Here it comes

It's almost that time of year.

Colorful falling leaves, the hint of apples in the air, suggesting cinnamon doughnuts and cider on a chilly morning. Crisp breezes, with sudden surprising sunny afternoons. The first frost, which makes the grapevines wilt.

I love the Fall.

For years, I couldn't enjoy it because it only reminded me of how quickly winter would crash into town, like a retaining wall suddenly collapsing. Winter and I have not been friends for most of my life.

A few years back I discovered it isn't winter I hated, it's being cold. Stay warm, and winter has its own stark beauty. I found out I enjoy shoveling snow. It's a very warm activity, outside in the cold, yet not cold on the inside. And since joining the fire department, winter has a new personality, where the weather isn't nearly as important as getting to where we're needed. No time to indulge in not liking the snow. I've seen more of the winter NIGHT since then than I had the rest of my life, when I used to just stay indoors.

I have, in fact, had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but that's not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.


Err... ummm.. not exactly. :-) (Anyone who gets the reference gets a prize. Anyone except for you, SJ. If you DON'T get it, I'm going to come right over and check your BP.)


It's the time of year when new classes start. We have four starting in the next week, and that's pretty danged exciting.

When I was a child, the "first day of school" meant getting up early, and turning lights on in the morning- something I've never really done other times of year. It meant packing a lunch, and going off to a different world. It meant that giddy anticipation of finding out. What classes was I in? Who were the teachers? Who would I see that I had not seen all summer? Where am I in the complex social structure of the school-world? (That last one had an easy answer, but I digress...)

Now, it is not so much the getting up before dawn to try to get ready... I do that frequently enough, anyway, when the pager goes off in the middle of the night. But there is still that sense of anticipation, and, for some reason, I still get the urge to go buy new notebooks and pencils.


I love new classes. New students.

I love that first day, the first impressions, us of them, and them of us, watching them try to figure out what they've gotten themselves into. I love watching people see the fencing master for the first time, because it is NEVER what they expected, and that's no matter what they expected. I don't even have to know what it was, I know this isn't it.

I love to watch people learn.

They start at zero, especially in this, and then there is a continuous stream of moments of incorporation. I can watch, from the beginning of a class to the end, 45 minutes or an hour later, and see learning take place. The subtle signs of a shift in stress level as things start to connect. The bright-eyed look as with connection comes enjoyment.

It is especially fascinating at the college level where most of the new students are not only in our class for the first time, but they are freshmen, away from home and on their own for the first time, starting their entire college experience. There is a rawness to it that I find delightful.

One semester, there was a student who purchased our textbook with the first check he had ever written- I had to help him figure out how to fill it out.

Our classes are sequential in nature, each class building on what was in the class before, and it is in these first introductory classes that it is the most obvious that this is so. A roomful of students trying things they've never done, with mixed success. What we are asking them to do is both simple and complex at the same time.

I love seeing which students figure this out first. That each skill is expanded on in each class, and what appears to be "review" is in fact a deepening of understanding. Who recognizes that the master's monologues are not, as they may seem to be, irrelevant personal commentary, but are, in fact, directly connected to the subject matter? Who thinks that after a couple of days, they know how to do this, and who realizes that this is only the tip of the iceberg? Who clearly actually wants to do this, and who just wants to float through the class, undoubtedly the same as they do through everything else in their lives, without appreciation, without attention, without intent?

I look for the few who seem to have found home, at last.
Kindred spirits.

And I look for those who appear to be totally lost.
They, more than anyone, need to learn what we can teach.

Summer hike

We went "letterboxing" yesterday.

Only trouble is, although we found the location we were looking for- a very clever spot, in a hollow underneath the end of a fallen log- whatever was supposed to be there for us to find wasn't there. Disappointing. It was our first attempt, and now, we're not so excited about trekking off into the wild unknown to look for a hidden... nothing.

Still love the hiking part, though.

Saw this guy move, or I never would have seen him at all.

And then this guy... hard to figure out how to describe him, standing there watching over the forest.

Letting go

Stress is a bitch.

Life is full of stress.

Stuff going on in my life right now that's hard to reconcile. Things I need that I don't have, things I want that I can't have, and things I don't want that I have no way to avoid.

I feel like a shark, that if I stop swimming, I'll die.

:::conjuring up my best Michael-Phelpsian image of myself:::


The question is, how much of this is self-imposed, or self-inflicted?

It's not that I'm making up things to be stressed about. No need for that.
And it isn't that I'm stressing about things that don't matter.

But sometimes, I think there is a strong tendency- for myself, and for others- to hang onto things long past when they should be let go.

And that "letting go" process doesn't always work very efficiently.

For one thing, you've only "let go" of something when you actually do the letting go part.

If you dwell on it, stress about, or otherwise continue to let it have an effect on your life, you didn't let go.
Repeated statements of "I'm done with this," notwithstanding.

When you're over something, it's GONE.

And yet... how often does that really happen?

Sometimes it does.
For example, you meet many, many people in your life, some of whom you connect with in some way. School friends, work friends, acquaintances, really.
Leave your job?
Most people say they will "keep in touch."
Most people don't.

But for most of them, most of the time, they really do move on.
You can tell because of the large numbers of people whom you used to know, that now, you can't even recall their names. You don't think about them. You barely even remember them.

THAT is "letting go."

Contrast that with the nagging things that bother you day in and day out. The heartbreaks. The annoyances. The frustrations.

If there is ANY emotion still attached, you didn't let go.

Maybe that's the key.

Emotion is the glue that keeps you connected to things.

So if you could just not feel anything...

you'd have a serious case of clinical depression.

Not the best solution.

I don't think there is a best solution- hence the millions of therapists out there, trying to help people find ANY solution, let alone the best one.

Anyhow.

There are a number of things in my life that I need to let go of. Emotional baggage that drags on me day after day after day. Just when I think I've finally "gotten past it" I realize that thinking about whether I have or not kind of proves that I haven't, really. Not yet.

Oddly, it isn't the "big" things that hang on the hardest.
It's the little ones.

I've often thought my mind was a sieve- maybe the holes are so large they can't filter out the little things?

Ego and honor

A wise man once said:
Ego says "Whatever I do is right."
Honor says "Whatever is right, I will do."


Been thinking about honor lately, especially after watching The Kite Runner.
I highly recommend it.


I am frustrated with people who proclaim things as truth, who do not have enough experience or knowledge to be able to legitimately make such claims. Who go only by their own limited viewpoint, refusing to do any research or to evaluate any other information besides that which they have already decided to believe.

Who basically make shit up, and then preach it as gospel.

Truth requires the ability to see OUTSIDE your limited view, to enlarge that view, to take in all available information.

How can you have honor if you make no effort to discern what is right, what is true, but, instead, do whatever you want, whatever is easier or more convenient, and then make up some justification for it?

Blood lines

While I'm thinking about school experiences... I have a story to tell. Partly because I know you're reading this, Allen.


I took biology in 10th grade. Liked it, really, although I'm pretty sure the teacher didn't know that. I wasn't, exactly, the best student she had ever had. Didn't always pay attention in class. Had what I'm sure now was a really, really annoying habit of writing song lyrics in the margins of the tests while I was waiting for the rest of the class to finish the exam. I got decent grades in the class- I always got good grades, school wasn't difficult for me- but I was, by then, disenchanted with the whole school experience, and, quite frankly, bored. I didn't cause trouble, but I'm sure I was one of the forgettable students, who didn't "work up to potential."

For what it's worth, she was one of those teachers who seemed tired of the job, who was what I felt was unnecessarily strict in class with rules for the sake of showing who was boss, who didn't seem to like the students, and I didn't understand why she was even there. Until one day when I had to stay after school, and, in that environment, with just a few students, rather than an entire room, her love for the subject came through, and I had a completely different opinion of her from that point on. Too bad that happened in May, rather than in September.

Anyway.

One of the things we had to do in that class was blood typing.
Someone had the brilliant idea to do something that would never, ever, happen in a public school now.

We were expected to type our own blood. Lancets were handed out, and glass slides, and such, and we were told to get a blood sample.

No way.
NOT happening.
There was no way in hell that I was going to STAB MYSELF to get a blood sample for a freakin' biology class.
I was of the firm belief that my blood belonged inside my body, thank you very much.

While most of the boys in the class were jabbing themselves repeatedly and making little blood fountains come out of their fingers, I steadfastly refused.

After a brief period of... difficulty... the student teacher in the class volunteered to let me type his blood instead, provided that I get the right answer.

Fast forward a few years.
Okay, quite a few years.

I have told this story more than once over the years, to a variety of different audiences.

One day, during a break in one of the fencing classes I taught, the subject came up about my knowing many of the teachers in the school district because not only had I grown up here, but my mother worked in the schools for many years. One of the students in the class, a man who had fenced off and on for several years, and whose children also took classes, mentioned that he had been a student teacher at the high school years ago.

Oh? I hadn't known that. What subject?

Wait for it.

Biology.

And yeah. No kidding. He was that very same student teacher who had offered his blood to me.
Small world.

Very small.

For what it's worth, the high school no longer has students do this exercise, and it stopped not because of the HIV scare. I heard that they stopped when there was a controversy when a student typed his blood and came up with a blood type that was not possible for a child of his parents...


Fast forward a couple of years again, to a few weeks ago, when I was in the lab class where we were taught to start IVs.

We were told that we could practice on each other. The one condition was that in order to practice on someone, I had to allow someone to practice on me.

No refusal this time.
At all.
We had a great time.

It wasn't ever about the blood, or about the needle. It was about being told I HAD to do something with my body that no one had the right to tell me I had to do.


And Allen? I owe you one.

Lasting impressions

When I was six years old, I lived in Tifton, Georgia, in a house with a driveway lined with hibiscus. There are pictures- slides, really- of me on a warm sunny day, standing in that driveway, dressed in a little blue and white sailor suit, holding a book bag, all ready for my first day of school.

I remember that day.
Part of it, anyway.

I had looked forward to going to school for a long time. I had been in a nursery school before then, at Mrs. Seller's place, since I was three years old. My mother didn't live with us, so I had to have somewhere to be during the day. The past year, I had been the oldest kid there, and although being the most experienced certainly had its advantages, I was more than ready to trade that in and go to a "real" school.

We had bought my school supplies, according to a list we were given. Things I did not ordinarily have at home, since we were of modest means. They included a brand new box of crayola crayons. All of my very own. Sixty-four colors. With the sharpener in the box.

To make a long story short, I found out at the end of that first day that I would not be allowed to take my crayons home with me. They had to stay in my desk.

I was devastated.

And I don't remember every using them in school, all year.
I don't remember any other specifics about first grade, either.

When I was seven, we moved to upstate New York. In April, leaving warm spring weather to come to the cold, wet and gray. I first saw snow a few days after we arrived. It was during recess at school, and I was excited to be going outside, after having seen the flakes out the window of the classroom.

This new school was very different from what I was used to. A big old stone building, and very strict teachers, none of whom seemed to be able to understand much of what I said. Whenever the teacher left the room, the students would all misbehave and even cheat- something I had never seen before.

What I didn't know, that no one bothered to tell me, was that there was a rule in this school that children who talked in the halls had to leave their coat on the back of their chair for a week. So on about my third day there, in my excitement, I said something in the hallway about the snow.

I was forced to go outside with no coat on- the first time I had ever been in freezing temperatures in my life. And then, to go home without my coat, as well, and I had no other coat to wear.

This memory is one of only two that I have of school that year. (The other has to do with valentine's day, and I probably don't need to describe that one; it's very common.)

These two incidents are minor in the grand scheme of things, for sure. Crayons and a bit of cold are not worth worrying about. Certainly not worth the feelings I had at the time they happened, when looked at from the perspective of an adult.

My point is that when they happened, I was NOT an adult. I was a young, naive child.

It is the intensity of an event that carves out the deepest memories.
What qualifies as "intense" varies based on many different things. Age, experience, apprehension level, personality, and context, among others.

I try to remember every time I meet a new group of students that what is routine for me, is brand spanking new for them, that they walk in not knowing what to expect. And whether they are eight, or eighteen, or any other age, I want them to leave my class having learned something, not having had such a negative experience that they will never be able to forget it- or remember much else.

The second test

Some weeks after that first "test," I stumbled through my second. Almost literally.

It was a simple thing, really.

We do some exercises in class in a line. Then we do some with partners, in two lines, facing each other.

I know this.
I had done this, many times, as a student.

But this one day, in the middle of class, he asked me to have the class form ranks for the partner exercises, and for the life of me, I could not remember what to SAY to get them to do that.

"Okay, now you guys over here, come over this way and then you guys go over there and then turn around, no, not all of you, just this group, and spread out and..." was not going to cut it.

Funny how you can hear commands given over and over, and know how to respond to them appropriately, but not really be conscious of what they ARE before they happen.


Saw this same thing happen to someone on the show "The Academy," the reality show that is about training to be a deputy sheriff. Some poor woman, having been in training for weeks, was told to give the commands for something, and she blanked.

She got yelled at, embarrassed, and harassed, to the point of tears, all in that stupid, pseudo "military" hogwash of proving who is in charge, and that all the new people are lower than low, as if that's going to improve either morale or performance.

I didn't.

He just stepped in, took the reins, and the class went on. It is possible- even probable- that he and I are the only ones who knew I messed up.

We had a little talk after class.
I started paying more attention to the transitions, both verbal and non-verbal, in the class.

Since then, I have had the pleasure of having a couple of assistants have the same difficulty, and guiding them through it.

The trouble with expanding your comfort zone is that inevitably, something will come along that is way outside the new lines.