know that the rest is the pattern for the … oh, I think it’s a “Small Tree” because there’s two other headings of “Med tree” and “Large Tree.” I’m a bit irritated because she’s written this in my composition book and didn’t bother to tear it out. (Now that I think of it, I remember that this was from a trip to Borders in the Fall because the knitting pattern list appear before a mindmap of my CV I was putting together for an application and a mindmap/list of my most recent Lilly Grant proposal (and the brainstorming via list on what I should do and the circled “40 plays in 40 days” title when I knew I had a good idea).
• As a teacher, I have a Lesson Planning book that really is a place to make lists of stuff I’d like students to do. Lately, I’ve been using it for making lists of things I want to do.
• The envelope is probably the most portable and most accessible planning tool. I am still amazed at how I’ll make lists and notes on the back of envelopes….perhaps this is the great way to stay green and I wonder if pretty-boy Leonardo DiCaprio will give up on his brain-killing florescent light bulbs that you can’t simply throw away…no, he should go on the Today Show or Oprah and tell us the marvels of using the back of envelopes for our writing of these temporary thoughts.
• Talking is fine, but there’s something about jotting down stuff as it hits you and for some reason, you can always find the back of an envelope.
• Evan’s playing music that has a lot of notes on it. He has to act up them, says his piano teacher. (I’m not sure what that means either).
• Colin’s watching Kung Fu Panda on the portable; he’s obsessed with chopsticks and China Buffet.
• There’s an idea out there that we should save all of our stuff in digital format so that we can never again lose that scrap of paper that has that important note or number on it. So we then go through the process of taking those quick notes and scraps of information, key them all into some program with the hope that somewhere down the road we’ll be able to re-access that information when it becomes necessary. Only thing: it usually doesn’t. For example, I’ve tried, on several occasions, to keep our checkbook register on a software program. I am diligent for that first month and I am happy to see how reconciling and balancing our checkbook is some much more easier on the computer. But then, I go a week or two or even a month and I have to have these marathon sessions to enter all the stuff from the check register into the computer.
• I’ve given up on the whole double-entry thing. Isn’t the idea to not repeat yourself? Why do the same thing and take more time for what?
• As if information in digital form is of more use; I think not.
• So who cares if you lose a number or a piece of information; what about all the information that is lost with a delete button? I
• I think I’ve come to terms with list making and there are times that I can almost hear, to the tune of “Matchmaker” (Fiddler on the Roof) “Listmaker, listmaker, make me a list…” in our house. We have people who make lists in our house and those lists are temporary and they serve a purpose. It reminds me of that part of the brain that is the processing center; its function appears to temporarily hold (about 17 seconds, some say) information and to either move it into a longer term holding tank or to just dump it because it doesn’t have much meaning.
• Lists are temporary and sometimes reflect temporary thinking that may or may not lead to some type of action. For me, next on the list is to cut this down from 1707 to under 1300 words.
• So long, and thanks for all the fish.
• Spellcheck.
• Post to blog via the eeePC.
• Insert Flickr pix into the post (tweak the stupid code for text wrap).
• Better ending.

 Some call me “obsessed.”
I’m growing tired of people talking about my coffee. Honestly, it’s none of your business how much coffee I drink or what variation I have in my venti cup. Perhaps a couple of times a week, some yahoo will conclude “You’re obsessed with coffee, you know?”

It’s taxing, these little conversations or pronouncements about my “coffee obsession.” I doubt these folk know what the term “obsession” means anyway as they toss the word around like a stupid toy. For instance, Captain Ahab, I think, gets a bad reputation with his apparent “obsession” of chasing Moby-Dick. Tom Benke also gets pegged with “obsession” or “too much ambition” as he works on that yellow sheet of paper, recording his ideas for better displays in grocery stores in “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pockets.”

You know, is it too much for people to understand that I can just appreciate a good Starbucks grande Pike Place coffee in a venti cup with creamer and four Sugar-in-the-Raw^® packets on a daily basis? It’s not obsession, it’s preference.

I didn’t always like coffee. I think my first coffee experience was when no adults were around and my neighbor-friend Brad Frost suggested that we try some. His father was at work and his mom was at the local grocery store (the local Safeway store in Bennett Valley Plaza). Brad’s family had a microwave oven–the first family on Washoe Court to own one. We quickly found out that the thing was lousy at making grilled chess sandwiches, but was good at reheating coffee and so Brad put a cup of that morning’s coffee and in a moment or so later, we got steaming hot coffee.

It didn’t smell good and Brad suggested that we spruce it up with milk and sugar. We added both until the coffee black drink was now a light Mocha shade and we drank.

Yeah, it was terrible. I remember thinking that this must be an adult drink and that there would probably never be a time when I would like coffee.

Mrs. Frost was at the door and we quickly poured out the rest of the coffee and ran the dry wash cloth over the sugar-coffee-milk mess on the counter beside the microwave oven. Brad tossed the rag in the sink before she asked what we were doing.

“Nothing,” we chorused innocently.

She gave us one of those “I know you’re up to something” looks and told us to get outside and play. We were out the door before she could ask us to help bring the groceries in from the wood-paneled station wagon.

When we got to my garage, we went through the usual “What do you want to do?” business. Fortunately, simply the most exciting movie in the world came out in theaters last summer and every boy across the U.S. (and perhaps the world and the universe) could be found in lightsaber fights everywhere. Or, at least that’s what I thought. And fortunately for us, I had two lightsabers.

See, I think I liked Star Wars a bit more than Brad Frost. I had the Star Wars blanket, the Darth Vader digital watch, the Estes X-Wing model rocket, the complete sets of the first three series of Star Wars trading cards (gum eaten, yes), the radio-controlled R2-D2, the official Star Wars blueprints of various spaceships and droids, a set of Ralph McQuarrie’s concept drawings and paintings, the “Story of Star Wars” album along with the Star Wars soundtrack on double LP set. Oh, and I saw Star Wars twelve times in the theater.

You might say that I liked Star Wars.

But Brad Frost could appreciate a good lightsaber fight and I had written out the script for the final duel scene between Obi-wan Kenobi and Darth Vader from listening to my “Story of Star Wars” album quite a few times. I hadn’t gone through my freakish eight-inch growth spurt yet, so I think we would just switch roles. This time, perhaps, I was Kenobi and we worked through not only the lines but also the choreography from what I had remembered from watching the film those few times.

The lightsabers back then weren’t that sophisticated; they were basically a flashlight with a long translucent tube attached to it. You could even unscrew the flashlight and place a red filter over the flashlight lens to emulate Vader’s lightsaber. It was really cool when we would turn off the garage light and enjoy the glow of our lightsabers.

Unfortunately these were not very sturdy and they often broke or bent whenever you tried to bang your saber against your friend’s.

I thought about Star Wars all the time during sixth grade as seen in my many renderings of Darth Vader, R2-D2, Tie Fighters and X-Wings on and in my spiral-bound notebooks. Each night I would fall asleep to John Williams’ soundtrack on my record player that I bought a garage sale. It was one of those all-in-one units that was mostly white plastic and all of the glorious orchestra sounds were outputted through a 3 inch speaker. Still, I could hear the themes and I would drift into sleep dreaming of Luke and Leia and the Force and space.

My sons like Star Wars, more the later films (the “Prequels” over the “Classics”) and they have quite a collection of lightsabers between them (ones that you can really bang against another lightsaber without breaking). They also have the Lego sets and the Lego PS2 games. There’d be times when I find our oldest just listening to the soundtracks to the newer movies. And I don’t think I have ever thought that Evan or Colin were “obsessed” with Star Wars. From what I have observed, the boys will like something a lot for awhile and then move on to something else.

Neither of them like coffee, though…at least at this point in their lives. And, I haven’t seen them try to sneak a sip of coffee when the adults are away.

I recently read a detailed account of how the first Star Wars movie came about and it’s a story of people spending countless hours pursuing a common goal of making a “long shot” of a film. The book centers around the film’s creator, George Lucas, who was–according to some people’s standards–”obsessed” with making this movie. Human history is made up with many of these “obsessed” men and women who concentrate on one thing and delve deep while excluding normal life. Sometimes, it seems, that the many want conformity from all individuals and there’s a part of me that is happy for those who concentrate and who are not that “well-rounded.” Perhaps it’s those folks that push our imagination.

One of my favorite critiques about my coffee is how bad the stuff is for me. “Did you know how much caffeine is in a cup of Starbucks coffee?” a person might ask. Before I can answer, the quoter is off on a “real fact” accounting of numbers and amounts attached to my coffee. Sometimes I want to tell them that they’re just “jealous” or that a fresh cup of coffee is a gift to myself for the day or that the cup keeps my hands warm. Most of the time I do what Captain Ahab probably should have done more of on board the Pequod: just smile and nod.

At least that’s The Way I See It.

The boys find talking about farting as being pretty funny. And they’ve just spent the trip from South Third Street to piano lessons in the 1993 Ford Escort Wagon while it was snowing trying to come up the substitute words for fart. Lori laid down the law in her frustration with the boys starting the fart-talk riff before dinner and by the time we were almost done, she’d had enough.

“Chris, you deal with the ‘f-word’ thing,” she said.

“Sure thing,” I replied. “Boys: no more saying the ‘f-word’ in public.”

“Uh, dad,” Evan asked. “That isn’t the real ‘f-word’ you know.”

“Well, Evan,” I said. “In our house, that is the ‘f-word.”

“Sure thing Dad,” Evan said.

But Colin hadn’t heard a word I said as he was high with the thrill of saying “fart” and then rehearsing several different situations where the word could be said. And the problem was that Colin had already eaten his food, so we couldn’t tell him to eat the rest of his dinner. (Colin’s our reluctant eater sometimes and many a “1-2-3” magic has resulted a trip upstairs and perhaps, a physical reminder to listen and obey; this, along with the thing he really hates: the timer. We set the timer and suddenly he’s full of anxiety that he might not finish within time).

Instead, he was happy-drunk with the countless possibilities and humor with the ‘f-word.’

This, in short, was not a fun trip to the piano lesson, but not as ‘un-fun’ as making a gingerbread cottage from scratch last weekend.

The story begins with Lori commenting on how fun it would be to make our own gingerbread house. Instead of paying $22.50 for pre-built G-Houses and assembling the exteriors with icing and a variety of candies, she suggested that we do the whole thing a home.

“Why don’t we just buy a kit like we did that one year?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Those were gross.”

And she was right as I remembered some tense words being exchanged between parents while the kids ask to help and the adults snapped “On, no!” and then trying to concentrate as the cheap icing lacked any practical value in holding the walls together. So, like the glue in those assemble-yourself-book shelves: white doesn’t necessarily mean that its main purpose is to stick two things together.

“Yeah,” I said. “It wasn’t our prettiest moments…but I remember the house tasting good in coffee.

“I think we should make out own,” Lori said. “The kids will think it’s fun and it’ll be a nice memory.”

“Fine,” I said (secretly hoping that she would forget the conversation).

But she didn’t and so she found a suitable design and I decided to put a smile on my face.

And so that lasted until the adding of ingredients began. Lori is so much better at this sort of thing. If I have some task to do around the house, I’ll usually go off and do it myself. Lori, instead, will have the boys help her out. So, Evan and Colin worked on breaking eggs into bowls and then having the boys mix the recipe by hand. A too-much-broken egg shell in the batter, giggling during the mixing and soon the tones from the parents grew increasingly firm to terse to almost the “snippy.”

Then the walls came out a bit irregular and so was the roof and floor. So that brought us back to two parents trying to hold the walls together while Evan asked “What do we get to do? though we were supposed to help out.” And I was about to get snippy, but Lori beat me to the response and said “Sure thing…why don’t you hold this in place here.”

After the walls settled (or sagged to the side), we then set the roof in place using the homemade icing. One of the roof pieces broke earlier and so we were careful to make sure it would break when we glued it to … and Colin accidentally pressed down on the roof and the roof sagged into two.

Just as a note: icing, like chalking, can cover a multitude of sins.

I think I first recognized this realization of sub-par completion when I put together various plastic models. We had a family friend named Don Garret who had quite an impressive set up to assemble plastic models and I wanted to have model planes that looked like Don’s but I soon found out that by the time I had overglued the fuselage that the wings would be slightly off and by the time I had glued down the now glue-fingerprinted canopy, I really didn’t want to face the decals. And I’m sure the gray pilot was saddened (if he could even see out the glue-cloudy canopy) by the sad, sad state of his plane with half torn decals because no one has successfully been able to transfer those things off the backing onto the desired placement on the plane.

I hated the plane by the end of the fun of building my own version of a famous plane and so I think it’s no wonder that many a boy looked forward to blowing the thing up with firecrackers or just dousing the thing in lighter fluid, taking a match to a wing and launching the ball of flame down the cliff of the creek behind your house.

I would experience the same feeling of building anxiety and disappointment when I would put together those “assemble yourself an entertainment center” from pressed sawdust or really any plumbing task. You hope it’ll take 30 minutes, but usually the task is completed 2 ½ hours later and several versions of the ‘f-word’ have been uttered or at least considered.

On the trip to CVS to get the candy for the landscaping and exterior decoration for our Gingerbread Cottage, I felt I should explain all of the candy. (We’d been calling it a “cottage” because we felt that the structure resembled more shack than a shelter to protect its inhabitants from the elements. Our structure should collapse anytime: something you should avoid in looking for a house, by the way).

“Oh, somebody’s got a sweet tooth,” the CVS cashier says.

“Well, we’re building a gingerbread house from scratch and we just need the candy to decorate it.” I explain.

“Oh, well isn’t that fun,” she offered.

“Maybe, “ I said and took my stuff to the car and drove home.

And as I’ve told people that we made a gingerbread cottage from scratch, the most common response “That sounds fun,” they say. And I want to say “No, it was not fun.”

Even though Lori accused me of being “Scroogey” on her Facebook status this weekend, I do think I like to have fun. But fun isn’t so much defined as making a gingerbread cottage whose walls and floor and roof is so uneven that it seems that only by luck does the thing say together. Fun isn’t having to liter the entire structure with so many pieces of candy only to cover up how sad the thing thing looks (as if candy, now, covers a multiple of sins). Fun isn’t getting testy when the kids are trying to help out in the building of thing that will eventually become a family memory of the time we built that really ugly gingerbread thing full of candy and Dad was cranky.

Perhaps that’s what Lori meant when she said she was tired after finishing the thing, but it is something we’ll remember. Sure we’ll laugh as we’re eating the thing after dinner and drinking coffee, but I still contend that the act of putting the thing together was not fun.

Colin asking me if I had ever heard “Cut the cheese”–now that’s fun.

Colin’s at his piano lesson and I’m noticing his outfit for today: Faded navy blue cotton pants and a cranberry-colored plaid shirt. It’s a nice outfit, except he has the pants and the shirt on backward. Apparently it’s Red Ribbon Week at his school and if I remember correctly, he and his school mates will dress up in different ways throughout this week. Today it might be backward day, tomorrow, I think, is crazy hair day. All of this, according to the take-home handout, is to show his spirit for this week: the Red Ribbon week.

I think the first time I realized that dressing up as something wasn’t the greatest way to express my support for some cause probably came in kindergarten when I was changing into my Planet of the Apes “Doctor Cornelius” Halloween costume. I won’t bore you with the details, but let’s just say it is the single reason why I didn’t dress up for Halloween during my childhood.

But I think the real shocker came in college when I was an resident assistant (RA) and the guys in my house wanted to dress me up as a woman. I resisted the idea, stating that I didn’t think was proper for a guy to dress up like a girl (which I knew would have some merit at the college I was attending. I even went to the Dean of Students would siding with my house guys and so I dress up in pink turtle neck, cardigan, plaid shirt, and boots. I was a fright to behold and got the desired affect effect for the ones who dreamt up the outfit in the first place.

We’re in a fairly serious class (I think it was Exegesis-English Bible) and Mr. Brew (our instructor) is lecturing about something equally serious (maybe the overall impact of Tyndale on our current translations) and he stops. Brew (a rather short man with glasses and wonderfully pressed shirts) looks at the class of 30 or so of us and steps toward the middle of the room.

He smiles.

“You know,” he says, “sometimes I wonder.”

He pauses and looks toward the window on his right.

“Sometimes I wonder what we are thinking and how that impacts what we do.”

We pause from our note-taking knowing that this would be another “Brewism”–a piece of thoughtful insight to the larger world beyond the campus on Franklin Avenue. This wasn’t the times that your teacher begins a digression for the sake of hearing one’s own voice. Brew was a smart, wise person who was unassuming with a zing of humor that earned our respect and usually our agreement of his perception.

“For instance,” he continued, “my daughter attends a ‘liberal’ college across town: Calvin. Now we may not agree with the doctrine over there or even how they would view our topic of translation and it’s impact on what we know about the bible.”

He looked at us, then walked to the window and then addressed us again.

“He are at Grand Rapids we have ‘Dress up your RA Day’ as a day of fun…and I’m not saying that’s a particularly bad thing.”

Brew then looked at the notes he’d scribbled on the board and then looked back at us.

“See, today we are having ‘Dress up your RA Day’ and at Calvin they are having a peaceable protest against world hunger.”

He let the words hang and then continued.

“We are so set on being right in our belief here and yet you have to wonder what is happening at Calvin to make them think about their impact on the world.”

Part of me wanted to explain to Brew that I didn’t even want to be dressed up this way and that I didn’t see the purpose of the whole dress up thing anyway. But I couldn’t because I was just feeling guilty for feeling guilty (something that religion does very well). Instead, I felt bad because he was right (something that he did not insist on).

Tomorrow’s crazy hair day and Colin has insisted on going with the green, wacky hair. Colin will be one of those students who will always participate on school or class dress up days. (Heck, he would have loved to be in my spot in kindergarten and then on those Spirit Weeks in high school and probably would have worn makeup with the turtleneck in my “Dress up your RA day”).

He likes to dress up because he likes putting the combinations on. And when the costume goes on so does the persona. Colin as the Joker, Colin as the Penguin, Colin as the Ninja Darth Vader.

And so, as he wears his clothes backward, he is happy to dress the part. And for dressing the part for Red Ribbon Week, he got a sticker.

It’s a round red sticker with an animal on it:

“Don’t monkey around with drugs.”

Piano lesson is over.

(on having a former teacher asking me what’s been happening in my life since 1984 via Facebook)

Dear Mr. Noble,

And I start that way because what student has the gall to called their teacher by the first name? It just sounds and feels funny, so I’ll simply address you the same way I did in high school: Mr. Noble. (Besides, I think the students that called you by your first name were just being daring. To call your teacher “Dick” is both funny ha-ha and probably the result of some silly dare at the expense of your first name, perhaps).

I think the last time I saw you was at your house and I can’t remember for the life of me who was with me, but I remember it was probably after graduation and before a lot of us heading to the Midwest for college (or, in my case, post-high school education <g>). And I think your wife was there and your daughter (the one whom you proudly told us could say the Pythagorean Theorem by the age of 4). Wait, maybe it was Peter (who later said he had AIDS but I think is in Canada now) who was with me. Anyway, it was a nice visit and I think we made a lot of small talk and if I am correct, you even offered us iced tea and we accepted and sipped it (and why is it when we invite people into our homes do we give them tea or coffee or water? Maybe it’s a carry over from the olden days when traveling meant more).

From then, I sort of lost contact with you. I had heard a few reports of how you might have slightly ignored authority (creative teacher decision) and took some of your students to see Schindler’s List even if it was rated R (content over labels). I didn’t confirm the rumor, but I didn’t think it was that far out of your character. I don’t mean that in a negative sense; in fact, I think that’s one of the things I learned from you.

Remember when we were getting to Chapter 19 in Biology and you prompted us to say the “magic word” when a certain history teacher came in the room in the portable classroom you taught in? Yes, to the book, Chapter 19 was “Human Reproduction” but to our Biology class we gleeful answered your prompt “Class, what are we learning about today?” with a chorus “Sex!” This teacher-student exchange could be wrong on several levels: 1). You did it to possibly get a desired reaction from the unsuspected history teacher that walked in; 2). You were encouraging teenagers to say the word “sex” in public in the 1980s; and, possibly most damaging, 3). We were in a Christian school, weren’t we? And yet, there was so much more that I learned from your pedagogy than making someone a tad embarrassed and that was the power of being human and calling out sacred cows and celebrating things that make a lot of people uncomfortable. Sometimes the purpose of humor is to say the things that are unspoken in public so that we can simply get over ourselves.

And I’m not sure how he pulled this off, but I can say that Todd was a good “tally man” in Algebra II. Early in the semester you had made a mistake in a computation on the board and someone called you on it. Your response (and perhaps this is where the Christian school comes in) was that Jesus said that we need to forgive one another 70 times 7 (of which we all calculated to be 490). And we took it literally as most Christian folk take things in the Bible and Todd kept a running count of your mistakes, miscues and blunders (even if you corrected them immediately) until the end of the semester. When we reached 489 we decided as a class to have a celebration the following day and when you hit 490 the next day, we celebrated your mistakes with cake, ice cream, pop and other sweet stuff.

Probably what confused me the most about you was the Timothy group (I think that’s what you called them) where a few of us got a special invitation to meet as a group off campus to talk and have a look at the book of Timothy. It was a bit different of a group than I was used to and I really can’t remember any of the conversations or even topics that we discussed. I think I remember feeling like this was something special and that I was invited to be a part of it and I sometimes wonder why I was invited. For me, it was one of the few times that a teacher actually wanted to do non-school stuff outside of school. This wasn’t a school-sponsored club or even; it was something that you did for us and it was out of the ordinary.

Granted you did pick me up in Sebastopol every morning for a year or two. I would hop on the county bus at 6:20 a.m. in Monte Rio and get off by that corner where you would swing by in your … what kind of car was it? It had fins and was some shade of gold or silver or both. I think you also tried to explain why a manual transmission was better overall than an automatic one (it had three on the tree didn’t it?) And you are correct: I was a mooch for getting rides to places. I don’t think I every gave you gas money for the trip and perhaps you’d like to prorate your pay back in today’s gas prices, eh?

My oldest son, Evan, turned 11 Friday and he had two of his friends over for a slumber party thing.

Colin, the 7-year old, did his part in dressing up as a ninja/Darth Vader/bad guy from Meet the Robinsons. Lori is still a tad sore from last week’s running in the Cleveland Marathon…I got to help pace her to a new personal best of 4:44. (And, btw, this is the second year we’ve run a marathon on our anniversary and I wouldn’t exactly recommend that type of a weekend when you get a chance to get away from the kids). We’ve been married for 18 years, Lori and I, and we’ve been living in Goshen, Indiana for 12 years. She’s a SLP and works on private contract through the state with the 0-3 year old population. She’s the first person I met that really read a lot of books and had quick wit (though I’m proud to say that I beat her every time in Scrabble).

I am teacher, Mr. Noble, and though I choose English as my subject, some of the teacher persona comes from my observations in that portable classroom in that little school in Santa Rosa, California. I tried for a mathematics endorsement through college correspondence courses, but my heart wasn’t in it and I loved words more (though, I think they’re all symbols–math and English–and it’s all about language anyways, eh?). My students like appreciate respect me and have creative ways of showing it–and I think you know what I mean. Whereas somebody drew the numbers “666″ on the forehead of every one of your pictures in my 1984 yearbook, my students write “DDJD” on my board or on our class website or even on their Google Chat status indicator. I think one year, a student even made bracelets to hand out to the class with “DDJD” on it. I smiled. (Die Die Judson Die, btw).

In short: when you messaged me via Facebook: “I’m interested in you and your family and your work, etc, etc” I can tell you that I am happy, that I have a wonderful life with Lori and Evan and Colin (and sometimes LukeTheCat), that I am amusing myself in my work, that, and I think I got this from you, the classroom is not so much a place to learn about stuff for the future but a place where one can live a life. I think of you often: about a 4-year-old girl saying “The sum of the square of the legs equals the square of the hypotenuse” and a father smiling in approval, about Chapter 19, about 490, and about someone enjoying what they do and the people that watch him perform each day. And, about the improbability of impacting human lives and the randomness of words and how sometimes the whole business of life is a bit funny.

Thank you.

Peace,

Chris Judson

Class of 1984
(Geometry, Biology, Algebra II and Basic Auto Theory)

It’s not a question I enjoy since the youngest son has become obsessed with Meredeth Vieira. If you remember the special features on the DVD version of The Lion King 1 ½, there’s the “test your knowledge” of “all things Disney Lion King” in the form of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” called “Who Wants to be King of Jungle” (or “Pride” or “Mountain” or something like that). You are Timon and the whole “Millionaire” motif is carried out so that you can have fun whiles you recount scenes and characters. And so, after hours of playing the interactive DVD game, Colin has taken to sharing the game experience with us his family. It’s a long, drawn out affair as he tries to ask the questions, and give the choices in the same tone as Merideth. Most challenging for us, his family, are the questions that go “Who’s in this picture?” We’d chorus: “Colin, how can we answer that question when we don’t have a picture in front of us?” And Colin would say, “It doesn’t matter” and repeat the question “Who’s in this picture?” and begin listing the choices. It’s a difficult question with no picture to reference.

I’m hoping he doesn’t actually have a thing for Meredeth.

It amazes me that many people reference Disney as the “family-friendly” content provider. DisneyWorld is the place that you take your family; the Disney films are fun for the whole family to watch together; and the DisneyChannel gives us the family-friendly High School Musical and Hannah Montana (both of which I know nothing about because I have boys). What’s strange to me is what we’ve grown to know as the fairly well-used, typical Disney film plot: it begins with a single parent family and a child who wants something more out of life and culminates with a little magic and a “happily ever after” ending. And I really wonder where’s the “family-friendly” in a single parent household.

I considered this once or twice the past week as my wife took holiday to Florida for a week and it was me and the 10-year-old “all things PlayStation2” Evan and the 7-year-old “Who’s in this picture?” Colin. (I could include Luke the Cat, but he’s more or less a prop in our house and doesn’t really count as a person). I could tell you how hard it was to make sure the boys got off to school fine (waking, dressing, making breakfast and lunches, combing hair and reminding of brushing teeth), but it wasn’t that incredibly hard. I could tell you that planning and making dinner and doing the night time routine was exhausting, but it wasn’t. If anything, I found that I was out of my routine and the extra duties were not convenient for me. In fact, I had more concentrated time with Evan and Colin and we all had moments that could not have been created and shared if Mom was there. Evan and I talked about his day during dinner and Colin, well, asked me “Who’s in this picture?” questions. What was most difficult for me was what to do when the boys were in bed.

It was too quiet and still.

I wonder if this is how my mom felt as the three of us finally got to sleep and she was left by herself to listen to the quiet and stillness. I also wonder about some of my students and their families where it’s just mom or dad at home and what mom and dad hear and feel. And sometimes I think about a few of my students who are the parent and how it is for them and who will not magically realize that in a week’s time, the “other” half of the parenting group will be back in the house and be hearing about how we gave new names to Colin and Evan, and how Evan will insist that dad do that silly voice that makes the name story even more funny.

We were to watch Blades of Glory that night. I could have watched it by myself, but I decided that if it was a film to endure, she should have to endure it with me. Instead we talked—about the crowded Tampa airport, about her seeing the Harlem Globetrotters walking in the Atlanta airport, about how Evan actually gave her a hug when she got home and how Colin asked her “Who’s in this Picture?” And I think I realized that it is easier to be the one returning than to be the one who remains.

I thought it was quite humorous too. It had been a day that began with me being slightly hostile toward…well, a few things: being moved to another room so my classroom could be used for retesting of the ISTEP and a faculty meeting that had me say some things that ran contrary to most of my colleague’s opinions. Some call it grumpy; I call it “Tuesday.”

So, there’s this student whom I swear is in the hallways, when he should be class, almost every hour. I’ll make some comment and usually the response is playful banter. He also has a girlfriend and she is in my resource period class (sort of a homeroom idea) and so I feel even more welcome in sharing my views on dating with the both of them. And at the end of the day I’m watching the rush toward buses and dash to after-school activities and there’s the couple doing the “departure” kiss and I yell down the hall: “Hey! Stop your kissing and read books.”

I think I’m funny, but the boy doesn’t. She leaves for the bus and he walks toward me and I feel the compulsion to say it again: “Don’t Kiss; Read Books.” He mutters something slightly negative and I turn toward my editor and tell him how funny I think my new found phrase is and he perhaps humors me and I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

My day started out hostile and I think I passed that hostility on to the kissing boy.

Like Target, eating a meal at Hacienda will yield at least three encounters with people from school (it’s usually 3 students to every 1 teacher). And as Lori and I are enjoying a night out without the kids, I see four students swing by our booth to say “Hey” or to bring us our food (I’m a fan of the wet burrito myself). Occasionally the conversation goes a bit beyond the “Hey” stage and Paige and I are chatting a bit while my wife was…well, now I think of it, I don’t remember what she was doing during this time. Anyway, Paige (maybe her real name) and I are talking and she wanted to make sure that I told my senior students something that needed to be told. So, I’ll repeat it here:

“It’s not that great.”

Or, at least that was the theme. After high school, according to her, it really isn’t that wonderful. You work on finishing college and then you get a job and you suddenly find yourself– well–at the bottom. And sometimes, at the real bottom with little money and little respect and little power. So, she tells me, “Tell your little seniors that” and I say “Okay” and she leaves.

Tonight I coerced my son into playing in a chess tournament this weekend. He’s two weeks out from playing in the state team chess tournament in Terre Haute at the end of the month and we have talked about playing in the county tournament this weekend. He was wavering a bit because my son’s calendar revolves not around events, but opportunities to be with his friends or PlayStation or–and the best scenario–both. He wanted one of his friends to come over Friday night which means lots of PS2 time (and not the usual 30 min. timer limit). So, before dinner, I tell him (whiles he sits on my lap and he’s being all silly) that I think it would be good for him to play in the tournament and he objects a little but then concedes with “Well, maybe he could come over Saturday night.”

During dinner I ask Evan if he feels like I coerced him into playing in the chess tournament this weekend and he says “Maybe.” I ask him if he knows what “coerce” means and he says that he thinks it means “To force” and I say “Yes, do you think I forced you into playing in the tournament” and he says “Sort of.”

And I don’t feel really bad about it. Father knows best, right?

Maybe Paige has a point: Life’s not all that great after high school. Maybe there’s an upside to the coercion that parents and schools inflict on students. Sure, we parents and teachers “talk” our kids and students into doing a wide variety of things and most of the time they’ll smile and nod their way through compliance. And at what cost?

The kissing boy said I should just go ahead and write him up because “I already got a referral today anyway.” I told him that’s not what I wanted to do. He wasn’t too pleased with what I had to say and started off down the hall. I told him that all I wanted him to do is “Stop Kissing and Read Books.”

He didn’t laugh. I did.

That’s what we call it. Straight from the Jewish Old Testament, every 7 years all debts were forgiven and it was a time of celebration. So, how does that translate over to the boys in our house in 2008?

And it’s probably because those are the few words I know…well, the lead in to chorus and something that rhymes with “name.” I think I heard in a church once where people were more friendly in bars than in church and that “Shouldn’t the church be friendlier than a bunch of sinners getting drunk?” I leave the irony of the statement for you to ponder; I really wanted to talk more about the idea that wherever I go, someone knows me and it usually is connected with school.

For instance, today, when I did a quick run into Target to spend no less than $18, I recognized a boy who went to CHS. How? He was still wearing the OpticOrangeTuesdayBadge for not having his ID at school. I wanted to motion to him to take if off, but then I thought again. As I was walking out, former students honked and waved at me (really, why do we honk our horns and wave anyway?). I didn’t get past CiCi’s when a fellow teacher honked at me from his truck motioning to “roll down your window.” I did and he yelled “Your rear brake light is out.” I thanked him (and I did mean it) and off we went in our separate speeds.

It’s a hazard of the job: public recognition. Anywhere I go in Elkhart County has the probability of running into a student or colleague from school. Most encounters are spastic…especially the ones where you recognize one another but had very little beyond a “Hey” relationship. “Hey’s” are exchanged and then “What are you up to?” and then the “Well, see you later.”

My sons aren’t fond of the Dad-as-Teacher thing. I thought they would be proud to have their Dad recognized– by name–outside of our family. One time, after its Grand Opening, We the Judson family went to ColdStoneCholesterol Creamery. And in opening the door, one of my more vocal students happen to see me and did a big singsongy “Hey, it’s Mr. Judson!”

I smiled. Lori sighed. Boys looked down.

I don’t think that they were embarrassed…well, yeah, the we’re embarrassed and when Lori asked the boys later if they liked that my students shouted our last name, Evan said “Not really” and Colin looked down.

They’re shy kids like most of us: not happy in being the object of too many eyes upon one. Evan used to faint in school (usually it was a blood sighting thing) and Colin takes awhile to warm up to a new environment. Lori usually just smiles and nods in these situations. Me, I think I got used to too many eyes on one when I would arrive to school late because I missed the 6:30 a.m. bus in Monte Rio and would have to take the 7:30 20-mile bus trek to Santa Rosa, transfer to a city bus and arrive at school an hour and 25 minutes late.

I remember taking a deep breath before opening the door to Mrs. Addis’s classroom and walking in front of the class to get to my desk as fast as possible. I avoided the all eyes on me by looking down.

To not acknowledge attention is not a bad coping mechanism. I don’t see you, therefore you do not exist. Descartes would be proud.

My sons are more interested in my second real full name than Judson. One night, I told them that I was adopted at an early age (6 months old) and that I was in foster care between birth and my adoption to Dr. and Mrs. Judson. For court records, I was given a proxy name or a placeholder name or something like that. And, seriously, Evan will smile and Colin will smilelaugh when I tell them that my second full name was: Eugene Allan Bivens. (Go ahead: laugh. I did when I found out through some hunting for my birth parents 13 years ago).

For now, Judson is my defining name. Some use it as a signal for a “Hey” while others use it as a curse word. And there’s no getting away from the name. And maybe, perhaps, the nice thing about being in school–as a student or teacher–is it is the one place everybody knows your name.