Vergil’s Coffee

My father-in-law remembers it differently. He says that our first meeting was cordial and friendly and I tell him that his memory is a bit slippy. First, he should have remembered that Paul Hickey and I borrowed his Sony Micro Cassette recorder and hit “Record” and said some just plain silly things. We thought we were funny. Secondly, and perhaps more important, I was wearing my “Luv Ya!” kelly green pants which I thought was stylin’. Ken doesn’t remember that and why should he? Both of us, Ken and I, are fashion illiterate like most of our gender.

Perhaps it’s my mom’s fault because when it was time for “back to school” shopping, she’d just give me the local department store credit card and instruct me to get what I needed. I’m not sure if I ever asked for direction, so I was left to wander the aisles and purchase variations of the same theme: flair pants (avoiding that crazy bell bottom jean things that my sister wore) and t-shirts. About my only clothing purchase that I put thought into was the “I’m with Stupid” tee that was specifically for picture day. (I might have even calculated who would be the left of me in the yearbook…was it going to Jeff Graves or Karen Kane? Hopefully not Karen as I asked her to go with me via note and she wrote in “maybe”).

My mom did tell me that I needed to get a suit and tie for my 8^th grade graduation: apparently it was a big deal for the kids of Guerneville and my mom might have helped me pick out that ivory white suit with pants, jacket and vest. As I think of it, it reminds me of something that Atticus Finch would wear on a warm, Alabama afternoon as he defended Tom Robinson. But I was 13 years old and I was wearing an off white suit and I had grown eight inches that year and so, in short, I think I stuck out from the rest of the class.

I think my time at a private school and then onto a conservative private college has lead me to a conclusion about clothes: some people care more about them than I do. Or, perhaps more accurately, those people are attached to what they wear and believe that it’s their God given right to dress however they damn well please, thank you. “And, if you dare mess with my clothes, then you can just go…” and you know where this line of thinking is headed.

So, when Debbie made me pants and a shirt for the Christmas during my freshman year in Grand Rapids I was a bit taken aback. First of all, no one had ever made clothes for me and second, well, I was going to break up her when I got back to school. I think she was excited to give me the box that January and though I’ve been given the obligatory sweater or jacket, I might have paused a bit too long as I picked up the navy blue, uncollared shirt with the little green frog branding the left chest.

“Do you like it?” she asked and I might have paused, again, a bit too long, because she continued “I like the color and, well, you know: I like frogs.”

“Thanks,” I responded and then caught eye of the homemade tag on the shirt: “Luv Ya!” it read and I think she had crossed stitched it herself.

“Oh,” she says, “there’s one more thing…”

And I reach my right hand into the box while Debbie grabs my left arm and pulls it toward her with some giddiness.

She must of read my expression, because she said: “Remember when I did your laundry before winter break? Well, I took measurements and I worked on both pieces for about a week during break.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, my mom helped me a bit with the inseam,” she said. “Try them on.”

Everything fit me pretty well, but as I emerged from the bathroom, I felt a bit, well, like a frog. It seemed that I should just start doing high kicks and get a top hat and take my skinny frogged legs on tour.

I did thank Debbie and I waited another month to break off the relationship…I distinctly remember that it was February 13^th and you have to realize that I simply couldn’t take it anymore.

I guess I never really considered what I wore to be who I am. And, perhaps, my few attempts at making a statement were only mere spastic tries at being someone beyond me. Perhaps I’ve aimed too low on the fashion scale or perhaps, I simply don’t care that much. It’s the complaint from girls to boys or girlfriends to their boyfriends or wives to their husbands and it just might be a gender thing. Women care about clothes; men eat on the couch. For one, there is a nurturing aspect of selection and matching and arranging, for the other, life’s about consumption and piles.

So, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on Ken for not recognizing my fashion faux paus during our first meeting. The fact that I even remember the incident probably has more to do with my wife’s reaction to the “outfit.” Not much was said regarding my choice of clothes and the arrangement thereof. In our subsequent conversations about fashion usually have fizzled into mere grunts or “while you’re up” requests from the pantry or the store. And I think of Ken’s advice to me during my engagement to his daughter; he told me, suggested to me: “Choose your battles wisely.”

Those stupid yearbook people cropped out my directional t-shirt and the “Luv Ya!” brand was discarded soon after my engagement to Lori. I’ve recently retire nine…yes, nine, plaid Timberland shirts that made up my teacher wardrobe last year. Apparently pleats are out and I’m just not a fan of the tie. Sometimes I tell Lori that “this year, I’m going with the tie and jacket look” and she’ll say something like “are you going to CVS for some M&Ms?”

My first real car, the 1988 Ford Festiva of Love, got rear ended by a van full of Amish folk. The current car, the 1993 Ford Escort, hasn’t lived up to the myth-like status of the Festiva–the Northern California nights of a San Francisco Giants hatted Dominos driver blasting the soundtrack to Cats out of Spark-o-matic speakers whiles eating an extra slice of pizza getting 46 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Instead, the Escort has been the ugly step brother of cars: purchased with the settlement money from the totalling of the Festiva and little love has been put into the forest green Escort wagon with it’s missing grill, cracked front bumper and punched driver’s side bumper. It is ugly but useful and like most ugly useful things, it has been quite consistent in being the designated “Point A” to “Point B” car (6.5 miles each way). So when it didn’t start the morning of the last day of school, I was a bit shocked, a little annoyed and slightly disappointed that the Green Wagon couldn’t just hold it together for one more day.

So I had to take public transportation.

We don’t really have a lot of public transportation in Goshen, Indiana; it is a small community, and aside from riding your bicycle and perhaps calling one of the 2 taxi services, about all you got is the Interurban Trolley which conveniently runs by the public library (about 2 blocks from my house).

I’m running a tad later than I wanted and the last time I rode the Interurban Trolley I found out quickly that the drivers believe in a schedule to the point of being much like my in-laws after Lori and me got married: on time means 5 minutes early. I was able to speed walk across US 15 and head toward the library while looking back to check on the presence of the Trolley and it was acomin’. The nice thing about the Interurban trolley is that you can also flag it down if you are not at a designated stop–and I was not–but the driver did pull over and pick me up (this may have something to do with my height or that I was wearing my optic orange polo shirt).

I take my seat halfway to the back of the Trolley and pull out my cellphone to twitter a bit about my trip thus far (for these are the exciting things in life that people should be reading, eh?) And then it happened: I began to read some of the signs on the Trolley. There was the usual “No Smoking” sign which seemed appropriate enough and then there’s that “Don’t stand beyond this white line” threat. The one that confused me a bit, partially because of its message, but also because it was the biggest sign inside: “No Profanity Allowed!”

And at this little observation followed by a chuckle, I came to the conclusion that I was doing a good thing: taking public transportation instead of stomping my big-ass carbon foot print in the sands of this day and time. No, I was riding the Interurban trolley while others, who could have done the same, were speeding by in their gas-guzzling, smog spewing, environmental death bombs that will certainly lead to the destruction of all things green and damn our children to an impossible, irreversible future of breathing air through a mask.

I was, in a sense, doing my part to help the future of the Mother Earth and was finally being a submissive fellow earth walker and a responsible one too.

I decided that I would skip getting to school 30 minutes early and get off at the Starbucks about a 1/2 mile down the road from school (and that was an easy decision: coffee or people?)

So, for about 15 minutes, I walked to school along US 33 South as a myriad of death inducing vehicles sped past me (remember, I’m tall and I’m wearing an optic orange shirt with a Starbucks coffee in hand, walking along a roadway where very people tend to trod).

Again I felt smug; in fact I even Twittered about it (so imagine the lanky orange pylon holding a coffee in one hand and texting with the other). Indeed, I was good.

And that didn’t last.

I remembered the absolute fear in second grade that we all would be swimming in our own garbage by the year 2000 (and then the tear rolls down the face of the Indian chief and fade to some recycle message in white on back). Hostility returned to my smug face as I recall how fashionable now it is to “Go Green” and buy expensive light bulbs, not use toilet paper and buy a hybrid car. Isn’t interesting that in order to “Go Green” you have to buy more stuff?

Douglas Rushkoff points out in his Frontline video “Merchants of Cool” where he comments on how the metaphor for consumerism is not a mirror (where the ads and media are only reflecting back to us images of ourselves) but more of a feedback loop (where the “cool” new stuff is seen in people and the media picks up that “cool” and then sells it back to the mainstream and by the time “cool” hits mainstream, “cool” has been effectively killed…it’s no longer cool).

And that’s when it hit me: It’s a giant feedback loop. The media watches kids and then sells them an image of themselves. Then kids watch those images and aspire to be that mook or midriff in the TV set. And the media is there watching them do that in order to craft new images for them, and so on.

This idea that by the time something becomes popular or hits the mainstream consciousness should be a clue to all of us that something is amiss. When Leonardo DiCaprio tells us about his use of energy-saving lightbulbs or that entire networks are having “Green” weeks where both the advertising and the content of the shows are reflecting this “Go Green” message, you have to wonder what’s being sold.

And really, how much will a hybrid car help the environment? If one really thinks that burning fossil fuels is bad, why then (you upper middle class guilt-ridden suckers) would you spend almost twice as much for a car that still uses gasoline? “Every little bit helps” has been the slogan to sucker money from so many people who may truly care about various causes.

And it’s not over: we’re ready to enter into the SuperBowl of US Politics this summer and we really have to realize that every single motto, every single stump speech, every thing that can be squeezed on a bumper sticker is for a vote and not so much a promise to keep.

After moving through the smugness into hostility, a car pulled in front of me in a driveway to the one of the many car dealerships on US 33S and I recognized the person as a colleague from school. She asked if I would like a ride and since I was only 5 blocks from school, I said no but thanked her for stopping. And I remember feeling a bit mixed on if I had done the right thing by refusing a Good Samartian offer. Perhaps I should just take the offer as a reminder of the more important things in life, instead of getting guilted into a cause for someone else’s financial gain. Perhaps, it’s more important to remember the nice things people do every once in a while and to appreciate even the ugly but useful things in our lives.

Besides, about the most “Green” you see me get is when I hit my “mid-age life crisis” and do what I can really get excited about: buy a Segway. It’s useful and ugly.

(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)

Sometimes I feel like I’m getting payback for how lazy I was as a child. I was not helpful around the house and I watched a lot of television in the 70s until I got to school and then I was busy with whatever sports season it was or whatever social engagement was happening. Oh, and I wasn’t a great student until my senior year.

Did I tell you that Brad Frost mowed our lawn? Maybe I didn’t, but my best friend through sixth grade, Brad Frost, apparently came from a more industrious background, because he mowed our lawn. Oh, we had a lawnmower (one of those manual push mowers with exposed swirling blades of death), but I think my mom got tired of asking me to mow the lawn, and probably offered Brad Frost five dollars to do it and he did (I think he even planted grass seed in a big dead patch to the south side of our front lawn).

Where did he even learn that stuff?

Anyway, two weekends ago, my wife asked about the upstairs bathroom sinks and commented how both sinks were draining “terribly slow again.” Yes, “again” is the operative word here as I’ve written about the same “fixing of the sinks” on my second “Coffee Stain.”

I gruffed and decided to just get the stupid thing done “once and for all.” This, by the way, is not a pronouncement you ought to make when working with plumbing as it is generally “wishful thinking” or just plain stupid talk. Whereas electrical work will usually yield an immediate result (be it that the lights go on, the lights don’t go on, or you hear a “pop!”); plumbing is a lesson in patience, humility and economics. And fortunately for me, this day I would face all those lessons.

I’ve mentioned this before, but that liquid “Genie-unplug-my-gunky-filled” pipe opener rarely works as advertised. Instead, you really have to get the hands dirty and snake that mother-of-a-gunkball out of its lodging and physically remove it from your house. (It’d be really stupid, you know, to flush it down the toilet or, better yet, wash it down the drain). So, that was the plan of action…for the adjacent sinks: to remove both S-Joints and get the snake-thing in there and remove the gunk.

Then several more variables entered the equation that equaled more time, effort and humility. One of the pipes had holes in it and the main outflow pipe’s threads were unusable.

Trip one of eight to the hardware store(s) began at 10:30 a.m.; I finished putting away my tools at 2:05 p.m.

Time+Effort+Humility=an amateur plumber.

Or at least that’s what I got from the Helpful Man at Ace Hardware on trip #2 when I was still jokey and happy. I was making some comment about how I try and remember to bring all the original parts with me in a plastic bag as to make sure I get the right size pipes. He had mentioned, in passing as I was checking out, that the average amateur plumbing job takes 3-5 trips to the hardware store. I laughed his little comment away, confident that this trip #2 was all I needed.

We then launched into a quick “what did you see?” chat about the man whom I saw get arrested in front of the BMV. I said that I was watching from the van as the police officer appeared to be using calming gestures and tones while the little Irate Man kept waving some paper around in some type of protest of something that happened (or didn’t happen) in the BMV. Irate Man took a few steps toward the police car, the police man did some type of warning thing, Irate Man put his hand on the police car, policeman handcuffed Irate Man and off they went downtown.

Or that’s how I saw it, I told the Ace Hardware chat group. They nodded in acceptance and off I went to find out that there was not way short of a large hammer, that I could connect the new piece to the old piece.
I did a lot of floundering from this point on as I tried to figure out a way make the connection with a few more trips to John Hall Hardware store. I went to John Hall Hardware store not so much because it’s a bit more “local shopping” as much as being taunted by those “amateur” words. In fact, as I was leaving the Ace Hardware store, the Helpful Man said, in passing and I think he meant no ill: “At my other job, I used to do that same plumbing job in less than 6 minutes.” So, I avoided the my own mockery and having to face the “6-minute man” and went to John Hall instead.

And it was after I found a workable and safe solution on my 4th John Hall trip that I got the mockery again.

“You know,” said the Old-Timer Hardware Workerman. “They say that most amateur plumbing jobs take around three trips.”

Is this part of the hardware business training? Did he just get a phone call from Ace Hardware Helpful Man and was told: “Oh, hey John Hall Old-Timer Hardware Workerman: there’s a guy who looks like an amateur that’ll be coming your way. Why don’t you give him the ‘3 times’ business, okay?”

Only thing is that I’ve apparently skewed the averages with my 8 total trips to the hardware stores. I suppose I’m not average, you know?

To my credit, though, I will say that I’ve fixed a plumbing problem that was directly caused by someone’s inability to do the job correctly, and who had merely stopped the leaking drains (and there’s a difference between the two).

I’ve been told that the word amateur has at its essence the idea of one who loves what they are doing. It’s not out of being paid for the job (a “professional”), an amateur does the job out of love of doing the job. I do not love the job of plumbing for the sake of plumbing; I do the job of plumbing because I couldn’t get my lazy butt off the couch and mow the lawn. Instead, Brad Frost (the amateur and possibly entrepreneur) mowed my family’s lawn and I have a feeling Brad Frost likes plumbing more than I do.

And as I look at the people that I really like, those in my house, I see Evan, the amateur of Ape Escape 3 1/2 game design and of a pretty well-developed sarcasm; I see Colin, the amateur of making Cast Lists and illogical pronouncements; and I see Lori, the amateur of mothering the boys, and of words (though I still can be her in Scrabble to her astonishment). I suppose those people don’t see me as Chris, the amateur of plumbing and mowing and picking the hair out of the Roomba. I hope not, as sometimes Lori will comment: “How did you know how to fix that?” and I will say something about serendipity and instinct (also known as luck or fate or perhaps, like many things in life that get “fixed”: time and effort and humility).

I think about my last Coffee Stain and some of the response that students have given regarding my not advising Student Publications next year. You should know that I don’t really view advising or teaching as my job; even though I am paid for doing it, I consider myself an amateur of teaching and learning and the whole business. I simply can’t view teaching as a job; I can’t see anyone else doing what I love to do (not even Brad Frost).

Because I can.

And that is perhaps the long and short of it.

As it stands, my teaching schedule does not include Student Publications nor Beginning Journalism and that is a first since I’ve taken this position at Concord High School 13 years ago. The change also has me not in Room 138: a room I’ve occupied since it was built 12 years ago. I will no longer be responsible for the Journalism program at Concord High School and it’s a change that I requested–a change that has been in the works since first trimester of this year and so it has little to do with the current newspaper staff and more to do with some necessary changes in my life and my department.

I requested from my department chair (Livrone) and principal (Cunningham) that I teach sophomores again and that in order to do that I would give up my teaching and advising responsibilities of Newspaper and Journalism. My schedule for next year will still include the other classes that I have been assigned this year (English 12b, Biblical Literature, and yes, AP English Language and Composition) and then sections of English 10A, 10B and another English 10 class to be titled later.

The teacher that will be taking the Student Publications teaching and advising responsibilities along with the Beginning Journalism class is Ms. Lauren Martin. We will probably be swapping rooms as we swap teaching assignments.

I’ll be adding more to this post tomorrow, but for now I thought it was time that you know.

It was Mrs. Addis who told me that I’d be blind in twenty years if I looked at the solar eclipse back in 1978; I looked and I’m still looking. She also was the first person I remember to complain (or comment) about the poor, or those on welfare. She was telling us how she was in a family’s house who was poor and that “They had a color television set…one nicer than ours,” she said. I think she then went on to make some comment about how it wasn’t fair or right that people who weren’t working to have more comforts than those who actually worked for a living.

My mom sent me to the Christian School in the sixth grade because she didn’t like what she saw at the school my brother was attending. She told me later that “almost every kids was stoned out of their minds” and she was not going to have neither me nor my sister Stephany go to “that public school.” So, she looked in the phone book and decided against the St. Eugene’s (”too expensive and too much guilt”) and enrolled us in Rincoln Valley Christian School in the fall of 1977. Mrs. Addis was my 6th grade teacher and I listened to her most of the time. I remember trying to explain to my best friend, Brad Frost, that I was transferring schools and that we’d probably not hang out a lot. Brad’s dad was a car salesman and I think the Frosts were a bit better off than we were. They had a pool and we had the Santa Rosa Creek.

I know my mom didn’t make a lot of money and the court-order child support checks from my cardiologist father helped us to be clothed and fed and kept a decent house functional until we moved in 1980 out to the Russian River area. Those support checks continued until I turned 21 and I remember appreciating those checks because they basically paid for 3 years of college in Grand Rapids, MI.

I think I became more aware of our lack of money during my sophomore year of high school. We moved back to Santa Rosa into a 3-room apartment and I remember people from the church doing a lot of nice things for me. In fact, I think someone even bought my letter jacket for me because they realized what I knew: we didn’t have much extra cash for luxury items. And though that was to my advantage when I applied for financial aid (for, on paper my family had little), it was an odd feeling using my mother’s food stamps to buy her some groceries when I visited her during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college.

I don’t pretend to fully understand what it’s like to be poor as I come from a family which was upper middle class, then middle class, and then lower middle class. It’s all labels anyway, isn’t it?

I suppose that’s why I had to snap myself when ConcordLive! ran the “Where are you going for Spring Break?” piece last Friday. It’s an annoying topic because you know what’s going to happen: all the rich kids are going to shove in everyone else’s faces what tropical climate they’ll be sunning in while everyone else is stuck in this “nothing-to-do” permaclouded area known as Elkhart County. (I’m hoping you were reading that “all the rich kids” part in an annoying nasal tone; it’s fun. Go back and do it…really; it’ll be fun and effective for the tone I’m trying to set…Spencer, do it; Chris, that’s a great nasal tone).

At least that’s the impression I got when I look on the faces of some of the students in my classes. Their families are working poor or certainly can’t afford to go on holiday for a week or so. These families may or may not own color televisions or letter jackets. But why do those who have more get to tell us about their seemingly wonderful exploits? Do the rich even deserve the wealth they have?

And it’s at this point where I silently slink into another conversation because you’ve heard this rhetoric before. You’ve heard it recently as a battle cry against the “have’s” who make big profits and who get huge tax breaks. The reason I tend to back away from this line of thinking is because of the eventual cliché:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Cliché because I don’t even know if it’s accurate, but man you can get the Democrats “Amen”ing about this one. We might as well recite the labeling:

• Republicans = Big Business,
• Democrats = Social programs for the individual,
• Ron Paul = Sancho to Don Quixote.

As the ConcordLive! piece ended, I remember making some comment about how each person in the piece were going somewhere warm and exotic, while not one student said that they were staying in town. And at that moment I wanted to make a value judgment, but I stopped myself because the implications are unjust and illogical. People like to blame their misfortune on the fortune of others and that makes for a fairly miserable and cynical permacloud on one’s day. Some days I’m ready to pick up the lance and fight windmills; most days, I’d like to think I might just aim a little lower and be happy with a cup of $1.98 coffee and some blinding sunshine.

Sunshine feels good, doesn’t it?

Even in Elkhart County.

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.

Hint: It’s really simpler than you think.

Let me tell you a story:

It begins yesterday when I’m listening to simply the best version of “Mack the Knife” (Sinatra and Buffet) in my 1993 Ford Escort Wagon heading north on US 33 South toward school. If you remember this version (and probably like other versions) there’s the part toward the end when the whole brass section builds to an explosion: Pow! and I’m hitting the “back” button on my iPod Shuffle to hear it again. In my mind, this is one of the best recordings of music ever.

I’m at school and after 3rd hour one of the music teachers motions me to talk and we’re discussing some arrangement for a student of his to get out of my class to listen to a pretty famous musician. I’m cool with that, but what I really want to ask him about is “Mack the Knife.”

“You doing the Jazz band thing, eh?” I verify.

“Yes, I’m the other director,” he says.

And then I ask him if they’ll be playing “Mack the Knife” at the Jazz Cafe this year and he says “Yes” like they always play it.

“It’s a standard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says.

And then I launch into my experience of listening to “Mack the Knife” and how it’s incredible the way that “ol’ Blue Eyes” includes himself in the list of names in the verses that he and Buffet add to the song. And then I ask him if he thinks it’s a violent song as far as the lyrics and I think it is and he stops for a moment.

“You know,” the jazz director says, “I don’t think I remember the words…I just listen to the music.”

And I say “Oh” and he responds “But I’ll have to look at the words now that you bring it up.”

Here’s another story:

After I got my teaching degree, my wife and I moved to Bloomington, IN so she could complete her graduate studies in speech/language pathology. It is simply impossible to get a teaching job in any school district within an hour’s drive from Indiana University for someone who is from the outside and who has no contacts. I did, though, interview twice for a school within 25 minutes and those were sorry interviews (mostly because I’ve been told that I don’t interview well). But in one case, I realized that I hated some of the people that did the interviewing.

I was answering the usual questions and trying not to sound too desperate in wanting to do anything to land my first teaching job. (In our senior ed. seminar class, we were encouraged to say “Yes” to any coaching assignment or an extracurricular activity). I was working as a bill collector in Indianapolis at the time and I was ready to mop the floors if the school asked. I simply wanted to teach.

The principal then looks at my application and is unsure of where Grace College is at and “where’s Winona Lake anyway?” I tell him it’s by Warsaw and he still doesn’t get the geography of Northern Indiana and then looks back at me and asks/tells “You know, you can’t evangelize in the classroom, don’t you?”

I was amazed at this man’s inability to understand my application. First he didn’t know his Indiana geography and second, he was being an idiot (or at least that is what I thought at the time). I took a breath and then calmly pointed out to him that I had been a bill collector for 5 years and it wasn’t my general practice to “share the Good News after I had just asked a person to pay their hospital bill.” I don’t think he wanted me and I certainly didn’t want that type of a person as a principal.

And a last story:

Last Friday, a student in my Expository Writing class (senior composition) challenged my requirement of a 15-20 page paper when I was teaching them about how to write good sentences.

“If we can’t write a sentence, then how are we to write a 15-20 page paper then?” he said. And the kid next to him was saying “Well, there’s simply no way I could write a 15-20 paper.”

When the murmuring died down enough for me to answer–and maybe he didn’t want an answer, maybe he just wanted to say aloud what was going around in his mind–I asked him for a favor: to ask me the same question after he wrote the paper and to let me know if it was worth it. And, if he could, to then let me know in a year (after some college/life work) if he could see why I had the class write a massive paper.

And I think he backed off a bit and I’m not sure if he believed me, but I added: “You might just have to trust me on this one” and walked back to the front of the class.

Each day, teachers and students and staff engage in sharing their religion with one another by the stories they tell. We talk about our passions and we sometimes actively try and convince others that they too should see or hear or feel those same things that rouse in us the stuff that dreams are made of. Other times, some folk may misread us and instead of seeing a person full of passion, they’d rather see a label and restrict human potential through an incomplete sentence. But most religious of all school practices is when someone asks the simple question “Why?” For in that very question, one is attempting to figure out place and perspective and purpose. And as long as public schools encourage questioning and discussion of ideas with others, the public school will continue to be a place of religion.

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.

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.