Wayback - Cradle Robbing

In 2000, I went to Italy for 12 days. While there, I got a crush on a boy many years younger. This is me explaining to two former readers of this blog. From August 25, 2004.

For Diva and Trillian, a tale of (almost) unrequited love.

He’s just adorable. Amused gray eyes, shy smile, large, strong arms and hands, tall enough to look up at, and smart, but oh, way too young. He came on slowly, just getting under my skin. It could have been the exotic location, or it could be that he’s just adorable. I found myself looking for him everywhere, wanting to know exactly where he stood with relation to me at all times. If I wasn’t looking directly at him, I used my peripheral vision to search for the black hair, the beard or the blue baseball cap.

In the cathedrals and in the ruins, I found myself standing in the back, away from the guide at the front of the crowd, just so I could talk to him and be close to him. He’s so eager to learn, so aware of everything around him, so positive about everything. I wonder if I was ever that young, ever that polite, or ever that enthusiastic.

I started to admire him in Venice, noticed his build, the maleness of his body and the way he moved. He held a beer, a Beck’s, in one hand as he saw me look at him, and managed to look sheepish and unapologetic at the same time. On the long ride to Florence in the bus, I played games with his cousin in the hopes that I could get his attention and talk to him. It took a while, but it seemed to work. We played card games and Uno, and I taught him how to play Gin. He proceeded to kick my ass in Gin almost every time thereafter, but I taught him. Maybe some day I’ll get to ask him his strategy, how he manages to win at least 3 out of 4 games.

In Florence, he mentioned going out at night so we decided to go together. We found the open-air bar recommended by the guidebook, and had a few drinks while listening to, of all things, a Dixie-land jazz band called Dixie Train. Had to go from Texas to Florence to hear that. He talked about music and movies, and was charming and funny. The next night in a Florentine bar called Be Bop, I was nervous that his leg was touching mine under the table as we listened to the cover band. I entertained fantasies about being alone with him, finding the courage to tell him that I found him attractive, or just jumping him in a dark corner of the hotel, but always turned away by the simple fact of age.

Thinking about him now makes me smile more than I have in a long time. Two nights in Rome I went to his room instead of going to bed, ostensibly to play cards and relieve my boredom, but in actuality just to be in his company for a few hours more.

I do wish to be 21 at this moment, more than anything I have wanted before. Does it count that I feel 21, that my heart pounds when I see that he responded to an e-mail, that at this minute I can’t imagine the rest of my life without being able to see his face out of the corner of my eye? (Maybe I can call him, and tell him that I just want to use him for sex. Any 21-year-old would go for that, right? I could call him and tell him that I have a crush on him, and he won’t think that it’s creepy at all. My family would approve, and so would his, especially since his mother liked me. When he moves to Seattle to go to stuntman school, he can just take me with him. That would work.)

I want the courage and conviction to do something about what I am feeling, or for the feeling to go away. I keep telling myself that there is no way that he could like me or be attracted to me. I am too old, overweight, too annoyingly sarcastic, and too passive to be someone that he could love.

Too many people were in the way in Italy, and also just me, embarrassed for what I feel, afraid of what my friends would think of me, terrified that he would not feel the same way about me. And yet, telling myself all the horrible things, all the ways in which it wouldn’t work, inventing flaws, I still feel these things for this boy.

Wayback - Long vs. Short Hair

Another Wayback, this one from the same month as last week, September 2, 2004.

About 18 months ago I cut my hair. Severely. I still have really short hair now, but my profile photos on the dating sites were old. When I joined my current pay site, I used a recent photo and I haven't had any responses. Yesterday I changed the photo to an older one with shoulder length hair to see if that might be why boys aren't a' callin', and I got 2 "waves" in 12 hours. After none for almost a month.

I am not ugly, with short or long hair. I have been called "cute" more times than I can count, which I hate, by the way. I am not a different person with longer hair. I even act the same as I did then, more or less. Why is hair so important to everyone?

When I cut my hair, everyone assumed something was wrong with me. Even a couple of my closest friends got worried, thinking that it was a symptom of a deep depression or something. One of them even took me out to lunch to try to find out what was the matter. Nothing is wrong, I just always wanted to cut my hair and see what it was like. I even made some art about it.

It was interesting to hear the responses from the different people. I got pretty much a gender-standard response. All the girls had to come up and touch my head. They walked around me and looked at it really closely and said, "What did you DO?" All the boys said, "Hunh. You have a really nice-shaped head."

At work everyone assumed that I was ill with something serious, and I hadn't even thought how much some of my students would worry or assume something was wrong. To me it was just hair, not my identity. Apparently I was looking at this all wrong.

Now I am sure that people assume way too much based on the length of a woman's hair. I must be a lesbian, I must be sick, I must be depressed, there has to be something wrong with me. (Okay, just so I don't get hate mail for this, NO, I don't think that there is anything wrong with being a lesbian but that is how many people look at it, unfortunately for lesbians. Except for almost every man who ever lived, but then the only use they have for lesbians is asking them if they can watch.)

Now I wonder what is the problem with a photo of me with short hair. Do the men assume that I am manly, or in the closet? Do they all have to subscribe to the feminine stereotype of long, flowing locks? Most of them don't qualify in that area. Why should I pull a bait and switch just to get the opportunity to meet a guy? If I start e-mailing someone, should I not tell him that my hair is short until I meet him? Why are boys so dumb?* (Don't answer unless you really want to. Most of these are rhetorical.)

*BTW, I am aware that I lapse too often into stereotypes. I apologize, most profusely. I have grown a lot over the past seven years, but didn't want to edit these to make myself seem a better person than I was at the time.

Wayback - An Art Teacher

This comes from October 6, 2004. There used to be links that now do't work. There is a blog called "Happiness Squared," but it's not the same one from 2004.


Found a blog the other day from links from others. I love to see what other people read, and almost always check it out to see if I enjoy it as well. I found this one, happiness is. . . when I looked on Metrotronic and I just had to comment on a post. The following was the result.

I'm an art teacher. That still surprises me sometimes. This was not my aspiration, as those of you who have read my "find your bliss" entry know.

What I didn't explain in that entry is my total lack of artistic talent. I didn't have any talent of which to speak. I still don't. I have learned skills that allow me to draw what I can see, that's all. Talent had nothing to do with that.

Now, Bear and any others who have ever seen my drawings are disagreeing with me right now. But. . .I'm right. Talent is the natural ability to do something, usually without formal training. That's not me. Without lots of hard work and learning a new way of thinking, I would not be an art teacher or even much of an artist now. Not that I am denigrating my ability to create realistic representations of things. If anything, I have great confidence in that skill, because it is a skill. I learned it, and am unlikely to unlearn it.

I try to teach this to my students. "Drawing is a skill." Sometimes your creativity can pair with your skill to reach amazing heights. If you want to be an artist, all you have to do is practice. I truly believe this. Hopefully it makes me a better teacher, but that I don't know for certain.

Yes, I believe talent exists. Talent, though, only takes you so far. Drive led me, a non-art person, to become an art teacher. If I had relied on talent, I would not be where I am now, with 650 loving, wonderful and open students willing to take a risk on my say-so. It feels pretty good sometimes to be me.

Wayback - Trevor

This post is about my little friend Trevor. It originally appeared on September 9, 2004.

Today I was in the hall, delivering some students back to class when Trevor appears and hugs me. He looks up at me with his adorable face and says, "Hi. "

I hug him back for a bit, and then let him know that I have to go. "Trevor honey, there are students in my room and I have to go."
"Okay," he says, "I can come and help you with them."
"Well, not today," I tell him. "We'll have to talk to your teacher and find a really good time for you to come help me. Maybe we can try it when you've had a really good day and have been nice to Mrs. Smith." I hug him again and tell him to be good, and that I will see him later.
I turn to go back to my room, and there he is again.
He looks at me and says, "How much do you love me?"
I put my arms around him, look at him, and without hesitation I say, "I love you a lot."
Trevor turns up his face for a kiss, and although this is not something that I normally do, I kiss my little friend. He smiles at me and goes back to his class.

Wayback - My Little Friend Had a Bad Day

Back 7 or so years ago when I taught at the elementary school in a different district, we had a troubled, very young student. He had emotional and learning issues, and he and I bonded. Not all of the posts about him have survived The Great Deletion. Anyway, here's something about Trevor (not his real name.) This post is from August 23, 2004.

Last Monday, my first with Trevor, was a hard day for him. He has never been to school before last week. He doesn’t know the rules; he can’t do lots of things, and he strikes out when he doesn’t understand instead of asking for help. When you don’t know how to ask, you can’t.

My first grade class was writing their names on their work folders. Trevor doesn’t know not to do things with his pencil like poke people, throw it, and give it to someone and then grab it back. In order to help him learn not to do these things, I took Trevor’s work, his pencil and his ruler away. Trevor’s response was to kick the underside of the table for 10 minutes. Okay. I thought that we could start slowly. As I am making sure that the other 20 children don’t need me, I am next to Trevor after his tantrum telling him what he needs to do to get his folder back. I tell him that if he can wait for three minutes without kicking or making noise, then I will give his things back to him. Three minutes turns out to be way too long. I walk to him to ask him why he’s having such a hard time. He has his head on the table and his sad face on. I say, “You can do this Trevor. You can sit quietly. You’re a good boy.”

Without looking at me he says, “No, I’m a bad boy. Always a bad boy. I can’t be good, because I’m bad.” This almost makes me walk away and let him do anything he wants, but I must persevere, or he won’t survive here. I reduce the time to one minute. I tell him to watch my timer and then when it gets to one, he can have his things. I tell him that he is a good boy, I know he can be a good boy and that I love him.

He says okay, and away we go. This time it works. He sits and writes his name, and draws a bit, and then it is time to clean up and go back to class.
He looks at me and says, “You mean we can’t stay here? I don’t want to go back to the class. Why can’t I stay with you?” I hug him and say, “No, but you’ll do a good job in your class. I’ll walk down there with you.” The class lines up, and we go back to his class. I hug him again, and remind him that he is a good boy.

Then, last Thursday, his teacher comes to my door almost at the end of the day. I have my last class, and we will be getting ready to leave in 15 minutes or so. Mrs. Smith opens the door and looks in. I ask what she needs, and she says, “Trevor has been doing such a good job today. We had a talk, and I told him that since he wanted to see you so badly today, if he behaved he could come see you.”

Wow. She could have knocked me over by looking at me too hard. Nothing like love at first sight. I say yes, of course, and he comes in and sits and draws a little in the back of the class. He sits quietly and works, and after a few minutes I tell him it’s time to go. He shows me his paper, gives me a big smile and a hug, and goes back to first grade.

Today, I see Trevor first thing. He comes into school, sees me and I hug him. I tell him that he’s a good boy, and that he will have a good day. Unfortunately, this turns out to be less than true.

Later, Mrs. Smith’s class comes in and sits down. They continue using rulers. The other students complete their pictures and then begin to color them with crayons. Trevor picks up his ruler and starts hitting someone else’s ruler with it. He grabs the crayon box and puts it in his lap, four different times. I explain to him that he must share the crayons, but as soon as I move away from the table, it is in his lap again. I take his folder and ruler and pencil. Trevor tells me he doesn’t care, he doesn’t want it back. He doesn’t like me and he likes to be mean. He goes under the table.

I ask the two students at his table to sit somewhere else, for their own safety. At this point I have no idea what he will do. While Trevor is under the table, he starts humming to himself. I think, maybe this is what he does when upset, I’ll let him sit for a minute. I do, but then go to him to get him back in his chair. He seems calm, but then tells me that he is mean. “You watch out, I’ll be mean to you. I’ll call you names, I’ll call you a [brat], I’ll get you,” he says. The other kids hear this and gasp, and I tell them to ignore him. I tell him that he won’t do any of those things and then get him in his chair. He gets under the table again after I say that he will get his things back once he can raise his hand.

I send a note to the principal. When the student taking the note leaves, Trevor decides that he must follow the student, so I have to then guard the door so that Trevor may not leave the room. When the principal arrives, she tries to explain to Trevor that he must behave. He ain’t buying it. She accompanies us back to his class, at which point I leave.

I found out today that he's been abandoned by his parents and thrust on the grandmother, who also doesn't want him. Nothing like the innocence of childhood, huh?

Tomorrow he’ll probably be asking to see me again. I’ll have to deal with that when it comes.

Wayback - My Dad

Today would have been my father's 72nd birthday. Here's something I wrote about him from December 9, 2004 from before The Great Deletion.

My father stands about 5' 9". He's not very tall, but he has width. If he was a smaller object, you might say he had a good heft. He definitely takes up space, and he takes up space so well that people imagine him taller. His beard and white hair make him resemble either Santa Claus or Kenny Rogers, but he won't respond well to being called either.

His parents named him Brad, after his father, and he likes people to call him Brad, not Mr. He says that thing that older people say, you know, "Mr. X is my father. Call me Brad." He and my mom named my brother Brad too.

Growing up, my father played games with us. He did physical things, like hold us with one hand or let us grab his thumbs and walk up his body and flip over. My father the jungle gym. Later, when I got older, he played other games with us.

We had fun, mostly, except at Monopoly. My father insists that we play all games by the explicit rules, the ones written on or in the box. So, when we played Monopoly we had to own the three properties to build houses or hotels, we had to pay rent on everything we hit, and woe betide the person who asked if we could put money in 'Free Parking.' "Free Parking is just Free Parking," he'd say. "It doesn't say, 'Pay me for Parking here.'"

He and my mother share a passion for information and knowledge, and they've passed that down to their children. Each of us possesses knowledge about a specific area. Sometimes more than one. Brad my brother knows comic books, computers and computer games. Chloe, my sister (who just had a baby) knows reality TV, specifically Survivor and American Idol and the telecom business. Jenny knows music, all kinds of music. She knows the artist, the song title and probably all the lyrics too. I know movies and TV, and a little comics. (I love to astound my students by telling them that I accept all challenges to knowledge of The X-Men. Only failed to answer one question so far.)

My father and mother like reference books too, so we grew up with an unabridged dictionary, a giant encyclopedia, atlases and movie and TV show guides. Any time one of us said, "Mom, what does BLANK mean?" she or my father would go look it up, even if we didn't want them to.

I'm actually quite worried about my dad. Like I said, he doesn't take care of himself, and he drinks too much. We don't talk about it, except in passing. We all bug my mom about the smoking, so I wonder why that is? Big Brad won't talk about it.

A while ago, about a year and a few months now, my dad fell down. He hurt his hand and his foot. He lost a nail. You know, black and blue and then fell off? We had to have help getting him off the ground outside next to Jenny's pool. For a minute we thought he'd banged his head on the side of the house.

He got up, someone drove him home, and then he quit drinking. For a few months. Sort of like Mom quit smoking for a bit after the SECOND heart attack. Dad's drinking again, and I worry. He might fall down again. He might have cirrhosis. He might be pickling all his organs.

But, we don't talk about it. Not unless one of us feels especially brave that day.

Wayback - Because I'm Crazy

When I vacated and then re-inhabited this blog years ago, I didn't put all of the posts back. I saved a few of them before the Great Deletion and want to put them back out here, either because I think they're interesting or because I'm too lazy to come up with new content. Anyway, here's the first in a series I'm calling Wayback. Here's a post originally made on September 11, 2004.

Every school has a few. Some we call helicopter moms (thwp, thwp, thwp), some we cringe when they come close, some have bright ideas that they know we will love but have absolutely no feasability. In our school, we have all of the above. Our neighborhood consists of primarily upper middle class residents, with a few lower class/borderline poverty residents too, so many of the maternal units do not have jobs and little to do but Volunteer At School.

One parent the other day had a bright idea for a school-wide project that she proposed. Her proposal: each of the elementary grade levels would be assigned a continent and learn about and create projects about it, omitting North America. Her idea: that different cultures more likely exist on different continents than our own. Now as the world has seven continents and our school has six grades, eliminating one of the continents makes sense. See if you can figure out why she left out the wrong one.

Other parents frustrate with the "I'm exempt from the rules attitude." Again, with many upper middle class residents we get a lot of that. "I have money therefore you can't make me follow the rules if I choose not to."

Our school secretary has to deal with most of these, and we have such a chronic tardiness problem that the truancy court judge in our area has lowered the number of tardies necessary to receive a referral to truancy court. (I used to count kids for the principal after the bell rang last year. One day we had over 100 students arrive after 8am. That's about 1/6 of our student population.)

One of the most egregious offenders of the "I'm exempt" persuasion had what  almost passes for a normal conversation with me yesterday. This man, Mr. Gisbourne, complained incessantly about the early start time of our school when his son started kindergarten last year. We start at 8:00 am. He kept telling anyone whom he could corner, "But I don't have to be at work until 9:30!" Should have kept his sperm in his pants then, don't you think?

Mr. Gisbourne also had a problem with our policy regarding where he could drop his child from the car. We have a carpool driveway, with a great system that (we think) keeps most of the children safe. He didn't want to wait in the line, so he would try to sneak into the teacher parking lot. When we started posting a staff member to keep this lane clear for the school buses, Mr. Gisbourne actually yelled at teachers. "Why can't I drop my kid off in there? It's more convenient for me." His child, not surprisingly, has much the same attitude.

The conversation that he started occurred in the morning as I was enthusiastically greeting all of the students walking in the door, most of whom I actually like. "Wow," Mr. Gisbourne said, "You're very cheerful and enthusiastic this morning. Why can't all of the people here be that friendly?"
So I replied, "Because I'm crazy."
He did not laugh or anything, although that had been the response I projected onto him.

He said, "Well, it just seems like some of those other people could be more pleasant. Why aren't they as pleasant?"
I said, "I don't have to enforce any rules. I'm just the art teacher, so I tell people what to do in my class. The ladies in the office have to tell teachers and parents what all the rules are, and nobody wants to follow them. That might make me cranky too."
Mr. Gisbourne said, "Oh," and turned to say goodbye to his son as little Gisbourne walked to class.