Loco Parentis

 Sometimes, when I get a spare minute here or there, my mind starts down a path of what might be considered antisocial behavior. Given a moment or two with little or nothing about which to think, I might consider some kind of low grade vandalism. This particular muse struck me a few days ago when I went past someone's front staircase that had glass slats for their railing. It did not take me long to pivot from the admiration of the design to "I wonder what a BB gun would do to that from a few yards away?"

But here's what you should know about these wicked thoughts of mine: They don't last long. They are chased out of my head almost immediately by all the practical considerations found in my cerebral cortex. "Okay, genius: how would you go about carrying out this petty crime? Are you going to come back later in the day, disguised? And whose BB gun are you going to use? I suppose you could come back late at night and carry out your nefarious scheme, but would you drive the car? Or would you walk up here, with the BB gun you don't have hidden under the trench coat you also don't own? If you drove you'd probably have to park a block to two away, and then run back to the car. That would be a pretty picture, wouldn't it? And as fond as you are of waking up in the middle of the night I'm sure you'll want to make a special trip up here just so you can scratch that malevolent little itch in your soul. Shame on you for even thinking such a thing."

So, that tiny bit of anarchic whimsy of my inner child was drowned out thoroughly by my inner parent. I might feel worse about this if I hadn't spent a good deal of my youth stealing the numbers off of busses and the occasional road sign. My parents, the ones who lived with me before the voices in my head took over, were aware of my faint brushes with the law, but since I was such a good boy in so many other ways, this little larceny was overlooked. 

For the most part. 

When I moved out to go to college, my father loaded all those bits and pieces of municipal property in the back of the family station wagon and, in the middle of the night, dropped it off in front of the county courthouse. 

He got away with it. I would imagine that this transaction helped activate those voices in my head. Walking the straight and narrow used to be my parents' responsibility. These days I am responsible for a couple hundred elementary schoolers. Making those good choices is what I am all about, 24/7. Still, it's probably a very good thing I don't have a BB gun. 

Signs And Symbols

 Congressperson Barry Moore from Alabama would like to adopt the AR-15 as our "national gun." We have a national bird. We have a national tree. Why not a national gun? 

If you are currently nodding your head and saying, "Yeah! Why not?" Please stop reading now.

All clear? Good. 

We do not need a national gun for the same reason we don't need a national poisonous gas. We, the country that has all the guns, is not really in a position to choose. Once guns outnumbered human beings in these United States, we lost our perspective about which one is arguably "the best." 

Of course, this really isn't the point Barry is trying to make here. It's just a line in the mud that emphasizes his insistence: “One rule to remember: any government that would take away one right would take away them all.” That right he's talking about is, as usual, the right to bear arms. Not just a revolver or a shotgun to keep pests and predators away. A great big semi-automatic weapon created with the sole purpose of shredding human beings. Very little of our nation's proudest moments have come at the end of an AR-15. Uvalde, Atlanta, Las Vegas. And on and on and on. There is probably no coincidence between making this type of monument to death and the failed arguments for keeping statues of Confederate "heroes" around. Some people just want to watch the world burn. 

Over and over again.

Meanwhile, many of us on this side of the argument continue to butter our arguments in such a way as to not conflict with that most holy of holy, the Second Amendment. "We don't want to take your guns. We just want to put some common sense into the way we blunder about with them." We step into the ring looking for a solution that will make the nuts who insist that they need as many guns as they can afford because it is their right have some sort of point to make. Instead, I say we start saying what we really mean: "Yes, we would like your guns because people are getting killed with them. We want to put them away so that no one else gets hurt just so you can feel some sort of angry connection to the rich white slave owners who penned that antiquated piece of legislation."

Or maybe we should take the words from some other good ol' southern boys regarding guns: "You ain't good for nothin'/But puttin' men six feet in a hole." National gun? How about national disgrace? 

Needs

 In Ohio, the only things substitute teachers are not supposed to do? Lunch duty and summer school. End of list. They are required to do lesson plans, testing, behavior management, report cards, IEP meetings, parent teacher conferences. If it feels like those lists may be transposed, I would agree with you. At my school, we are fortunate to have a parent volunteer to assist on lunch duty, and our staff is traditionally nowhere to be found when the list for summer school comes around. 

Each year, it seems, one class seems to be bit by the substitute bug at our school. Try as we might, getting and keeping an experienced teacher in that room somehow seems impossible. Personal and personnel issues collapse on themselves creating a perfect staffing storm. Students and parents complain that "nothing is being done," but we all know the challenge of getting a qualified teacher to take a classroom in urban Oakland. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the staff steps in as we can, supporting whoever it is at the front of the room, learning the names and figuring out how this thing called elementary education works. I know for a fact that we have seen enthusiasm and commitment broken before our eyes. Bright-eyed idealistic young men and women show up at our school with an eye toward being the next one to spend their career here. 

The problem, as it has been for decades, is a teacher shortage. That's how I found my way into a classroom. I enrolled in an intern credential program that allowed me to take a job in a school before I had any kind of "formal training." I truly was a "student teacher." I was being asked to teach reading and manage classrooms before we had gotten to that chapter. I was, as the saying goes, making it up as I went along. 

I can no longer count the number of colleagues I have worked with and through. I have been fortunate to have gained skills and wisdom as I have stuck around, but having that backstop of a master teacher who could step in and save me when I wandered away from the best, most effective strategies was sorely missed. I cannot imagine the experience that awaits those fresh-faced youngsters coming to us, or in Ohio, or anyplace else, with a bachelor's degree and the notion that teaching school might be a pretty cool gig while they are waiting for the next best thing. 

Whatever that might be. A job where three letter acronyms didn't fly around like debris in a hurricane. A job where the only nose you were asked to blow was your own. A job that was not in the education field. The curious thing is, there seems to be a lot of those hanging around these days. Not just in Ohio. Or California. 

Everywhere needs a teacher or two. 

Keep It Civil

 You don't have to feel sorry for Marjorie Taylor Greene. Lots of people get divorced. Just under fifty percent of all marriages end that way. Back in December, Marge and her former husband dissolved their union after he had declared it had become "irretrievably broken." 

Ouch. 

Again, you don't have to feel sorry for Marge, especially since she seems to find this solution applicable to all manner of things. This past week she declared "We need a national divorce. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrats' traitorous America Last politics, we are done." The fact that this "policy suggestion" was issued via her Twitter account suggests just how seriously we should probably take this, but since the folks over at Faux News picked it up and ran with it like it actually meant something, we might prepare ourselves for a few weeks of discussion about why this thing isn't really a thing and remind folks about a time that someone made a similar suggestion in our nation's history and how it didn't work out so well for all those involved. 

And it's not like Marge didn't think about it, or what amounts to thought in that big empty head. Back in 2021, she started kicking this notion around: “After Democrat voters and big donors ruin a state like California, you would think it wise to stop them from doing it to another great state like Florida. Brainwashed people that move from CA and NY really need a cooling off period.” So there's some consideration for just how this whole thing would work. She is probably busy concocting a plan in which travelers going from blue to red states would require special paperwork, to be presented at MAGA checkpoints and received by a special force of nimrods like Kyle Rittenhouse. 

Of course, I do wonder if she has considered what lopping off the economies of California and New York would do for the "flyover states." I am sure that the braintrust found in those locales like Florida will figure out how to replace Wall Street, for example. Just as soon as they figure out how to get all those naughty books out of their libraries. 

Meanwhile, we should all take a moment to reflect on the pain and suffering Marge has undergone during this stressful time. Divorce is never easy. Even when it's a divorce from reality. 

War Zone

 Joe Biden showed up in Ukraine on Presidents Day. It seemed fitting, since the presidents of both countries met to talk about things presidents do: governance, war, and the way you can't please everyone. 

Back home in the "United States," everyone's favorite marionette Marjorie Taylor Greene chose to commemorate the day by suggesting, "We need a national divorce. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrats' traitorous America Last politics, we are done."

If this weren't clear enough, she added,  “I can not express how much Americans hate Joe Biden.”

First of all, I don't know if Marge has checked the map lately, but the state she nominally "represents" shows up blue on most strategists' maps. 

You might wonder if, sitting in the middle of a war zone, the first sitting American President to do so outside the aegis of the US military wondered if the air raid sirens and shelling in the distance was a welcome change to the constant bickering back home. 

Republicans used the opportunity to insist that the right place for the President of the United States was in one of those states. In this case, they wanted him in East Palestine, Ohio where toxic chemicals continued to make things uninhabitable for humans and other wildlife. Never mind that Biden's trip to Ukraine was in the works for months, and the appearance of government officials at disaster sites tend to be media opportunities rather than actual attention and help, the MAGAts wanted the guy they don't believe is really the president to be there choking down the poison air and making a show of passing out rolls of paper towels. 

Or something like that. Never mind that the man who currently stands behind the emblem of this country's head of state was supporting an ally, trying to stem the tide of an invasion brought by what many consider "the bad guys." Never mind that back in Ohio, Republicans continue to make it easy for big corporations like Norfolk Southern rail to make big profits while operating on the wrong side of safety. Two weeks after the derailment in East Palestine, the CEO of Norfolk Southern Alan Shaw broke his silence: "I've made it clear--I am terribly sorry for what has happened to this community--we're going to be here today, we're going to be here tomorrow, we're going to be here a year from now, and we're going to be here five years from now."

A couple things there: First of all, Mister Shaw issued his apology many miles away from the devastation his company caused, and in the divorce Marge suggested Ohio is hers to clean up. 

Half Life

 My wife asked a very pointed and pertinent question: "Did you ever get that Twinkie out of your mom's refrigerator?" Backing up a half step, the genesis for this inquiry stems from a bit by comedian Bobcat Goldthwait. If, Bobcat posited, Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty years, when you took a bite out of a Twinkie that was twenty years and one day old, would you say, "Ewww. This Twinkie tastes funny?" At some point, I took it upon myself to put a Twinkie in my mother's refrigerator where I figured it would be safe for two decades. 

Then I moved to California where I couldn't keep an eye on it. When at last my mother moved out of our childhood home, my older brother did me the solid of transferring all that Hostess goodness to the new place, where I was able to check in on it from time to time when I was in Colorado visiting. And somewhere in there I lost track of the time. My mother's house is currently being sold, after her passing late last year. Which is why my wife was wondering. 

The funniest version of this story would be the one in which the new owners contacted one or all of us surviving family members to ask about the golden sponge cake with creamy filling wedged in the back of the otherwise spotless fridge. This did not happen. Somewhere in all these intervening years there was a moment of common sense that pushed the commitment to the bit to the side, allowing our grand experiment to conclude without a punch line. 

I thought of that Twinkie as my son and his friend pulled out of our driveway with his first car on the back of a trailer. Hobbes, named for Calvin's tiger, was back on the road after a stay of more than two years in front of our garage. During that time, our son had dalliances with a number of different vehicles, but he was adamant about his commitment to one day return and take his beloved Supra back with him to his newly established bachelor digs. 

During the time that Hobbes sat dormant in the driveway, there were multiple attempts to get it moving on its own, if only long enough to get it someplace where it could be worked on in peace. All the while, the entrance to the garage and the sidewalk that runs between the house and the driveway were made slightly less passable by a factor of one car. Inside the garage all the attendant spare parts, wheels and interior and hoses and electrical bits, were stacked loosely in piles waiting to be freed. 

This past weekend, the truck came for the Twinkie. The relief I felt was mixed with a twinge of regret. I will miss having to scoot around Hobbes. Hobbes is part of the family, after all. Just don't ask me what the shelf life for a Toyota Supra is. 

Appointment With Destiney

I don't like going to the doctor. I tend to equate the experience with bad news. Both of my parents went to doctors shortly before they died. Coincidence? I think not.

Or maybe I should stick with the wisdom espoused by the late Warren Zevon who, shortly before he became the late Warren Zevon, suggested that perhaps a few more regular trips to the doctor might have kept him from experiencing the cancers quite as completely as he ended up doing. 

Or perhaps I should stop looking for chicken and egg correlations in this matter and see the occasional doctor's office visit as a mildly affirming or corrective. This past week I made one of my less-than-frequent stops to our family doctor. I had not been to see her since COVID began. And my mom died. And all sorts of other life changes. I was tensed for whatever might come my way. 

My wife has a much more regular and, if I may, healthy relationship with our doctor. They talk about me when they meet, I mean besides all the other potential subjects that could come up between them, specifically my wife's health. But I expect that I will be tattled on for one thing or another if I don't show up, so I got myself an appointment and headed on in.

The first non-surprise was my blood pressure. I have always skewed to the higher end of "healthy" and my initial reading was higher than that. High enough to inspire a suggestion: How about medication to bring those numbers down a bit? 

I take a few medications. And a handful of vitamins. One more pill? What's the difference? Well, the surrender to the certain age at which I find myself. The age in which I find that having high blood pressure could be more of a problem than when I was a  mere slip of a lad. When I was in my forties, I used to get a stern look and a reminder not to eat so many salty foods. The salty foods have already been diminished or eliminated, and now I was left with the option of giving up one more thing, or trying this one little pill. 

It felt a little like surrendering, but I asked my doctor on the way out if there was any good news. She told me she thought I was pretty healthy overall, and that I was doing a good job staying active and finding ways to stay that way. Suddenly the sting of that little pill diminished.

A bit. 

So now I'm sixty and taking medicine to get to seventy. Or eighty. Next year I will be in the running to outlive my father. I'll keep taking my medicine and stay away from small planes.