PAUSE

THERE'S A PLACE where time stands still; or so I thought. Maybe I was just trying to will the clock and the calendar to slow down.

BROOKE AND JEREMIAH; KYLE AND MALACHI ON THE FERRIS WHEEL AT THE HINTON FAIR

There seems to be an age at which we grow more nostalgic. For me it was somewhere around 17. Could be that wasn't nostalgia; more of a youthful sentimentality (if there is such a thing.) Now though at 70-something, I long for a place of nostalgia, a return to the good old days when even in politics most everyone agreed with the admonition to Richard M. Nixon: Don't let the screen door on the back porch of the White House hit you in the rear end on your way out, as he resigned in 1974.

I long for those halcyon days when it was clear the best music ever was being created: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Neal Young, Carole King, Stephen Stills, Jimi Hendrix, Grace Slick, Dolly Parton, Marvin Gaye, Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis... just to mention a few.

Sorry. I drifted off into that sweet place a few decades back, driving up and down Peoria Ave on a Friday night with Crosby, Stills and Nash playing "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" on the 8-Track. I'm back to the future now.

We need a place where we can pause every now and then, but those places where time will slow or pause are harder to find these days, or so it seems to me. When we do get to pause though we can glimpse what is important: our shared humanity, hopefulness, possibilities, joy and a peaceful moment or two. It happens waiting in line to ride the merry-go-round, or Ferris wheel. It happens sharing a funnel cake, just pulled from the grease, served on a dixie paper plate, covered in powered sugar, or blowing on a too-hot corn dog, while listening to the whistle of the little red train coming out of the tunnel.

I realize that even while watching children ride the little kiddie cars, or trying to pop balloons with darts that I'm not a child any more. Still; the pause works, because the emotions are the same, the feelings of glee when winning a prize, the terror of getting on the Tilt-A-Whirl seen in the faces of the young are still real.

I've been listening a lot lately to a song by Switchfoot called "Beloved". Here's verse 3:

The questions that we're too afraid to ask
'Cause the present is the future of the past
'Cause the river is the same, but moving fast lately
And maybe every other is a we
Maybe differences are easier to see
Than a family we are that's underneath, maybe
I start to recognize that I need you
Like you need me

For a few hours in the hot, dusty midway of the Hinton Free Fair, we were all just there to live in the glow of the colored lights and happy sounds. Differences be damned. I'm off to find the homemade ice cream stand.

THERE'S LABOR THEN THERE'S TEACHING

IT SOUNDS HARD. But, we do it because after-all, Labor Omnia Vincit! Right!? That's Oklahoma's official motto. Did you know that? Did you know this:

Labor omnia vincit or Labor omnia vincit improbus is a Latin phrase meaning "Work conquers all". The phrase is adapted from Virgil's Georgics, Book I, lines 145–6: ...Labor omnia vicit / improbus ("Steady work overcame all things"). The poem was written in support of Augustus Caesar's "Back to the land" policy, aimed at encouraging more Romans to become farmers. The actual meaning of the phrase can be obtained as the following: "anything can be achieved if proper work is applied". --borrowed from Wikipedia.

This Labor Day, 2022, I'm offering my appreciation and support to TEACHERS; this year especially because they are back at work, putting the pieces together after the quarantine quake, where remote-learning proved that without our teachers our kid's "education" might suggest that remote-learning is an oxymoron--kind of like football coach/social studies teacher. Just kidding coach. Yessir, I will drop and give you twenty, sir.

Further, [Hey look Ms. Osborn, I used further rather than farther] in addition to teaching in a classroom with a few more promising-young sponges than that classroom should have, in spite of the fact that she will fork over her own funds for classroom supplies because our politicians have a stranglehold on the purse strings. Oh, and because of shortages, Mr. Teacher will also have to drive the bus and then go to work at Home Depot to make ends meet.

Inherent in the idea of Labor as I picture it, there is this thing called: duty. Teachers have to do a lot extra of that--duty. Hall, lunchroom, recess, the craziness of the car line; it's their duty.

Last week, in a school near here as the end drew near, the elementary principal received word that there was an old man in an Hawaiian shirt, shorts and Birkenstocks standing out front. So she snapped into duty, going outside to confront him.

Her: "Can I help you sir?"

Old Man: "I'm here to pick up some little girls."

Her: "Any in particular?"

Old Man: "Harper and Nora and Karlee."

Her: "You must be Pops. You should be in the car line."

I turned to look at the car line which now stretched beyond the horizon.

Her: "Come to my office."

Me: (mumbling under my breath) "Oh crap!"

Nothing has ever gone well for me in my many trips to a principal's office.

What happened next is a blur. A lady at the front desk, a student aid and Dr. Smith, the principal, spoke together in a sort of code and the next thing I knew the girls were in the car explaining to me how I had done everything wrong. "Hey, that's how I roll," I explained.

AND NOW? What are we doing to teachers? Apparently we're swallowing some storyline concocted by the far-right-wing-nut-job-lunatic-fringe, that teachers are conspiring and conniving to poison young minds. I swear if I see one more fundamentalist soldier threatening to burn books like "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle, or worse yet, threatening a librarian or teacher for having that book on their shelf, well...

I don't want my vocal support of teachers here in this humble blog to be just words. I'll admit that as a student back in the day I wasn't a dream student or teacher's delight, but I've changed (although if I'm ever called on again to pick grandkids up from school, I'm not going to use what life I have left waiting in that dang pickup line). I want to show my support for you and the high ideal that Labor Omnia Vincit.

Here's what I have to offer:

Do you need a cold refreshing beverage at the end of the teaching day after the last of your little einsteins gets on the bus? I'm happy to make a run to Sonic, Braums, Starbucks to get you something--my treat.

Do you need something for your classroom? Let me buy it.

Do you need a testing monitor for state testing day? If I can, I'll be there. I actually have experience in that area and can pass a background check with flying colors.

Do you need someone to come to your class that you can point to and tell your students that if they don't do their homework this is how they might end up? Scare them straight!

I will also do this:

I will campaign hard for Jena Nelson for Oklahoma's State Superintendent. I will do what I can to make sure Ryan Walters' quest to damage public education and go after teachers like some baseless witch hunt ends in November.

I will campaign hard for Joy for Governor. It would be so refreshing to have a leader who values public education.

Oh, let me add: I know many people who have chosen the homeschool path and done so beautifully. Good for you, but I'm not going to Sonic to buy you a cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper at the end of the day. You're on your own.

UNDERSTAND?

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UNDERSTANDING. That’s a big concept isn’t it? And, this essay could go off in numerous directions. For example, we could consider the difference between seeking to understand and seeking to be understood.

Take seventh grade algebra. Why couldn’t I understand this stuff? How hard could it be? I wasn’t stupid. I could conjugate verbs all day. I never doubled my negatives or dangled my participles. I could diagram any sentence; so why couldn’t I get how to graph an equation? Logic is logic right?

My folks hired a tutor, a nice man who parted his hair near the middle, had dirty glasses and dandruff.

Mr. Tutor: “Do you understand this,” pointing to a paper where he had written something like: If the nth root of 1,296 is 6, then what is the value of n?

Me: “No. Do you understand me?”

Then there’s the question of understanding that seems to have a warning built in to it: “Capisce?!”

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ca·​pisce | \ kə-ˈpēsh
—used to ask if a message, warning, etc., has been understood

“If you fail Alegbra One it will be an irreversible blemish in your permanenet file, capisce?”

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Recently we visited a couple of very busy, public places—four adults, seven kids, ranging in age from 12 to 1.5. I liked our odds. Two of us four adults though are not as fast as we used to be and all seven of the kid group are quick, curious, and confident. Two of the adult group are parents to four. They had theirs managed. The other three were the responsibility of the two us who are less agile and whose warnings seem to carry less weight.

The older two were fine and a big help. The youngest (just turned 7) is quick as lightening, can disappear like a vapor, turn your back and she’ll be up a tree, in a tunnel, scaling a boulder or off to see the next attraction. Her own parents write their cell phone number on her arm when in a large group so someone will know whom to call if they find her.

I suggested to her that we do that and she sought to help me understand that that wasn’t necessary. Then I had an idea: I made her a little leather bracelet and stamped her Mimi’s phone number into the leather. Her dad rehearsed with her how to find a grandmotherly looking lady, how to show her the bracelet and ask if she would call her Mimi. “Capisce?!”

She wore her bracelet the whole trip: swimming, sleeping, climbing, running and all. Here is her photo at a river parks playground. Notice her little snowcone stained bracelet.

It probably won’t be too many years before I’ll need a bracelet with somebody’s number on it. I understand this. It will be good when they put out the “silver alert” for an old man wearing a bracelet with a loved one’s number. Hopefully when someone calls the number the loved one will answer and come and get me.

Sometimes Nora misunderstood me. She saw our concern to know where she was every moment as unnecessary and inhibiting. I could emphathize with her. When she would say to me: run over there with me, or let’s climb up those rocks, I too felt shackled. I tried to help her understand that I’m too old. She would say, “Oh, Pops.” I love the confidence she has that I can still do the stuff best done in our youth.

For now, she doesn’t understand. One of these days though… It will be like my algebra tutor said, “one of these days it will just make sense.” He was right. At least enough of it made sense that my permanent record shows a pass on Algebra One.

I want to thank those seven grandkids, their parents and their Mimi for understanding, for including me. I like to think I’m self-sufficient, that I can meet all my own needs, but the fact is I need all of these people.

There is a line I like from the story, “A River Runs Through It”. In fact there are many lines from that movie that I like. This one is near the end. A pastor is talking about people that are sometimes difficult to understand and to love.

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”

TIME IS ON MY SIDE…

YES IT IS. Remember that song by the Rolling Stones from 1964?

“Time is on my side; yes it is”

I was 13 then, and time was on my side. Experience wasn’t, but time was.

Of course, the song wasn’t about the timeline of life and a person’s spot on that line at any given moment. It is apparently a guy warning his freedom-seeking girlfriend that he can out-wait her prodigal ways.

Now you always say
That you want to be free
But you'll come running back
You'll come running back
You'll come running back to me
Yeah, time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is

I wonder if she ever came back, or if he’s still singing his cocksure prophecy to the wind?

Funny how we view life differently along our timeline. But as I compare say 70 (my current numeric point on the line) with 13 (the age I was when Mick Jagger was warning his girlfriend), one thing time-related is pretty much the same: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

My Amazing-Missus has a grandfathers clock; not one of those tall wooden boxes with a big swinging pendulum and deep chimes and a clock face at the top. Hers is literally her grandfather’s clock. It doesn’t work anymore. Who knows how long it’s been stuck at its current time? As they say, even a broken clock is right two times a day.

It is on display in our house not as a way to tell the time but as a way to remember a time.

For many years we lived in a small town in western-ish Oklahoma. We loved it very much. There were a couple of barber shops in town. I went to Roy’s. Roy Chenoweth was one of the classiest men I’ve ever known. Here’s how I’m defining that: kind, happy, gentle, immaculately groomed, loved his wife dearly and always had a smile. Oh, and by the way, was grandfather to Kristin, the Tony-winning Broadway star of stage and screen.

On the door of Roy’s shop hung a cardboard sign, yellowed with age except for the area behind the little metal clock hands which were always at 2:00. Above the clock hands: “We’ll Be back at…” On the flip side: “We’re open. Come on in.”

Everyday Roy at noon, Roy would flip his sign on the door, go home for lunch and a nap and return at 2:00 sharp—except for the day he retired at 90.

I like 2:00p. It’s almost like a shift of gears. Morning is for exercise and chores and work. By 2:00, if you’re like Roy you’ve had lunch and a nap. Things slow down a little. There’s still plenty of daylight left if you want to do something fun or productive, but we’re coasting to suppertime.

Bedtime is another matter. I don’t like it. I never have. Apparently my imagination is as active at night as it is during the day. My Amazing-Missus says I’m never still at night. Always moving, twitching, kicking, flailing. It’s always been that way. I explain to her that I’m usually saving us from some nightmarish attacker. That doesn’t help her sleep any better. For me though, I awake rested and triumphant.

More and more I don’t care that the hands on her grandfather’s clock don’t move. I don’t care that I can’t remember what day of the month it is. The measure of time is more and more irrelevant to me. The measure of the quality of time is more and more precious. Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful for another 24-hour gift each day. I take it less for granted. I wish I still had the spunk, energy, carefree spirit of my 13-year old self. Maybe I do—relatively speaking. Maybe today I will shake things up and do something radical like NOT watch Wheel of Fortune at 6:30.

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Helen Seinfeld: Morty, what do you have to open this box for? There's already a box of cookies open.

Morty Seinfeld: I wanted a Chip Ahoy.

Helen Seinfeld: I don't like all these open boxes.

Morty Seinfeld: Look, I got a few good years left. If I want a Chip Ahoy, I'm having it.