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.

Three Things

1. My car wouldn't start the other day, so I took it to the garage and they couldn't get it to 'not start' so they didn't charge me anything.

2. I hate the cold, and it's only 45° outside. It's a good thing I don't still live in upstate NY.

3. My cat loves my fake fur blanket so much, he's been grooming it, and now it's damp, yay.

Go ahead, tell me three things.

Prince of Tides

Before Prince of Tides, the Movie, there was Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. The paperback copy that I own makes it look like a romance novel, and I'll post a photo of the back cover soon. I couldn't find one on the internet.

I've read it twice, and been in awe of Conroy's use of language both times. It tells the deeply moving story of one horribly dysfunctional family in South Carolina, and what happens when the sister of the main character tries to take her own life. Her brother travels to New York City to help her recover, and ends up telling his family's story to her psychiatrist.

Chapter 4 begins:
There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past. I am more fabulist than historian, but I will try to give you the insoluble, unedited terror of my youth.

Later, in Chapter 5:
I spent the first few days reviewing the tapes that so chillingly recorded the extent of my sister's breakdown. She spoke in hurt fragments of language. I wrote her screams down on paper, studied them, and each day startled myself with some clear vision of memory I had repressed or forgotten. Each of her phrases, no matter how surreal or bizarre, had a foundation in reality, and each memory led to another and another until my head blazed with small intricate geometries of illumination.

...in the unconscious I began to encounter both wild fruit and vast disciplined vineyards. I tried to censor the superfluous or the commonplace, yet I knew large truths lay hidden in the clovers, sweet grasses and wild mint. As gleaner of my sister's troubled past, I wanted to leave nothing out but wished to find the one rose that might contain the image of the tiger when found blooming on the trellis.

Sunday Cat

An older photo of Hobbes, about a month after I got him. He and his brother love this windowsill most.

Finished Banana Bread

Here's the banana bread out of the oven. I made a double batch, and got eight mini loaves for my favored co-workers.

Stanley Tucci

I'm watching Easy A and thinking, "Wow, Stanley Tucci is hot." I have entered that stage of adulthood where guys who are dads and are over 50 can be hot. Conversely, I no longer find Pierce Brosnan attractive, as he's gotten a little too doughy for me, at least in Bag of Bones. But ohh, Remington Steele? That guy was hot.

And Matt Bomer? So my type, unless rumors are true. Also, I'm not so much consistent in my attraction to men. Huh.

Banana Bread

White Nut Bread 
makes moist, tasty sandwiches for luncheons* and lunch boxes.


3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp. soft shortening
1 egg
1 1/2 cups milk
3 cups GOLD MEDAL Flour
3 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup chopped nuts


Heat oven to 350° (mod.). grease a loaf pan, 9x5x3" or three 20 oz. cans. Mix sugar, shortening and egg thoroughly. Stir in milk. measure flour by dip-level-pour method or by sifting (see p. 6). Blend dry ingredients; stir in. Blend in nuts. Pour into pan or cans. Bake 60 to 70 min., or until toothpick stuck into center comes out clean. (Crack in top of loaf is characteristic.) Cool thoroughly before slicing with a thin, sharp knife. 


Banana Nut Bread
Make White Nut Bread (above) —except increase sugar to 1 cup. Use only 3/4 cup milk and add 1 cup mashed bananas. 

Again from the 1961 Betty Crocker's New Picture Cook Book, my famous Banana Bread. I've never actually made the White Nut Bread, just sort of the Banana Nut Bread variation on the page below the main recipe. I don't really follow either recipe.

I have no idea why, but I got it into my head that it needed to be a spiced banana bread, so I fiddled with the recipe over a period of about a year. I don't increase the sugar or decrease the milk. I double the butter and cream it with the sugar. Then I add the egg and the spices. After my experiments, I settled on 1 tsp. of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. of nutmeg and 1/4 tsp. of cloves. I add two or three VERY overripe bananas and incorporate them. Then I blend in the milk, the baking powder and the salt, and lastly the flour. I never put nuts in my bread. I object to nuts in things on general principal, especially walnuts, which I hate, because they taste like sand.

I cook the bread according to the recipe, though I generally have to cook it longer because my oven temp is way off. I can never wait for it to cool so I immediately start to peel the yummy, crunchy crust off the top. It's good right out of the oven, or sliced into pieces and then frozen, microwaved and buttered. When I'm in a baking mood, I make a loaf to take to school for my mid-morning snack.


*From a time when people still used the word "luncheon." 

Things Wrong with Me - My Breasts

Offered without further comment.

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.

The One - AKA Hobbes

Following along with Carmi at Written Inc., here's an entry to his Thematic Photographic. This weeks theme is The One.  Because I lack a life outside of school right now you see something that I see everyday, for which the internet has an apparently endless appetite. At least on YouTube anyway.

Three Things

1. Taco Delite has great tacos, so much so that yesterday I went and bought six so that I could have two for lunch, two for dinner and another two for lunch tomorrow.

2. I've had Dish Network since I bought my house back in 2004, and I think it's about time for a change. They wanted to charge me a fee when their DVR box quit working, and the new one keeps doing weird crap.

3. Both the estimable John Scalzi at Whatever and Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light have recently made "Three Things" posts. I'm in good company.

Go ahead, tell me three things.

Mary Oliver

I've already posted this about an encounter my sister and I had in an airport with a woman who read us a poem by Mary Oliver. I'm endeavoring to cultivate more appreciation for poetry that doesn't have the words, "um", "baby", and "la, la, la" in it, so I went searching for more Mary Oliver to read since I loved "Wild Geese."

It seems I have a bird theme, which doesn't make much sense because I don't like birds. Here is an excerpt of The Swan:

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

Sunday Cat

Hobbes plays with his feather toy.

Roast Chicken

Here's what the chicken looked like when I took it out of the oven. I wish I could find either bigger chickens or smaller turkeys, because I think that a 9 pound chicken would be about the right size.

Chicken with Stuffing

Bread Stuffing 
1 qt. for 4-lb chicken
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup finely minced onion
4 cups coarse or fine crumbs or cubes
1/2 cup chopped celery (stalks and leaves)
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. dried sage, thyme or marjoram
poultry seasoning 


Melt butter in large heavy skillet. Add onion and cook until yellow, stirring occasionally. Stir in some of bread crumbs. Heat, stirring to prevent excessive browning. Turn into deep bowl. Mix in remaining ingredients lightly. For dry stuffing, add little or no liquid. For moist stuffing, mix in  lightly with fork just enough hot water or broth to moisten dry crumbs. Cool and place stuffing in bird when ready to bake. 


Every year my parents would get up early (late for them, early for me) on Thanksgiving to make dinner, filling the house with the most wondrous smells. They aimed for 1:00, but it ended up being more like 2:30. They would have us help, of course. Four sous chefs and table setters, Brad, Jenny, Chloe and Kate. Four nibblers of ingredients too. When Big Brad and Mary got hitched, they were given a copy of the Better Crocker Cookbook published in 1961, and they would use the turkey and stuffing recipe from it.

A few years before she died, my mother found a new one at the Half Price Bookstore that didn't cost extra. I found listings on Amazon that wanted over $100 for an "Very Good" condition. I have the old copy with my mother's notes in the margin as she refined the recipe over the years.

My sister Chloe makes Thanksgiving dinner now at her house about 45 minutes away, which means that I don't usually get leftovers. I decided to try making and stuffing a chicken and then I could keep ALL the leftovers (maniacal laugh)!

Mary's notes say to reduce the salt by at least a fourth to 1/2-3/4 tsp., and use 1 tsp. sage and 1 tsp. poultry seasoning.  I had to use olive oil due to a recently discovered milk allergy, but it still tastes really good. The chicken that I bought had a really small cavity. I could only get 3 cups of stuffing in with using the body cavity and the neck cavity too. Next time I'll just make my own turkey. It's about the same amount of work but then I get more stuffing and breast meat too.

Things Wrong with Me - My Skin

Obviously I'm not perfect. Who is, other than those political pundits, brave enough to cast the first stone? But there are so many ways that the world reminds me that there are all kinds of things I need to change and make better. Thinking about this as I got up and showered, I remembered that old commercial, for Dove, I think. No, it was Caress body bar. (Thanks, Google.)

"Shouldn't your skin be softer than anything that goes next to it?" That's a perfectly reasonable request, right? But this has nothing to do with cute kittens, you say. Wrong! Anything that goes next to my skin could be everything, so I have a lot of work to do. My skin needs to be softer than kittens, or a chenille sweater, or baby bunnies, right? That's a goal, that's something to accomplish. I'm gonna go work on that. Right after I go out and buy a pair of these shoes.

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.

Three Things

1. These cookies ROCK!

2.  I love TV, but I'm so disappointed in it this season. I have deleted Person of Interest, Parenthood, Modern Family, Castle, A Gifted Man, The Secret Circle, Supernatural & Terra Nova season passes.

3. An article about comic books that doesn't use the line, "They're not just for kids!"

Go ahead, tell me three things.

E. E. Cummings

E. E.  Cummings is my favorite poet. I recently bought a poetry book called Poem Crazy. I loaned it to an English teacher friend who still hasn't read it, two months later. It reminded me of a Cummings poem that makes me tear up every time I read it.


love is more thicker than forget

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

Sunday Cat

I know that sometimes it's Caturday, but I pick Sunday as my cat day. So there.