When I Found Out That Not All Adults Are Good People

              From Kindergarten through second grade, I attended Wilkes’ Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas. Most days, transportation came via carpool. However, on occasion, I rode the bus. To be fair, the bus was really a powder blue (with white lettering and logo) 15-passenger van, but for all intents and purposes, it was the bus. In fact, Mitch, the driver, got a touch upset if you called it a van. And although I don’t recall many of our daily trips aboard the fun bus—most days were nondescript—for some reason, I do remember you didn’t want to make Mitch mad. He was, though, the adult, the one in charge, and therefore, the ultimate word in what we were supposed to do...right?

He wore ratty t-shirts and jeans every day, perhaps a jacket in the winter. An old-school green mesh ball cap with a foam front with a faded logo, like one of those generic pieces of hud they give you in little league molded his hair to his head, only a curly mullet strung out the back. Mitch had absolute control over the radio (loud), too, and he made sure everyone know it. And I remember that he was loud—louder than Van Halen or the Oak Ridge Boys. His ultra-loud nature disquieted my shy, quiet nature on a daily basis. 

Two other kids in my class rode the bus—Shawnna and Kira. The only other kid I remember by name was Stephanie, who was a third grader, who coincidentally looked like my wife did when she was in third grade. Somehow, Stephanie always got Mitch to crank up the volume when “Abracadabra” by the Steve Miller Band came on. No one else could get him to relent his music dominance. The rest of the bus riders were older. Due to my timidity and my unfounded fear of big kids, I usually hunkered down in the back until my stop came.

The mighty Mitch didn’t talk to me much. He had too much fun yelling at (and with) the older kids. I do remember, though, that every once in a while that he and/or one of the older boys would say something that I wasn’t allowed to say. I remember being perplexed about why an adult would let other kids use words like that or even use words like that himself. Adults were supposed to correct inappropriate behavior, not encourage it, right?

Another time Mitch had a shouting debate with one of the older girls about whether taking the Lord’s name in vain was really breaking a commandment. For a kid who was trying to learn to do what was right, the time on the bus really confused me.

              I don’t remember much of the route, or how many stops we made, but I do remember one distinct spot along a woodsy bend. This was where Mitch pulled over, leaving the motor running. He scurried across the busy, two-lane road, almost becoming a stain on the wood paneling of a white station wagon. Those of us in the bus who hadn’t been paying attention were alerted by the blaring horns and the one-fingered salute Mitch waved back with. He continued and ducked under a no trespassing sign into a yard surrounded by barbed wire with no trespassing signs. He came back with an armload of political campaign signs. He opened the back door of the bus, directly behind me and shoved them in, muttering to no one in particular about how the no good *expletive phrase* wasn’t going to win anyway. A pit opened in my stomach. We stopped a few minutes later where Mitch stuffed them into a dumpster. I about swallowed myself. Was this an adult I was supposed to trust?

              However, the event that completely messed over my malleable mind was one time when Mitch had had an extremely hard day, I suppose, because the yelling started before we had left the parking lot to go home. He quickly detoured to a 7-11, one of his usual stops, and came back with two brown paper bags. The first, he shoved under his seat. The second he held up as he pronounced, “Listen up. I’m going to try something different today. If you are good, I’ll give you a piece of this candy. If not, you get nothing.”

              My young brain kicked into gear. I was always good. I never caused any trouble. I was going to score a Now-and-Later or a Tootsie Pop!

              It was one of the quietest bus rides I ever experienced. Even the normally rowdy crowd settled down for the afternoon. I distinctly recall cute Kira getting dropped off in front of her house, Mitch turning around, and giving her a treat as she exited. Shawnna got one, too. And Stephanie. And a few others. When my stop came, I reached for the door and paused, waiting for my candy. But when he didn’t even acknowledge me (not that it was anything new), my candy-loving, adult-trusting soul got crushed. Whether there was any blatant favoritism or not is up for debate. Wasn’t the promise that if I were good, I would receive candy? In my little mind, I didn’t get a piece of candy, so therefore….well, you figure it out.

              Why am I sharing this story? That is a good question. It has been on my mind for a while, but I don't know where to take it from here. I have literally typed and deleted eight different conclusions to this tale. Some were more didactic than others. All just felt wrong, though. That said, I will leave you with your own reader response. Whatever you get out of it is fine with me. I’ll just say this, though:

              Think about the messages you send to others, especially the direct statements or promises you make.

My Adventures in Mathmagic Land

I have a confession to make. My math teacher friends may cringe, so I advise them to cover their ears...or at least scroll to the next section where the narrative I want to tell actually begins. Disney fans may also want to avoid the next sentence, too, unless you really want to think less of me.

Here goes: I have never watched Donald in Mathmagic Land. Ever. Despite its consideration as a "classic" portion of multiple generations' educational experience, or as the lone offering in the district media library for math classes (for many years; it's better now), I have still never seen it. And I don't really have a desire to do so.

There. I said it. Let the stoning commence. Oh, wait. That was "The Lottery," not Donald Duck. Thank you, Ms. Jackson.

Now I must clarify: I am not a math hater. I freely acknowledge its paramount importance in our world. I use it daily. I love the critical thinking skills it teaches. I understand the importance of statistics and figures and everything math encompasses. I just didn't like it. I think that may have been because I was never taught the "why" behind everything we did.Probably would have made a difference for me. Now, I wasn't bad at math; I did quite well, better than most in my grade, if I might say so. But I had quite a few adventures in Mathmagic Land without Donald or Walt or any other guide. And honestly, there were some years where I did better off just reading the darn textbook than listening to my teachers. I'll spare the guilty parties by omitting which years those were. I think, though, that I will share a short series of narratives involving me and math. (Shudder.)

Here is Episode I: The Fourth Grade Breakdown

We moved from Las Vegas to Japan in December of my fourth grade year. It was a crazy move, and we didn’t get any of our household goods from the shipping company until Christmas Eve, but that’s a different story. 

Yokota West Elementary

                I considered myself to be a pretty bright student: pretty much perfect grades, top reading group—you know. Just the year before, I was placed in the Gifted and Talented Program at J.E. Manch Elementary. However, on my first day at Yokota West Elementary, about halfway through the day we started doing multiplication, a skill I felt fairly capable of handling. I was the first one in my Ms. Pierce’s third grade class to have my multiplication table memorized after all.

                However, after a couple of simple problems multiplying two-digit numbers by single digits, Mrs. Wood assigned three rows of “review” problems where three-digit numbers were multiplied by three-digit numbers. I had never attempted problems like these before. As a young nine-year-old, I didn’t even know that was possible. My confidence eroded. The grip on my pencil faltered. I was lost, a sensation I had never experienced in school before. So what did I do? Put my head down and cried. Of course.

                No one noticed at first, but then the kid next to me poked me. “Are you okay?” he asked. I pretended not to hear. Soon the teacher was by my side asking the same question. I feigned sleeping; it seemed safer than speaking at the moment.

                Wisely I see now, Mrs. Wood dismissed the class for an unscheduled recess. When the class had disappeared and the lights were out, I thought it safe to raise my head. I should have known the teacher was still lurking. She called my name softly. “What’s really the matter?” Even my inexperienced fourth grade soul knew that she was genuinely concerned. So I spilled.

                I broke down sobbing again; this time it was a really ugly cry—snotwads and all. I felt so dumb and out of place. I just couldn’t do what everyone else already knew.

                After a few moments of blubbering and rambling, I sniffingly composed myself. And then Mrs. Wood gave me my own private multiplication lesson. She showed me that I was not too far behind the rest, and she proceeded to demonstrate the step I needed to master in order to catch up to the rest of the class. By the time recess ended and the others were back inside, I could do the assigned problems by myself.

                Not to brag or anything, but by the end of the week, I won every single multiplication race against anyone in the class. Not too bad for someone who came late to the game, huh? I learned a few lessons that day, the least important was math.

Belated Ramble in Two Parts and Mixed Metaphors

Part I

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or any other kind of –ist for that matter, to see that I have neglected my blogging as of late. However, I need to articulate that I was writing, just not blogging. I started a few pieces. Then I put them down (literally and figuratively). I journaled. I dissertated. But I could not come up with anything I deemed blog-worthy.

Before I go on, though, I must confess that I am a little disappointed that I only had one entry for the poetry contest. Dave, you win! (Again!) Now back to our not-so-regularly-scheduled blog post.

As I worked on my seventh draft of my dissertation proposal, I had an epiphany. In the words of Smee from Hook, “Lightning ha[d] just struck my brain.” I encountered an amazing quote in my research book of all places. In her latest edition of Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Research, Sharan B. Merriam quotes Harry Wolcott: “Writing is not only a great way to discover what we are thinking, it is also a way to uncover lacunae in our thinking. Unfortunately, that means we must be prepared to catch ourselves red-handed when we seem not to be thinking at all. The fact should not escape us that when the writing is not going well, our still-nebulous thoughts are not yet ready to be expressed in words” (Writing Up Qualitative Research). That from a research book? Wow.

I didn’t need to feel too guilty (apart from breaking my promise to write 31 narratives, which I am still working on). 

Part II

And so I thought about my blog. And my writing. Then I looked down at the book again and noticed all my notes scrawled in the margins. Ping! (That’s the sound of the light bulb.) My ninth graders are annotating To Kill a Mockingbird right now (and digging deeper than they ever have before). As I revised, I was using the annotations I had made, just like I had been taught in Mr. Albert’s class. So I thought—hand on chin, pensive furrow in my brow—about the different skills that I had picked up over the years.

Mrs. Thompson taught me how to respond to questions with complete sentences in fourth grade. Mrs. Curry taught me how to effectively summarize (without embellishments) in fifth grade. Mr. Iwanski, even though he was a super creeper, pounded grammar and usage into me in sixth grade. That same year Mrs. Saiki taught me how to research, paraphrase, cite, and read as a writer. I started writing story to escape the realities of seventh grade. I wrote for audience in eighth grade, as it were in the Algebra Express. Mr. Albert, in tenth grade, instilled in me the importance of revision and the need to appeal to an audience. He also made sure that I knew how to back up my arguments and opinions with evidence and to never try to argue for something I didn’t believe in—at least when my grade was on the line. That same year I became a wannabe poet on the side. (Scattered evidence can be found on this site.) Mrs. Misselhorn helped me as a junior  to take something abstract and transform it into a concrete image, as well as to focus thesis statements. The advisors of the Lancer Lot gave me the confidence I needed to start publishing. And in twelfth grade I finally realized that I was a writer—not a very good one—but a writer nonetheless.

Various instructors throughout my college career helped me to shape my craft both academically and aesthetically. I sat through lecture and workshop and acquired piece by piece my writing tool belt. And just like Batman’s utility belt, there’s more there than you would ever think possible.  Nevertheless it’s still packed in there.

(I know I’m rambling now, but I needed to just spill a few thoughts and the way they came to me.)

Writing came to me slowly, as a process, one small fragment at a time.  And as I reflect on my skills, I realize that everything I learned back when I wondered if I was ever going to use it in my life…well…I still use them. These skills and shortcuts and secrets and styles—they are all a part of me. My own voice and style are a reflection of all the reading and writing I have ever done. Even the words I scribbled on the tiny Fisher Price desk with a chalkboard with yellow chalk that always squeaked and sent goose bumps racing over my body (They are visible now as I relive that memory.) helped lay a foundation, helped me to become the writing superhero I pretend to be. It’s up to me—jumping back to the Batman metaphor—to help them pack their utility belts, so they can use the tools whenever they need them. Okay, now that I think about it, I'm probably more like Inspector gadget than Batman, but the idea is the same.

Because I know hardly anyone will ever read this far, I’ll wrap up simply asserting that the writer I am today is because of the patchwork I stitched together from so many others. To the many, thank you. And as I try to instill similar skills in the nebulous minds of my students, I hope that some of them will also realize that I am just adding a piece to their puzzle. For some, it will just be a small patch of sky that blends in with the rest of their life’s panorama, but for others, I may be the red roofed villa in the hills that serves a s a focal point that gets the puzzle started within the boundaries of its frame. And yet for others, I may even be a straight-edged side, or even a corner foundation, from which the puzzle of their lives begin to take shape.

That’s enough of the metaphors, but I hope you know what I mean. Just take life, and writing, one piece at a time. And when the pieces don’t always fit, it may be time for a new puzzle. Either that or you just need to re-cut them to make them fit.

Can anybody tell me what this is supposed to be?