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A Melancholy Holiday

11/30/2013

This probably isn’t the funniest blog post I’ve done (hey, some others have been damn funny…well, at least in my mind), but I feel the need and I’ll keep it brief.

            As I sat in my recliner yesterday evening, feeling like a gastric time-bomb and fearing for my family’s olfactory safety, I once again realized that I’m a very lucky guy. I don’t have a lot of bad in my life, just sometimes in my head. But I felt a bit melancholy, primarily because of the people who are gone from my life.

Both my parents passed away a few years ago and although they passed a few years apart, both died in the late fall. This gives the season an air of sadness. The feeling lessens as the years go by, but I don’t think –nor would I want – it to go away completely. However weird it may sound, the feeling is a tie to my folks and I don’t want to lose any ties, tangible or intangible.

My oldest brother also passed away a couple of years ago and though he obviously didn’t plan it, he died toward the end of June. The melancholy is there a bit when June rolls around, but when you’re being hit with a lot of sunshiny weather the feeling doesn’t seem as intense.

Two people I know lost loved ones in the past week. One lost her mother and another lost her son. My heart goes out to both. I can’t help but wonder what their future Thanksgivings will be like. How do you give thanks at a time of year when that kind of loss occurred? I lamely told one friend that, although there is a hole in her heart that will never be completely gone, to allow her loved ones the attempt to fill it. I’m not the smartest man in the world, but I do know that when someone suffers a loss, others hurt for them. To deny those who love you the chance to try and be of comfort to you hurts them even more.

I’ve been on both sides of that fence.

Of course, the gray weather of the season doesn’t help. There are many who suffer from seasonal depression or are diagnosed as depressives. This time of year only heightens the intensity of that difficulty.

In the end, I guess I just want to say that for many, this time of year makes for some melancholy holidays. If someone you encounter isn’t filled with the thrill and joy of the season, realize they probably have a very valid reason. Use empathy and allow them their mood or, if you can, reach out to them even more.

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Thanks to all of you who frequent my little website and who have read and commented on things I’ve written. It’s the people –even those we don’t physically see – who instill the humanity in the season and in our lives. I appreciate and am thankful to you all.

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Super Cop

11/23/2013

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* Caveat: My intent in this post is not to slight law enforcement personnel. It is simply my experience shared through the lenses of time, memory, and the need to tell a decent story. Enjoy.

Super Cop

            I’ve mentioned before on this blog that when I was younger I wasn’t the Einstein that many confuse me with today (honestly, I hear ‘Way to go Einstein!’ fairly frequently which only goes to prove my point). One of my greater deficiencies was the inability to choose a career path. I mean, I thought I made a lot of decisions, but my dad said that making a lot of decisions wasn’t the same as making the decision. That was dad: he could deflate a brick if he was of a mind to. But one advantage to being clueless is the opportunity to seek out and discover a wide variety of potential careers you suck at.

Which is what I did.

            I tried dish washing. I sucked at it, hated it and, truth be told, wasn’t very good at it. It does not bode well when you have a small epiphany and realize you suck at one of the most menial jobs available.

            I tried installing floor covering: I sucked.

            Sheetmetal apprentice: I sucked.

            Salesman: I really sucked (check out my ‘If I, Will You?’ blog post).

            Shipping/receiving clerk: I sucked.

            Welding supply store manager: I sucked.

            Heavy steel construction: I sucked.

            I think you’re getting the idea of the pattern I established early on. Yet there was one career I checked into where a strange thing happened: I didn’t suck. Unfortunately, many of the people within the career sucked, but in various ways.

            I decided I would pursue a career in law enforcement.

The idea of wearing a uniform, feeling like I belonged, and helping others appealed to me. I liked the honor and nobility of it. All that and I could carry a gun. I mean, how cool is that?

I had visions of being in uniform smiling down at some little kid who would be reaching up to touch my gun and me saying in a deep, kind voice, “Don’t touch that, sonny. It’s dangerous.” Of course I also had visions of being in uniform and some hot chick reaching over to touch my gun and me smiling and saying in a deep, sexy voice, “Go ahead and touch it. It’s dangerous.”

            I went down to the local cop shop to check into it. They suggested I go on “ride-alongs” with some of the patrolmen to get a feel for the job and decide if I truly wanted to pursue it.

No problem.

Well, I say no problem, but I always had to go with the late shift, which put me home about 2:00 a.m., but hey, I’m not a morning person anyway.

            My first night on a ride-along was dull as hell. I sat for six hours listening to the patrolman (I’ll call him Bob) bitch about his previous two wives and how this third one wasn’t much better and ‘what the hell is wrong with women?’ I almost said, “Hey buddy, if you’re facing your third strike, you might try checking your swing instead of blaming the bat.” But since it was my first night, I kept my mouth shut.

            The second night we had excitement. Another officer was in pursuit of a motorcycle traveling at a high rate of speed. Officer Bob hit the party lights, picked up his mike, gave his code and said, “We’re on it.” We’re on it. I felt like I was part of the squad already.

            We raced to cut off the motorcycle which the other cop judged was traveling somewhere between 60 mph and instant death. Far up the road we saw a single headlight. Before it got to us though, it veered to the right down a side street. We raced up to the side street, looked and saw nothing. Then we slowly cruised around the neighborhood until we finally ended up down a back alley. We were barely rolling behind a house when I saw a motorcycle.

            Me: “There’s a motorcycle.”

            Bob: “Yeah, but there’s nobody on it.”

            Me: “Yeah, but he could have gotten off of it.”

            Bob (shrugging his shoulders): “How ya gonna know?”

            Me: “Well, I could hop out and go see if the engine’s hot.”

            Bob (after some short, false reflection): “That might work. Go check it out.”

            I did. The engine was hot. I went back and reported to Officer Bob.

            Me: “It’s hot alright”

            Bob: “Okay, get in.”

            Me: “But aren’t we going to go knock on the door and check it out?”

            Bob: “Nah. My shift is over in a half hour and I don’t want to be stuck at the station for another two hours filling out paperwork. The guy was only speeding anyway.”

            Me: “He was also eluding a police officer, endangering other motorists, riding recklessly.”

            Bob (his eyes narrowing): “Get in the Goddam car.”

            I got in the car as instructed and that ended our night of fighting crime.

            The next night, Officer Bob drove right through an accident scene. I pointed out the obvious.

            “Um, Bob, an accident just happened at this intersection.”

            Officer Bob rolled the window down and called out, “Is anybody hurt?” A few people shook their heads and Bob yelled, “Hang tight. I’ll have another cruiser right here.” We continued on our way and he called it in. I asked him why we didn’t stop to see if help was needed.

            Officer Bob: “’Cause there’s a shoplifter to pick up at Wagner’s Grocery and I want to get him.”

            Me: “Why? It seems like the accident would be more important. There could be people injured. The store is holding the shoplifter. He isn’t going anywhere.”

            Bob: “Yeah, but if I get to the shoplifter I’ll get to take him down to the station to the booking agent and the booking agent is hot! Actually, I’m talking beyond hot. She’s scalding!”

            Me: “To protect and to serve, huh?”

            He glared at me for a few seconds and didn’t say much the rest of the night.

            The next night I was paired up with Officer Fred. Fred had recently moved to our small town from L.A. He seemed like a good guy and we got along pretty well, until we were driving through a fairly affluent community and a kid with a group of other kids waved at us.

            Officer Fred dove for the floorboards and actually started pushing the gas pedal with his hand. I hadn’t experienced this driving technique before so was a bit concerned as to how he could pull it off without looking to see where we were going.

            Me: “What the hell are you doing?” Officer Fred sat up again, sweating and panting a bit.

            Officer Fred: “Sorry. It’s just that my last job was in East L.A. and when a kid’s hand goes up like that you don’t know what they’re throwing at you. I know this is a small town and that stuff doesn’t really happen. I just need to…I guess ‘retrain’ my instincts.”

            We made a routine traffic stop a bit later that evening. Officer Fred called in the plates and then leaned toward me, his head below the dash. His face was invading my private space a bit more than I cared for, but then he whispered, “Okay, if any shit goes down, you scrunch down to that floor board as much as you can. You get all the way down there. But whatever you do, you do not scrunch down on the floorboard on this side.”

            Me: “Okay. Because the pedals will get in the way, right?”

            Officer Fred: “No. ’Cause I’ll be scrunching down over here and I don’t want you invading my personal space.”

            He went on to tell me that the car, an older piece of crap that was lucky to be rolling, was a ‘throw-down’ rig. When I asked what that was he explained it was the kind of car that low-lifes drove and if something prompted shooting and they ended up being unarmed, you’d need a throw-down gun to toss in the car so the shooting would be ‘righteous.’

            I decided to just stay on the floorboard while he went and wrote them a ticket for going through a stop sign at ‘walk speed.’ The floorboard wasn’t too uncomfortable and it was somewhat emotionally comforting after all of the paranoia Officer Fred instilled in me.

            My last night of trying ‘ride-alongs,’ I was once again paired with Officer Bob. He was in a jovial mood compared to my other rides with him. I soon found out he had solved all his problems with his third wife.

            Me: “Wow. Good for you. So you two straightened everything out?”

            Officer Bob: “Nah. But I’ve got a girlfriend now, so I can pretty much ignore the bitch from hell.”

            Me: “Wow. Good for you? I don’t know what to say. Congratulations?”

            Officer Bob: “You can meet her a little later if you want.”

            Me: “Nah, that’s okay. Maybe next time. You don't have to go out of your way.”

            Officer Bob: “Not a problem at all. Don’t worry about it.”

            A couple of hours later we were flying down a back road about ten miles out of town –and the area we were supposed to be patrolling. I knew we were going pretty fast, but couldn’t see the speedometer with all the cop crap between us.

            Me: “We’re going a little fast, aren’t we Bob?”

            Officer Bob: “Yeah. It sure doesn’t feel like 110 mph though, does it?”

            I felt my butt cheeks scrunch together to hold onto the seat (yeah, like that would help if we hit anything).

            Me: “Um, Bob? If it’s okay to ask, how come we’re going so fast?”

            Officer Bob: “’Cause my girlfriend lives fifteen miles from town and we only get a half-hour break.”

            Me: “Oh.”

            Officer Bob: “Well, there’s that and we’re leaving our area of patrol, so I’ll have to get back before they find out.”

            The short time that Officer Bob was with his new girlfriend in her single-wide, I scrunched down on the floorboard. I’m not sure why, but it felt a bit more comforting there. And as I wadded into a fetal ball it occurred to me that once again I’d tried a career and failed. But this time when I added it to my list it would read:

            Police officer: They sucked.

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The Day the Music Dies

11/16/2013

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My mind often goes off in strange directions. Sometimes I can follow its route, sometimes not so much. Sometimes I have no clue as to how my mind got from point ‘A’ to point ‘Q’ without letting me in on its travels.

But in this case, I was able to follow it fairly well.

I was stopped at a light when an older Honda Civic (driven by a teenage boy, which matters) pulled up alongside me. You’ve seen this kind of car before: lowered to the point of scraping the ground, huge fin on the trunk that made me wonder if the back end would take flight, (the fin had to be compensating for…well, I won’t go there), an exhaust that was as big around as a trash can and as loud as a coughing, sputtering Jolly Green Giant.

The whole gaudy symbol of teenage-boy insecurity I could live with. I just shake my head knowing the police and/or accidents would either help the kid quickly grow up or bury him in some form or another –be it figuratively through tickets or literally.

It amazes me when teens driving a car like this cannot figure out why the police pull them over so often. Come on kids, it’s called profiling and in your car’s case, it works. But I digress…

I could live with the obnoxiousmobile running roughly along side me, but what I had trouble with was the ‘music.’

To be honest, I’m not sure it was music. All I could hear was a booming bass that sounded like a cannon going off to a 4/4 beat. It was so loud it rattled my doors and windows. The passenger kid’s head bobbed in unison with the explosions as though he enjoyed it. His hearing will be as acute as a brick’s by the time he’s thirty.

I had my window down and smiled to the passenger kid and made a motion for him to roll his window down. He rolled it down as the driver lowered the volume on the cannon. The kid looked at me.

I smiled very politely and said, “You do know your music sucks, right? And there’s probably better than an odds-on bet that most of the town would rather not listen to it with you.”

He looked at me for a second, surprised, but then his hand shot up like a gunfighter’s. I felt sorry for him then, because when he waved I noticed he was missing three fingers and a thumb. Had I known he had a disability, I might not have been so forward.

The driver hit the gas as the light turned green and the Civic coughed and sputtered away in a cloud of blue smoke. I’m not sure, but I think the passenger might have yelled, “Luck to you” as they pulled away –which was cool, because not many adults run into the good kids out there in the world and there are a lot of them.

As I drove on I thought about the kids’ ‘music.’

I don’t think it classifies as music, but then, the generation before me didn’t think my music classified as music and the generation before them probably thought the same, all the way down the line to the new guy Gog hitting a rock with a stick instead of hitting two sticks together the way it should be done, the way Banga would have done it in the old caves.

And I thought about the old Don McLean song “American Pie” and how most of the lyrics made absolutely no sense, but that everyone just knew it was about Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash. I always thought it was about those good old boys drinking whiskey and rye and then somehow drowning in a dry levee. And I wondered who got the Chevy when they were gone.

Then I had my small epiphany: The day the music dies is different for each of us.

It’s the day we realize the next generation’s music sucks. In my case, it was August 14, 1980. I turned on my car stereo and heard Devo’s “Whip It” for the first time. That all time song suckfest was quickly followed by Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration,” and the final nail in the coffin, “Funky Town” by the one-hit wonder group called Lipps Inc.

Music hasn’t been the same since. It pretty much died.

It does live on for other, younger people.

But one day, the nice kid who waved with his disabled hand and yelled “Luck to you!” will discover his own date when the music died.

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Why I Do It

11/9/2013

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As many of you know, besides writing I also teach English/Language Arts. Like many teachers I often wonder why I do it. The bureaucracy can be overwhelming. Parents can often be overbearing –or worse, when it comes to their kids, enabling. I actually put in a lot of hours I am uncompensated for. The list goes on. (See my previous post on meetings. It’s actually very close to true.)

            I know there are those who would quickly point to the advantages of teaching. They would argue I have more time off during the year, great benefits, job security and a host of other things.

            To a large extent, they would be right. But those things are slowly fading away. More and more the time off I receive is brought about because of budget cuts and the district saves money by not having to pay me for those days. Like many in our country, our benefits are continually cut while our rates continue to climb. As far as job security goes, well, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and although I’ve heard of the word ‘tenured,’ I’ve not seen nor experienced it in any form in my district.

            Honestly though, I’m not complaining. I made the choice to go into teaching and overall it’s been a good choice for me. After all, every job has its good points as well as its bad. Yet lately it seems like the bad points have been outweighing the good and I stop and wonder why I continue to do it.

            Yesterday, I was reminded why.

            One of the classes I teach is American Literature. The 11th graders who make up the class are also enrolled in U.S. History, so it’s my hope that through literature, I can help show the human side, the human perspective of historical events.

            I tried to do that the other day with Patrick Henry’s speech to fellow delegates at the Virginia Convention of 1775. Most people are familiar with at least part of the last line of the speech, where Henry –attempting to persuade his fellow delegates to go to war with England—says, “…as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

            I tried to put the speech into context. I gave the speech my best heartfelt, soulful reading. I spoke with passion, asked students questions and, overall, was met with blank stares, heavy sighs, and weak attempts at hiding cell phones.

            The harder I tried, the less the students seemed to care. I could begin to imagine exactly what Patrick Henry was up against at the convention. In a last ditch effort to get students engaged in what is one of the most perfect persuasive speeches ever written, I turned to the white board and wrote “50 points extra credit.”

            For some reason, the words ‘extra credit’ gets students’ attention and 50 points in my class is a decent chunk of points towards their grade (which I really don’t give a damn about. I’m much more concerned with what they learn rather than what letter grade they have). Of course they immediately asked me about the catch. I told them all they had to do was come to the front of the room and give a heartfelt reading of the last paragraph of Henry’s speech. That’s it: just the last paragraph. Of course, I reminded them it had to be a serious reading with as much passion as they could muster. I also guaranteed them that the rest of the class would listen respectfully and give them a well-deserved round of applause when they were done.

            Kids aren’t stupid. One quickly asked if the points earned were on a scale depending on how well they did with their reading. I assured them it was an all or nothing proposition. If they did it and gave it their full effort, they received full points. If they went up and made a joke out of it, they received nothing.

            There was whispering. There was quiet contemplation. For most 11th graders, standing alone in front of 35 or their peers is a very frightening thing.

Finally, there was the first volunteer. Then the next and then the next. Just to remind folks about the speech, here is Henry’s final paragraph the students had to read in front of the class.

“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace!
Peace!’ –but there is no peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that
sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our
brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that
gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be
purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almight God! I know not
what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Pretty heavy stuff. Read well, it’s also very powerful. It’s difficult enough to be a real challenge for students. Yet each student gave it his or her best shot and they did well. Hell, it was going so well I would have given them 100 extra credit points. It seemed as though with each reading the students were better understanding the piece and trying to put more and more passion into it.

And that’s when it happened.

The one student who I would have never guessed would try it stood up and walked to the podium I’d set up at the front of the room. She’s not the best reader in the world. She has difficulty with fluency. She told me early on in the school year that she simply would not read in front of the class. But there she was.

She started off rough. She had trouble with the word ‘extenuate’ which caused her to give a short, nervous giggle. The class remained dead silent. She struggled the first half and stopped at the word ‘brethren.’ She struggled with the word twice and then her eyes started to fill with tears. I told her, “It’s okay. It’s okay to pause, take a slow, deep breath and then continue.” She did and fought her way through the rest of the paragraph. When she got to ‘…give me liberty or give me death’ she raced to the finish.

It was something I hadn’t seen in years. She raised her eyes from the text and looked out on the class of students. There was a moment’s pause of dead silence.

Then the class erupted in applause, whistles, and shouts of how proud they were of her and for her. Her eyes filled again, but this time she was smiling.

I am very circumspect when it comes to any kind of contact with students. But I walked to the front of the room and gave her a hug. It goes without saying I felt proud of her and admired her courage. I also felt fortunate to be there to witness it.

And then I realized.

This is why I do it.

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A Melancholy Holiday

Super Cop

The Day the Music Dies

Why I Do It

William Martin

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