My paternal great-grandfather John Welker, who was a Union soldier when he was only 17, came to Oklahoma in the Cherokee Strip land run, April 22, 1889. Fifty years later to the very day, his youngest grandchild, my father, was born. I can't help thinking that the timing was not an accident; Dad must in some ways be very much like the grandfather he never knew. But that's something I can never really know, since John Welker's story has been difficult to trace. I can only know what I have seen.
I remember when I was very young, maybe a toddler, seeing him come in the back door in the evening, calling me "Catfish" for no reason that I've ever known, a play on my name, I guess. I ADORED him and thought he was so funny. He would do silly stuff like putting a bowl on his head to make us laugh; it worked every time. Even then, I sensed what I would later come to understand clearly: that he was only truly comfortable with kids and animals. Something in him was and still is spiritually more connected to them. But that didn't make him weak. I can also remember when I stood at the door of the breezeway in the middle of the night, a storm raging outside while he watched to see what was brewing. I was so little that, standing next to him, I wrapped my arm around his knee. He was a tower of strength to me, capable of mastering even the winds of a prairie cyclone that threatened his grain elevator business and our little town.
With no seat belt laws in effect, I would sit on his lap to drive to the elevator or out to check cattle, and I remember standing next to him on the pickup seat as well. We would sing Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard songs with complete abandon. That was only the beginning of hundreds of thousands of miles we would travel, hot-hot summer trips, trips to the mountains, all over Canada, anyplace with cooler air and fewer people. Once when I was a pre-teen, very quiet and withdrawn, we were on our way to the South Dakota farm, and we had to pick up a pup trailer in Omaha for the grain semi up there. Dad always likes to get to a business first thing in the morning because no one else will be there then, so we were driving overnight to arrive in the city at 8 a.m. I was doing my shift of sitting up to make sure he stayed awake; we were somewhere in northern Kansas or southeastern Nebraska, and we had the 8-track going on a Johnny Horton album. We didn't sing because we didn't want to wake anyone up. But the song "Whispering Pines" came on as we drove through that dark June night, windows down, heat lightning off to the west, and in that moment I felt a sense of connectedness to Dad that I would not have felt if we had been singing along. It was a powerful enough event that I can still describe the moment nearly 40 years later.
There are just a few important compartments in life that really seem to drive Dad. One is his love of music, which is only superseded by his love of work. He can raise, doctor, and work cattle with an encyclopedic understanding of them. He's a speed demon on a four-wheeler (or a two-wheeler for that matter) when it comes to moving or herding animals. Until implements and tractors went metric, there was little he couldn't fix, and he's a pro at welding. He's designed and built many working pens and chutes of all sizes here in Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Dakota. Pole barns, too, have sprung from his mind and design, all over the place, with only the family and a few close friends to assist him.
Dad also values family more than many people realize, and although people in general can annoy him, he's learned the value of and earned friendships as he's gotten older that he was missing when he was younger, working nonstop. He won't touch a computer, but his cell phone has become attached to his ear whenever he has to sit in one place, keeping him in touch with a rogue network of retired and semi-retired people he's gathered over the years as he and Mom have traveled. He likes to be at the center of their mischief, and he's become something of a social butterfly now that pleases me a great deal. All I ever seemed to see of him was work; that he will sometimes take time to have fun now makes me more confident that he's enjoying life.
I could write a thousand different qualities about him, in song and verse form, even. For example, everyone that he feels close to gets a nickname from him eventually, something based on an experience, a story, a quality that person has. According to Mom, he chose my name so that he could call me CJ, which he did for a long time, though he's called me Fred for years now. Everyone in my family has had their nicknames for years, right up to Allie's "Alley Cat" name that Dad started using before she was even born. Another remarkable detail about him is that he can switch his eating habits up on a dime; one day he can wolf down big farm meals, including ice cream two or three times, and the next, he will subsist on salads, coffee, and water. He developed that habit after his only brother was diagnosed diabetic. It's also lost on no one that he adores babies and would take his grandchildren traveling with him anywhere, any time, for as long as he could get them to go. Logan and Nolan, in fact, probably spent up to three months out of the year with Mom and Dad every year until they started school. While we were brought up to spend time with our family, to respect and honor that time, Dad's desire for us to all be together is part of what keeps us celebrating the holidays all in one place. I'm proud and happy that we can do that for him. And he never (neither he nor Mom would EVER have) spoiled us, but he believes he has a responsibility to watch over us to make sure that if something drastic ever happens, he can step in and help. That quality alone leaves me staggering with the weight and worry of what parenthood, fatherhood, must be.
I have no illusions about his being only a human being, though it took me a long time to realize that he was not God, that he made mistakes. I know his flaws---his sense of control he keeps by withholding information until the last minute, his pride, his moodiness, and Lord knows his stubbornness---because I share almost all of them. Sometimes, yes, I would like to be rid of some of the more difficult qualities in trying to negotiate with him. Then again.....that's almost the same as wishing him gone, and I can't bear to think of what life would be without him in it.
If we tend to idolize our fathers, I surely must have a temple in my heart just for mine. A fire on the altar provides the light that keeps me on the path of good that he raised us with. There is no heresy in this; only a pure, clean love of the one earthly man who will always love me more than any other man this side of heaven.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Friday, April 26, 2013
My One True Love
We met when I was still a chubby toddler with wild curls and a gift for chatting up complete strangers. My true love was never a stranger to me, though. We met for the first time, I think, at my grandparents' big round oak table, but we immediately began to see each other on a very regular basis. We delighted in the infinite variety we found in each other's company, but we also treasured the parts of our relationship that were built on tradition and family and plain, pure love. For a long while, it seemed I had a bit of the upper hand in our understanding of one another---if being able to manipulate is the "upper hand." But that kind of lack of balance is never good for building long-lasting, loving companionship. By the time I was seven or eight, I knew in my heart that food could never fill that true-love spot for me....but I kept at it, simply for lack of understanding how else to fit something or someone else in that well of need I felt.
I loved baking from the time I could stand on a kitchen chair and help my great-grandma roll out bread dough or pie crust or chilled cookie dough. Along the way, I'd stuff my little belly so full of whatever we were working on that I'd either get queasy or, worse, bloated from too much yeast dough. I would bake at home, too, whenever momma would let me. There's no accounting for what percentage got cooked, but it wasn't ever nearly all. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with baking or serving desserts, especially in those days, when everyone worked harder out in the heat, and few people had air conditioners. We burned off what we put into our bodies, for the most part.
There's no clear reason why, but I never developed a taste for vegetables; I wanted meat and carbs of all sorts. Of the older generations in my family, only my Papa Welker, who was severely diabetic, didn't eat mostly healthy foods. I had good examples to follow; I just didn't care to---even though I was warned from a young age that I needed to watch out for my blood sugars to go up, that I would most likely become diabetic at some point. But when this doctor or that did the before-and-after meals testing, my levels would be perfect. This, or course, set me on a "What do they know?" path toward chips, candy, and assorted other junk.
These things, I should stress, weren't allowed in our house in much, if any, quantity. We didn't keep pop at home, and we were only allowed to drink pop in the afternoon or evening, never the morning, and never at meals. Of course, then, it goes without saying that that was the FIRST rule I threw over when I went away to college. Chips were allowed with sandwiches or hamburgers, not as snacks. At Ralston, where we went to school, students were required to eat at the cafeteria every day through 6th grade; after that, we could walk "uptown" (three blocks) to a grocery store named Leroy's and get lunch there. To the best of my memory, every day from 7th-12th grades, I had a lunch of chips, pop,and candy. My weight had already become an obvious issue by then, but I refused to do anything about it, though I wished I could. I was convinced that I would fail, and why set myself up for failure? No, better to know that my true love---grease, fat, salt, and sugar---would be around to greet me each day.
The much-threatened "Freshman 15," the extra pounds most freshmen are said to gain, didn't trouble me because I already had put on so much more weight in high school. I stayed practically the same size for the first three years of school. Then I found a group of friends who worked in the residence halls and hung out together like a rag-tag family of gypsies, surviving on a little cafeteria food, Love's deli sandwiches, cigarettes, beer, and late-night sugar binges to keep studying at the last minute. I kept that up all the way through my Masters, and I....blossomed....into much the same size I am today.
But that's not all to that story, of course. I had always enjoyed remarkable good health; I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been so sick I had to stay in bed up till my early thirties. Then, at 32, I was diagnosed pre-diabetic. All I had to do to resolve it was to quit drinking Pepsi for several years. I didn't have to start taking medicine for another 6 years, when Laura was terminally ill. But so much other stuff followed hard and fast: hypothyroidism, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, neuropathy, autoimmune arthritis, hammertoes, foot sores, ulcers, neck and back pain, blinding headaches, and a few bouts with pneumonia and bronchitis. Finally, it seemed, my true love had come for me, body and soul, and I would have to pay up for all the damage I had caused. There was only one thing to do that I found viable.
Wednesday, my true love and I broke up. We are separate now, for the most part, for the rest of my life.
With joy and in desperation, I did something I said and thought I would never do: I changed the structure of my body to limit my ability to eat. The procedure I had is called a vertical sleeve gastrectomy; it's relatively new and is less risky than gastric bypass, and my body can't reject it, like it could have done with the lap band. I worked on getting the procedure done since December of 2009, spending three years with Cherokee Nation, and finally giving up on them because the surgical nurse there just hated that I asked questions.
Just when that source seemed insurmountable, I found that the state insurance, Healthchoice, is doing a test of 100 patients this year to see if bariatric surgery will save them money in the long run---a question I find laughably stupid, when the money they have had to pay up in scripts for me in a single year has amounted to just about the same cost as the surgery. I hope that by this time next year, anyone who has the health issues I've had can come through the program as quickly as they can prepare themselves for it, and start over with a new life, new chances for good health and happiness.
And of course, a newer, truer love that will never endanger, but only enhance who we wish to be.
I loved baking from the time I could stand on a kitchen chair and help my great-grandma roll out bread dough or pie crust or chilled cookie dough. Along the way, I'd stuff my little belly so full of whatever we were working on that I'd either get queasy or, worse, bloated from too much yeast dough. I would bake at home, too, whenever momma would let me. There's no accounting for what percentage got cooked, but it wasn't ever nearly all. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with baking or serving desserts, especially in those days, when everyone worked harder out in the heat, and few people had air conditioners. We burned off what we put into our bodies, for the most part.
There's no clear reason why, but I never developed a taste for vegetables; I wanted meat and carbs of all sorts. Of the older generations in my family, only my Papa Welker, who was severely diabetic, didn't eat mostly healthy foods. I had good examples to follow; I just didn't care to---even though I was warned from a young age that I needed to watch out for my blood sugars to go up, that I would most likely become diabetic at some point. But when this doctor or that did the before-and-after meals testing, my levels would be perfect. This, or course, set me on a "What do they know?" path toward chips, candy, and assorted other junk.
These things, I should stress, weren't allowed in our house in much, if any, quantity. We didn't keep pop at home, and we were only allowed to drink pop in the afternoon or evening, never the morning, and never at meals. Of course, then, it goes without saying that that was the FIRST rule I threw over when I went away to college. Chips were allowed with sandwiches or hamburgers, not as snacks. At Ralston, where we went to school, students were required to eat at the cafeteria every day through 6th grade; after that, we could walk "uptown" (three blocks) to a grocery store named Leroy's and get lunch there. To the best of my memory, every day from 7th-12th grades, I had a lunch of chips, pop,and candy. My weight had already become an obvious issue by then, but I refused to do anything about it, though I wished I could. I was convinced that I would fail, and why set myself up for failure? No, better to know that my true love---grease, fat, salt, and sugar---would be around to greet me each day.
The much-threatened "Freshman 15," the extra pounds most freshmen are said to gain, didn't trouble me because I already had put on so much more weight in high school. I stayed practically the same size for the first three years of school. Then I found a group of friends who worked in the residence halls and hung out together like a rag-tag family of gypsies, surviving on a little cafeteria food, Love's deli sandwiches, cigarettes, beer, and late-night sugar binges to keep studying at the last minute. I kept that up all the way through my Masters, and I....blossomed....into much the same size I am today.
But that's not all to that story, of course. I had always enjoyed remarkable good health; I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been so sick I had to stay in bed up till my early thirties. Then, at 32, I was diagnosed pre-diabetic. All I had to do to resolve it was to quit drinking Pepsi for several years. I didn't have to start taking medicine for another 6 years, when Laura was terminally ill. But so much other stuff followed hard and fast: hypothyroidism, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, neuropathy, autoimmune arthritis, hammertoes, foot sores, ulcers, neck and back pain, blinding headaches, and a few bouts with pneumonia and bronchitis. Finally, it seemed, my true love had come for me, body and soul, and I would have to pay up for all the damage I had caused. There was only one thing to do that I found viable.
Wednesday, my true love and I broke up. We are separate now, for the most part, for the rest of my life.
With joy and in desperation, I did something I said and thought I would never do: I changed the structure of my body to limit my ability to eat. The procedure I had is called a vertical sleeve gastrectomy; it's relatively new and is less risky than gastric bypass, and my body can't reject it, like it could have done with the lap band. I worked on getting the procedure done since December of 2009, spending three years with Cherokee Nation, and finally giving up on them because the surgical nurse there just hated that I asked questions.
Just when that source seemed insurmountable, I found that the state insurance, Healthchoice, is doing a test of 100 patients this year to see if bariatric surgery will save them money in the long run---a question I find laughably stupid, when the money they have had to pay up in scripts for me in a single year has amounted to just about the same cost as the surgery. I hope that by this time next year, anyone who has the health issues I've had can come through the program as quickly as they can prepare themselves for it, and start over with a new life, new chances for good health and happiness.
And of course, a newer, truer love that will never endanger, but only enhance who we wish to be.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
People of Walmart
I really hate to have to admit that I spend a lot of time at Walmart, and an almost equal amount of time hating it. It's not just about the money I spend there; in fact, the only reason I shop there is because who can afford to shop anywhere else?
I don't make shopping lists very often, simply because I don't think to. I always think I'm going to easily remember everything since I don't cook for myself and have a limited grocery list. What happens, of course, is that I forget then remember things once I'm across the store from them, so I wind up criss-crossing the place several times per visit. Good exercise, but bad for people interactions. Tonight, the same guy with a little girl in his cart nearly crashed into me no less than 5 times, all over the store. But the one that took the cake was the lady with two children who were apparently getting matching brightly-colored plastic (are you ready for this?) megaphones. And she was letting them use them, full volume, all....over....the......store.
It was worse than any crying baby situation, ever---and I get really upset at those parents who bring babies to Walmart at night when they should be sleeping, and they cry as if their little hearts are breaking. I just can't stand it. But this, this: it was must have been something like the Manuel Noriega-music torment, where the US military blasted his house with really loud music non-stop for a while. These children were shouting nothing bad into the megaphones (and thank God; that would just have been a bridge too far), but they were SO LOUD!!! YES, JUST LIKE I'M YELLING AT YOU IN CAPITALS RIGHT NOW!! It went on, and on, and on. They were in the aisle next to me for what seemed to be an ice age. I could hear other people in nearby aisles discussing the noise, too.
It was just one of those situations when I find myself taking a look around and feeling there's almost no hope for the human race. Yet, when I got to the checkout, I was furiously throwing gallons of water on the checker's conveyor belt, when the lady in line behind me picked up something off the floor and handed it to me: a bottle of my Koolaid drops I carry everywhere that had apparently fallen out of the cart. I would never have seen it on my own.
It was such a small thing, yet it restored my faith in people, if only for tonight. Oh people of Walmart, may you never humiliate yourself more than you can stand; may you never offend the rest of us more than we can endure.
I don't make shopping lists very often, simply because I don't think to. I always think I'm going to easily remember everything since I don't cook for myself and have a limited grocery list. What happens, of course, is that I forget then remember things once I'm across the store from them, so I wind up criss-crossing the place several times per visit. Good exercise, but bad for people interactions. Tonight, the same guy with a little girl in his cart nearly crashed into me no less than 5 times, all over the store. But the one that took the cake was the lady with two children who were apparently getting matching brightly-colored plastic (are you ready for this?) megaphones. And she was letting them use them, full volume, all....over....the......store.
It was worse than any crying baby situation, ever---and I get really upset at those parents who bring babies to Walmart at night when they should be sleeping, and they cry as if their little hearts are breaking. I just can't stand it. But this, this: it was must have been something like the Manuel Noriega-music torment, where the US military blasted his house with really loud music non-stop for a while. These children were shouting nothing bad into the megaphones (and thank God; that would just have been a bridge too far), but they were SO LOUD!!! YES, JUST LIKE I'M YELLING AT YOU IN CAPITALS RIGHT NOW!! It went on, and on, and on. They were in the aisle next to me for what seemed to be an ice age. I could hear other people in nearby aisles discussing the noise, too.
It was just one of those situations when I find myself taking a look around and feeling there's almost no hope for the human race. Yet, when I got to the checkout, I was furiously throwing gallons of water on the checker's conveyor belt, when the lady in line behind me picked up something off the floor and handed it to me: a bottle of my Koolaid drops I carry everywhere that had apparently fallen out of the cart. I would never have seen it on my own.
It was such a small thing, yet it restored my faith in people, if only for tonight. Oh people of Walmart, may you never humiliate yourself more than you can stand; may you never offend the rest of us more than we can endure.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
A Dip in the Gene Pool
This afternoon on NPR, I listened to part of a fascinating TED talk and then an interview of a guy who does genetic/psycho-social research of some sort. He was talking about the fact that his 5th-great grandfather killed his own mother, and there had been seven other violent criminals in his family tree since then. He has researched and apparently proved that these violent tendencies appear genetically in somewhat random but repeating cycles. Through brain scans, genetic testing, MRI's and such, several scientists have been able to detect both a predisposition to violence and seen where it activates in the brain. This researcher had found that he himself had all the markings of a violent person. The defining characteristic of those who become criminals, however, is missing for him: a direct, personal exposure to brutality in 3-D reality before the onset of puberty. It was riveting to hear his story, and an accompanying one of a writer who was at one time married to a Wall Street genius who, after worshiping her for two years, became abusive just before they married. It was riveting---and a little terrifying. The imagery that he used to drive home his point was that we are all born of a genetic casino, with a hundred dice thrown for our genetic traits and hundreds of thousands of combinations possible.
I have no knowledge of any murderers in my family---though my great-grandma, the one who was alive until I was 15, was a McCoy, supposedly of the Hatfield/McCoy fame. But this story did get me thinking about how much of the individual personality is truly innate. I've always believed that in the nature/nurture debate, it's split about 50/50. But then there are things I have no reason for in my character.
What convinces me nurture has more power is the monumental influence of my farm/ranch childhood: I am naturally pretty lazy, but my parents taught us to work hard and expect no handouts. I have interests more geared to large populations, but I love a country lifestyle like the one I grew up with. No matter how smart a person is, I think a little less of them if they don't develop and use their common sense. Although I believe in gun rights, I don't understand the obsession with them currently in fashion, which I attribute to my extremely cautious and non-hunting father. No matter how many kinds of music I enjoy, for the rest of my life, the lonesome wail of a Hank Williams song or the timbre of Johnny Cash's voice or just a steel guitar on the right notes will be able to transport me back to my earliest years. I was born a naturally chatty child, but was bullied so relentless after third grade, when I changed schools, that I've struggled ever since to believe that people have any interest in knowing me. Conversely, I learned that I was a good teacher over time, when my students succeeded or gave me good evaluations. That was what I grew my whole self-esteem from for the last 25+ years. I've seen the same kind of stories, different details, played out in so many lives that I've lost count now. I couldn't ignore the impact of so much influence without negating the greatest part of my life.
What leads me to believe nature can overwhelm nurture, besides that NPR interview? I'm writing tonight listening to a blues channel, a form of music that spoke to me so deeply the first time I heard it that it felt like I was in church---yet I had no knowledge of it until I was in my 20's. While I teach American literature and generally despise British lit, there is no explaining why I fell instantly in love with Jane Eyre and a few of Jane Austen's novels so deeply that I read them over and over. I love to dance and am good at it (or used to be, before I lost the feeling in my feet), though I knew nothing of dancing until I went to college; I just understood it, the way some people understand how to play instruments by ear. I can also see all the things that I KNOW came genetically from my family because so many of us share the traits: a sweet tooth, a broad love of music, a talent for learning, the insatiable desire to travel, a gift for baking, no fashion gene at all, the desire to help others, an absolutely ridiculous enjoyment of babies and children, a lack of patience for waiting or sitting around, too much pride and ambition at times, not much skill at reading people. And over all those things, an intensely private daily life, craving peace, quiet, and harmony, one that I set the parameters for, stubbornness being the one quality most of both sides of my family share.
Which side wins? I don't know. Probably with all of us, it's one side one day, another the next. It may change from minute to minute. I think I know myself well enough to say that I'd never get myself engaged in a blood feud like Grandma's people did---but then, I can hold a grudge until the end of time. That'd play pretty well with Anse McCoy, come to think of it. I'm glad that when it comes to my genetic dice shoot, I don't have to find out whether I'm more Lizzie Borden or Mother Theresa.
I have no knowledge of any murderers in my family---though my great-grandma, the one who was alive until I was 15, was a McCoy, supposedly of the Hatfield/McCoy fame. But this story did get me thinking about how much of the individual personality is truly innate. I've always believed that in the nature/nurture debate, it's split about 50/50. But then there are things I have no reason for in my character.
What convinces me nurture has more power is the monumental influence of my farm/ranch childhood: I am naturally pretty lazy, but my parents taught us to work hard and expect no handouts. I have interests more geared to large populations, but I love a country lifestyle like the one I grew up with. No matter how smart a person is, I think a little less of them if they don't develop and use their common sense. Although I believe in gun rights, I don't understand the obsession with them currently in fashion, which I attribute to my extremely cautious and non-hunting father. No matter how many kinds of music I enjoy, for the rest of my life, the lonesome wail of a Hank Williams song or the timbre of Johnny Cash's voice or just a steel guitar on the right notes will be able to transport me back to my earliest years. I was born a naturally chatty child, but was bullied so relentless after third grade, when I changed schools, that I've struggled ever since to believe that people have any interest in knowing me. Conversely, I learned that I was a good teacher over time, when my students succeeded or gave me good evaluations. That was what I grew my whole self-esteem from for the last 25+ years. I've seen the same kind of stories, different details, played out in so many lives that I've lost count now. I couldn't ignore the impact of so much influence without negating the greatest part of my life.
What leads me to believe nature can overwhelm nurture, besides that NPR interview? I'm writing tonight listening to a blues channel, a form of music that spoke to me so deeply the first time I heard it that it felt like I was in church---yet I had no knowledge of it until I was in my 20's. While I teach American literature and generally despise British lit, there is no explaining why I fell instantly in love with Jane Eyre and a few of Jane Austen's novels so deeply that I read them over and over. I love to dance and am good at it (or used to be, before I lost the feeling in my feet), though I knew nothing of dancing until I went to college; I just understood it, the way some people understand how to play instruments by ear. I can also see all the things that I KNOW came genetically from my family because so many of us share the traits: a sweet tooth, a broad love of music, a talent for learning, the insatiable desire to travel, a gift for baking, no fashion gene at all, the desire to help others, an absolutely ridiculous enjoyment of babies and children, a lack of patience for waiting or sitting around, too much pride and ambition at times, not much skill at reading people. And over all those things, an intensely private daily life, craving peace, quiet, and harmony, one that I set the parameters for, stubbornness being the one quality most of both sides of my family share.
Which side wins? I don't know. Probably with all of us, it's one side one day, another the next. It may change from minute to minute. I think I know myself well enough to say that I'd never get myself engaged in a blood feud like Grandma's people did---but then, I can hold a grudge until the end of time. That'd play pretty well with Anse McCoy, come to think of it. I'm glad that when it comes to my genetic dice shoot, I don't have to find out whether I'm more Lizzie Borden or Mother Theresa.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Poolhardy
No, no, you didn't misread that title. Here's how the deal went down.
I spent a furious day Wednesday---no, I'd spent the previous week and a half---trying to convince my juniors that they could, they MUST, be successful in completing a research paper to pass the second semester of English III, and they had only limited time for their hard copy research in the library because the book fair would be set up after school on Thursday. Additionally, I would be out for a medical procedure on Thursday, so they would need to be extra-disciplined about their reading and tagging articles for me or my teacher's aide to photocopy for them. I had told them at least 4,592,883,116 OUT LOUD and INDIVIDUALLY that they had to get the title and author of their articles in reference works to be able to do citations later. I had put it in print; I had, truly, done everything but tattoo it on my forehead and stamp it on their hands---though that may be a good idea for future classes. (In the interest of disclosure, I should probably point out that research is my very least favorite thing to teach. I loathe it. I hate grading it way more than dental work---at least I get anesthetic for the dental work. But I digress.) However, other than complaining that there was nothing on their topics/they didn't know where to look/this was too hard/why wouldn't I help them?, no one seemed terribly concerned about this title/author point I kept bleating about. After all, tomorrow is another day, right? Problem was, I didn't know whether any of us were going to make it to tomorrow at the rate we were going. I might spontaneously combust and take them with me at any time.
Our library is much too small for the size of classes we have at LG now, and by last hour, when I have 27 students squeezed in there, milling around and trying to do everything except what they are supposed to do, it makes me absolutely insane, to the point of babbling and cowering in a corner. (Not really---I only wish.) I'm intensely claustrophobic in a situation like that, where I can't control the environment down to the Nth degree, so by the end of first hour, my hair starts sweating---even pinned up, it's dripping. (All right, I admit it: I hate sweating even more than teaching research.) By 7th hour, I probably looked like I'd put in a full day in the field. And then, our assistant principal comes in and begins to observe. At first I didn't realize...she was there to evaluate me. Really, I have no memory of what came after that, but only because I'm consciously blocking how ridiculous the scenario must have looked to her.
Last bell, I trotted off to my cool room, a fan on my face, and a small group of students who needed to make up tests from the week before. After I got them all cleared out, I went back to the library, grabbed a cart stacked with reference books my students had tagged, and shuffled off to spend a sweaty hour in the copy room trying to make at least a small dent in them and fuming because they STILL weren't tagging their articles correctly. At 4:55, I threw everything back on the cart, returned it to the library, and raced out of the parking lot, headed for a blissful kick-butt hour in the pool for deep-water aerobics. I was ready to work off the day's considerably raging head of steam. Anyone who knows me well knows that it takes me a while to get this mad, but when it hits, I get irrationally pissed off at the world. Often, it makes me say comically stupid things. Never, ever, does it escape; I turn it inward, like all good depressives do. But Wednesday's cocktail of frustration, professional embarrassment, AND anger turned into....are you sure you're ready?....the closest thing to fisticuffs I've ever experienced.
I made it to the pool, went skittering through the locker room business and equipment room, and slipped into the too-warm water, a problem we often seem to have. I honestly didn't notice at first; I was still replaying that humiliating 7th hour. I greeted our instructor, Yolanda, whose three kids I taught, and my other classmates, two of whom I knew and a new older lady, and said hey to Debbie, who was swimming in the lap lane with her husband Steve. I taught their youngest daughter, April. Then I realized there was some random fellow of indeterminate age swimming right next to the lap lane, but outside of it, in our class space. His swim cap and goggles made him unidentifiable to us all. Yolanda and the ladies were kind of looking back and forth at him, like they kept expecting him to figure out that he was in OUR dance space, not the other way around, but he seemed oblivious. After a couple of his laps, Yolanda said, "Sir, we have a class at this end of the pool for the next hour." He hardly slowed down, saying, "I'm just going to stay over on this side." COMPLETELY blew her off. That was the next-to-last-straw: one simply does not treat another adult that way, especially a person as polite and gentle as Yolanda. (I later found out that was the second time he'd been rude to her about the issue; she'd already told him once before I got to the pool.) Rhonda, who was my classmate next to me, and I kept trying to just be inconveniently in his path when he came by our way, but he would swim around us and totally ignore the point we were making.
Finally, the young lifeguard caught him at the shallow end of the pool and began having a conversation with him. We all watched surreptitiously as the man started gesturing, obviously arguing with him about wanting to continue his swim uninterrupted. The next thing I saw, Steve and Debbie were getting out of the swim lane, and this "man" (only a child would behave such; I can't take someone like that seriously as a man), this BRAT was moving into the lane while Steve and Debbie began swimming laps across the pool at the shallow end.
My friends, dear readers, I lost it. I saw one too many people acting like an immature crybaby for one day.
I was in 9 feet of water, but I LEVITATED about three-quarters of the way out of the water and screamed at him, "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF! This is our classroom---no grown man would dare come in and say 'I'm just going to use this side of your classroom'! And they were in the lane first! How dare you run them out!" Dimly, I became aware of voices: the lifeguard shouting, "Ma'am! Ma'am! He paid his money, too! Let him alone! Ma'am!" and Debbie waving me down with, "Don't worry about it, Cathy," and Yolanda behind me saying calmly, "Let it go, Cathy---" Meanwhile, crybaby started his laps like nothing ever happened.
I began churning the water furiously, racing on sprints like I never had sprinted before. Muttering curses and phrases like "travesty of justice" under my breath, I told Yolanda, "Let's just do sprints all hour!" With a chuckle, she reminded me that the water was a little too warm, so maybe that was a bad idea. It was a quiet hour, though usually there are at least one or two people chattering a little too much for me to hit my Zen attitude the way I want. But the only interruption I knew was when the stranger in class said, "I feel like I know you from somewhere," but I assured her that she didn't if her kids didn't go to Locust. Otherwise, I was Super-Zen that hour, not realizing how I would pay the next day in sore muscles and stiff joints; it was something like a bomb went off and my body absorbed the impact. I worked off that frustration but good. By the time we moved to the shallow end the last ten minutes for ab work and stretching, I had begun to laugh at myself. I apologized to Yolanda and my classmates and later the lifeguard (who was very understanding, since the guy had pissed him off, too), and we all completely ignored lap boy when he left the pool.
I have never once had a physical fight in my life, not even with my brother or sister, which most people assure me is standard for siblings. I've gotten punched once breaking up a fight between a couple of junior high girls, and been threatened by a student, but nothing else even close. But I do believe I might have punched that guy square in the mouth if we had been on dry land. It was an unforgivable breach of etiquette and just general bad manners---but it was on his part, and mine, too. At least my part was funny, after a while. His was just self-absorbed narcissism.
And the stranger who was sure she knew me? Yep, she did; we figured it out. I sang at that nice Christian lady's daughter's wedding more than 20 years ago. It must be a variant of Murphy's Law: If you're going to make a jackass of yourself, it's always going to be even more embarrassing than you could imagine.
I spent a furious day Wednesday---no, I'd spent the previous week and a half---trying to convince my juniors that they could, they MUST, be successful in completing a research paper to pass the second semester of English III, and they had only limited time for their hard copy research in the library because the book fair would be set up after school on Thursday. Additionally, I would be out for a medical procedure on Thursday, so they would need to be extra-disciplined about their reading and tagging articles for me or my teacher's aide to photocopy for them. I had told them at least 4,592,883,116 OUT LOUD and INDIVIDUALLY that they had to get the title and author of their articles in reference works to be able to do citations later. I had put it in print; I had, truly, done everything but tattoo it on my forehead and stamp it on their hands---though that may be a good idea for future classes. (In the interest of disclosure, I should probably point out that research is my very least favorite thing to teach. I loathe it. I hate grading it way more than dental work---at least I get anesthetic for the dental work. But I digress.) However, other than complaining that there was nothing on their topics/they didn't know where to look/this was too hard/why wouldn't I help them?, no one seemed terribly concerned about this title/author point I kept bleating about. After all, tomorrow is another day, right? Problem was, I didn't know whether any of us were going to make it to tomorrow at the rate we were going. I might spontaneously combust and take them with me at any time.
Our library is much too small for the size of classes we have at LG now, and by last hour, when I have 27 students squeezed in there, milling around and trying to do everything except what they are supposed to do, it makes me absolutely insane, to the point of babbling and cowering in a corner. (Not really---I only wish.) I'm intensely claustrophobic in a situation like that, where I can't control the environment down to the Nth degree, so by the end of first hour, my hair starts sweating---even pinned up, it's dripping. (All right, I admit it: I hate sweating even more than teaching research.) By 7th hour, I probably looked like I'd put in a full day in the field. And then, our assistant principal comes in and begins to observe. At first I didn't realize...she was there to evaluate me. Really, I have no memory of what came after that, but only because I'm consciously blocking how ridiculous the scenario must have looked to her.
Last bell, I trotted off to my cool room, a fan on my face, and a small group of students who needed to make up tests from the week before. After I got them all cleared out, I went back to the library, grabbed a cart stacked with reference books my students had tagged, and shuffled off to spend a sweaty hour in the copy room trying to make at least a small dent in them and fuming because they STILL weren't tagging their articles correctly. At 4:55, I threw everything back on the cart, returned it to the library, and raced out of the parking lot, headed for a blissful kick-butt hour in the pool for deep-water aerobics. I was ready to work off the day's considerably raging head of steam. Anyone who knows me well knows that it takes me a while to get this mad, but when it hits, I get irrationally pissed off at the world. Often, it makes me say comically stupid things. Never, ever, does it escape; I turn it inward, like all good depressives do. But Wednesday's cocktail of frustration, professional embarrassment, AND anger turned into....are you sure you're ready?....the closest thing to fisticuffs I've ever experienced.
I made it to the pool, went skittering through the locker room business and equipment room, and slipped into the too-warm water, a problem we often seem to have. I honestly didn't notice at first; I was still replaying that humiliating 7th hour. I greeted our instructor, Yolanda, whose three kids I taught, and my other classmates, two of whom I knew and a new older lady, and said hey to Debbie, who was swimming in the lap lane with her husband Steve. I taught their youngest daughter, April. Then I realized there was some random fellow of indeterminate age swimming right next to the lap lane, but outside of it, in our class space. His swim cap and goggles made him unidentifiable to us all. Yolanda and the ladies were kind of looking back and forth at him, like they kept expecting him to figure out that he was in OUR dance space, not the other way around, but he seemed oblivious. After a couple of his laps, Yolanda said, "Sir, we have a class at this end of the pool for the next hour." He hardly slowed down, saying, "I'm just going to stay over on this side." COMPLETELY blew her off. That was the next-to-last-straw: one simply does not treat another adult that way, especially a person as polite and gentle as Yolanda. (I later found out that was the second time he'd been rude to her about the issue; she'd already told him once before I got to the pool.) Rhonda, who was my classmate next to me, and I kept trying to just be inconveniently in his path when he came by our way, but he would swim around us and totally ignore the point we were making.
Finally, the young lifeguard caught him at the shallow end of the pool and began having a conversation with him. We all watched surreptitiously as the man started gesturing, obviously arguing with him about wanting to continue his swim uninterrupted. The next thing I saw, Steve and Debbie were getting out of the swim lane, and this "man" (only a child would behave such; I can't take someone like that seriously as a man), this BRAT was moving into the lane while Steve and Debbie began swimming laps across the pool at the shallow end.
My friends, dear readers, I lost it. I saw one too many people acting like an immature crybaby for one day.
I was in 9 feet of water, but I LEVITATED about three-quarters of the way out of the water and screamed at him, "YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF! This is our classroom---no grown man would dare come in and say 'I'm just going to use this side of your classroom'! And they were in the lane first! How dare you run them out!" Dimly, I became aware of voices: the lifeguard shouting, "Ma'am! Ma'am! He paid his money, too! Let him alone! Ma'am!" and Debbie waving me down with, "Don't worry about it, Cathy," and Yolanda behind me saying calmly, "Let it go, Cathy---" Meanwhile, crybaby started his laps like nothing ever happened.
I began churning the water furiously, racing on sprints like I never had sprinted before. Muttering curses and phrases like "travesty of justice" under my breath, I told Yolanda, "Let's just do sprints all hour!" With a chuckle, she reminded me that the water was a little too warm, so maybe that was a bad idea. It was a quiet hour, though usually there are at least one or two people chattering a little too much for me to hit my Zen attitude the way I want. But the only interruption I knew was when the stranger in class said, "I feel like I know you from somewhere," but I assured her that she didn't if her kids didn't go to Locust. Otherwise, I was Super-Zen that hour, not realizing how I would pay the next day in sore muscles and stiff joints; it was something like a bomb went off and my body absorbed the impact. I worked off that frustration but good. By the time we moved to the shallow end the last ten minutes for ab work and stretching, I had begun to laugh at myself. I apologized to Yolanda and my classmates and later the lifeguard (who was very understanding, since the guy had pissed him off, too), and we all completely ignored lap boy when he left the pool.
I have never once had a physical fight in my life, not even with my brother or sister, which most people assure me is standard for siblings. I've gotten punched once breaking up a fight between a couple of junior high girls, and been threatened by a student, but nothing else even close. But I do believe I might have punched that guy square in the mouth if we had been on dry land. It was an unforgivable breach of etiquette and just general bad manners---but it was on his part, and mine, too. At least my part was funny, after a while. His was just self-absorbed narcissism.
And the stranger who was sure she knew me? Yep, she did; we figured it out. I sang at that nice Christian lady's daughter's wedding more than 20 years ago. It must be a variant of Murphy's Law: If you're going to make a jackass of yourself, it's always going to be even more embarrassing than you could imagine.
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