O Mighty Crisis

As God Is My Witness, Each Individual Shall Tote His Own Weary Load

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Jocelyn

Behind our house, across the alley, there lives a cohort of quasi-charming renters. Moving in after several disastrous previous occupancies, this group of young men demonstrates that young folk renting a house together don’t have to be feral beasts lacking even the most basic notion of boundaries. I mean, seriously, there’s a reason I regularly urinate a distinct line of piddle at the end of our driveway–no easy move for a dame, incidentally. I do it because I’m sending. a. message.

Indeed, because they behave as though at least one person in their childhoods cared enough about them to communicate the provision of the social contract titled “We Don’t Put Our Figurative Feet on the Figurative Furniture,” these young men have been fine neighbors. What’s more, I appreciate these fellows for restoring my faith in college boys (*typed the college instructor*).

At first, we weren’t sure about them. The previous tenants had behaved terribly poorly (as chronicled here and here, if you care to read stories of Nasty Renters Past), to the point where we were a bit shell-shocked and expecting the worst. Their first weekend in the house, when ten cars pulled up on Friday night and parked out on the avenue, I started warming up my digits for some late-night tapping out of 911 on the telephone keypad. However, in the best of all possible developments, each friend who parked his car out on the avenue also carried, from his car into the rental house,

a computer.

Turns out the new renters are committed computer geeks who host overnight LAN parties, wherein all comers hook up their computers, and then they sit around a big table in the dining room and game furiously into the wee hours.

That kind of partying is Neighborhood Watch Approved, for sure.

All in all, then, we’ve not minded this batch of renters–from a relative distance, with the occasional “Hi, how are you?” tossed out when we’re getting in our cars at the same time. Sometimes, I pull a little Mrs. Kravitz and peer through my window at them hanging out on the driveway, under-dressed for the weather, taking a smoke break in between rounds of first-person shooterizing. One time, I drafted the biggest guy, who then drafted three of his roommates, into helping Byron move an organ out of our basement.

For the most part, we exist in a state of benign indifference towards each other. Some of them are still at college; some of them have graduated and have jobs. We don’t chat, but their behaviors allow us to sleep at night, so I’mma call that a win.

My feelings toward them perk up when I’m feeling particularly Mrs. Kravitz, though. If I’m vacuuming the back porch and see one of them wandering around wearing only one shoe, I am delighted. If’ I’m watering seedlings that gain life on that same porch, and I see a young woman pull up and enter their house, I get giddy for The Lads and sometimes yell, inside the echoing cave of my head, “SCCCCOOOOORRRREEEE!”

And sometimes, when Winter is delivering Her loads, I find myself grinning wildly at this:

Can’t you just imagine the conversation that led up to this?

“It’s supposed to snow tomorrow. Who’s gonna buy the shovel?”

“I’m not buying a shovel. I don’t have any money. Plus, I hate shoveling. Someone else can buy a shovel.”

“I’m not buyin’ one. No way.”

“Not me.”

“Dudes, we need a shovel. I bought the beer last week. One of you has to buy the shovel. I only make $8 an hour; I can’t keep this house in beer AND shovel.”

Silence as they all try to outlast the others in unwillingness to Buy The Shovel.

Finally, the conversation starter announces, with great frustration, “Fine. I’ll buy a shovel. But it’s going to be my shovel, and I’m not sharing it with any of you losers. I’ll use it to shovel out my car, and my car only, and I’m keeping it in my room. You dorks cannot touch my shovel. EVER.”

The next day, six inches of snow fall. One guy easily digs his car out, throws his coveted shovel in the trunk, and drives off to work.

Three other guys are late to work because they had to spend an hour grubbing their cars out with meaty paws and the head of a broom (where did that handle go?).

Eight hours later, three meaty-pawed guys return home with newly-purchased shovels.

During a quiet moment when everyone’s characters are trudging to their next mission in Call of Duty that night, one of the renters notes, a bit too casually, “So, hey. It looks like we all have shovels now. Like, we don’t really need to sleep with them in our rooms or anything, what with us each having our own. Just maybe, you know, leave your shovel wherever. I won’t touch it.”

Thusly, the peaceable line-up of shovels is born.

Moments after Shovel Truce 2013 is established, though, The Short Guy announces, “Time out. I’m hungry.”

He walks to the fridge.

Opens it.

Stares inside.

Turns, accusingly, towards his roommates.

“Who the hell ate my leftover Famous Dave’s? I had clearly marked the box: THIS BBQ BELONGS TO SHORT GUY. DO NOT TOUCH MY PORK ON PAIN OF ME PLANTING AN EXPLOSIVE CHARGE IN YOUR INSTALLATION.”

Simultaneously, three mop-topped, meaty-pawed figures drop their heads guiltily. One nibbles at a piece of fat under his fingernail while another picks a tidbit of meat out of his front teeth.

It is the Clever Guy who pipes up with a distracting, “Hey, forecast says snow tomorrow. Was my shovel orange or black? Do you guys care if I use one of your shovels by mistake?”

The answer to his question comes in the form of rapid-assault gunfire ricocheting out of three computers’ speakers. Blood appears on his screen.

How else will he ever learn that

Shovels Are Not For Sharing?

Hope All Your Tricks Are Good Ones

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Jocelyn

In line with my dislike of holidays and “planned happiness” is my aversion to greeting cards. For me, a pre-packaged sentiment drummed up for pay by someone who hates her job isn’t heartwarming. Nor is the fact that the sender found himself so unable to frame an original thought that he willingly shelled out $3.00 rather than try to write a single meaningful sentence like “You are special to me because one time I was having a bad day, and then you came into the room doing a fake tap dance, and suddenly everything felt better.”

As far as I’m concerned, a piece of white paper featuring an awkwardly drawn stick figure kicking up its heels to “Singin’ in the Rain” accompanied by that single meaningful sentence, well, that’s the stuff of a genuine sentiment. Send that.

Guess what, though? Every now and then a prefabricated, heartless card hits the spot. Sometimes, the card is particularly clever. Sometimes, it’s got some terrific art on it. Sometimes, the sender has taken a minute to add in some words that redeem the rest.

Sometimes, the sender–having lived a somewhat insulated life–seals into the envelope a card that is unintentionally hilarious.

As was the case last week when my mom sent Paco a birthday card for this tenth birthday.

I’ll let the card tell the story as to why I have been hooting ever since I clapped eyes on the thing. Oops, did I say “clap”? Perhaps not the best word choice, given the scenario on the card.

Prostitute Poodle001

What my mom saw were doggies in costume. And what’s more fun than doggies in costume for a kid?

What I saw was an opportunity to explain prostitution and the term “turning tricks” to my fourth grader. You know, in case there’s a question on this subject on the statewide exams at the end of the year.

His first follow-up question, after my mini-lecture, was

“Why do they call terriers ‘Johns’?”

Ode an die Freude

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Jocelyn

By the time I finished my first decade of life, I had learned to walk, run, ride a bike; play piano and flute; jeté like a big-boned ballerina possessed; babysit; and play Boggle. Also, I had boobies and was on the cusp of menstruation.

By the time I finished my second decade of life, I had held a driver’s license for five years; been trained in oratory; lived with a family in Denmark for a summer; dropped out of high school to travel Europe with my dad’s college choir; stolen street signs from around my hometown; climbed a water tower; hidden sloe gin under a yucca plant; declared a major.

By the time I finished my third decade of life, I had studied for a semester in Dublin; worked as a nanny and a reader of romance manuscripts; had a date with a Mexican DJ; taken a bucket shower in Belize; visited Graceland and accumulated beads at Mardi Gras; lived with a wolf; drunk my first cup of coffee; used a Nordic Track daily and managed to gain weight with every workout; finished college and graduate school; returned to Ireland with a beau; scraped my heart up off the floor.

By the time I finished my fourth decade of life, the floor had been mopped with my heart. As well, I had returned to Ireland two more times; traveled to Moldova, Eastern Europe, Iceland; laced my own snowshoes; snagged my One-And-Bestest; birthed two children, lost a third; broken into pieces as my family of origin redrew its lines; bid my father the saddest of farewells; adjusted to my family of origin’s new shapes; tightened my boundaries; discovered trails as a source of joy; applied myself to baking.

Now, only half way through my fifth decade, it’s too soon to summarize, but one thing I know for certain is that all future descriptions of these years will include the words Turkey, trampoline, and tunnel bun.

I’m thinking about the accomplishments of decades because one of my favorite people is just completing his first decade of life, and I find myself marveling at all that he has done, all that he is, with a mere ten years behind him.

Yup, Paco has just turned ten. He does not have boobies, nor does menstruation seem imminent.

Whew.

What he does have–and I very much want to document this moment in time, as so much will be changing in the next ten years–are innocence, creativity, focus, appreciation, intuition.

Don’t get me wrong: he’s also occasionally moody, sullen, bullheaded. It’s not like I think he was slingshot to Earth from the firmament by a unicorn horn draped in angel wings and rubbed with fairy juice. The kid is often a Cranky Little Bastard.

I don’t condemn him for possessing common human frailties. All I have to do is swing my head from the left to the right during any family gathering, and as I scan the interesting, accomplished, quirky, complex individuals digging into their plates of pie, I can point in any direction and aim my digit at “moody” or “creative” or “stubborn” or “observant.”

My lad is just part of the mix.

What distinguishes him is the way the inherited and learned traits mesh within him specifically. More than anything, they add up to sensitivity. When he understands something that hasn’t been voiced, it’s because he feels the unspoken with his entire being. When he refuses to try a bite of a new food, it’s because he knows some tastes are just too much. When he expresses one of his heartfelt, mannerly “thank you”s, it’s because he genuinely moved to have been considered. When he patently refuses to crack the cover of a book that we know he will love, it’s because he–a sleepwalker still–perceives something within the story that will lodge too deeply in his heart and mind. When, pencil and paper in hand, he disappears into a drawing he’s making, it’s because there are entire worlds, often populated by orcs, dancing through his mind. When he denies opportunities to try new things, it’s because he’s preemptively guarding against the possibility of feeling awkward or on the spot.

Moodiness and creativity are two sides of the same temperament, really–because it’s stressful to have so very much inside.

Mostly, he is this:

sweet and soft as a cream puff.

Also, he is this:

whipsmart–his test scores prove This Child Was Not Left Behind–and funny, funny, funny.

More than anything, he is one of my truest boon companions. Few things make me happier than the way he hums all the time, all day, every day. From some, this could be annoying, but somehow it works from the Wee Chumly. His favorite tune to hum is Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” We hear it when he’s in the shower; we hear it when he’s riffling through his backpack, looking for his planner to check the assignment for the math homework is (all homework is done the second he gets off the bus, often before his coat is removed); we hear it as he puts together his saxophone, sucking on the reed; we hear it when he’s in his closet, picking out the next day’s school uniform (it ceases only when he holds up a grimy belt to ask, “Should we maybe wash this thing?”); we hear it as he carefully arranges his long bangs to obscure his eyes, a hint of the imminent adolescent.

The other piece of him worth remarking is how very respectful he is, deep down. The honor he accords to boundaries and expectations makes him both a teacher’s ideal and a playmate’s choice. His peers know they are safe with him and that he will, even in his strongest moment, merely mock slay them. A couple years back, a girl in his first grade class told her mother, “I only like three boys in life: Daddy, Jesus, and Paco.”

And now he’s ten, and soon all these bits of him will ripen into manhood, and it will be a joy of my life to see his promise reach fruition.

Of course, in the meanwhile, we live in the day to day. That means we spend many hours playing his new favorite game:

Munchkin is a satire of Dungeons and Dragons; there’s a bit of a learning curve the first time through, but it’s worth hanging in there simply because the cards and challenges are so perfectly oriented towards young boys:

I want to file away a mental note that, at age ten, Paco loves his friends and spinning his Beyblades into battle.

He also loves teaching his Furby new words and sleeps with a mountain of favorite plush pals, each of whom is given a special night of cuddling according to The Chart.

Another great hobby at the end of Paco’s first decade is baking. You should hear the “Ode to Joy” filling our kitchen as he cracks eggs and measures flour–most recently when he made biscotti (“I want to do as much of this whole thing by myself as I can, so you just watch, Mom, until the hot stuff needs to come out of the oven”). Although he dislikes being in front of the camera and being told to smile, he is occasionally amenable to candids, especially if I keep the camera away from my face and just hold it out and snap randomly.

The same day as his lemon-ginger biscotti project, he also helped Byron make pretzels.

Like a good pretzel, Paco fills up my senses.

I tried to fill his tonight at bedtime when I showed him this video:

Rapt, he stood with the toothbrush in his mouth, robotically pushing it back and forth for three minutes and five second before dashing to the bathroom to spit. Hightailing it back to the computer, he returned into the trance of the performance.

When it finished, he was silent. Then, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in his too-short flannel pajama pants, he spoke. Nervously. Almost sheepishly.

“I don’t play it so well like that when I play it on the piano.”

Always in a rush to reassure my most self-conscious child, I promised, “Oh, Pup, when you play it on the piano, it absolutely sounds like what all those people were playing. If you showed up for that flash mob with a keyboard, you could play your ‘Ode to Joy,’ and it would fit in perfectly with what they were playing. To make it even richer, you could hum along as you played.”

Still looking embarrassed, he continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “When I play it, though, it doesn’t sound like that. I don’t know how to play like they do. It’s not like that when I do it.”

I tried again. “But all those people are playing their own instruments, in their own ways. You play your instruments, in your way. If you showed up and gave it a try, you’d find out that your notes fit with theirs.”

Trying not to feel daunted, he clutched his comic book to his fleece-covered tummy and announced, “I’m ready to go to bed now.”

Agreeably, we nestled him in to the snug company of his heaps of stuffed buddies, and then I pushed back the too-long bangs, kissed his cream puff skin, and pulsed–from my soul to his–a Mother’s benediction:

You are my very own living, breathing Ode to Joy, Paco; you are the melody, and when you’re ten, that’s all you should be. You are the melody. As the years continue, you will add in all the other parts and layers of orchestration. You will explore the fugues, become polyphonic, find the harmonies.

It is enough right now, at the end of your first decade,

humming your song with ineffable purity, that

you are the most beautiful melody ever composed.

You Asked for It (Well, Two of You Did): How to Achieve a Style Equaled Only By Its Substance

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Jocelyn

Women too often lead with apology.

I have vowed to break that culturally inculcated habit and not apologize for my behaviors unless I’ve just vomited in your daisies or hit the reset button on your Furby.

Thus, I will not lead with apology here.

Instead, I will celebrate my inner She-Ra by boldly stating, with unabashed confidence and not a whiff of regret, that I am supremely untalented at setting up a video camera in a way that captures all of me in the frame (ah, but there is so very much to capture!), that utilizes anything resembling flattering lighting, and that actually shows viewers the thing I’m trying to demonstrate.

Put another way: in the following video, I’m trying to show you my hair, but most of it was out of the frame…and I was too pressed for time to even consider redoing the silly thing.

Because I am unapologetic, I will point out that what I’ve done here is create a tool that provides just enough information for you to figure it out for yourself. And that, Chums, is a little something we call Good Teaching.

I also refuse to apologize for the duncery that has me using “regime” for “regimen” and concocting a stylist named Paul Sassoon. Rather, I commend my mouth for being able to form words at all–no matter how ineptly–after four decades of brain-cell-decimating hairspray spritzing.

It’s a wonder I’m upright, really, what with all the years of hairspray.

And beer.

On that note, I advise you to take out a notebook, sharpen a pencil, and prepare to jot down a few of the most helpful tips:

Because the top of my head was cut off for most of the video, I am also providing a few full head shots, so’s you can see Full Bun in Action.

This is how I look when I re-enact the scene that got me the Oscar nomination. I was very stern in that scene. Plus, I had a limp. And an accent.

This is how I look when I re-enact the scene that earned me the Oscar nomination. I was very stern in that scene. Plus, I had a limp. An accent. A surveillance camera. Tucked into the tendrils.

This is how I look on the red carpet when I’m lunging toward Helen Mirren, angling in for a grope and a gossip. Before I reach for her rack, however, I freshen my breath with a curiously strong mint that lives in a tin on my head.

Here’s how I look at the Governors Ball after three cocktails and a week on The Master Cleanse. Where’d I stick all the tiny umbrellas and knives and extra olives that came in my drinks?
Oh, I think you know.

So…

now that you know how to tunnel your buns,

do tell:

how would you use the form for function?

Over the River and Through the Tunnel

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Jocelyn

We aren’t fans of resolutions around here, nor are we particularly go-getters. However, as it turns out, we each have something we’d like to achieve in 2013.

Allegra’s goal for this year is to learn to skate ski. We got her outfitted with rental equipment yesterday; she’ll use it the next six Sundays with the skating group in the kids’ Nordic Ski program here in town. Byron took her out for a few minutes–to try out the sizes of boots, skis, and poles they’d given her–and it was lovely.

Paco’s goal for the new year is to make it three months without suffering from a bout of strep throat. So far, seeing as he’s home from school today after a quick culture taken at the grocery-store clinic yesterday afternoon, he’s failing miserably. In better news, he likes the taste of his current antibiotics, and that makes life easier for everyone in the house. As well, he’s thriving on Daddy’s pho (the kid LOVES that broth and the rice noodles) and ramekins of applesauce.

He’s also suffering from a serious case of Enlarged Eye Syndrome.

Byron’s goal for this year is to grow his facial scraggle long enough that we can braid some beads into it. I love that my beau is my plaything.

He also agreed to a lipstick-based photo sending out New Year's Kisses. Summary: the guy is free of hang-ups. Plus, he'd be hella pretty drag queen.

He also agreed to a lipstick-based photo for sending out New Year’s Kisses. Summary: the guy is free of hang-ups. Plus, he’d be hella pretty drag queen.

And me? Well, recently I spent a few hours leafing through old photos, and I encountered this one from Easter of 1971, in which I, suffering from an ear infection, look as woebegone as Paco does today; my brother, as ever, tends to me; and my sister poses proudly, showing off a hairstyle that she and I were crazzzzzy for in the early ’70s.

It’s called The Tunnel Bun.

Inspired by this photo, I found my goal for the year. In 2013, I’m bringing The Tunnel back.

I’m also going to be promoting a look called “Wear Your Hanger Strings Outside Your Sweater.”

A Night Like Any Other

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Jocelyn

In 2000, when our first child was born, my dad bought us a video camera to aid in documenting the special moments.

Although YouTube and America’s Funniest Home Videos intimate otherwise, video cameras are rarely present during the truly special moments.

It was extremely lovely, however, to be able to point that big, clunky camera at our newborns, toddlers, preschoolers in their early years. Later, it was equally fun to capture the kids’ growth and development on a smaller, digital video camera. After I managed to leave that fine investment behind some couch cushions at a pension in Turkey, we replaced it with a cheaper video camera–one that does the job, but not with much finesse. Something about the lower quality coupled with the kids getting older has made us forget to record, has made us neglect the visual documentation that we tracked so faithfully back in the years when the kids were less complex. Thus, we really don’t have many videos of them, outside of their school concerts, during these elementary and middle school years.

In an effort to counteract that negligence, I recently have tried to place our cheapo camera in high traffic areas, in the hopes that I will occasionally remember to grab it and turn it on. Not so interested in “framing a story” or “catching a special moment,” I just want to capture the sounds of the kids’ voices at these ages, to chronicle how they move at this stage of life, to give them something to look back at, should they care to see themselves objectively at some point in the future.

A few weeks ago, as Paco was practicing his saxophone, I spotted the camera nearby and thought, “Hey, I want to remember what it sounded like when we had a novice saxophonist in the house.” Since Paco does not like to be the object of a camera’s attention, I didn’t go stand in the same room with him. Rather, I turned on the camera while in another room and just kept the flow of everything else going. Because I couldn’t see Paco from where I was sitting, I handed the camera to Byron, who was able to train the eye on the boy.

We recorded for not much more than a minute, and I quickly forgot about it. As I downloaded the kids’ holiday concerts last week, though, I also downloaded that saxophone snippet. When I clicked Play, to remind myself what the video even pertained to, I was entranced. There, without any planning or artifice, was a moment in time that typifies Our Current Everything. I was quizzing Allegra on her Spanish; Paco was practicing; we all were hanging out before dinnertime. One minute on the video camera, and it feels like a cross-section of our entire year.

2012 was a time of particular grace for this family. We did not lose anyone dear. We were preternaturally healthy. We had time and travel and community and dashes through the sprinklers. We started Morning Glories from seed. We ran races and learned guitar. We left the library with more than we could carry; we dipped strawberries in chocolate. We choreographed tricks on the trampoline. We played cards, attended conferences, shot fireworks, drank beer, carved pumpkins. We jumped in lakes, lost at tug-of-war, played Bananagrams, graded papers, listened to secrets. We braided hair. We built robots, took ink to paper, tobogganed at the golf course. We rode trains, planes, boats, and Ferris Wheels. We availed ourselves of free refills on large tubs of popcorn and taught others to feed themselves. We threw an arm around a waist and walked hip to hip.

We were providentially free of crisis and pain.

Quite blessedly, we were able to idle around the wooden spoons and mark the music,

living those flashes of Nothing Much that add up to the beauty of Everything That Is.

Take Every Moment As A Gift. Then Twist It.

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Jocelyn

“The Bear’s Money” by Louis Jenkins from The Winter Road: Prose Poems

Every fall before he goes to sleep a bear will put away five or six
hundred dollars. Money he got from garbage cans, mostly. Peo-
ple throw away thousands of dollars every day, and around here
a lot of it goes to bears. But what good is money to a bear? I
mean, how many places are there that a bear can spend it? It’s a
good idea to first locate the bear’s den, in fall after the leaves are
down. Back on one of the old logging roads you’ll find a tall pine
or spruce covered with scratch marks, the bear runes, which
translate to something like “Keep out. That means you!” You can
rest assured that the bear and his money are nearby, in a cave or
in a space dug out under some big tree roots. When you return
in winter, a long hike on snowshoes, the bear will be sound
asleep. … In a month or two he’ll wake, groggy, out of sorts,
ready to bite something, ready to rip something to shreds … but
by then you’ll be long gone, back in town, spending like a
drunken sailor.

———————–
Joy to you.

Love each other.

Listen, Boys: They May Hide Beneath Seventeen Gushy Exterior Layers, But My Abs Are So Fierce They Could Crack Open Your Early Morning Can of Red Bull

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Jocelyn

A friend had dragged them along.

A week earlier, that friend had been dragged along by his girlfriend.

Isn’t that how trying out new things works when you’re young? A girlfriend drags a boyfriend who brings a couple more friends, and before Taylor Swift can pen her next break-up anthem, an entire team of fresh-faced, positively-charged energy has assembled in the name of Let’s Do This Thing Together.

Sometimes, the assembled youth are gathered around a keg of beer.

Sometimes, the assembled youth are gathered around a cross and an altar.

Sometimes, the assembled youth are gathered at a football game.

Sometimes, the assembled youth are gathered around an X-Box (an altar featuring a different kind of cross).

Sometimes, as was the case the other day, they’re assembled at a Core Challenge class at the YMCA.

I’d noticed the first young guy the week before. Roughly twenty years old, he was eager to participate in the class with his girlfriend. I got the impression he was excited that they had this thing they were doing together.

As the class began, he happy-puppied his way through some initial push-ups on an overturned Bosu ball. As the class continued, he remained game and did as much as he could, grimacing and taking breaks as is necessary in a fitness class aimed at making one’s body parts yelp. As the class ended, he acknowledged to his girlfriend that he’d had fun–but that his glutes, triceps, shoulders, and quads were screaming.

(Not incidentally, I am a master eavesdropper; it’s one of my superpowers, in addition to the ability to hurl commas with both force and accuracy)

Fairly adorably, they wiped down their mats, side-by-side, chatting companionably.

I stood, waiting for the spray bottle so as to clean my own sweat-sopped mat, and thought, “You two cutiepies stand a real chance of enduring. As the old adage goes, the couple that holds a huge blue ball between their feet while extending those feet straight to the ceiling and doing a hundred crunches is the couple that stays together.”

A week later, the upbeat, burbling Cutiepies were back, ready to create more memories together as they plank walked their way across the wooden floor. This time, Male Cutiepie had dragged along two of his pals. I assume he lured them with promises of

1) a workout like they’d never had before

and

2) a room full of tight-bodied women in full make-up and tank tops (plus the rest of us)

Ready to reap some rewards, the college-aged bucks snapped their mats into place and amassed the necessary equipment: big blue balls; weighted bars; hand weights; small weighted balls.

Freakish comic Carrot Top once worked up a 25-minute set using exactly these props. Audience members weren’t exactly blown away by his virtuosity when he stuck the weighted bar next to the big blue ball and hollered, “This is what it looked like inside Lance Armstrong’s spandex after he finished his seventh Tour de France!”

Adjusting their own balls (ba-dum-dum), the young bucks surveyed the class with the youthful cockiness that eventually ages into appealing confidence or overweening arrogance, depending on the character. Thwapping their hands against their muscular arms, bouncing up and down with excess energy, chatting brightly with The Friend What Brung Them–emanating an aura of “I’ve scored enough goals in my time to know that I will own this class, once it starts”–the two passed the minutes until they could, as was their life habit, dominate the physical challenge.

When the petite instructor moved to her mat, winding her long hair up into a bun and calling out, “All right. Let’s get started with some gentle stretches,” the bucks exchanged a quick glance with each other, a glance that said: “Um, yea, gentle stretches bring us water at half-time.”

Four minutes later, stretching was done. Gentle had left the building.

Quivering side planks, sustained squats with the small weighted ball held between the knees, prolonged balance moves on top of the big blue ball, repeated military presses, walking lunges, elevated buttocks engendering screaming hamstrings, robot push-ups,

all these things hammered home the shouty message of GAME ON.

Not feeling so on nor so enamored of the game were the youthful athletes.

After the lads completed the first few moves, their eyes began spiraling around from ceiling to floor to door. A few moves later, they began opting into the suggested “modifications.” Twenty minutes beyond that, they started leaving their feet on the floor instead of raising them to the rafters; they chose to prop a knee down as a kickstand instead of straightening both legs into maximum contest; they retreated to a kind of domination in which their limbs owned the floor by spraddling out across the wooden boards, covering them limply.

Asked to engage their bodies in entirely new ways, the bucks had evolved into sea stars.

Twenty-four minutes into class, during a change of equipment, the sweaty fellows peeled their arms off the floor, hung up their mats, and bolted for freedom.

I like to imagine the text they sent to their girlfriend-centered buddy read, “schneikees chodes 2M2H,” which, roughly translated for the Wrinkleds in the group, means “Jehosephat, my friend, but that was too much to handle.”

To rebut their complaint–and to butt inexplicably into their conversation with their friend–I might text in response (‘tho it would pain me to omit the requisite punctuation), “totes chodes its 4AO,” which is to say, “Most assuredly, chums, physical activity not based on speed or agility is For Adults Only.”

Because here’s the thing.

When I was twenty, I wouldn’t even have known how to find a gym, much less try out a class. I didn’t have any sense of strength or health; I didn’t even know how to rue my lack of physical domination since the whole notion of there being power within my body was, at best, a remote dream.

Compared to the middling achievements of my very best days–running sprints in track during 7th grade, taking ballet and modern dance for a bunch of years, doing really well on the standing broad jump in the Presidential Physical Fitness Test because I was taller than everyone else–the young bucks were Greek gods. Before that day in class, they had actually harnessed and realized the potential of their bodies. They moved through the world with a natural assurance of their prowess.

For that reason, I noted their retreat from the Core Challenge class with a certain satisfaction.

I wasn’t glad they couldn’t handle it. In fact, I wished they’d come back again and then again, just so they could feel the payoff that comes from making glacial progress, the kind of forward movement measured between the words “I can’t do this” and “I can do this two times.” That, of course, is a very adult lesson.

Micro-gains are the measurements of advanced age–barely detectable with the crude yardsticking of a typical twenty-year-old.

Rather, I was satisfied that they couldn’t handle the class because comprehending a personal weakness is a pretty significant first step towards developing compassion, towards understanding humility.

I wanted them to go home and plop themselves onto their beds. Then, as they stared at their shelves of soccer, hockey, football trophies, I wanted them to raise their feet to the ceiling and, slowly, thoughtfully, drop one heel towards the ground. The other. Back up. Back down. I wanted them to try scissor kicking in the air for a few minutes as they contemplated how very hard it is to carry on with unaccustomed moves. I wanted them to understand that, despite their brute strength, deep parts of themselves were underdeveloped.

I wanted them to think, “There are people who can’t bench 200 pounds, yet they are stronger than I am. Maybe I need new ways to consider the idea of strength.”

More realistically, a twenty-year-old male lying on his bed, having a quiet moment, would be contemplating thoughts more base than these. At the very least, he’d be thinking about his next huge glass of milk.

Through the sheer dint of wishing, I can’t jam any lessons into the bucks’ psyches. It’s more fruitful for me to cull my own lessons and let the universe teach those young men what it will, when it will.

For me, I know this:

I have had more fun in the last five years than during any other phase of my richly-happy life.

A big part of my recent gratification comes from finding whole new ways to consider strength. The world told me I was fat. Actually, the world still tells me that. The difference is in what I do with that message.

When I was younger, “fat” = “repulsive, unlovable.”

Now, “fat” = “that’s what you say, and if that’s your word, that’s your problem.”

If you were blindfolded and brushed up against me a few times, you’d pull off the cloth from around your eyes and ask where you could buy that comfy beanbag chair. Bits of me set to flapping when a strong wind gusts up. I would never be anyone’s “after” photo. Yet.

I’m strong as hell. I can do things that defeat twenty-year-old athletes. I have taken a remote dream and unlocked the power in my body. I may be sliding toward the grave, feeling the decline of advancing years, but the accrual of days, months, years has shown me how to connect the strength of my body to a soundness of mind and emotion.

It’s awesome, this convergence.

It’s so swell, in fact, that My Very Sound Mind is tempted to run up to every twenty-year-old male I see and goad him: “Punch me in the gut. Just punch me. PUNCH ME IN THE GUT. Your hand will be in pain, I tell you. Focus right here, on my abs, and whale away! It is you, not I, who will break first!”

Hmmmm.

That would be the point at which I’d hope the twenty-year-old had attended at least one Core Challenge class in his past.

If he had, perhaps his awareness of personal weakness would translate into compassion.

Mock jabbing at the mid-section of the Aging Nutter so as to calm her urgent babblings, the young man could carefully lead me to my car, help me fumble for my keys in my purse, and then bid me adieu with an affectionate squeeze around my shoulders.

At that point, he’d do well to rub his hugging hand briskly and remark: “Wow, Lady. You’re strong.”

That Time of the Semester

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Jocelyn

I graduated from college twenty-three years ago, but still, at least once a year, I have the “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, I woke up late and am missing my final exam but can’t find the classroom” nightmare.

Considering my lax attitude towards class attendance in my college years, the notion that I can’t find the classroom isn’t necessarily the stuff of dreams. There was actually a reasonable possibility that, even by final exam week, I didn’t know where my classes had been meeting. More likely yet was the scenario where I’d find the classroom and burst through the door breathlessly, only to be met by the professor with a blank stare and the query, “Hello, breathless stranger. Are you lost?”

Just as amazing to me as the endurance of the “I’m missing my final exam” nightmare is this: once I started teaching college classes twenty-two years ago, the student point of view morphed into an instructor’s point of view. The anxiety remains the same.

Thus, I now, roughly once a year, have the “Sweet Moses, I’m missing my final exam” dream as though I’m a student who’s forfeiting her chance to pass the class…AND, I also have a variation of that dream, again roughly once a year, in which I’m the teacher–unable to find her classroom, knowing there’s a crop of nervous students waiting on her arrival. Once or twice, the issue in my teacher nightmares has been that I get near the classroom but realize I have no final exam to distribute. Once, I found the classroom and had a final exam ready to go, but the room was locked, and I spent the first hour of the students’ writing time attempting to track down a facilities guy who might have the key jingling from a ring on his belt loop. This dream ended with me calling out over my shoulder to my students, “Just get out some notebook paper, and start writing! You don’t need computers or desks. And don’t talk to each other while I’m gone.”

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m realizing that this last “dream” scenario was reality. It most definitely has happened on many occasions during normal class meetings–this business of me trying to get us into a locked classroom–and sometimes in an iteration where we all get into the classroom, but then students work on the computers during the class period, only to find the printer has no paper. So I spend fifteen minutes trying to find the one person on campus who’s allowed to hand a ream of paper to an instructor. Fortunately, in the last couple of years, it’s become increasingly possible for students to save work online, without the benefit of a flashdrive or disc.

The disc years, though? Cripes, but those were a weird interlude.

You’d think the headaches of both reality and dreams would recede with the advent of online classes. When no one ever looks at each other face on, and everything’s done on the computer and saved to something like a cloud as a matter of course, the final exam should be easy. We never need a facilities guy; we never need paper. It’s even somewhat hard to be “late” or “lost”–although it’s fairly startling how often both can happen in cyberspace.

For me, from the instructor point of view, I’m pretty much able to find the online classroom, so that worry has been neutralized. However, I do sometimes, at the end of the semester, have a momentary gasp during which I panic, “Was I supposed to send out the final exam this week? Did I not?” If the final is a multiple-choice test I’ve created ahead of time, an instrument that can be pre-set to “reveal” and “close” at certain times, I also have a moment of anxiety when I realize I haven’t double checked to be sure it followed my directions.

All in all, I prefer online final exams to on-campus tests, simply because they don’t involve driving, finding a parking space, and being punctual. Not a one of those is a personal strength.

Interestingly, I seem to have discovered a whole new way to turn an online final exam into a nightmare, though. The other day, I emailed out a “take-home” exam question to the Writing for Social Media class. My aim with the test was to have students step back from the practice they’d done during the semester and look at the value of the various types of social media platforms more objectively.

However, by the time I managed to get around to posing the question,

which asks students to craft 650-1200 words in response,

I found I, myself, had typed 1500 words of collateral malarkey:

Final Exam

Writing for Social Media

A time machine is too easy.

This final exam question won’t involve one.

If I gave you a time machine, you know you’d go back twelve weeks and do that blog post you missed and make those comments you got zeroes on and toss out a few more Facebook updates and do your live tweeting session all over again.

No, the power of a time machine is too immense, and I’ll not unleash you on the world with one.

If I gave you a time machine, you’d not only go back and redo some bits of this class, you know you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from also going back a few million years and riding a triceratops in some sort of prehistoric rodeo fantasy and then flitting forward a few million years and trying to save Lincoln at the theater that night and then catapulting forward another hundred + years and putting yourself in that garage with college-aged Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak so as to get in on the ground floor of Apple’s creation.

I can’t trust you and your murky soul for a minute, and that’s why I’m not giving you a time machine here.

What I am giving you, however, is one of those vacuum-tube systems like they employ in banks when customers in the drive-thru need to send a signed check and a deposit slip to the teller behind the glass fifteen feet away. Wait. Do they not use those anymore? Do we need to take a quick field trip in my personal time machine back to 1990 so I can show y’all that vacuum-tube system? Such systems were also used for inter-office communications back in the era of Mad Men.

MMMMMMMM. Mad Men. Stop with your mysterious, charming self, Don Draper. I’m trying to focus here.

Anyhow, focus.

What I’m trying to tell you is that you get an inter-office communication, drive-thru-at-the-bank kind of vacuum-tube system for this final exam. It also has the unexpected power of, yes, time travel. But only the tube can time travel, and don’t even think you can pack your own adult body into that little tube and take a quick joy ride back to the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey match when the U.S. upstarts beat all predictions and trounced the Russians, thus winning the gooooooooooollllllllldddddddd.

Oh, I hear you: you’re mewling, “But Jocelyn, I don’t even like hockey. I’d never abuse time-traveling vacuum-tube technology thusly.”

Yea, but admit it: if you were compactible and double-jointed enough, you’d totally stuff your body into the little tube and whiz back to the Chicago World’s fair in 1893 to try a ride on that huge, spinning wheel invented by Mr. Ferris and then dial it forward a few years to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 so as to try that new-fangled invention called Ice Cream Cone.

If neither of these things appeals to your sense of whimsical time-traveling vacuum-tube adventure, I think we all can agree we’d attempt a tube stuffing and quick zip back to 1778 if it meant we could talk John Stafford Smith out of including that impossible-to-reach high note when he composed the tune that was eventually used for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” We’d be all, “John, John, John. Have mercy. Despite our time-traveling abilities, we’re all mere mortals here. And that high note you’re considering? Something only dogs can hear. Don’t write a national anthem that only dogs can hear and that every performer, from Roseanne Barr to Carl Lewis, will be forced to suffer public humiliation over for centuries to come.”

The good news is that I’m not only restricting you to a time-traveling vacuum-tube with this assignment, I’m making it a really, really small tube. There’s no earthly way you can get yourself into it.

What you can fit into it—if you fold it up into a teensy little square—is a letter, a single sheet of paper (with very small font, if need be). If you typed 650-1200 words, you’d use just the right amount of paper.

So here’s what I’mma need you to do with your vacuum tub and your letter:

I’mma need you to help out my poor sheltered friend from the past–a Mormon woman living in 1873, and since washing machines and grocery stores haven’t been invented yet, she’s got a lot of work to do just to get through a day. Despite her heavy schedule of manual labor (as 12^th wife, she’s both sister-wife to 11 others and co-mother of 48 children), Ann Eliza has unbounded curiosity. What she wants to know more than anything else is what the future is like.

Here’s a note she sent me recently through the time-traveling vacuum tube:

Dear Madam, I wrote you some few weeks since and as I had not received a reply I thought my letter might be miss sent and I would write again. You wrote me some two months ago that you would interest yourself sufficiently to become my agent to procure means of knowledge of times beyond these. I await your next missive and desire heartily some vision of the communications in your age. For me, I pen a missive to my mother every two weeks, telling her in some detail of Hiram’s work and my fellow wives’ unseemly angers. Some time later, I duly receive a reply from dear Mother. Generally, she reckons the weather will be might poor and predicts plagues upon the wheat. What I wonder is how people in your time, when not looking at each other face on, share information. Were I able to stuff my crinolines into our shared vacuum-tube thingjimmie-amabob, I should quite enjoy a hop to the future whereupon I could take stock of how you do your churning and how you cover your absences from each other. In your day, do you write words and, once the ink dries, drip some candle wax onto the envelope as seal? Do you await the hoof beats of the Pony Express rider? When you write, do you discuss the weather and the wheat? I nurse a severe hankering to know how you connect with others in your modern age. Some part of me, I guess, wants to know if I would feel less alone were I alive in your time. What think you?

Do write some kind word to me on the reception of this; it will be gratefully received. We should not neglect to answer each other so long again. I had no time today but sit up an hour later past putting the ten four-year-olds to bed (1869 was a busy year for Hiram here in the compound!) to say to you, that you are kindly remembered.

Accept my best wishes and let me hear from you soon.

Yours-

Ann Eliza G. Smith

In sum, this final exam is my way of drafting you into replying to Ann Eliza. She wants to know how people in 2012 communicate. What would you tell her? I’ve already got a letter going to her regarding telephones (e.g., voice communication, texting) and email, but I don’t have time to cover some of our other technology-boosted forms of communication. What are the various options people use nowadays to make connections with loved ones and with strangers? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various options (i.e. “platforms”)? Is she missing out on anything? Would she be less lonely if she were alive now?

Another way to think of these questions would be this: how would you explain various social media options to Ann Eliza, and how would you analyze each option for her? Based on what you’ve learned in your own personal use of social media and what you’ve learned from the activities in this class, what are the strengths and weaknesses of, say, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs? (feel free to bring in other types of SM, like YouTube)

My letter to her is going out tomorrow; I really want to fold up your letter into an itty-bitty bit and jam it into the vacuum tube by Wednesday, December 19^th, at 10 p.m. That’s Ann Eliza’s night on duty with the eight twelve-year-olds in the family. She’s going to need something to look forward to at the end of that evening, and I’d like to promise her that your letter will be in the chute, awaiting her weary but excited eyes.

Because I control the vacuum tube (mwahahahahahaha!), I’ll be the one to print and send your letters. I can just visit your blog and print from there, so please be sure they’re in place by the time I swing ‘round on December 19th.

And you know, Ann Eliza will be eternally grateful to have this diversion from the drudgery of boiling Hiram’s undershirts in lye and negotiating truces with her sister-wives. Let her know how we Moderns use technology-based platforms to create entirely different kinds of communities, and let her know in what ways she’s missing out…and in what ways she should be glad to live in the era of traditional letter writing.

—————————————————————————

Almost immediately after I sent out this “question, ” I got some feedback from members of the class. First, there was:

Seriously- you are hilarious. This is why I love you.

Two days later, another student weighed in with:

Could you please explain the final essay assignment, I am somewhat confused.

Both responses made me grin.

Both responses had merit.

And somewhere between these reactions is the lesson that hides inside all my nightmares over all these years:

a final exam is nonsense; a final exam matters; a final exam is a genuine reflection of something; a final exam is a reflection of nothing; a final exam can be fun; a final exam can be hell.

No matter its true weight in the larger scope of life, a final exam affects us in some way that lingers–hence its permanent imprint in our psyches.

In fact, I’d be willing to dissertate about this at greater length to my students,

but I can’t seem to find them.

Or the classroom.

Steadily Growing

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Jocelyn

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”–Salvador Dali

Today, Byron turns 42.

He has been, and in some cases still is,

son, brother, friend, father, student

custard scooper

corn cross-pollinator

park ranger

naturalist

anthropology and earth science instructor

newspaper delivery boy

barista

office manager

book seller

mentor

traveler

greenhouse worker

runner

skiier

swimmer

biker

gardener

handyman

chef

bill reckoner

splinter remover

kickball roller

beer brewer

geocacher

crossword puzzler

logistics coordinator

observer

comforter

sounding board

voice of reason

purple beard sporter.

In recent years, he’s also been Artist.

For this piece, Byron laid out 275 one-inch by one-inch squares, and then, for each of 275 successive days, drew a mini-diary entry. There’s a teensy ink sketch of a necktie for the day he went to a meeting with the mayor to strategize about how to re-imagine park funding in a way that could keep libraries open. There are also minute depictions of a shovel, an owl, a planter, a pumpkin…among 270 other Lilliputian moments of life, all harmonized by the presence of emerging sight lines that meet up in the lower righthand quadrant.

Byron, the least OCD person on the planet, makes art that presents as fairly OCD.

He had a show this past summer and spent weeks deciding which pieces to include before working on matting and framing and layout. Below, you can see where we laid out the final drawings in an effort to figure out how they’d fit on the public wall space to best effect.

Our time living in a Muslim country affected him. Upon our return to the States, he spent some time studying Islamic art and the use of variations within sets of geometric shapes, as we had seen all across Turkey in the tile work of madrassas and mosques. Here is one result:

He is pulling together a website to showcase his art. Here’s a link to his “galleries” page, which includes both pen & ink drawings and digital collage: Laying Fallow. I love the precision of the pen & ink and the whimsy of the digital collages (the one with the Amish figure on the ship was a commissioned piece; he bartered his services, and, gollee, have we enjoyed the blueberry-lemon bread, pickled beets, and other baked goods from the recipient).

Tonight, we will celebrate with white bean/bacon soup, pumpkin bars, limited-release Surly Darkness beer (gaspingly expensive), and a night of music seeing his favorite group, Cloud Cult (having conveniently driven their biodiesel van to Duluth to perform on the anniversary of his birth).

This talented grown-up boy,

still discovering the myriad vagaries that constitute “ambition,”

is,

quite simply,

the best.