The Infamous Promised Meme

Well, my life just gets more and more interesting ;-)  Another pancreatitis flare-up, having surgery on Tuesday, and just in general exhausted and continued overextended.

But I'm here now to post the odd collection of questions put together by my readers ... I had lots of fun with this :-)  Hope you enjoy!

(Oh, and there are some questions that were really not meant to be included here, but I felt inclined to include them anyway, just because they were either an interesting challenge to write about or made me think a lot ... or both)

1. Is there something most people find funny that you absolutely do not? (from David Batista)
Actually, there's quite a bit of stuff that evidently goes over my sense of humor ;)  I know I'm going to take some heat for this one, but I'm kind of lukewarm on Saturday Night Live (yes, even the older ones).  Parts of every show are LOL funny, but I've always wondered how people can sit at home and watch marathons.

Also, I tend not to laugh at the misfortune of others.  I know that sounds kind of "preachy" and I'm definitely not like that and would never judge anyone for finding a guy getting hit in the genitalia by a golf ball funny or chuckling when a baby bird is trying to get out of an egg and gets stuck instead.  A lot of people tend to laugh at those moments.  I don't.

2. What do you find funny that most people don't? (from Jane)
I find humor everywhere and will randomly just break out laughing.  I think it's because my brain connects odd things together, I don't know.  Here's an example.  Belle and I have a tollbooth game we play, where we have to guess the gender of the tollbooth attendant before reaching the booth (this is honestly why I haven't switched over to EZPass like the rest of the world).  She always guesses boy, leaving me with  girl (and there are a lot more men than women at the tollbooth we frequent).  We were driving home the other night after picking Addie up from practice, and Belle shockingly announced that she was "calling" boy and "Mommy, you have girl, and Addie, you have basket."  We got to the tollbooth, and honestly, the person at the tollbooth was so androgynous that I couldn't definitively say which gender it was.  I'm not one to judge somebody on appearances, but I was laughing so hard I cried when, as we drove off, Belle said, "So ... who won?"

Or Addie got hit in the nose with a flag during winterguard rehearsal, and it was pretty ugly.  While at the ER, we nearly lost it over the fact that the doctor's name was (honestly) John Smith.  And there was a drawer containing a label that said "TAMPONS PLEASE SCAN" (yes, I took a picture ... if anyone ever stole my phone, they would think that the owner was completely nuts based on the pics).  Needless to say, I'm surprised Addie and I didn't get kicked out of the hospital for laughing as we tried to figure out what in the world "TAMPONS PLEASE SCAN" might mean.

So I guess I take the time to find life funny, which is a little rare (I honestly don't think many people would notice the little "TAMPONS PLEASE SCAN" label) :-)


3.  If you could go back and do a romantic relationship over, with a different outcome, would you? (from J.J. in L.A.)
No.

This was a hard one, actually.  I went through the whole stupid laundry list and contemplated briefly what I could have done differently and so on, but ultimately I realized that, no matter how hard and unpleasant and oddly twisted some of my romantic relationships have been, they have played a role in shaping who I am today.

And I'm starting to become pretty fond of who I am today.

4. What do you hate being asked? (from Martin Willoughby)
It's funny, I don't really mind being asked anything by complete strangers, but I get really annoyed when some of my relatives want to go on and on about the situation with Pythagorus.  "Why do you think he started drinking, Katie?"  "Can you believe that someone could change so much?" "Do you think he'll ever stop drinking?" "What could you have done differently?" "What is Pythagorus up to these days?"

I do not want to talk about Pythagorus with people that want to have the "before alcoholism" and "after alcoholism" conversation.  It's pointless.  I spent probably a year of my life keeping myself awake with these questions, and to have people ask me them--like, when I make it pretty clear that I do not want to talk about this--really irks me.

5. What is the funniest thing you ever did in front of your class? Was it planned or not? (from septembermom)
This cracked me up because I was voted "Funniest Teacher" in the yearbook superlatives section for this year ... and I never plan to be funny, it evidently just sort of happens.

My mouth has a tendency to work a lot faster than my brain, and my brain at times has a bit of a delay.  As an example, on my first day with a group of ninth graders five or six years ago, we were in a circle talking about the highlight of our summer.  There's an educational philosopher named Harry Wong, and I went on and on about how amazing Harry Wong was and how I wished I could spend more time with him after meeting him briefly and concluding with, "I think it's safe to say that I love Harry Wong" ... and having no idea why the kids were laughing so hard.

Then there was the day I was teaching the plot triangle.  I drew it on the board, talked about exposition, rising action, and climax, then asked, "What comes after the climax?" and an eighth grader raised his hand and said, "A cigarette."

And of course there was the infamous three-legged Romeo incident. I am the worst artist in the world, but visualization is something that kids today struggle with ... they are so used to movie adaptations that I sometimes think they are unable to come up with their own "mind movies".

Anyway, I was teaching Romeo and Juliet and talking about how the balcony scene, which has a reputation for being so romantic and stuff, is really very creepy. I drew Juliet on her balcony and Romeo hiding in the bushes in full peeping Tom mode checking her out, listening to her speak. But I drew Romeo as a stick figure ... and he appeared to have a third leg that could be interpreted a certain way given the context.

I could go on for hours ... something funny happens in my classroom at least once a day :-)

6. Who cares how many pickles Peter picked? (from Bud Weiser, WTIT)
I don't care a bit, as long as he keeps them far away from me ... I hate pickles.

7. Can you allow yourself to believe in love and trust? (from France Rants)
At this point in my life, nope. I hope it changes, though, I honestly do. I truly believe in the whole "happily ever after" dream and wish more than anything that it was a reality in my future. Time will tell, I guess.

8. From where your internal power comes from? (from getyourselfconnected)
I've been knocked to the ground a time or seven through some pretty unspeakable events. I think at some point, you have to make a choice on whether you want to stay on the ground and feel sorry for yourself or if you want to stand up and, yeah, risk getting knocked down again ... but being fully aware of all the beauty and goodness and laughter and living you'll miss out on if you lay "safe" on the ground curled in a fetal position. I did that for awhile, and knowing how amazing life can be has allowed me to get back up.

9. If you HAD to do it, what color would you dye your hair? (from Alleged Author)
I'd probably just dye it the same shade of dark brown it currently is, which might be happening soon because the grays are starting to really creep in. I wouldn't look good blonde or black-haired because of my coloring. I might go with green or purple or bright red as long as it was only temporary.

10. Which deceased author would you want to meet either in heaven or hell? (another one from Martin)
I would love to meet Shakespeare to find out if he really wrote the vast body of literature that is attributed to him. It is work that has brought me a great deal of pleasure as both a student, a teacher, and a human being, so talking about the universality of his works with the bard himself would be cool.

I'd also love to have a sit-down with J.D. Salinger ...

11. If you were on a desert island, would you prefer to have music only or books only? (And another from septembermom)
Wow, that's almost impossible to answer ... probably music, actually, which is surprising me (I made a list, haha). The thing is, books are only accessible when there is light to read by and, even though I'm a proponent of rereading, I personally read so quickly and voraciously that it'd be hard to keep me stocked in reading material on a desert island ... Music tells its own story and can be a constant source of comfort and light.

12. How was your weekend in Vermont? (from Marvin the Martian)
It was pretty fun ... way too much on my mind as a result, but what else is new, right?

I did walk the streets in a blizzard, and it was like being inside of a snow globe ... one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The company I was with thought I was odd, I think, because I'd forgotten my jacket at home (I'm pretty dumb sometimes) but still wanted to frolic in the snow.

13. Who played Wally on Leave It to Beaver ;-)? (from Mac)

Tony Dow, natch ;-) (I am a fountain of useless information)

Coolest Idea Ever (If I Were An Inventor)

I have always envied people that are truly intelligent across the board. I mean, obviously everyone has some things they're smarter at than others (my sister, a brilliant microbiologist, put "toona" on a shopping list made after she'd received her PhD), but there are some that are just true renaissance peeps.

Sadly, I'm not one of them. I had a stroke of genius on my drive home last night, though, that made me wish I was.

So it snowed again (I'm sure you're shocked to hear that), and I had my typical white-knuckled run down the back roads of very, very rural New Hampshire. After I picked Addie up from school, I spent the entire drive home trying to explain to her how to drive in snow, which is a little bit tricky because my car has all wheel drive and hers doesn't (plus it's very small and light), so most of what I was telling her doesn't even apply.

Anyway, I dropped her off at home then went to get Belle, and while I was driving I couldn't help thinking about how fortunate the kids in driver's ed right now are. Addie took driver's ed in the late summer and early fall, so she had no formal instruction (beyond the book, which is of course very theoretical) in the fine art of driving in snow.

There are pros and cons to having an ADHD mind, but one thing that's essentially a wash is the ability to connect things together that have absolutely no relation to a normal person, and to do it in a matter of seconds. My brain synapses are always at hyperspeed unless I'm reading or writing (most ADHD folk have an activity that allows them to "hyper-focus" ... sadly it's video games a lot of the time, but for me it has always been reading). The overactive brain synapses, by the way, are very helpful when writing and explain a great deal about why I write in fits and spurts much of the time ... namely, I picture what happens next in my mind, often at night when I can't sleep, but don't write it down right away.

And I'm way off-topic, which is of course the hard-core downside to the ADHD brain ...

Anyway, I explain that because, in a matter of seconds, I came up with the coolest idea ever. The thought process went something like this:

1. The driving really sucks.
2. There are a lot of inexperienced drivers on the road. Even though I'm crazy overprotective and won't let Addie drive in snow, there are a lot of kids driving today that really shouldn't be.
3. I'm going to have to teach Addie to drive in the snow one of these days. It's going to be horrible.
4. Why isn't "snow-driving" a required part of driver's ed?
5. The space shuttle Challenger exploded twenty-five years ago this week.
6. My fourth grade teacher cried ... I had never seen a teacher cry before.
7. I'm surprised they haven't made a movie of the Challenger disaster yet ... after all, they did for Apollo 13.
8. Apollo 13 was a really neat movie.
9. Gary Sinise always seems to get that "unsung hero" role, which he's very good at.
10. Gary Sinise, playing the role of Ken Mattingly, is what stands out the most to me about that movie because he was stuck in that space simulator trying to figure out how to save his colleagues.
11. I watched an iCarly episode with Belle where Carly and her peeps were in a space simulator.

And ... *ka-bam*

12. How cool would it be if there was a "driving-in-snow" simulator? That would allow driving students to have the experience of driving in snow without being an any true danger. There are a certain number of required hours for nighttime driving, highway driving, and so on ... why not "snow driving", at least in areas where snow is a concern?

I wish I had some idea of how to actually go about doing this, because I think it would be very helpful :-)

This Is How You Flash

Which is, of course, a far preferable title to "Flashing With Teenagers", which was what this post wanted to be called. And just to make this crystal clear, I am talking about flash writing, not any sort of sick, mind-in-the-gutter stuff.

Okay, so here's what happened.

I was late to work today. Let me just say that, despite my disorganizational tendencies, I am fairly compulsive about time. I deplore being late for a variety of reasons, most noteworthy that it conveys a sense of irresponsibility, deserved or not (I know a lot of really responsible people that are often late). Since my much maligned desk at work, for example, sends a certain message, I try to counter that with being early. Always.

I think most people are aware that the northeastern United States is taking quite a hit from Mother Nature this year. On a more personal note, I've been trying to contend with the added stress of a newly minted driver, so the do-I-let-her-drive-today-or-don't-I has been the litany in my mind for the past week or so.

Anyway, we'd decided that Addie would be able to drive herself to school. We looked out the window at the roads and, while there was some snow on the roads, there were clear track marks that went down to bare pavement. If I'm driving Addie to school, I have to leave at six, but I can leave half an hour later if she drives herself. At 5:45, the roads looked doable, so I took my time drinking a cup of coffee and watching the news and so on.

It's amazing how much snow can fall in half an hour.

When I left to go to work at 6:20 or so, I quickly realized just how treacherous the roads were. When I saw three cars go off the road in the space of five minutes, I called Addie and said I was turning around and would be bringing her to school.

I'm not going to perpetuate my recent "Wow, the driving is HORRIBLE" theme I've been focused on lately. Suffice it to say that I didn't get to work until fifteen minutes after my first period class started.

And, since I assumed there were other teachers with a similar problem, I didn't stop to make photocopies of what I'd be teaching this morning because I was in a rush to get to my classroom and relieve whoever had been covering my class. It occurred to me as I was walking into the building that there was no way I'd be able to pull off my intended lesson for the day ... so I decided to improvise.

By my second class of the day, I'd figured out how to make it look like I'd actually intended to teach flash writing today.

I wrote on the whiteboard: YOUR SNOW STORY and explained that, when I started the clock running, they would have ten minutes to write a snow story (in other words, a memorable experience that they'd had concerning snow). I didn't let them ask a lot of questions, because in a class of twenty-five adolescents, that's a Pandora's Box you don't want to open.

"Just think for a minute about a specific memory that concerns snow," I said, "And start writing when I say, 'Go'."

Now, one of the things that I do as a teacher when I give most assignments, particularly a writing assignment, is to sit at the student tables and write with the kids. I tell them it's so that I can relate to what I'm asking them to do, but the truth is that I just seize any opportunity to write.

And, of course, what I wrote about was Addie's car debacle last night.

When the ten minutes were up, the kids weren't thrilled with me. At least half of them hadn't gotten to finish their story--"I was just getting to the good part!" one student complained.

"Me, too," I said, and read my flash writing piece aloud to them.

And there was a cacophony of, "So then what happened?" "Did you get her car out?" "Did she get in trouble?" "Did her car blow up?" "Did you fall down your driveway again?"

I sort of gave them that patented teacher, "So I'm guessing you got my point" look, refused to answer their questions (for the time being), and asked if anyone else would like to share their pieces.

It was a pretty amazing learning experience for these kids. They have a writer's notebook that they have eight minutes to write in at the beginning of most classes, but they know well in advance about the eight minutes. They watch the clock. They plan out about how much they can fit into the eight minute timeframe, because it is a known.

This was completely new to them.

Their biggest complaint? That they didn't get to finish ... I was sooooo excited ;)! I even had a couple of kids ask if they could take their pieces with them so they could finish.

This is what I think they learned:

1. Planned, expected, daily writing is good ... but it's easy. You know the parameters. Complacency is a high probability.

2. With flash writing, your pen has to be quick and your brain has to be quicker. In other words, you need to be planning ahead, visualizing your memory, even while you're writing.

3. When stories are unfinished, there are some really cool questions and predictions that can be made (we call that "rich dialogue" in the education world).

4. When you take a common experience such as "snow" (well, common to us New Hampshah folks), there are almost infinite connections to be made between what someone else wrote and something that has happened to you.

I don't think they're ready to go the whole-hog flash fiction yet, but now I have hope that it's not totally beyond them ... and that the lessons they learned from today's class will transfer over into the realm of creative writing.

So 34 Is When the Middle-Aged Thing Kicks In ...

I realized today that I'm getting old.

I joke all the time about how old I'm getting, give my students a hard time about the strands of gray in my hair, and tease the rookie teachers about being babes in the woods. In general, though, I feel pretty much the same as I always did, so I'd written off 34 as just another number ... until it came crashing down on me that I'm not a kid anymore.

Okay, here's what happened.

I have a lead foot. I don't mean to speed, it's just not something I pay the best attention to. I have (knock on wood) never been in a real car accident ... I just like to drive fast. And, to be fair, I don't drive anywhere near as fast as I used to (racking up the speeding tickets will do that).

I live in New Hampshire. I've been driving in snow, often quite a lot of snow, since I was sixteen. Truth be told, I love to drive in snow. Well, I did.

Until I woke up this morning, and the roads were sheets of ice, and it took me almost two hours to get to work. It then snowed all day, and the drive home ... well, they say a picture's worth a thousand words (and no, I probably should not have been taking a picture of how bad the driving was while I was actually driving).



So what happened to turn me from a lover of snow-driving to a cautious Cathy?

It's weird, but the only thing I can think of is that a couple of my friends were in a pretty bad snow-related car accident recently. I've driven in snow since, but I haven't been enjoying it as much, and today I was honestly afraid.

I went to one of those friends, Donna, for advice on which route to take home today--the flatter, longer one or the shorter, ridiculously steeper one. She voted for short and steep, so I headed out as soon as possible.

And I don't think I hit 20 MPH for the duration of that long, long back mountain road. Donna was right behind me, which I thought she realized, but once I got onto a main road that was at least moderately maintained, I got a text.

DONNA: Stay off Mountain Road. Very slippery.
KATIE: Thank you, but I was the car in front of you driving like a grandma ;)
DONNA: Okay, I did not mind.
KATIE: : )

And it hit me like a ton of breaks how fragile life is, how truly dangerous driving in snow is, and how fortunate I am to have reached the age of 34 considering the parking lot doughnuts and the reckless, unnecessary trips and the lack of understanding I had of what a responsibility driving is.

This was driven home, by the way, when I got onto another semi-back road (I had to go pick Addie up ... I didn't let her drive herself to school today) and this guy started tailgating me. Like, I have All Wheel Drive and I was slipping and sliding a bit, and this guy was so close I could not see the front of his car.

Ten years ago--heck, one year ago, I would have started driving faster because obviously the pace I was setting wasn't good enough. Today, I pulled over to the side of the road and let the guy pass me.

Yup, middle age hits at 34, if I'm any indication ... unless that's just adulthood in general catching up to me at last ;)