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 "Are you gonna miss me?"

This was the question I was asked by a good number of rising middle schoolers. Not just this year, but it seems that this is a test that I always hope to pass. 

Invariably, I say much the same thing: "Of course."

Because this is the core of truth. Will I miss many of the group-inspired hijinks and behaviors that caused me undue stress and discomfort over the course of the one hundred eighty days of their fifth grade campaign?

Of course not. 

But I am clever enough to understand after all these trips to the cafeteria to watch the promotion of our "big kids" to the next level. 

Where they will once again be the "little kids." 

I do what I can to soften the reality into which they will be thrust. Middle school in any of its varied forms can be a harsh landing spot. Urban Oakland may be at the tip of that spear. 

"Are you gonna miss me?"

Well, I'm expecting given my somewhat lengthy experience in these climes that you are the one who will be missing me. The quantum difference between a once-weekly game-infused PE class with yours truly compared with your standard middle school Phys Ed class that meets daily requiring a change of clothes has not been fully revealed to these scholars. 

A media arts curriculum that allows them essentially six years to become accustomed to what a fifty minute period with transitions feels like will become their norm. The comforting scaffold of one teacher all day long will be removed. Showing up on time becomes the coin of the realm. 

Yes. I will miss them. All of them. After spending six years with most of them, I have become familiar with their good and bad days. I know what makes them smile. I know what makes them grumpy. I know there is another group right behind them with their own tastes and foibles. 

I look forward to that first minimum day next year when the new sixth graders will parade past their old school, and I can hear all about the next leg of their journey. 

I will miss them. 

Cha-Ching

 Out of many, one. 

E pluribus unum. 

That's the Latin you get to learn if you're a kid like me growing up in the sixties. It was the suggestion of Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, patriot and artistic consultant, that this become the newly United States' motto to the Founding Fathers in 1776. For one hundred seventy years, this worked out just fine, reminding us all that the castoffs and mutts from across the globe landed here to steal the Native Americans' land. It should be noted for accuracy's sake that this phrase seems to have an origin in the Roman poet Virgil's recipe for pesto. 

It wasn't until 1956 that President and steward of the Interstate Highway system that covers this great land of ours decided to make "In God We Trust" as the country's official motto. This was to draw a distinction between the U.S. and the godless Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. 

Well, in hopes of making America great again, the U.S. Mint is going to pound out a whole bunch of sesquicentennial quarters featuring both mottos. For now we'll just revel in the specialness of our aging republic and ignore the fact that twenty-five cents isn't what it used to be in form or function. This one, besides having lots of mottos, will feature the visage of Thomas Jefferson. Which seems mildly appropriate considering he wrote the Declaration of Independence without Chat GPT. And if you're searching the change in your pocket to see who Tom replaced, I'll tell you that it has been George Washington since 1932. Since 1999, the flipside eagle has been replaced by commemorations to states and various natural wonders. Add to this the Mayflower quarter that features two pilgrims embracing and coming to a sidewalk soon in your area is the Gettysburg Address quarter featuring none other than Honest Abe after he had been so ingloriously cancelled from being the face of the penny. 

And speaking of pennies, just when you thought they were gone forever, the Mint will be pressing a bunch of Sesquicentennial coins worth an ever-diminishing value of one cent. Which reminds me: I have a bunch of bicentennial quarters I saved for fifty years. Any idea how much each one is worth now?

If you guessed twenty-five cents, you'd be correct.  

Questions

 Questions about the "president's" health persist. 

He's almost eighty years old. 

He's prone to fits of paranoid rambling.

He falls asleep during meetings in his own office.

His hands and ankles appear as though something is trying to claw its way out from the inside. 

He does not exercise. 

He eats McDonalds.

Did I mention that this guy is almost eighty? 

Oh, and should I mention the fact that he is currently assigned one of the most high stress jobs imaginable? 

And people seem to have taken up shooting at him as a hobby.

He's almost eighty years old. 

Yes. Questions about this subject's health persist. 

On Memorial Day, he spent six minutes "transfixed" by one of the columns in front of the White House after he got out of his limousine. 

But he can distinguish a squirrel from an elephant. 

Just in case that comes up. 

Feeding Frenzy

 I spent the long holiday weekend as I have on many occasions: feeding the cat. 

There was some concern raised recently about the relative health of the feline member of our family. To be clear, we got him from the scratch and dent sale in our neighborhood. All those other kind souls had gathered funds to pay for this infamous area stray to have all his teeth removed. Seeing an opportunity, my wife leapt at the chance to be the place where Fluffy would convalesce. 

Most of you know the story from there: How this wandering tom came to live in our home and hearts as our "forever cat." Or at least our "for the foreseeable future cat." 

Having arrived on our doorstep with a few thousand miles already on his kitty odometer, we have puzzled from time to time coming up with any sort of verifiable age for Mister Fluff. My suggestion of cutting him in half and counting his rings was dismissed as "horrible" and "insensitive." A point of clarification here: these remarks were made one morning after a particularly busy night of our cat stomping around our bed, demanding late-night attention, which makes sense since his kind are naturally nocturnal. Much in the same way that I am naturally cruel and sarcastic. 

There was not much on my Memorial Day agenda, save for the regularly scheduled runs and sitting down in front of a computer to compose another in a series of hysterical and insightful blogposts. With the school year winding down, there wasn't much in the way of lesson planning or classroom prep. This meant I had no solid excuse for ignoring the needs of my not-so-feral friend. 

Approximately every three hours, he would rise from whatever piece of furniture upon which he was ensconced, and wander about the house, yowling to let me know that it had been just about enough time since his last feeding and that if his bowl sat empty for another few minutes there would be 

Trouble. 

So that's how I spent my holiday weekend: being at the beck and call of a creature who by design turns up his nose at every third bowl of whatever I put in front of him and by circumstance has no teeth to do much about it. 

Boy, am I looking forward to summer vacation!

Victims

 I took the bait. I read with some prurient interest the story of an elderly California couple that ended in an apparent murder/suicide. Authorities believe that a months-long association with a Tom Selleck impersonator who bilked Karen and Donald Whitaker out of tens of thousands of dollars. Karen was convinced by one or more individuals who said they were Mister Selleck that she would be helping out the star's manager whose wife had recently passed away, leaving him destitute. Exactly how this became Karen's responsibility and not "Tom's" is a good question, probably answered best by the revelation that Karen suffered from early-stage dementia. 

For his part, Donald intervened along with the couple's adult children, eventually going so far as to cut up Karen's credit cards, but she went on to ask other family and friends to help in her mission of misguided mercy. The strain this put on the Whitaker's marriage ultimately proved to be too much, and on May 15 a welfare check at the couple's residence revealed their bodies. 

Karen's initial contributions began around eighty dollars, but soon grew into the thousands. In spite of numerous attempts to limit Karen's access to funds, she kept finding ways to send ever larger amounts of money. Donald confessed to friends that he had considered taking his own life, but didn't want to leave Karen alone and even more vulnerable. Donald was eighty. Karen was seventy-nine. 

Roughly the same age as the guy currently residing in the ruins of the White House. 

I don't think it's too big a stretch to suggest that some foreign actor with access to humiliating and/or incriminating evidence connecting the convicted felon to any number of embarrassing acts or incidents could be manipulating the feeble-minded former game show host. Unable to make the payments to his blackmailers through Target gift cards, the twice-impeached former slum lord decided to run for president again in order to keep the truth about his sordid life from making headlines. Need cash quick? Just have the Department of "Justice" put together a two billion dollar slush fund. Don't worry about Congress. They'll let you start a war without valid ID. 

I would say, "Poor Melania," but I think she's getting a cut from this whole scam. How else to explain that documentary? 

Suckage

 Did she jump or was she pushed? 

This past week, Tulsi Gabbard gave up her seat in the clown car as she resigned from the former game show host's cabinet. The former Director of National Intelligence can now spend more time perfecting her Capoeira technique. 

And trying to figure out where she went wrong. 

Some might point to the moment when the convicted felon was furiously planning an invasion of Venezuela and Tulsi was busy posting photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii. She really should have known that in this administration the only approved conspicuous waste of time allowed is golf. 

Or maybe it was when she insisted that Iran was not trying to create a nuclear weapon in spite of her boss' insistence otherwise. 

Perhaps she never got fully comfortable being a "recovering Democrat" in a cage full of MAGA chimps. She called her former party an "elitist cabal of warmongers."

What about that time that she got caught lurking around the FBI raid on Fulton County's ballots from 2020? 

She says that she will be leaving her post at the end of June to support her husband who is battling bone cancer. 

I think the most likely reason is that distinct lack of a Y chromosome. The four departures from the Orange Worst's cabinet during this Second Trumpreich have all been women. For those of you keeping score at home, you've got your Bondi, Noem, Chavez-DeRemer, and now Gabbard. 

And you're just going to have to believe me when I tell you that the boys in that band are every bit as bad at their jobs as the girls. They just happen to have the Bro Code working in their favor. Why none of these morons have been let go only goes to show how precisely bad off we are in terms of a leadhership vacuum. 

To wit: it sucks. 

Memorials

 Memorials are found in Washington D.C;

They are also found on sections of our Interstate Highway system. 

Or in front of libraries. 

On benches. 

Or scrawled in spray paint on the wall of a neighborhood store. 

People die every day. Lots of them. But not all of them get a memorial, save for the moment of silence afforded some at the beginning of a sporting event. 

My mother in law likes to share her feelings about such rituals when the topic comes up, suggesting that all those monuments and kind words are often wasted on those to whom they would matter the most. 

I want to believe now that I spent a good deal of my time with my parents sharing how much they mattered to me while they were alive. I believe it was our practice to end all of our conversations with "I love you," as a way to ward off the inevitable. The fact that this has been passed along to the interactions my wife and I have with our son is not lost on me. I hope to limit the chances of feeling like the last time we talked didn't include that reminder. 

The idea that people in our lives might drift away without an appreciation for all that they have done and meant to us infuriates me. I'm big into completion. And summing up. And tying up loose ends. 

And building memorials. 

My father has a rock next to the creek that runs behind the high school that we all attended. That creek is near the bottom of a watershed that begins high up in the hills above Boulder where the trickle of a stream where I sprinkled the ashes of my father so many years ago. There is a blue spruce tree that still stands in the back yard of my childhood home. It was brought down the mountainside by my mother and I, much to the bemusement of the rest of our family as a tiny sapling. These markers remind us of where we came from, and give us a place to rest our memories. 

Which reminds me of a song by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that my older brother likes to quote: "Gravestones cheer the living, dear, they're no use to the dead."

I suppose I truly hope that I am the monument to my parents. Along with my brothers and our families, we continue to point in the direction on which we were set by them.