Kindergarten Trouble

               I have written about being a follower multiple times in my life. See, Jack Gantos’s “The Follower” in Guys Write for Guys Read (ed. Jon Scieszka) is one of my favorite literary prompts for students. I usually write with my students. Now, I am running out of stories. Either that or I’m subconsciously blocking memories, for I’m pretty sure that I didn’t learn to be a leader for quite a while. And some would still debate whether I ever stopped being a follower. Regardless, these stories are a little rarer now. Here’s a little twist about being a follower and not able to speak up for myself. 

              In Arkansas, you can’t start public school until you are five years old. I had been reading more or less since I was two, but the school system still didn’t want to take me. Perhaps in part because I wore a little on my mother’s patience, and part because I needed something to stimulate my mind other than cartoons, game shows, and torturing my little brothers, she wanted me in school. My precociousness, however, was only accepted at a private school, though, so that’s where I started: at Wilkes’ Academy Lil People School. (I recently returned to the area; the school doesn’t exist anymore. The buildings currently house a dance studio.) I was only four years old.

              Despite my youth, in Kindergarten I prided myself on being the top student in Ms. Cogwell’s class: model citizen, top reader, the only kid who only had to go half day instead of staying the full time and forced to take a nap after lunch. A few incidents, however, showed me a little humility.

              My very first experience having a substitute teacher was a scary if not traumatic one. I had never experienced anything like it. In addition to this chaos, our school, because of its small enrollment, as I soon found out, would sometimes do activities with another small private school or two. The first day with a sub happened to be one of those days. We were going to do some project with planets and Styrofoam balls—I had just learned what Styrofoam was called—and I was excited. However, I was shocked when I arrived at school to find my classroom overcrowded with strange kids and someone sitting at my desk. 

              “Who was this kid, and why was he at my desk?” I wondered. Whoever he was, he was loud and had a lot of friends. While I stood in the doorway, the adult in the room called his name twice to put all four legs of the chair on the floor. I decided to keep my eye on him. I took a seat on the floor close by.

              Before long, I was told to get back in my chair by this unfamiliar adult and to follow the class rules. I was surprised. Someone else was in my desk! However, shy, little me didn’t say anything; I just slumped into an empty chair somewhat close to my desk. I didn’t have the guts to say anything back to this interloper.

              Not even five minutes later, as I was still trying to get my bearings on who all these extra kids were, this old woman with stringy, gray hair was in my face, her glasses slipping from her nose, her finger wagging. “You,” she said. I froze. “And you, and you, and you, and you.” Five of us in all—two other kids from my class, Robert and Shane, two outsiders including the dork at my desk, and me. “I’ve had enough of your misbehavior (another new word for this Kindergarten kid). You will sit out during the planet activity. You are very much in trouble!”

              Gulp.

              I tried to protest her sentence passed for the crime I didn’t commit, but the words stuck in my throat, choked on nervousness and naiveté. I could not summon the courage or the sense to speak up and protest my innocence. She turned away. I was lost. I so sunk into my anxious self that I didn’t even know what the others had done to anger the substitute. Oblivious would probably be the best word to describe the moment.

              The other boys shrugged off the reprimand and continued being obnoxious, ignoring this lady. I, however, had never been in trouble before in school. I didn’t know how to handle it. It wasn’t fair. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I just wanted my desk. I wanted my teacher. I clearly remember shaking and sobbing—quietly, of course--especially after the others had filed out of the room and the lights were clicked off. She left the five of us to our own devices—not a slick move on the sub’s part I soon registered. While the rest of the kids went downstairs to take part in the fun of paint and wires and Styrofoam and who knows what else, I remained stationary in the seat, sniffling. The other four hooligans sneaked out the classroom door, ignoring me completely, leaving me alone in the dark, disheveled classroom. After the group returned, nobody talked to me, nor did I move from my chair until it was time to go home. I never told anybody. I didn’t know how.

              The next morning, not many hours passed before I learned that my bewildering isolation the previous day actually saved me. Ms. Cogwell was back, which lowered my anxieties, but more importantly, Robert and Shane were also conspicuously missing from the morning activities, although I had seen them on the blacktop before the bell rang. Relieved to see some sense of normalcy, I finished my work early (as I usually did), and my teacher granted me time to browse in the small school library—one of my favorite activities at Lil People School.

To reach the library, I had to walk past the principal’s office. As I scurried by, Shane, straight-backed and pale, sat outside the open door on a rickety, wooden folding chair. I slowed. He didn’t say anything, just stared at the wall opposite, his lips quivering. Through the open office door, I spied Robert bent over, receiving the unfriendly end of a paddle. (Yes, it was still legal back then.) Perhaps the most distinct memory of this incident was the crack of wood on backside resonating in the corridor as I scampered a little quicker in hopes of reaching the stacks and disassociating myself from criminal mischief. If I had been associated with the guilty, that could have been my butt being blistered! 

In that collision of space and time, my tiny mind swore not to get in trouble at school. Ever. That paddle put the fear in me. I also knew that if I got into trouble at school, it would be worse at home…and I did not want to find out what that meant.

Since then I knew that because I had no spine, I had to be careful whom I followed. At times, I failed my own advice, but I would like to think that for the most part, this lesson was a fairly easy one for me to learn.

Photo Credits:

https://www.amazon.com/Yonor-Lacquer-Painted-Wooden-Airflow/dp/B07T54TM6K/ref=pd_lpo_201_img_0/131-6054741-4403501?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07T54TM6K&pd_rd_r=699908d6-cc30-4b06-9dce-dcf1cef6c0c8&pd_rd_w=x5z9Y&pd_rd_wg=C0M96&pf_rd_p=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf_rd_r=Z8PM0K5REV2FGHENPWW0&psc=1&refRID=Z8PM0K5REV2FGHENPWW0

https://boyslife.org/hobbies-projects/projects/164781/how-to-make-a-model-of-the-solar-system/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-13/flock-of-sheep/7322538?nw=0

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.

Back from the Dead (Halloween Hater)

Like a zombie from the crypt, this blog--dead or undead--has new life breathed back into it. It's part of my efforts to get back to writing more frequently. So how should I start it off? With a little personal narrative ramble, of course.

For the record, Halloween has never been my favorite holiday…even as a kid. I didn’t really get into jump scares or monsters. Truthfully, on the whole, the horror/slasher genre of lit and film bores me. Suspense, I like, but for me, horror involves no real fright—just frustration and consternation at how demented people invent such stories. The gross-out factor didn’t even make me gag (much). And yes, I tried haunted houses and corn mazes as a teen and as an adult, but they didn’t do anything for me either. Maybe I’m concerned that people actually enjoy these “scary” things. To me they aren’t scary, just lame.

Dressing up in a costume never did anything for me either. I simply don’t enjoy it much. Sure, I dressed up as the obligatory superhero or clown or vampire (I believe those were the only personas I donned for trick-or-treating or class parties.), but I didn’t really get into it. Too much work for so little return.

                The only payoff for me was the candy. And I only ransacked the neighborhood until I was ten. My parents had a rule that trick-or-treating was done after you turned twelve. I ended early, opting at age eleven to drag my younger siblings around, and by the time I hit twelve, I opted to stay home to answer the door and sugar-load the roaming hordes of diaper-sagging Supermen, pillowcase-toting Princess Leias, and demons nearing diabetic comas.

                My last year of candy retrieval we lived in military housing in Japan. I was a vampire (again): white Sunday shirt, dark Sunday slacks and shoes, a plastic bargain bin cape and false teeth that Mom had grabbed at the base exchange. No makeup. I have no clue what my brothers wore.

Dad escorted us around some familiar blocks, and I grew impatient. My younger brothers lagging behind—Marc stopping to examine his haul after each house and David was just tired. We were coming near the end of the night (Trick-or-treating was only allowed on base from 1800-2000 hours.), and I still wanted more candy. As long as we were out, it needed to be worth my time, right?

The homes were all your standard, military four-plexes, and the blocks consisted of sets of two buildings facing each other with a parking spaces between them. Each set meant eight doors to knock. Eight treats. However, the two four-plexes we approached all looked dark. Dad wanted to move past them and head for home. I wanted candy. I was out here going through the motions, wasn’t I? Maybe David’s fussing wore on his patience, or maybe I was an impertinent little ten-year-old, but somehow I convinced Dad to let me try the darkened complex anyway. The three of them moved on, and I was allowed to continue by myself.

So I ventured to the first door alone.

Nothing.

I went to the next. Again, nothing.

The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh doors all remained shut.

At the eighth and final stop, frustration started creeping in, and I felt like an idiot for wasting my time with the darkened doors. Despite the blackened windows, my stubbornness knocked anyway. As I stood with my foot tapping, tapping at the concrete floor, I heard but silence, nothing more. Yet once again I started rapping, rapping at the darkened door, wanting candy, nothing more.

When I was about to admit defeat, the porch light flicked on burning my vampire eyes, and the door opened.

“Hey, kid.” A man in a ratty Chicago Bears T-shirt and sweats stood before me, beer in hand.

“Hey,” I responded.

“We haven’t had anyone come by tonight. Probably because the light was off, huh?”

I didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, he saved my caught-in-the-porchlight dumbfoundedness by turning, setting down his bottle, and picking up a large Tupperware bowl, hundreds of Tootsie Rolls heaped above the rim.

“So, uh, why don’t you just take the whole thing?” he proffered. “Then I can turn my light off and go to bed.”

Before I could speak, sweet, chewy goodness spilled out of the bowl, into my plastic pumpkin, and onto the ground.

Caught in a trance, I mumbled a thank you, and the door closed. The light went out. I scurried about, collecting as many more Tootsies that I could stuff into my pockets. Persistence paid off that night. But that was the end of the story—no more trick-or-treating for this kid.

I figured that my siblings would always bring home candy. And if I really wanted some cavities that badly, I could buy my own sugar. It always went on sale on November 1^st anyway (as long as it wasn’t candy canes or Chocolate Santas). In high school I even sold Halloween surplus out of my locker for a while, which for me, was much more beneficial than sweating through makeup or a freezing in a cracking plastic suit while hiking from house to house.

 (from http://www.disneyfilmproject.com/2009/06/skeleton-dance.html)

What? This from a guy who enjoys writing zombie haiku? I know. It’s weird. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an absolute hater. Garfield, the Great Pumpkin, and the Headless Horseman all make regular appearances. And I’ve been known to set up a spook alley or design the occasional Viking shield, false bloody knife, or other costume accouterments. One of my favorite cartoons of all time remains Disney’s Silly Symphony “The Skeleton Dance.” When I was younger, I enjoyed helping my younger siblings create homemade decorations. One of our favorites included constructing haunted houses with working windows and doors out of construction paper. Sounds like I might (hypocritically) enjoy Halloween. Nope. I love when others enjoy Halloween. All the effort is for the kids. It does nothing for me. 

 

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.

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.

Taking Down Superman

                I looked down at the Hawaiian Teriyaki chicken surrounded by twenty-seven types of salad situated on my sagging Chinet.  Yuck!  What would have been a typical neighborhood Labor Day feast, didn’t even appeal to my appetite.  Mr. Stomach Knot made sure of that.  I mean, I couldn’t even force myself to try the Italian marinated pheasant or the barbecued elk steaks.  Something was definitely wrong with me, and it wasn’t just indigestion or heartburn.

                My stomach started hurting Sunday afternoon, but at the time I thought it was just hunger pains. For dinner I pounded more than I should have; I had been fasting after all. Then at the Labor Day breakfast that morning, I inhaled enough for three people my size—not bad, but the hash browns tasted like cardboard. I assumed that my pain was an exorbitant amount of carbs nestled in my belly, so I tried everything I could think of to rid myself of that burden, but it refused to budge.

                You can ask anyone who knows me: my pain tolerance is pretty high; but this was an ache like nothing I had ever experienced. It was as if someone was literally grabbing my guts and wringing them from the inside. And although I hurt, I didn’t feel extremely sick, though I tried to force my body to give up whatever remained on the inside. As I knelt on the cold tile of the bathroom floor my geeky English teacher nature cringed even more because I couldn’t come up with one single simile or metaphor to accurately describe my anguish. All that came out, literally, had been hyperbole.

                Bent double over the porcelain at my parents’ house, I hid from the overloaded smorgasbord outside and the curious, well-intending neighbors asking if I felt all right. I didn’t want to see anyone let alone strike up a superficial conversation.

Alone for the moment, I mused: a new thought burrowed into my thick skull and nestled into my brain: where I had previously thought that nothing could stop me, this Superman just got hit by a truckload of Kryptonite; some extraterrestrial substance had brought me to my knees. I’m not sure if you want to call on Karma, hubris, or just gold ol’ irony, but just the previous week I had bragged to my students that I never missed school. I had only missed one day of work due to illness in my life, and that had been in college when I commanded the back of the house at Brick Oven. I only missed eight days of school (from illness) from Kindergarten all the way through graduation. I did not want to get a sub, especially since missing a day as a teacher requires more effort to prepare for and clean up after a substitute, no matter how good she is. So I tried to walk it off, rub some dirt on it, take two Tylenol, and see what the morning would bring.

Sometime between two and three o’clock the next morning, my body popped itself out of bed, not even my usual sloth-like roll out. It was toaster-action popping.

“My appendix,” my brain tried to tell me. I don’t know where the thought materialized from, but immediately I knew that that spindly, superfluous organ was the cause of all my pain. I trudged downstairs to the almighty Internet to confirm my suspicions. Yep. Well…maybe. There were about 47 different possible prognoses with my symptoms according to Web MD. But somehow I knew it was my appendix. Just to be sure I wasn’t fooling myself, I read Amy’s big, thick, how-to-treat-yourself/ home remedy thingy book.  It said to go to the hospital.  Duh!  I already figured that out.

So I typed up some simple lesson plans—students were to read “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell—and emailed them to a colleague, knowing I was not showing up that Tuesday morning.

I then showered and got dressed before I woke up my wife. When she saw me standing there, she knew something was wrong.

“Provo or Payson?” she asked simply, knowing that when I request to go to the emergency room, something was seriously wrong.

We quickly bundled the kids into the car and headed north. She drove me to UVRMC, where she dropped me off so she could take the kids to Carol’s while I was examined and such.

                The triage nurse was unbusy, so it took no time at all to get me in. The actual nurse was pretty ditsy, and I remember thinking, “Great! I’m stuck with her?” She flirted with just about every male nurse or doctor in the joint.  I was placed in an isolated part of the ER where they were making a few renovations.  I don’t think they were staffed properly; it took a little while for anyone to even remember that I was there. Then Ditsy nurse led me to a room the size of a cubicle and gave me a hospital gown, something I had never put on my body before then, so it took me a while to figure out. And when I finally did, the faded pastel print cotton was almost long enough to cover my nether regions, so she had to bring another—an actual adult size.

                Somewhere between thirty and three hundred minutes later Ditsy brought me this sick, chalky, supposedly mint flavored milky garbage to drink.  I think the thick, white goo was supposed to act as a painkiller and check for ulcers or something like that, but I’m not entirely sure. Maybe it was a SuperTums! All I know is that it was like trying to gag down liquid Styrofoam or coagulated Elmer’s glue.

At this point, I guess the insurance finally cleared or maybe an actual non-flirty, non-ditsy nurse came on shift and paid attention to her patients, but I was able to get an x-ray. I was CT-scanned, too.  All the preliminary tests came back negative; finally a think tank of eleven or so medical personnel decided that my appendix was about to rupture. Duh. I could have told them that when I first arrived, but what does the patient know?

Surgery was imminent.

“I guess I’ll need a sub for tomorrow, too,” I joked with my wife and dad, who had sat with me for an hour or six.

The rest of that day was a blur except one distinct memory. I was shuffled onto an icy metal table-bed thing after I had taken out my contacts before being wheeled into the OR. Once through the doors, a hive of green-scrubbed surgeons and assistants teemed about, prepping instruments, reading charts; a couple even jammed to the radio. I knew that they weren’t going to do much slicing, that my appendectomy was going to be performed laparoscopically, but my mortality, the frailness of my flesh, began to make itself manifest in my mind. I was no longer invincible. Superman had met his match. Tuesday, September 7, 2004, would go down in infamy as the first surgery I remember, my first hospital stay since infancy. A small, pencil-shaped blob that had swelled to the diameter of a toilet paper tube had called out my invincibility.

With these thoughts swimming, a trio of nondescript masks surrounded my head, and one doctor slipped the anesthesia mask over my mouth and nose. Another had me start counting backwards. I knew I would never make it to zero, but as I started sliding into La-La Land, one of the assistants from across the room shouted, “Hey, Boss, listen to this.”

I heard Nickelback wail from the crackling speakers, “Something’s gotta go wrong ‘cause I’m feelin’ way too damn good!”

Like I said, I don’t remember conking out, but I do remember chuckling to myself and contemplating the irony of the lyrics.

Once a Narrator, Always a Narrator

                Since I was young, people have told me I had a good reading voice. Not deep or soothing like James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, or Christopher Lee, but I frequently landed the part of the narrator in church or school productions. I got to know the second chapter of the Book of Luke extremely well. One notable narrating role I had was for the 6^th grade play, The Nutcracker. I was the nutcracker. No, there were no tights involved, nor was there any ballet or any type of dancing for this guy. Get that image out of your heads. Besides, back then I was a scrawny 98-pound weakling with thick glasses and dark, wavy hair. I was simply the voice that told the story while other students awkwardly pranced about to excerpts of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece and parents videotaped the low-budget performance. Perhaps the most amusing part of these narrating roles, though, was that I was always appointed to these parts; I never auditioned or sought them out due to my natural introverted tendencies. However, despite my quiet nature, I guess others, namely teachers, saw something in the way I could tell a story.

                The first “major” role I landed, though, was that of the narrator in my first grade class’s production of Where the Wild Things Are. I must stress that this role was unexpected and the cause of great stress to this shy first grader. Mrs. Latch had written an adaptation of my favorite story and cast parts for the 20 or so of us. I remember anticipating the casting call at the end of one day. I wanted to be a wild thing—a cool part but one that also could be done as part of a group…without a spotlight! My buddy Jeremy was cast as Max, and Jill was to be Max’s mother. Those were the only solo speaking parts that I remembered from the book, so my timid self felt safe. That was until Mrs. Latch had cast all the other students as monsters, bushes, trees, vines, and the rest of the Max’s made-up world. I alone remained without a part. Panic hit me in the face. Having to speak would have been horrible for the emotional six-year-old me, but being left out of the cast entirely was worse than being picked last for kickball at recess. My face flushed, and I could feel the red rise in my cheeks, tears peeking at the surface. Then gray-haired, good-natured Mrs. Latch, larger than life itself, smiled softly and pulled me aside. She handed me what appeared to be a ream of paper, although in reality it was only about six or seven pages of hand-written material.

                “I want you to be the narrator,” she said, an unnerving twinkle dancing in her eye.

                I probably gasped, blinked, blanked, or something along those lines. That meant I had to talk. In front of people. Lots of people!

                Needless to say, I didn’t want to do it. But because this reserved people-pleaser couldn’t speak up for himself, I ended up nodding my head. We practiced. And practiced. The others danced around, and I stood alone behind a podium. I stuttered, stammered, and stumbled my way through it, but after hours of practice (mostly with Mom), I got to a point where I had the whole thing memorized. I said it as I went to sleep, wishing that I, too, had my own wolf suit—not that I would ever have dared tell my mother I would eat her up.

                And when the performance night came, and I saw that all my friends (except Jeremy) were wearing tights—yes, even the wild things—I was relieved that I was not one of them. I just wore a white dress shirt and a maroon vest with some Sunday slacks, garb I was already resigned to donning once a week. One more time wasn’t too bad. Plus, if I forgot what I was doing, before, during, or after the wild rumpus, the podium hid my papers. But I didn’t even have to use them once.

                I remember starting a little shakily, but then, as I got into the performance, I noticed the crowd watching me, hanging on to what I was saying—parents and siblings alike—and I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this narrating stuff,” and the rest of the words flowed out of my first grade mouth like the ocean that Max sailed through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year, or at least until the performance ended.

                Being a narrator gave me the confidence I needed to volunteer to read aloud in class or raise my hand when I knew an answer. Following the play, it seemed like whenever we did a readers’ theater in school or when we read verses in Sunday school, I always got the longer parts. Narrating Where the Wild Things Are was a gateway experience which started me on the path of oral performance and public speaking and brought me to where I am now—still a bit introverted and shy, but ready to present to a crowd, give a speech to a large congregation, or even teach a room full of junior high wild things voluntarily. On occasion I even get invited to do a poetry reading or perform “The Tell-tale Heart” on Halloween for other classes. I guess once a narrator…