The Boy broke a string on his guitar, and since they were the original strings for the guitar, we decided we needed to change them all.
It was a frustrating experience.
Changing Strings
Month: November 2022
Twenty Years Ago
Banquet
Faces
A forgotten post
It’s late October. The first quarter is drawing to a close, and students sit wading through district-mandated benchmark tests. Despite this, it’s one of my favorite periods of the school year. The honeymoon period is over, and we’re up to our noses in work that occasionally seems like it might sweep over us all. The kids are getting comfortable with the demands of an honors course, and we’ve all settled in for several months of work. But more than that, more personal, when I look out over the class, the students are now not just faces to which I’m trying to attach names; when I scroll down the roll at the start of each class, the names are not just sitting there waiting for me to combine with a face.
They’ve emerged as this amalgamation of worry and laughter, of procrastination and focus, of silliness and maturity — everything that makes thirteen-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds thirteen-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds. They’re still kids but in bodies that are nearly fully developed, and the awkwardness that implies radiates from every smile of accomplishment and glistens from every tear of frustration that accompanies the eighth grade. Their brains, developing in new and unexpected ways, are awash in a warm flood of newly-released hormones. They realize they’re not adults yet but in some sense are convinced they are. They’ve become people that I think I might actually have quite warm feelings toward instead of just a list of names an administrator has handed me.
I look around the classroom and see faces behind which are entire universes of experiences, worries, excitements, concerns, joys, and doubts. Each face is a mixture of all these things and more.
I see B, who’s new to public school and worried the effect her shyness and lack of experience might have on making friends but who is, nonetheless, making friends because she is a genuinely good soul and everyone sees that. I glance over at J, sitting with his head down, a child I suspect is just on the edge of the autism spectrum, who seems just enough aware of his social awkwardness to be annoyed but not defeated by it. H sits in front of the class, a teacher’s dream in so many ways: quick, bright, kind, helpful, she would probably be accused of being a teacher’s pet if it weren’t so obvious that she does these things because it’s just the person she is. In the corner desk is D, who has a mouth that seems incapable of pausing at times yet is impossible not to like despite his frustrating behavior. In the middle of the room sits quiet J, who struggled mightily at the beginning of the year and wanted to leave the class but has in the last weeks blossomed into a determined but struggling writer who has shown more improvement in the last month than some students show all year because she is so very determined to make that improvement.
In short, it’s the time of year that I realize I was wrong in my assumptions at the end of the last year, just as I am wrong every year.
“I love these silly kids!” I think at the end of the year. “There’s no way any other group can compare to them.”
And then the next year’s students come, and over the course of a few weeks they go from being names on a list to kids I’m working with, laughing with, fighting with, crying with, and I see that the impossible has happened: once again, I have the greatest group of kids I could ever imagine working with, and I’m equally convinced that they are irreplaceable, that I can never feel for another group of kids what I feel for these kids.
Isle of Palms
Grand Bohemian
Greenville’s newest fanciness.
Thanksgiving 2022
Wednesday Evening
Games
During lunch today, one of the teachers arranged (i.e., asked the principal) to have the World Cup shown in the cafeteria while everyone ate.
Poland versus Mexico. Everyone in the cafeteria was rooting for Mexico — except for one teacher.
In the evening, the Boy’s basketball practice. He hasn’t played basketball in several years: in fact, when he last played, he was young enough that double-dribbling was not an issue, and the basket was much lower. Now, just like off-sides is a thing in soccer, double-dribbling is a threat in basketball.
Having little experience puts him at a disadvantage with some of the boys who clearly have had much more time on the court. Still, his teammates are supportive as, naturally, is his coach.
City Hall Recognition
The Mauldin City Council invited the girls to a meeting for special recognition of their achievement: the first state volleyball title in program history, the first state title for the school since 2018, and the first Greenville County School state championship since 2013.
“They look awfully nice,” the mayor quipped, “but just don’t get on the other side of the net with them.”
Sunday Fiddler
Ognisko, Fall 2022
An Apt Poem for Now
To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl
by Billy Collins
Do you realize that if you had started
building the Parthenon on the day you were born
you would be all done in only two more years?
Of course, you would have needed lots of help,
so never mind, you’re fine just as you are.
You are loved for simply being yourself.
But did you know at your age Judy Garland
was pulling down $150,000 a picture,
Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory,
and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room?
No, wait, I mean he had invented the calculator.
Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life
after you come out of your room
and begin to blossom, at least pick up all your socks.
For some reason, I keep remembering that Lady Jane Grey
was Queen of England when she was only fifteen
but then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model.
A few centuries later, when he was your age,
Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family,
but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies,
four operas, and two complete Masses, as a youngster.
But of course that was in Austria at the height
of romantic lyricism, not here in the suburbs of Cleveland.
Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15
or if Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17?
We think you are special by just being you,
playing with your food and staring into space.
By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes,
but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.
Bank Book
The little deposit book I carried with me everywhere and could use to withdraw money from some banks and almost any post offices…
Winter Walk
The weather is turning cooler: I head out for an evening walk with the dog wearing a jacket and sweat pants, covering my bald head with some cap or other. In the morning, we crank our cars a few minutes before leaving so that they’re warm when we begin our journeys.
Later this week, it’s supposed to drop into the upper twenties; next week, it’s supposed to get into the lower twenties. It will only stay that way for a few days at most, though: we’re likely to get back into the sixties for a few days at some point before Christmas.
Which is to say that, no matter the date, we’ll not likely have any winter walks as we did twenty years ago.
The Start of the End?
I heard the news in the late afternoon: a missile strike on Polish territory. It’s what we’ve all been worried about, consciously or unconsciously, since Russia’s unconscionable attack on Ukraine began almost nine months ago. “It wouldn’t take much for a Russian missile targeting western Ukraine to strike in Poland,” we thought, and it appears to have happened.
Monday Evening Swim
It’s slowly becoming a tradition borne from the limitations of scheduling and the necessities of an otherwise-sedentary life. Almost every Monday evening, we head to the local YMCA around seven to swim some laps.
We’ve been doing it for a few weeks now.
I swam in high school and find that although I’ve lost most of my strength and cardiovascular fitness, I continue to have a decent stroke and make decent progress through the water. Still, my lack of fitness means that I can’t swim the distances I used to. About eight laps — 200 yards — is my limit at this point, and I usually keep it at four-lap segments. So I work my way, 100 yards at a time, through at least 1,000 yards of swimming over the course of forty minutes or so, which was not even the distance we swam in high school as a warm-up and more than double the time it took then.
“What can we say — we’re getting older,” is K’s refrain. I refuse to believe that, though. It’s not age. It’s lack of fitness. It’s lack of movement over the last fifteen years. It’s lack of swimming: I haven’t really swum any since I finished high school over thirty years ago.
The best thing about regular exercise, though, is the progress you see over time. Our first time out in late summer or early fall, I couldn’t even swim 500 yards. In a few weeks’ time, I’ve doubled that.
Next, 2,000 yards at a time.
The Boy has experienced similar improvement. Today, he swam 300 yards in 100-yard segments. Once he was done, he decided to do one more 50-yard segment.
Next goal, 500 yards.
Conestee Afternoon
Recognition
The local hockey team, the Greenville Swamp Rabbits, invited the Mauldin girls to come out for some recognition of their achievement of winning the state championship.
They pulled off a last-minute (truly) goal to tie the game at 2 before scoring the winning goal shortly after overtime began.
“We’re their good luck charms!” the Girl proclaimed.