Small Comforts

                For many high school students, receiving a yearbook at the end of the year is worth enduring forty plus weeks of instruction and misery. At Lakenheath High School in England, where I attended as a freshman and sophomore, we received our annuals near the end of March instead of the last week of the school year. Instead of two days, we had two months to fill them with memories and messages, phone numbers and false promises.

                After the initial thrill of signing books died down, very few students carried them to school any more. Upon hitting this lull, I decided that I wanted to see how many of my teachers’ John Hancocks I could collect in addition to those of my friends’. There was one, though, that I wanted above the others: my English teacher Mr. Albert. I respected him, even admired him, so I wanted to see what nuggets of wisdom he might leave.

                However, there was one problem: Mr. Albert was not known for signing yearbooks. In fact, in most cases, if he deemed you worthy of his time, he simply wrote his name on a random page, as if he were simply filling out a hall pass.

                Mr. Albert was an older man with slicked back whitish-gray hair and severe, dark-rimmed glasses which bugged out his dark eyes to an almost insect-esque degree. In his prime he must have been quite tall and athletic. Now, his shoulders stooped a little, but that was about all that made him old. He attacked literature with a gusto rarely seen. His classroom at the end of the hall, directly above the main office at Lakenheath High lulled you into a home-like security. He packed the desks in tightly, but the ambiance of the rest of the room suggested more of a homey atmosphere: a throw rug under his desk at the front of the room, an old wooden rocker in the corner with a crocheted throw draped over its back. Framed portraits and works of art carefully line the walls, along with a few larger tapestries depicting ancient literary scenes from Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. The aroma of yellow-paged books clung permanently to the four walls—a comfortable mustiness that endured the custodian’s best efforts with air fresheners. The high windows across the back of the room let in enough natural light to make most days cheerful without the glowing phosphorescence overhead. It was probably my favorite room in the school.

                One day after school I stopped by his classroom and asked him for his autograph. Without skipping a beat, he put down the essay he had just finished grading, took the book from my hand, and flourished his pen. From the sound of it, he scrawled more than just his name across the page. The fact that he composed a whole line in the back of my book intrigued me, and I couldn’t wait to read his pearls of wisdom.

                When he was finished signing, he handed it back to me and immediately grabbed the next essay in the stack in front of him and resumed marking. I figured it would be impolite to read what he had just written in front of him, so I stowed the book in my backpack, thanked him, and went on my way to see if I could find my friends who had abandoned me. When I reached my locker, I whipped the yearbook back out and found where Mr. A left his message: “Make sure you buy a house with a fireplace.”

                I was baffled. What the heck was that supposed to mean?

                Knowing he was keen on symbolism, I shuffled through the files in my brain and all the pieces of English and American lit we had discussed and analyzed. Monkey’s paw? Check. Raven? Check. Pig’s head? Check. Red Death? Check. Fireplace? Nothing. No check. I couldn’t figure it out. And it bothered me. There was always a hidden meaning, right?

                Maybe. This mystery drove me crazy for several days. None of them had a clue either. But why I was so obsessed with finding out what he meant? Wasn’t he just a crazy old man? Why did I value his opinion so much? After several days obsessing, I realized that over the past year, whether he knew it or not, I found a mentor in Mr. Albert, someone who would help shape who I eventually became. And I didn’t want to let him down.

                To be honest, I thought he was pretty pompous at the beginning of the year, looking down his buggy bifocals at us. Then I learned how bifocals worked. He called me out in front of the class one day for not preparing for my oral reading presentation—an excerpt from a Dave Barry book I grabbed from the library that morning. I thought I could wing it, but he instantly branded me a charlatan because I mispronounced the word senility (seh-nih-lə-tē). He told me he knew I could do better. I grumbled, but I knew he was right.

                Another time I wrote a poem about a girlfriend dying. It was complete garbage, but the girls in the class who sat around me (Joanna, Becky, Jen, and a few others) were so touched, they thought it was real. I made myself cry to add to the charade, asking for a hall pass to go wash my face. Mr. Albert let me go, but I think he knew I was full of crap; I think he let me leave class because the girls wouldn’t leave me and my “grieving” alone and caused a disturbance.

                Despite all these seemingly negative interactions, he also helped me to understand poetry. We explicated some poem about a dog, and for the first time, I realized that I actually really liked poetry, and so I began to write. He encouraged my writing. Some of the poetry was worthless, but I also produced pieces like “Subway” under his tutelage, which was later published in a British student literary magazine. He showed me that I had a talent when I wrote a campy slasher story called “Bob of the Backwoods” for a Halloween assignment. He always pushed me harder than I thought possible. He very bluntly told me what made the story engaging while simultaneously showing me where it was crap.

                I remember him calling me on the carpet again when I attempted to write an opinionated analysis about a point I personally did not believe regarding the nature of man when we read Lord of the Flies. He simply said, “Your heart’s not in this and neither is your head. Try again.” I don’t remember what grade I got, but I think it was a C-, definitely subpar for me. He allowed me to rewrite it, though. He showed me how revision made me a better writer and thinker.

                I don’t remember a lot of our class discussions, but I know that I came to class engaged every day. Whether reading Julius Caesar or “The Necklace,” I felt my brain constantly filling, sometimes past the saturation point. He fueled my desire to learn and to always look for more. That is why his cryptic yearbook message perplexed me. I knew there was something I was overlooking, so I finally got up the guts to ask him.

                “What did you mean? I asked before class the next day.

                Mr. Albert looked up from his desk, his bright black eyes magnified by his glasses. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure to what you are referring.” He never ended his sentences with prepositions, even when he talked.

                I pulled my yearbook from my backpack, flipped to the page where he had scrawled in his long, fluid cursive earlier in the week, and I handed it to him.

                He hummed. Nodded his head in affirmation. “That’s some good advice, young man."

                “But what does it mean?” I implored, expecting a life-altering, earth-shattering insight into life.

(Taken from https://static.tumblr.com/279a8fb8356faab0227654021d93cb11/lftnwhz/tUin9103m/)

                “Simply that,” he said. “There’s nothing like a good fireplace and enjoying the smaller comforts of life.”

                “Okay, uh, thanks,” I said, taking my seat, still a little unsure why he would pen that into my yearbook. And I stayed in the dark about the meaning until much, much later in life.

                I corresponded with him fairly frequently, starting with a letter of recommendation for my Eagle Scout award. We wrote letters while I was at Ricks College, where I learned of his failing health. I even got a couple of cards from him when I was proselytizing in Spain for two years.

                One winter night, eight or nine years after receiving Mr. Albert’s words of wisdom, my wife and I unburied our high school yearbooks from one of the many cardboard boxes crammed into in our basement apartment. We had only been married a few months, and somehow stories of high school came up, and we decided that pictures were needed to go with people and events. As we flipped through the pages from LHS 1991-92, Mr. Albert’s message written in blue pen came back to me. I looked around at the crowded living space, felt the hot air blow out of the heating duct. I didn’t have a fireplace, but I began to understand the meaning of small comforts. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be any more meaning.

Math--Episode II: The Not-So-Harmless Prank

There are a few details about my 7^th grade math teacher Ms. Palenik that will never disappear, no matter how hard I try to eradicate them. She was short and rather nondescript other than the fact that her skin was elephant wrinkly, and her thin gray hair always flopped into her eyes, so she continually flipped her head in an effort to see. She knew her math, but I often wondered if she hated children.

Above all, one trait and one incident have been seared into my memory: Ms. Palenik was a coffee consumer; she always had several Styrofoam cups on her desk scattered like chess pieces in a half-finished game, standing over the crooked board of grade sheets and assignments. A few were empty and knocked over, but many remained partially full and cold, effigies to her caffeine addiction. She often had a half-full ceramic mug or two as well. I believe she guzzled more brownish-black wake-up serum than the rest of the faculty combined. Possibly because of her dependence on the stuff, her voice cracked and croaked whenever she ran dry.

                Because my last name begins with A, I was seated in the front of the room, and from there I could smell her coffee breath quite distinctly when she talked to the class and wrote on the board. She rarely cleaned the chalkboards in the front of the room, so a perpetual dust cloud hovered around me. I coughed quite frequently. When she would write on the board each day, she would wear a foam mitten thing—kind of like a bath sponge—that she would use as an eraser. Only it didn’t work very well; it just smeared things with built up chalk dust. Even worse, she would often stick the chalky mitten in the waistband at the back of her pants, which were mostly polyester track suits or something equally as hideous that should have been left in the ‘70s. She and her yellowing teeth would often get in our faces—much too closely—if we had a question. I never asked many for that reason alone.

https://www.commercialrealestate.com.au/news/is-the-hot-desk-in-the-office-leaving-us-cold/

                I was the new kid, but before I proceed, let me back up a little to provide some context: Smack in the middle of my seventh grade year, Dad was transferred from Yokota AFB in Japan to RAF Mildenhall, England. My new school was quite a bit different from the 7-12 Yokota High School I had attended in the Pacific. Lakenheath American Middle School was located on a smaller base (RAF Feltwell) forty-five minutes from our house in the village of Little Downham. The school campus was housed in several older buildings constructed in the ‘40s and ‘50s to house allied forces during and after World War II. The classrooms, former offices and barracks, were constructed of brick and cinder block with dark hardwood floors, smoothed over time. Original pipework still jutted from the walls and ceilings here and there, and the heating units on the walls continually hissed and groaned like creatures trapped in time, just waiting to be freed.

                I don’t remember which kids comprised my math class that half year I was with them. Patrick started school the same day I did, so I know he was there. And I think Tim, Carrie, and Lori were there, too, but I don’t really remember. One boy that I knew was there for sure was Chris Gallaway, and I think I remember him mostly because of this episode (and the fact that on a field trip later that year he pestered a llama at the zoo so intensely, it spit all over him, chunks in the face and all, but that’s another story). I remember he was often defiant and getting into trouble. He blatantly fought against Ms. Palenik in just about everything. However, at the time of this incident, it had been a while since he had been sent to see the vice principal.

Now it wasn’t a common practice for Ms. Palenik to send someone to the office to get her more coffee, but I do remember that one cold morning Chris volunteered to traverse the blacktop to the office building which contained the teachers’ lounge and Ms. Palenik’s beloved life blood. While he was gone, Ms. Palenik commented to the rest of the class about how wonderfully he had been behaving as of late. She may have even forgiven him for mooing at her; I don’t know. I remember that he came back all smiles, but the teacher was not in the room; she had just stepped out. He set the mug on her desk and started whispering to some of the girls on the other side of the room.

My first inclination as to what was happening was when Lori, smacking her gum like a cow or camel or some other cud-chewer, asked in a very disgusted, very non-quiet whisper, “Chris, did you really spit in her coffee?”

                “What?” someone asked, and pretty soon the whole class was abuzz.

                Chris stood up, a rather proud look on his face. “Yep. Hawked a big ol’ goober into, too. I even stirred it around with one of those stick things. Couldn’t even tell when I was done.” He laughed.

                A hush fell over the room, and soon our math teacher strode back into the room. She seemed surprised that we were all working diligently and complimented us accordingly, something that normally didn’t happen first thing in the morning.

                My mind was not on math any more. And I, having no real knowledge of coffee, wondered if the big greenie swimming in the coffee would be obvious. Whether or not she could tell the snot glob was in there, it didn’t matter. I knew—we all knew—that what Chris had done was wrong. He had definitely crossed a line. I felt like I should say something, but I was scared to do it. I was the new kid. I was not a tattle-tale. I wanted friends. I wanted to belong.

                The class held its collective breath as she maneuvered over to her desk, thanking Chris again for fetching her drink. She drank deeply—she never sipped—chugged, then suddenly croaked.

                “Ack!” She threw her mug directly into the garbage, where it shattered, bringing us out of our daze. She glared at us, and shaking a finger, threatened that if we even moved a muscle before she got back, we would regret it.

                We sat a moment in a stunned silence. 

                “Dude. She must have swallowed it.” Someone on the other side of the room voiced the exact thoughts running through my mind.

                “Chris, what have you done?” someone else shrieked. The implications started settling into our seventh grade minds. Previously he had been known as a joker, and his open abhorrence for math, our math teacher, and school in general had just manifested itself at a new level. I’m not sure whether to describe it as a new high or low; I guess it depends on how you want to look at it. Our silence at his disgusting prank had dragged the rest of us into his ongoing warfare against Ms. Palenik.

                Not long after her abrupt departure, Mr. Allan, the vice principal rushed into the classroom, his cheeks still red from hurrying across the quad from the main office. For a moment he glared at us from under his bushy eyebrows and shock of windblown, curly, brown hair. His striped ‘70s tie hung askew, poking out from his normally crisply pressed yellow dress shirt and brown sports coat with stylish patches on the elbows. He tucked the tie into his now-buttoned jacket and cleared his throat. Again, a guilty silence fell over the room. Hands went to hips. “I am very disappointed in you…all,” he began, but before he could say more, Ms. Palenik returned, accompanied by Mrs. Heard, the principal. Her large, imposing frame filled the door; her presence filled our souls with dread. The only time she ever left her office was for assemblies or serious trouble. We knew there was a dead man sitting among us.

                Our math teacher didn’t say anything, but her body shook. Tear trails streaked her blotchy, red face. She simply pointed a finger at Chris, who stood immediately, owning his transgression. Leaving his books, he marched over to the adults in the doorway, and the three of them disappeared. I don’t think he even got to request a last meal.

                We didn’t see Chris again for a week. Maybe two.

                Ms. Palenik returned after a day. And even though Chris wasn’t there for a while, she came back with a vengeance. If anyone even breathed wrong, the whole class felt her wrath in the amount of homework problems. She dealt worksheets like a card shark in Vegas, and no one beat the house. I remained buried in redundant math exercises because of someone else’s choices.

                I suppose I could have made a different choice myself, one that may or may not have prevented the class’s plight. But at that point in my life I was not strong enough. Looking back, I wonder if anyone else’s consciences spoke to them, or if anything would have changed if someone had spoken up about the foreign object in Ms. Palenik’s coffee, but I’m not sure. Perhaps our silent cruelty was bred out of a longing to belong, a fear of standing up and standing out. Junior high can be harsh.

Finding Balance

In my last post, I discussed the four personal narratives I was writing--one with each of my freshman classes studying the genre. We have finally arrived at the point where I can share what I have written with them in classes. These are second drafts after undergoing a public peer revision. They are still not perfect, but they are good enough for this rough blog. So..stay tuned for four personal narratives (one of which is included in my series of math adventures--more of those still to come). I won't release them all at once...just when I remember to do it. The first one is entitled "Finding Balance."

                The lunch smell of PB and J still hung in the air with a hint of that corn-chippiness that perpetually lingers around sixth graders. There were twenty-eight desks crammed into that classroom at Yokota East Elementary, and I sat in the back right corner next to the second story windows that looked over the courtyard. It was the perfect place for me to observe the rest of the class: I could watch every student covertly. It provided great entertainment when I finished my work early. Most of my classmates diligently poured over their life science textbooks. Lionel, of course, pretended to read while he actually stared ga-ga-eyed at Jennifer Gruenart and her silky brown hair tossed perfectly over her right shoulder. Chris Hiatt tried to learn through osmosis—a concept Mr. Anderson taught us earlier in the year—sleeping conspicuously, the open book his pillow. Marcie surreptitiously dug in her nose when she thought no one was looking, but I saw everything. Mr. Anderson, a semblance of an aging, bearded Dom DeLuise, perched at the teacher desk by the door, grading assignments or something, not really paying attention to us. The end of the school day approached, and our sagging bodies showed it.

                Science was the penultimate period of the day; only my favorite, reading, was left. Most of my classmates, however, loved science more than reading and were completely engrossed in their assignment. And although at the time, I didn’t really understand how someone could hate reading, I saw why they loved science. Mr. Anderson was an engaging teacher. He was big, loud, and most of all funny…at least to a room full of twelve-year-olds.

                “Dee leaves fall off dee trees in dee-cee-duous forests” was one of our favorite lines. In later years, kids would randomly repeat this scientific line. I taught it to my own children when they started studying plants in elementary school; my ninth grade son remembered it on his classification project for his biology class this past fall.

But whether Mr. Anderson was trying a Jamaican accent when teaching us biomes, or screaming in a pseudo-Michael Jackson falsetto “Annie, are you okay?” when demonstrating what to do with the CPR dummy, or calling us grasshoppers in a horrible wannabe Oriental voice as he expounded some Mr. Miyagi philosophies about an element of nature, or just joking in his normal rollicking voice, he was fascinating to listen to. However, there was one conversation I had with him that I would love to forget, but I will never be able to.

                “Young Master Anson, would you come back and see me for a second?” Mr. Anderson spoke loudly, without looking up. The students were used to his booming interruptions, though, and settled back to their work without skipping a beat.

                I stood slowly and made my way to the teacher desk.

                I wondered to myself if I were in trouble. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I uttered under my breath, mostly to reassure myself.

                When I reached the desk, his meaty hands gestured for me to sit. I slumped onto the yellowing plastic chair, nervous for what was to come.

                “Hey,” he started, in a buddy-buddy sort of tone. “You know you have some of the highest test scores in the class…in the school, right?”

                I gulped, not sure where this was going. He interpreted my non-answer as a sign to keep talking.

                “Well, you do. Eetsa gooda stuffa, “ he fake-Italian burst before returning to a semi-serious tone. “I just wanted to find out why you didn’t do any extra credit this term.”

                “Uh...,” I began.

                “You did it last quarter,” he continued, “and I wanted to make sure that you remembered that you can’t get an A in this class unless you do the extra credit.” The rule in Mr. Anderson’s science class was simply this: Unless you did an extra credit project each term, you could not get an A in the class. No exceptions. He sat back, folding his arms over his ample stomach.

(borrowed from https://www.parentmap.com/)

Now, I cared about my grades. Back in Arkansas and Las Vegas, I could take my report card to the video arcade and cash in grades for tokens, and I hadn’t looked back since. The problem was I disliked science. Well, at least the way it was taught in school. Ever since the debacle of the science fair volcano Doug Walters and I constructed in fifth grade, I approached projects with trepidation. Maybe it was the fact that I thought some of the steps of the scientific method were a little redundant, or that I hated working on labs with others who consistently let me down, or the endless researching and reading of throat-cracking dry tomes of bad technical writing crammed with too much technical jargon. Maybe it was the pressure to get an A. I’m not sure. But I hated it. 

Whatever it was, my abhorrence for extra science homework included much dragging of feet and slogging through late nights, me perpetually postponing the extra fluffy junk that had nothing to do with my interests.

                Although I know better now, at that point in my life, I would have preferred reading the dumb chapter, answering the pointless questions at the end, and going about my business none the smarter in science. I could answer questions from a textbook easily despite the monotony of the process; I simply did not care enough to want to know more than I needed.

                Perhaps because I tried to block it out of my mind, I don’t remember what I actually produced to get the extra credit that first term. What I do remember, though, was the turmoil it caused. One late night after doing a crappy rush job on some science-related assignment or another, my mom, knowing my avoidance habits, put her arm around my shoulder, and simply asked, “Is it worth it?”

                Through tears, I explained to her that the only way to get an A in science was to do extra.  Lately the extra had started to take its toll. From the look in her eyes, I knew she didn’t agree with that grading policy, but she simply asked me again, “Is it worth it?” And then she went to bed, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Was an A in science worth all the problems it caused me at home? Did I really want it badly enough. I didn’t sleep much that night.

                Standing in front of Mr. Anderson that day, I began to sweat. I looked around for an out. Lionel still ogled, and Marcie still excavated for green gold. No one paid attention to the conference happening at the back of the room.

                “I’m not going to do any extra credit,” I managed to mumble.

                “Sorry. What was that?” he bellowed. Disturbed by his raucous nature, people started to look over. “I couldn’t hear what you said.”

                My hands started shaking in front of this behemoth of a man towering over me even sitting down; he was at least four times my eleven-year-old size. My inherent timidity kicked in, but somehow my inner soul found the strength to stand its ground. “I am not going to do any more extra credit,” I repeated. “It’s not worth it to me.”

                I thought his eyes were going to goggle out of his head momentarily, but he quickly regained his composure. “Pity,” he said. “You could have done great things.” And that was all. His lack of further response dismissed me. I slithered back to my seat.

                Maybe it was just in my mind, but over the rest of the year, I think he started being a little tougher on me. He challenged me more openly in front of the class—I always had to answer the toughest questions—but I continued to hold my ground. I finished the year with all A’s with the exception of the 95% B plusses in science. Despite being one of the smartest kids in the class, one of seven in the talented and gifted program, I wasn’t voted onto the trivia bowl team as my class’s representative because of my B’s (and the fact that the most popular meathead in the school was in my class). Not doing extra credit did have its consequences, but they didn’t come at the cost of my personal sanity. I began to achieve balance.

                Now, I don’t want to make Mr. Anderson out to be the antagonist of this story, for he truly did teach me….and most of it involved science. But standing up for myself in the back of that classroom was definitely a turning point in my academic and social development.

                It wasn’t immediate, of course. In tenth grade biology, I swung it to the other extreme, failing third term because I didn’t think my own leaf project was worthwhile. It’s a good thing that credit was awarded on the semester system at that school. (I pulled it up to a B by the end.) I found an inner peace with what mattered and what didn’t. I worked hard (mostly), but I didn’t overexert myself, especially in areas I knew weren’t going to be valuable to my future—a lesson I try to ingrain in my students, principally those of the honors variety. Yes, I know times have changed, but you can still get scholarships with A’s and B’s. Contentment doesn’t equal 4.0. I had a colleague who frequently told his pupils that the world is run by B students. And I think I agree. Grades don’t mean everything, but they do mean some things.

                The last final exam I took for my bachelor’s degree involved a grammar test, which was supposed to take three hours to complete. Before the test, I totaled up the points I had earned over the course of the semester and compared them against the syllabus grade scale. In the end, I didn’t do more than was necessary. While the rest of my classmates toiled over the entire test, I answered the fourteen or fifteen questions to earn the points I needed to get the grade I wanted then took my wife to lunch, leaving the rest of the assessment blank.

                Some things aren’t worth the trouble, especially if they extinguish the desire to learn and enjoy life. I’ve had students go down in flames physically and emotionally when they couldn’t live up to expectations—both parental and self-inflicted. I know people who pushed themselves to breaking points in high school to snatch up scholarships (sometimes to the detriment of others) only to crack their freshmen year in college and overdose trying to escape expectations. I know students and teachers who work themselves sick before Thanksgiving.

                Balance for me came from an imbalance in my life, and I can only thank Mr. Anderson for forcing me to make that discovery.