Vergil’s Coffee

(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.

Tonight the 7-year-old informed me that Mom said “We could get a four-legged guinea pig” and I told him that his mother “wasn’t right in the head.”

He thought that was funny and went and told Mom what I said and she laughed.

Don’t try and read into the 7-year-old’s compound adjective of “four-legged,” I think he just meant…well, I haven’t seen a three-legged one before. I am serious, though, about another varmint thing in the house. And when Lois informed me a couple minutes later that I could be the “good” guy and be the one that takes the credit for getting the hamster-thing, I still said that she wasn’t right in the head.

And she laughed and left for a meet-up with her mom and a friend.

We did like Weebie a lot and the boys did too. Weebie played with the cats and I think even starred in a few of our movies. But, like most Weebie-sized pets, he died–on Evan’s 8th birthday. It was a sad affair with Weebie losing his eye sight and then, technically dying on Evan’s birthday, but we sort of hid Weebie from view (or said that Weebie was resting) and then pronounced him dead the day after May 23rd.

I think my aversion to small things dying came at an early age…around the same age of Evan when Weebie died. Here’s how I explain the story in a piece I wrote in 2003 and I’ll set up the context by including the first two paragraphs of “Mickey Rat” and then the last three paragraphs.

View Larger MapWashoe Court two blocks into an arc at which we lived. There were a dozen houses to the left of us stretching to the McCann’s house that bordered Neotomas Avenue. To the right, were three houses: the Davis’ (who were Catholic which didn’t mean really anything to me except that their boys got to wear grey slacks and sweater to St. Eugene’s school), the Robinsons and the Germans (who remind me of the kids’ obsession with Radley house). Brad Frost and I once played ding-dong-ditch on the Germans, Brad tripped when we made the get away and broke his arm in the process. Washoe Court straightened out and ran parallel for about thirty feet and then made way for another court in which Esther, our babysitter for a few years, resided. Fred, her husband, rarely talked much and her sons didn’t torture us as much as taunted. Washoe Court then rejoined the paralleling and yielded two more houses until it reached Ne0tomas also. Brad Frost, my best friend of 6 years until we moved to the River, was our neighbor to the left; the Ramseys, the Smiths and a couple houses down were the Gradys. We didn’t play with those two blond wavy-haired boys much at all. That’s why it’s still so strange on what possessed them to make us hate them so much and we were a fairly mellow family.

Apparently we lived in a “custom-built” house that we designed and built by some lawyer who lived in it for about a year before selling it to us and moving to the City. I’m sure the neighborhood was happy to see a cardiologist with his young family move into 2546 Washoe Court. There would gatherings and barbeques and parties and some showing of the gathering wealth of the Judson family. I remember by father telling me how to grill a t-bone steak on our custom built, brick grill complete with a heating oven for things like potatoes below the grill behind a 2 x 3 foot black iron door. I also remember wheelbarrowing those bricks and heaving them off the 20 foot cliff in our backyard 8 years later due to age and atrophy and erosion…

It was around this time that the Jason, our half calico bred cat, wasn’t enough of the wild kingdom for my brother. We housed various lizards and snakes in our room, but we were quite fond of our rats which became so numerous that Mike built a shed in the back yard by the fence we shared with the Frosts. We housed the 100 or so rats in a large, Plexiglas aquarium and several cages. We feed them the usual pet store rodent food along with peanut butter which they would lick off your finger. My mother even donned a “Mickey Rat” t-shirt that she got at a flea market in Sebastopol and even though it might have been an editorial message toward the early Disney World, I always looked at it as sort of a family shirt celebrating our rats.

Brad and I are either riding our bikes or trying to throw rocks over the power lines that hovered the court when I hear my sister or brother yelling something. Stephany is running toward me and I come with her, half running in slow motion. We’re headed toward the shed and Mike walks past us looking down. I feel death and I see images of saws with blood and white and red rats with unblinking eyes and mouths agape and heads with no bodies and I turn and ask Stephany. She says Mike heard it was the Grady boys and my mom comes out and is upset and we’re half happy because we never did liked the Grady boys but more than that we ask ourselves “Why?”

The Judson mob, all four of us, led by my mother, head to the gated front yard of the Gradys drab green house and my mother is talking/shouting and the offenders are summoned by their mother and admit to the crime and I find out later that for their punishment the Grady boys are put on restriction for one day. We clean up the crime scene and make the unanimous decision to let the remaining 11 rats go free. I remember it was the next day and in sort of ceremonial fashion, all of us, Mike, Stephany, and I make a speech and then set our pets free. And I remember the fog and the rats heading down the edge of the incline that lead toward the wilderness of the Santa Rosa Creek. We stood there for a while and then made our way back into the house past the shed and what was left of my father’s brick grill.

I think we’re safe if we just stick to one gineau pig. It looks like the boys will be getting a living Easter present.

It’s the one thing that I can say to Evan that will guarantee a dramatic response. It goes like this:

ME: Evan, how was your day?

EVAN: Eh. Fine, I guess. (Fiddling with a miniature paper airplane as he looks longingly at the PlayStation2 which he’s been ground from for the rest of the week. These are mean parents).

ME: (Noticing the hope in his son’s eyes for all-things-PS2) Yeah, that’s not going to happen. So, have you practiced your piano and cello?

[EVAN immediately hits the ground like a sack of potatoes and screams as if he were in pain...real pain]

EVAN: Noooo! [And EVAN throws the miniature airplanes in the air and runs upstairs to his room before the planes hit the ground]

ME: (to his wife): Well, that didn’t go well, did it?

And really I can’t talk. When I did make the varsity basketball team and then started, I can’t tell you if or how much I practiced during the off-season. Sure, I wasn’t a great player, but my heart wasn’t it. I remember trying to do conditioning (running I think) on the back roads of the town we were living in at the time (Monte Rio). And, I remember getting all jazzed up out getting into shape for the season and I think I made it 5 minutes down an incredibly beautiful road lined with massive redwood trees and then stopping. I think the universal, existential question popped into my mind as it probably does with Evan when he has to practice his piano: “Why am I doing this?”

I did practice, though, my lines for the play “Who Am I?” in which I had the lead and the entire short play (30 minutes) was based on my character and what he said (it was sort of a 20 questions “show” with me being host). I felt the pressure because, well, I was the lead and Ms. Jungkeit said I needed to know my lines. So, each day to school, I would drive 40 minutes and practice my lines until I got the mountain that crossed into Rincoln Valley (the driving was curvy and I really needed to concentrate). I knew my lines and the performance was, well, okay. See we were the opening play, then there was another short piece, and lastly, the main event: You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown in which my best friend Jeff Graves had the lead role.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if I was on the “B” team and the “A” team played the important parts.

And now Evan sort of faces the same situations. See, the guy who played Snoopy couldn’t sing, and if you know the musical, you know that Snoopy has at least one solo and our Snoopy could not sing. No, he could not sing…I’m not kidding. But, people liked him and he was able to ham his way through the song and people were happy. Sometimes the more talented don’t get the lead roles or the better spot on the team.

Evan has had his best year in playing chess than the previous two years. He’s had better tournament records than before and had a great team contribution last weekend in winning all the games he played. See, originally he was on the “B” team, but because one of the players didn’t show up, Evan got to play on the “A” team and, again, did well (won all four of his games). One of the kids on the team is a good friend of his and the others were happy to have Evan on the team. In fact, they might have wondered why he wasn’t on the team.

Now, this is where I stop as a parent so it doesn’t look like I know what is best for the team and my son (imagine a fist fight breaking out in a chess tournament: Dad slugs the tournament director). But that’s not how I do things and frankly, I’m not violent. I was happy for Evan and how well he did. But the worst thing for me was realizing that he’s had a “successful season” without little or no practice outside of Monday and Tuesday school practice times.

Ouch!

And I think he’s a smarter player for it. He understands the board a bit more and he makes the most of his playing on Mondays and Tuesdays. But even at those times, he doesn’t show off or try and make sure that the coaches see him playing. No, he plays against his friends and sometimes is a twit (and yes, he gets that from his father).

Unfortunately, the “practice like you play” and “practice makes perfect” or “Independent Practice” (aka Homework) are all hallmarks of parents and teachers of the answer to “Why do I have to do this?” It’s unfortunate, because it is not accurate. And I think down deep inside, most reflective people know this to be true (and sometimes we call those kids who don’t practice: “bright, but don’t work up to their potential”). It’s as if that we as adults merely make the children do stuff as payback for when we had to practice when we in their shoes (it’s the anti-lesson of Atticus “…you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them”).

It seems to me that instead of practicing something over and over that one should actually be doing that particular task (be it writing or reading or calculus or chess). Instead of reading about or talking about or thinking about a particular skill or activity, shouldn’t we just be doing it? I think Evan is learning that lesson and he seems happier this chess season because he gets to play some chess and be silly with his friends.

I wonder if he’ll hit the floor today when I remind him to practice his piano and cello.

The first 15 minutes of the Lego® Store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago is fairly entertaining; anything beyond that becomes a form of Chinese lead torture.

It’s what they love now, Legos®, and both Evan and Colin arrange much of their living space around the mighty investment into the building brick sets. Evan counted up how many pieces are dedicated to the Lego® Star Wars® sets and the number is approximately 11, 561.

We have a lot Legos® in our house.

And I think we can justify the purchases on the idea that both Evan and Colin still play with the Legos®. They might rebuild the set or might morph together sets and create new vehicles for Luke or Yoda or Darth Vader to do a flyby over Luke the cat. And as parents we like the idea of the boys creating stuff from bricks; it’s the good stuff of play. And it’s really hard to break the little things and no batteries are required.

But they do burn…or melt as I found out in 3rd grade.

The story is sometimes still in dispute, and is probably as controversial as the fire alarm story. In the fire alarm story (and I’m not kidding, my brother who is 5 years my senior and I still “discuss” it) I am the victim of a coercive brother. In the fire alarm story (it’s amazing how much of our childhood had some type of pyromania in them) Mike and I are at Yulupa Elementary School and it’s summer. And we’re roaming the hallways of school and around the corner from the water fountain by the bathrooms was a red “Pull for Fire” object about 4 feet up the wall. I’m watching Mike and he says (at least from my version of the story) that nothing happens when you pull it and he pulls it (or at least it appears that he has) and nothing happens. Then he says, “Now you try it.”

You cannot turn off a school fire alarm by banging your shoe against it. Apparently you need a key. Also, it is difficult to run across an uneven field and across a busy road with a shoe on your left foot and the other shoe in your hand: it just isn’t efficient in trying to make a quick get away when you hear the fire trucks coming to the school where you have just pulled the fire alarm. Lastly, it’s amazing that you might know that your brother has tricked you into doing something bad, and yet you still will be at his beckon call when he tries another stunt on you.

But that wasn’t the case with the Lego® house that we built when my mother was away. It was a group project: Mike, Steph and I are digging through the basket of Legos® and we’ve decided we’re building a mansion. We use the large green plate pieces for the foundation and then begin the two-story structure. We give up a strict color scheme on the second story when we run out of red bricks, but we’ve finished the house. It has windows, a door and a chimney.

See where this story is headed?

Again, I maintain that it was Mike’s idea, but perhaps we all wanted it and Mike lit the paper that we stuffed through the top of the chimney and I think I remember running for some reason (as if that would save me from the nasty burning Lego® house that was all of one foot high). The fire (or smoldering) was put out and we quickly cleaned up the mess and I even think we did the cartoon whistle-with-hands-behind-backs strolling about the house toward the door to the back yard.

Mom was not happy when she found out. It wasn’t the melting plastic from our realistic Lego® 2-story, but perhaps she even swore something silly when we sat down to eat dinner sometime later (that day or week or perhaps a month) and she saw the burn stain in her beautiful oak table.

Later, I was playing with the Legos® and found that some of the melted pieces didn’t make it into the garbage. I might have even used the evidence against Mike or Steph, but more than that, I didn’t have enough pieces to build whatever structure I was making at the time.

My sons haven’t discovered the wonders of fire but their lives do encompass Legos® and building and creation. I’m sure (and I know…I’ve heard it) they try and make their creations real: through battle sounds and often tossing the plane or ship into the spinning blades of their bedroom ceiling fan.

And it continues to amaze me that when we go to the Lego® Store in Chicago around Xmas that we will inevitably stop by the Lego® Santa Claus, in his sleigh, with his reindeer. We will gather around the big guy in Red Suit (lots of red bricks) and get a picture of our entire family much like a family picture during Thanksgiving in Schamburg or during the summer in Pennsylvania.

We’re back from the 9th annual family gathering of the Bickels (Lois’ parents and Lois’ brother, his wife [Jinger] and their son), the Certalics (Jinger’s parents) and us on Thanksgiving weekend in Schaumburg, IL (home of the Woodfield Mall<= really big).

And, for the last 9 years, we had all read the same book and had a book talk (this year: A Thousand Splendid Sunsets [Hosseini of The Kite Runner]). At the suggestion by Lois, we each created a list of “Things we loved” that didn’t include the usual things like family or country or belief-like items. I scribbled mine on the back of notes from a little talk that I gave the editors of the Student Publications class and found more room on the hotel’s small notepad paper. It was interesting to hear each person’s list and was in general a pretty cool to do.

Try it sometime…or now–as a response to this post–it’s fun. It’s not so much in making this list, but sharing it with someone else who has made the list too.

So, here’s mine:

The Things I love:

• Venti Bold lots of room for cream with four packets of Sugar in the Raw from Starbucks at 7:07 a.m. before school.
• New England Clam Chowder with sour dough bread at The Tides restaurant in Bodega Bay, California.
• The Mac OS X OS with its Unix core underneath and the bling bling of the UI on our eMac.
• That each Bickel has a bottle of nasal spray on their night stand.
• Celtic Women, Riverdance, and “Danny Boy.”
• Most BBC comedies.
• Netflixing with Lois.
• Colin’s red hair and Evan’s hitting the floor.
• Making Ken and Doris coffee.
• The first bass note in a song.
• The pictures of Lois and me at the Japanese Tea Gardens (Golden Gate Park) in 1989 and 2001.
• The beginning, middle and end of a marathon.
• My 2007 Grand Rapids Marathon shirt.
• NPR (”Wait, wait…Don’t Tell me,” “This American Life,” and “Speaking of Faith”).
• Troubleshooting a website’s code and the moment when it works as it ought to.
• Writing in a black marble composition book.
• The Golden Gate Bridge on a bright foggy day.
• My running shoes.
• My Timberland shoes.
• A 1988 Ford Festiva.
• Building inuksuk on the Lake Michigan shore in Milwaukee, WI.
• The flatness of the Midwest.
• When Lois calls me a jackass.

Sometimes, you just have to put on a costume and dub yourself royalty.