Zboysdad

A Little More Shelf Esteem

2006-07-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

Zboysdad
When I finally decide I can’t attend one more faculty meeting or listen to one more my-dog-ate-my-homework-on-the-way-to-my-grandmother’s-funeral-just-before-our-printer-ran-out-of-ink-and-my-mother-gave-birth-to-aliens-excuse, I think I’ll go into the trophy business.

It used to be that trophies were like academy awards and good genes—not everybody got them. But now, kids get trophies just for having parents literate enough to fill out the necessary registration forms and songs like “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” win academy awards.

On a shelf in my house, gathering dust along with all the books, sundry knick-knacks, happy meal toys, and other things of value, sits the one, individual, not-just-for-filling-out-a-registration-trophy that I had ever won. Sure I had a slew of medals and certificates for academic trivialities along the way, but I had no stomped-your-ass-now-you-can-go-home-like-the-loser-you-are-to-suck-on-a-Life-Saver-this-is-sports trophy.

As a member of the men’s volleyball team in college, I had won three conference championships and numerous tournaments, all of which came with team trophies roughly the size of a healthy second grader, but not until I entered a city league volleyball tournament where members of our college team split up to play on multiple teams, did I finally get my own stomp-your-ass-sports trophy, my own little golden statue to love and display prominently in my home or office.

And there that trophy has sat for 19 years, the lone and last Mohican of my athletic prowess—until this weekend.

Tennis used to be just a hobby for me, something I watched on television, played more often than was good for my really-needs-a-good-cleaning-cluttered garage, and something I could do a little better than the average couch potato who doesn’t know deuce from Doritos. But now, tennis is my job. As the assistant tennis coach at the school where I teach, I make up for an anorexic tennis résumé with private lessons from two different full-athletic-scholarship college phenoms, by reading every page of every tennis magazine that comes to my mailbox, and by applying everything I have ever learned about conditioning and competition from three years of conference championships and one trip to the Final Four in volleyball to tennis.

And because those who teach can also do, I found myself on a Sunday afternoon in the kind of heat that melts brain cells and makes even the strongest of sunscreens cry for its momma, on court twelve playing in the finals of Alamo City Adult Open Tennis Tournament. Of course it was the consolation finals of the old-and-not-very-talented division, but it was still the finals. And after sweating through two changes of shirts and surviving an early and late second set surge from my opponent, I walked off the court, reported my scores to the tournament desk, and received my second stomped-your-ass-now-go-home-like-the-loser-you-are trophy.

This year when the high school tennis season begins, I’ll walk onto the courts with a little more confidence and a tennis trophy of my own to love and display prominently in my home or office.

A Six Inch on Wheat with a Side of Cosmic Apron Strings

2006-02-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad

Aside from the occasional sleepover and trip to Grandma’s, our boys have led fairly close-to-home and sheltered lives. That all changes this weekend.

On Friday, every Animal Planet, laws-of-nature, mother-bear instinct woven into the fabric of my wife’s genetic tapestry will converge against the push-them-out-of-the-nest pragmatism that also exists in nature to create a schism in the prehensile, cosmic Pangaea that is parenthood because Zachary, first-born fruit of our loins, leaves on his first no parent, non-family, out-of-town-trip-with-people-not-related-to-us excursion. I, of course, have other concerns that have nothing to do with nest occupancy.

Back when I was growing up, in the days when the world was right, one could not officially become part of the church youth group until turning thirteen, or at least making it to the seventh grade. But now with the dissolving of junior highs into middle schools, my harmonic days of Aquarius have become wholly usurped and sullied by a generation that considers Dakota Fanning a star (C’mon, Matt Lauer. What pre-teen girl can’t scream at the top of her lungs on cure?).

Now, at twelve-years old and in the sixth grade, my oldest son Zachary will travel to Waco, Texas on a chartered bus to sing with our church youth group at Baylor University. Zachary, along with two other twelve-year olds and the senior citizen of the group, a thirteen-year old, will share a hotel room and hours alone behind locked doors, free from adult supervision to revel in the joys and smells of machismo. To the hotel maid who clocks in at the Fairfield Inn on Saturday morning, I offer profound apologies and swear by all that is pure to me, Diet Coke and Project Runway, that as parents of these children, we did all we could to instill some modicum of decorum in them—or at least the concept of occasional flushing.

And as the day of fly-the-coop reckoning approaches, and my wife weeps for lost days of Saturday morning snuggles in footie pjs soon replaced by dates with spiral-curled harlots doped up on Ortho Nuveau, I trust that the lessons I’ve imparted along the way, multiple, strung-together-by-hyphens words are better than brevity, Corn Nuts and Pepsi are the curse and urine of Satan respectively, and stupid people should all be cloistered into communities like lepers, will hang on the tablets of his heart forever, I also realize that along the way, some of life’s important lessons, like how to order at Subway, may have slipped our attention.

In his twelve years, Zachary has graduated from Happy Meals to Mighty Kids Meals, mastered the obligatory four-item cross-cuisine kid’s menu (mac & cheese, grilled cheese, chicken strips, or a hamburger—sometimes you’ll see the corn dog pop up on a kid’s meal menu but only at really class places), and conquered the Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet like a Hun off his Ritalin, all the while maintaining his Kate Moss on crack boyish figure, but he’s never experienced the bliss of ordering a sandwich with every condiment concoction and crudités permutation possible, minus all the annoying chopping, spreading, and messy clean-up.

Of course, one practice run through Subway and the knowledge that he can order all the extra pickles he wants and choose cheeses from a panoply of choices, and the second biggest obstacle of this one-step-closer-to-asking-for-the-car-keys-and-his-prodigal son-share-of-the-family-fortune- (my unpublished novel and his mother’s tortilla soup recipe) trip goes into the been-there-got-the-value-meal category.

But more than whether there will be enough adult supervision or if he’ll change his underwear all weekend, I worry about Zachary’s hair. The boy will wash his face, brush his teeth, and bathe with the frequency of an obsessed tabby, but he will walk out of the door in the morning with his hair flying off in more directions than Jet Blue on coupon weekend

This, however, may not be a bad thing. Zachary’s hair hassles make keep him off the Ortho-harlots radars a bit longer, and the chaperones will have no trouble finding him when he goes back for extra cheese and more pickles.

Post trip report: Zachary returned home in one piece and with his hair combed. Chaperone reports state he combed his hair the entire weekend. He came home with a couple of Baylor pencils, a Baylor rubber duckie, and a Baylor track and field t-shirt. He also informed me that on the way back home the group stopped at a mall food court for dinner. Zachary ate at Subway and ordered the usual.

Fruitcake: The Sequel

2005-12-15T08:26:00.000-08:00

Restless and anxious, I waited for the Sunday paper to arrive. Peeking through curtains and twisting down the narrow slats of the mini-blinds, I surveyed the tundra in front of me awaiting the delivery of this weekly tome replete with information both trivial and consequential from an intrepid courier sojourning masterfully from subdivision to subdivision braving gate codes and speed bumps to fulfill his duty with precision of an artisan. Actually, I watched in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt while the coffee brewed hoping the paper would land close enough to front door that not everyone on the block would see my faded periwinkle boxers festooned with ornately decorated Easter eggs nine months removed from the holiday.

When the paper finally arrived, I sprang out the front door like a man who had already had too much coffee, oblivious to eggs on my drawers and the eggs on the stove, snatched up the paper and flew into the kitchen with my periodical prize and rifled through the pages, a man in search of his grail.

Usually, I check the sports pages first to see how little Notre Dame coverage will appear, or grab a quick chuckle from the conservative fascists whose loquacious ballyhoos appear daily as letters to the editor, or flip through the circulars to find out who has the best price on Diet Coke for the week, but today, I had other treasures in mind.

Strewn across the kitchen table like a high school biology frog dissection gone horribly wrong, sections of the newspaper lay cast aside until I found them, those glossy Eves of enticement that beckon us to sample of their fruits and save money while doing so—the coupons. Frugality, however, had nothing to do with my quest. Saving thirty-five cents on furniture polish or saving a dollar when I purchase two of my favorite sugar-crusted cereals lacked the requisite pulchritude to lure my concerted gaze. Instead, the glossy-half-page Siren summoning my latent licentiousness came from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas and features the most decadent of holiday indulgences: The Fruitcake.

Each year when the ads begin to appear in the coupon section of the Sunday paper, I lust over the scrumptious offering of compacted cake, candied fruit, and nuts like a 14 year-old who finds his older brother’s hidden stash of nudie magazines. And like the paved-with-good-intentions-person I am, I set the high-gloss enticement aside fully pledging to officially order my Collin Street Bakery fruitcake and thus fulfill my destiny and take hold of this confectioned grail. Except, I never do.

So, let the world scoff at the fruitcake. Let the generic of mind regurgitate the staid holiday cliché of the regifted, rotating fruitcake because I know that others like me exist. Somewhere some other boxer-clad pariah salivates from an urbane palette at the thought of slicing into the cornucopia of color and texture that is the fruitcake. Someday we’ll form a support group but for now, I’ll just let the world think of me as a fruitcake.

By the way, I just put my order in to the Collin Street Bakery. Now I’ll spend my vacation peeking through curtains and twisting down the narrow slats of the mini-blinds looking for the UPS guy and my Christmas gift to myself. I hope he doesn’t mind that I answer the door in my boxers with a knife. He’ll probably just think I’m some kind of fruitcake.

Of Benchmarks, Bikes, and Little Nike Ankle Socks

2005-10-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

Today, my students begin their second day of taking a TAKS ELA benchmark test. And with a new school-day schedule of 50 minute classes, it will likely take them the majority of the week to finish. Naturally, I lament the instruction time lost to additionally mandated testing; however, with all that has happened in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, weathering a few days of bubbling, fretting, and exaggerated sighing by my students over a test they feel nothing but contempt for seems not only possible, but cathartic.

With all the uncertainty of displacement, gas prices, and the future of places once called home, the structure and familiarity of a benchmark test is a welcomed reminder of all we have to be thankful for.

After seven years of having my own classroom, I transferred schools this past year and now float into five different classrooms throughout the day. Nothing of me exists before or after I leave the rooms I float into. No more posters reflecting my idiosyncratic likes. No more stuffed cows adorning the tops of computers, and no more sense of ownership as I trudge from room to room. My teaching has been reduced to that of interloper. I am that generic “Occupant” squatting until the true tenant returns. But today as I push my cart, I’m mindful of the fact that I still have a job to go to every day and that everything in my world is just as it was on the day Hurricane Katrina sent the worlds of so many others into a maelstrom of confusion and loss. I may have lost a room of my own, but my place remains firmly entrenched.

Along with losing a classroom space to call home, I’ve also lost a commute beset with traffic and caffeine-crazed drivers and now ride my bike to school three to four times a week with my son. Of course riding my bike to school, along with my new schedule and work assignment as assistant tennis coach, means I have to lug multiple changes of clothing with me when I ride to school. There are the professional dress clothes I carry with me that, I have to re-iron once I get to the coach’s locker room to shower and begin my day. There are also the tennis clothes that I change into after teaching three classes in the morning before sprinting off to my athletic period smack in the middle of the day. Then of course there is the three-minute shower after the athletic period before changing back into my professional dress clothes to teach two more classes. The two classes are, of course, followed by after school practice, which requires yet another change of clothing (putting on clothes not yet dry from the previous workout is a practice I highly recommend avoiding). And then there is the ride home with tennis bag strapped on back loaded with the sweat laden cast-offs of previous days fermenting with micro-organisms that beg for washing and a dousing of Febreeze.

But today, as I cinch my Superman tie around my neck after the athletic period, I’ll remember that I have too many clothes in my closet. I’ll remember that I have enough little Nike ankle socks to wear double pairs to practice everyday and not have to do laundry until the weekend. And most importantly, I’ll remember that I get to ride bikes to school with my son and that the only thing that separates us is a bit of pavement and a couple of hours during the school day.

Regardless of benchmarks, state-mandated tests, or after-school duty out in a parking lot in sweltering Texas heat, we are blessed. This too I will remember when the time comes to grade all those benchmark tests.

Personal Foul: Deondre's Mom

2005-10-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

Deondre’s mom wouldn’t shut up.

Standing behind me for an entire Sunday afternoon YMCA flag football game, she bellowed an incessant stream of sideline commentary.

“Deondre, what you doing?”
“Deondre, pay attention to the game.”
“Deondre, support yo team.”
“Deondre, why you talkin’ all the time?”

At that comment, I wanted to hand Deondre’s mom a mirror, but I sat there the stoic observer trying to watch the game and ignore her at the same time.
Maybe coaching high school tennis has mellowed me. Tennis coaches don’t bark out verbiage during matches. Tennis coaches don’t, or rather can’t, offer instructions or admonitions in the middle of a point, let alone a game. Instead, we have to wait until the game ends and quietly call our player over to chat briefly before the next game begins. Deondre’s mom could not survive a tennis match. Hooping and hollering doesn’t exist in tennis. Tennis parents cheer politely for winners and occasionally, but not too loudly, call out, “Nice shot.”

But as Deondre, and everyone on the sidelines, knows, football, even football sans pads, helmets, and an entourage of coaches, and tennis look nothing alike.

Somewhere along the way of ballyhooing football as a barbaric exercise of Neanderthal proportions, our ten-year old son Zane expressed and interest in the pig-skin purveyor of contusions, concussions, and cracked ribs. So, after multiple viewings of Rudy, we opted for the everybody-plays-we’re-all-about-sportsmanship flag-football league of the YMCA.

And there I sat in my multi-purpose folding canvass chair baking and basking in the hundred-degree plus temperature of a typical October day in San Antonio listening to Deondre’s mom, dressed completely in solid black, badger him from across the field and introducing myself to the nomenclature of flag football.

Contrary to popular stereotype, growing up in Texas did not inure me to the intricacies of football, nor did I ride a horse to school. And while I faithfully watch the Irish of Notre Dame stride onto the field each week and have seen Touchdown Jesus with my own eyes, football has always been little more than an excuse for snuggling under a blanket while cradling a cup of hot chocolate.

And while I couldn’t understand the need for smearing streaks of black grease under one’s eyes, plenty of kids were steak-free and managed to survive without lasting damage to their corneas, I did understand the nuances that had nothing to do with football and everything to do with sports. Eleven kids lined up on the field for each team, but, as always seems to be the case, only about three kids on each team had any real hope of being in the game. Though the other eight ran about in a purposeful fashion, there was more chance of Deondre’s mom shutting up than them serving any real purpose in the game. And as always, there was a coach’s son on each team, and as always, when it came time to give the kids on the field a chance to rest and the kids on the bench a chance to play, the coach’s son somehow always manages to stay in the game. Score another victory for nepotism.

Next weekend, if there’s not a tennis match to coach, I’ll come back for another game. Maybe the weather will show a little mercy, and maybe Deondre’s team will play way before or after Zane’s team, but in every game, someone wins and someone loses. Today Deondre’s team won by two touchdowns, and losing, no matter the sport, feels exactly the same.

Hair Today and Tomorrow Too

2005-08-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

Forty years ago, I came to Earth in the middle of haircut, and I haven’t stopped thinking about my own hair since.

Ages before she became the tech-savvy, big business professional she recently retired from being, my mother, in one of those get-a-skill-you-can-fall-back-on-moves that preceded the days of hanging out in graduate school as a professional student until opportunity not only knocked but kicked the door in, went to beauty school and learned to, in the words of Steel Magnolias’s Truvy, “bang some hair.”

Regularly, and usually on Saturdays, women would drop by the house to have their hair and their wigs coiffed, poofed, permed, clipped, colored, and cut into beehive masterpieces that we usually saw buzzing the halls of church on Sunday. And as I’ve been told, this is where the story of me began.

Nine months pregnant and standing on her feet in the middle of boofing up some hallelujah hairdo, my mother realized that labor waits for no job, although this time it did because she insisted on finishing the do, and that on April 29 her dream of naming a child after Little House on the Prairie star Michael Landon, although my father swears it’s strictly biblical and I’m named after the archangel who waged battle with Satan himself, would come true. Forty-five minutes after dousing a do with a parting shot of Aqua Net hairspray, my mother met the best head of hair she’d ever work on again. Yes, I have three brothers, but their hair doesn’t hold a comb to mine.

Over the years, my hair has changed and chopped with the times. It has been long, short, feathered, parted to the right, left, and up the middle. It has been permed, shaved, chili bowled, and caked with enough gel, mousse, pomade, and hair glue to form a calcified veneer around my scalp. And like no product of high school and college in the ‘80s could escape, I too, even up until 1990, sported the mullet. Of course on me, with my hair, it looked good.

But with the passing of time and the expanding of waists, mine still the smallest of all my brothers, my hair has undergone yet another transformation—it’s turning gray. Slowly over the last two years tiny, errant colorless invaders have crept in and planted roots in my head. Initially I could brush back the assault with a lean toward the mirror and a blunt pair of tweezers but like Baptists to a potluck, more and more kept coming. Eventually, matters called for permanent help, the kind that comes in bottle labeled cocoa bean #54.

Perhaps the shellac surrounding my scalp protected me from the Love Canal side effects of hair dye, but reason returned and vanity subsided—slightly. In the two months before my fortieth birthday, I have refused to dye my hair anymore, but I have also refused to get a hair cut because once shorn, the gray that congregates mostly in the space above my ears and hides under a blanket of still-brown hair screams for attention like a breastfed triplet. Never the less, the barber beckoned, actually it was the mid-level cosmetology school graduate at the Great Clips Salon around the corner from home, but the extra time spent jostling hair in the morning won out, and I relented to a cut.

From the moment I stepped out of the chair, nettles of white jutted off the sides of my head like spikes on a mace decrying the winnowing of my youth. Once home a few stares into the bathroom mirror almost convinced me to Easter egg my head again, but then the effulgence of twelve 60-watt vanity bulbs shining like God from a flaming shrub blinded me into epiphany: Regardless of color, my hair always looks damn good.

Renewed by the winsome senescence of my hair, I am embracing forty as my Byzantine assault on aging. I will not go gently into that old age but instead will rage against the passing of time with a treadmill, hair gel, and possibly smaller wattage bulbs in the bathroom.

Cruise Control Off

2005-07-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

Just a few weeks before turning 40, I went into my garage and pulled from a shelf I put up years before I knew the mystical powers of a level a box of one-of-these-days-we’ll-put-these-into-an-album photos and took a schlep down memory lane. On this trip, I wound up in Room 306 of Anderson Hall at Hardin-Simmons University where I lived with Jimmy Pogue during the spring semester of my freshman year. And there in a photo of my side of the room, on a chocolate-brown colored cork board that hung on the wall adjacent to the bed, tacked up next to a Jose Cuervo Gold beach volleyball poster of Karch Kiraly and ticket stubs from the Air Supply concert at Abilene Christian University hung a glossy-coated-full-color-worth-a-thousand-words image of my late-high school, early-college obsession: Brooke Shields.

Almost 20 years have passed since I graduated from college and the temporal trivialities of baby adulthood have gone the way of magical metabolism and dogmatic decisions, but, even today, Brooke Shields remains, to me, an iconoclastic manifestation of classic beauty and a harmless reminder of the winsome ways of college when my biggest concern centered around the number of meals left on my weekly meal plan by the weekend, so when Tom Cruise came out on national television criticizing Brooke Shields for admitting to and advocating the use of medically prescribed anti-depressants for postpartum depression, I circled the mini-vans of my multi-kid reality and mounted my support for a woman courageous enough to admit that the blessed event of childbirth had left her “completely overwhelmed” and “[not] at all joyful.”

But more than defending an icon-school-boy-crush of my youth, defending Brooke Shields meant defending my own family. Tom Cruise’s bellicose tirade against psychiatry as a pseudo-science and his caterwauling that kids on attention-deficit medications are akin to junkies on heroin, made me sorry that I enjoyed Top Gun as much as I did and made me really regret the hours of my life wasted on Magnolia and Vanilla Sky.

As parents, my wife and I belittled the issue of ADD medications for children. We emphatically rested in the camp that chalked up Ritalin and its cohorts as the last vestiges of lazy parents and teachers more interested in pragmatism than peculiars. Then, our oldest son started having trouble in school. Months of debate, discussion, consultation, and hand-wringing over a diagnosis of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and attention-deficit disorder all converged with one question from our pediatrician, “Is his learning being affected?” We started medications that week. Teachers noted the change immediately, and we didn’t. All our concerns about mood shifts, and fluctuations in personality, temperament, and weight never happened, and we now had a child who could finish a school day feeling good about himself and having learned the lessons of the day. When we faced the same issues with our second child, we followed the arduous process and made a decision that might not be right for someone else’s family but fit the needs of our child.

In another of Tom Cruise’s interviews of histrionic espousals, he bellowed that it’s easier to get addicts off of heroin than it is to wean children off psychotropic drugs like Ritalin. But life in the real world isn’t Hollywood and preying on the fears of well-intentioned parents does the same disservice to them that Brooke Shields said Cruise did to mothers everywhere when he suggested she handle her depression with vitamins and exercise. Parents already have bullies, puberty, team practices, braces, and the rising cost of milk and college tuition along with heaping doses of violent video games to contend with without the ravings of omniscient celebrities.

On May 26 this year, our boys finished another year of school and took their last medically-prescribed ADD pill until August. On May 27 they spent their first day at our neighborhood pool unfazed by their cold-turkey withdrawal. Tom Cruise is not a doctor; perhaps he should stop playing one on TV.

Sunday School On Wheels

2005-04-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

She may not always agree, but my wife Venee gets the privilege of carting our three boys around most of the time. Zachary and Zane both go to school where she teaches, and Zion spends his days at the preschool across the street. So every morning and afternoon the four of them load up our little Mitsubishi Outlander and schlep up and down Tezel road for miles of stories that I only hear about later.

And off to the side of the road, at the corner where Culebra turns into Tezel, and Grissom turns into Culebra (I’ve tried to understand that mystery for years) on the way to Carson Elementary from our house, HEB juts out as a grocery store behemoth that beckons our little car into its lot on an almost daily basis. And on this particular day, Sunday School came to the HEB parking lot and flunked.

Like most boys, our three turn everything into a competition, friendly albeit, and walking back to the car is fodder for competition. Now four year olds are never partial to losing and are rarely ever good sports; Zion is no different. So in the spirit of brotherly love and possibly the promise sugarcoated reward, Zachary and Zane let their baby brother win.

Zachary, in the exaggerated panache we are accustomed to, gave his best slow motion, snail-paced rendition of a race and came in dead last. Zane restrained himself enough to come in second, and Zion lauded the exhilaration of victory over brothers from the second every door of the car closed. And Mom, never missing an opportunity for didactic inculcation swept into Sunday School mode faster than Baptists on their way to lunch.

“Zion, you know the Bible says the last shall be first and first shall be last.”

Silence hung in the air as the depths of spiritual truth sought to permeate the noggins of our three little angels when Zane broke the silence with the utterance of the age, “I still come in second, don’t I?”

Maybe we'll skip Sunday School fewer times this year.

(Hugh, I promised a short post--maybe this counts.)

Grade A Woes

2005-03-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

On the right side of my desk a book of reflections on the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel sits on top of a little cd notebook containing the McDougal Littell Audio Library. And tucked under the cd collection and Weisel book, stacks of papers awaiting my attention peek out to remind me that grades are due on Friday.

Today, some anonymous soul decided to assign a grade to one of my posts. Perhaps it's only fair because, as an English teacher, I often assign grades to the writing of others, and because, on occasion, I require my students to publish a post on their blogs or to post a comment on someone else's blog. So maybe it's just a case of tasting my own medicine, but I'd like to find this person so that he or she can help me with the grading I must complete. I wish grading were as easy as just anonymously slapping a letter atop a paper or tagging a blog post and then walking away, but if it were, I wouldn't dread it more than eating broccoli with my dentist. Because I think worksheets do little more than exercise students' skill with the pencil sharpener, most of the work and learning in my class comes through writing and through the dialectical nature of the class. And if I were one of those teachers who spend most of the class period tethered to the big teacher desk in the corner, I could find more time to grade; however, I spend most of the 90 minutes of each class on my feet engaged with the class and a drinking Diet Coke. And before anyone bemoans the fairness of teachers eating and drinking in class when students can't, my students can chow down in class as long as they clean up any mess they make. I prefer that eating in class not require multiple utensils nor delve much beyond finger and snack foods, but if the student brings enough to share with me, I’m flexible.

Grading, aside from the whole apple thing, reigns as my least favorite thing about teaching. It almost always creates an atmosphere of competition, and often, students and parents, mostly parents, have difficulty distinguishing between individual self-worth and a grade on a paper. There are the rubrics to follow, the students who debate every point, and then there are the students who pour every ounce of themselves into an assignment and yet, according to the standards and the rubric still fall short of passing. And on our report card and grading scale, there isn’t a column for effort.

But more than anything, grading becomes pervasive, a nagging pustule that haunts every free moment. There are about 70 English students who turn in compositions and answers to essay questions for me to grade. And there are about 50 journalism students who turn in news stories, editorials, features, columns, and captions for me to read. This morning I packed an extra bag filled with nothing but graded papers and papers to grade. Long after my wife and children went to bed, I blanketed the kitchen table with a panoply of student work, a bag of baked gourmet vegetable chips (it’s all we had in the house), a Diet Coke, and sat down to evaluate and assess student writing. Did the student show keen perception in analyzing the syntactical elements of Anaya’s writing? Did the student’s work show serious deficits or misinterpretations, or was it merely ambiguous and show a lack of understanding of the prompt or task? Did the writer generally demonstrate a good command of spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, usage, and sentence structure? Was the writer’s progression from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph smooth and controlled? Did the writer cross every t? Did the writer split any infinitives (which is antiquated and pointless assessment that has more to do with Latin than English)? Can I fudge a little to give this kid the one point necessary to pass? Am I grading this paper down because it’s poorly written, or am I grading it down because the kid who wrote it has been a Texas-sized ass all month long?

Most likely, this post will earn less than the B minus the anonymous grader gave “Burgers, No Buns” because it was written quickly and I have miles of grading to do before I sleep, but I won’t let that keep me from continuing to post. I love teaching and writing; it’s the grading I can do without.

Tonight's Menu: Sex and Cheese Pizza

2005-02-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Zachary thinks kissing on TV is gross. Eyes narrow into scrunched slits of disgust and his face seeks refuge under blankets, behind throw pillows, or submerged into the neck of his shirt, all to avoid the scarring visage of scripted romance.

At 11 years old and half-way through the fifth grade, life and all its realities swirl into a maelstrom of frenetic oblivion around Zachary, while somewhere, nestled within the cosmic mysteries and certainties of life’s bildungsroman, the genesis of puberty contemplates passing on one more swipe at the snooze button to begin the ritualistic stretch of rising from dormancy. Hibernation wanes, spring beckons, and I am forced by the fifth grade curriculum to don my dadhood and wax knowledgably, clinically, and sensitively about sex to the first fruit of my loins.

From the initial school open-house of the year, my wife and I knew that powerful forces outside our control, the Northside ISD school calendar, would dictate, even initiate, a primordial effluence of male bonding. All fifth grade boys in Northside, through the video Boy to Man, find themselves exposed to the magic of human blooming, when young men’s fancies turn to thoughts that send parents flocking to Barnes and Noble for the perfect, yet elusive, detailed, but not graphic holiest of grails—the embarrassment-free-human-growth-and-development-where-do-babies-come-from book complete with pop-up pictures, key terms in bold, and essay questions with answers in the back.

We knew as a fourth grader, Zachary still sat immobilized on the innocent side of childhood when he recounted to us what he wrote about for the class assignment: Write about a time you were embarrassed. Zachary wrote about the time he, as a kindergartener, mistakenly walked into the girls’ bathroom. Seizing on the opportunity of a teachable moment, my wife asked Zachary why he thought boys and girls had separate bathrooms. A raised eyebrow and contemplative moment later, Zachary answered, “Because boys are gross, and girls don’t like gross.” Pop-up reproduction books could remain on the shelf; puberty and curiosity still snored loudly in the hibernation of childhood.

But like spring and standardized testing in Texas, there are certain events that no amount of procrastinating and head burying can deter. On Friday, February 18, the Nile-size rite of passage for 5th graders at Carson Elementary would usher these nascent yearlings from a world of recess and ring pops to the skid row world of MTV where cleavage is cinched up to the neck and not having an STD elevates one from skank to paragon of virtue—except for Zachary. He would claim the pinnacle of childhood jubilations on that day: A parent-sanctioned hooky-from-school day.

Before the next school day, Zachary and Dad would have the talk. Before bits of truth and the rampant ravings of near-pubescent 11 year olds who only grasped and understood a portion of the Boy to Man video began to further entrench the playground lore of the root causes of blindness or that kissing causes pregnancy, Zachary would hear the truth from me.

With President’s Day observed as a school holiday, I now had an extra day added to the year I had already wasted to broach the taboo topic. Class would resume at 7:50 am on Tuesday, so Monday night I took Zachary to where every conversation of consequence should begin: We went to Chili’s.

Now having the hostess hand Zachary a children’s menu and crayons as we followed her to our table did little to assuage any concerns I had about the timing and content of the evening’s purpose, but even the worst of procrastinators must eventually ignore at least some of life’s little distractions.

Zachary ordered french fries and a cheese pizza with a Sprite, while I thought something more adult-like seemed apropos for the occasion. I ordered margarita and lime grilled chicken and shrimp with a side of steamed broccoli and a Diet Coke. Most of the time I argue that vegetables cause cancer, but tonight I thought I’d risk my health, carcinogens be damned, to look more like a grown-up. And in between refills of Diet Coke and Sprite, I launched into the changes that happen to boys when they begin their journey to manhood. We talked about how Mommy and Daddy met, fell in love, got married, and then had children, a bit of didactic impartation to chew on with dinner.

There were only a few shrimp, so I ate all of them but left about a third of the chicken sitting on my plate; I think I would have been happier with the deep-fried chicken tenders. More Diet Coke and Sprite came, and I snagged a couple of Zachary’s fries before wrapping up the conversation and the pizza Zachary didn’t finish.

Zachary will probably still keep hiding his face when couples kiss on TV, and I’m sure that at some point we’ll have this conversation again because the second I finished divulging the mysteries and magic of life, Zachary embarked on a gesticulated-laden description of Stitch: The Movie, complete with animated sound effects of experiment #625 who had advanced language programming and could make a good sandwich, despite being lazy and a coward.

Puberty still slumbers deep inside of Zachary somewhere, and I only have one regret from the boy to man talk night at Chili’s: No one will ever believe I ate any of my broccoli.

Frosted Blueberry No More

2005-02-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

On the first viewing of the house, we loved everything about it except the pantry. On the second viewing of the house, we loved everything about the house even more, except the pantry. Now that we own the house, we also own the pantry, and we're still not all that sold on it.

At our house, we tend to stuff the pantry. If we had a pantry the size of a small country, we'd wage war on the country next to us in order to expand our borders. Since our pantry comes nowhere near small country size and is actually closer to the size of the locker I had in high school, we balance, stack, and shove cans, boxes, and the sundry other packaged items anywhere something in unlikely to fall and cause bodily injury or worse--a mess to clean up.

On the top shelf, the one out of reach for my 5' 2" wife, boxes and canisters that, by now, must be growing some manner of beast or fungi that our children can use when they get to their advanced science classes peer in solemn regret upon the popular food entering and exiting below. On the bottom shelf, standing in line from end to end, clear containers filled with rings of oats, squares of wheat, and marshmallows of varying colors, shapes, and sizes fly in and out of the pantry at all hours of the day. And for the cereal that doesn't fit on the bottom shelf, hallowed ground beneath the row of sugarcoated whole-grained goodness dutifully keeps the cereal ready for use. But just above and slightly to left of the all-cereal shelf, in a place accessible to young and short alike, in a place where, when the pantry door opens at the appointed angle, beams of sunlight gravitate as if commanded by a supremacy beyond their control, empire blue boxes of the quintessential breakfast-on-the-go-perfect-for-anytime-of-day-snack, Pop-Tarts reign as the sachem snack of the pantry.

Frosted blueberry Pop-Tarts wrapped in shiny foil packages hermetically sealed to ensure freshness always occupied a place of honor on the pantry shelf as my favorite of the toaster pastry varieties. And though occasionally I have strayed to some exotic flavor-of-the-month like wildberry, a chemically created mutation of multiple berries fused into one mega and, hence the name, wild, berry, frosted blueberry remained the pastry of my eye.

In college I experimented with the Dutch apple variety because Tracy Ward's face contorted in fits of taste bud titillation whenever he spoke of Dutch apple Pop-Tarts, that I too became fixated on their tempting tastes for a season. But again, none could sway me permanently from the berry goodness of frosted blueberry until-- frosted brown sugar cinnamon.

Oh the scintillating delight of this ambrosia. This divine creation, warm or toasted, festooned in monochromatic browns, utterly cast down the frosted blueberry Pop-Tart from its lofty seat of salivatory supremacy to the less lofty role of second favorite.

Perhaps my hankering for the cinnamon delicacy rests in some preordained genetic coding masterfully laid out by the grand chef of the cosmos, or perhaps it could be that I've just always liked cinnamon. Cinnamon toast, cinnamon sprinkled above and mixed in oatmeal, cinnamon and sugar married atop oven-fresh chocolate-chip cookies have long enjoyed a seat of favor in my dietary repertoire. But so has the blueberry.

Blueberry flavoring itself remains a prominent part of my snacking palette. I have an affinity for blue-colored food. Blue Jell-O in the line at Luby's always warrants a second look, and I seem to always find myself saving the blue crunch berries until they alone remain floating in my milk. BooBerry cereal continues as a seminal favorite, especially around Halloween, and blueberry flavored syrup poured on pancakes at the IHOP is a choice I will always reach for. And on occasion, I've been known to actually eat a natural-grown-on-a-bush-somewhere-by-a-fruit-herder blueberry. But when it comes to my pantry, along with the flavor and character of the moment market-driven Pop-Tarts, the ones adorned with sprinkles, injected with cream filling, or iced with frosting made to look like spider webs, the ones that my kids eat, the box of brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts marked "Dad Only!" will reign as my ultimate Pop-Tart favorite flavor--at least until I discover a new favorite.

Burgers, no buns

2005-01-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

Like the good Baptists we were, Tracy Ward, Hugh Atkinson, and I met in the student center of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary everyday at 10 am to skip chapel and play cards. Each of us graduated from the same small liberal arts private Baptist university and put in the mandated semesters of chapel attendance required for graduation. Since SWBTS had no compensatory chapel requirements, the three of us found our spiritual renewal in camaraderie, cards, and deep fried cherry pies.

We weren't the only devout Baptists skipping chapel, so one of us would get to the student center first, grab a table, set up squatter’s rights, and wait for the others to come in plop down their backpacks and spend the next hour in Diet Coke debauchery.

I think it was Hugh and I who carried decks of cards in our backpacks, so whoever got their first played pit boss for the day and set the table for whatever game of chance and choice we settled on for the day. I introduced them to a game I learned at Ball State University called Euchre but most of the time we played a game called moola. I don't exactly remember how the game is played, but I do know that at some point it involved yelling out, "Moola!"

Most of the games we played needed a fourth. Sometimes it was Cody Caywood, and sometimes it was Jerry Bowen. But at the core of the games were Tracy, Hugh and I, the three married guys. Bound together by friendship linked to our alma mater, we enjoyed those days laughing, recounting heyday hijinks, and basking in a bawdy sense of humor that probably could have gotten us excommunicated, if Baptists ever chose to do that. There were breaks for Diet Coke and coffee, and each day found one of us rummaging through backpacks scouring for loose change to snag a Mrs. Baird's fried pie from the vending machine. Tracy, Hugh, and I were in the same stage of life. Newly married, enrolled in graduate school, and sometimes only enough change between the three of us to split a fried pie. And because of this, we often extended our chapel moments to the weekends and our wives.

I can't remember why Hugh came so late on this particular Friday, but by the time he arrived, Tracy and I had already decided on a cookout for that evening at Tracy's. All that was left was for Hugh and Melissa to join us. But Hugh, and depending on your theology, God, had other plans.

We all still had friends back in Abilene, having spent the greater part of four years there, and Hugh and Melissa had plans to travel back to Hardin-Simmons for the weekend. I, however, am extraordinarily persuasive, and Tracy almost annoyingly infectious, so before we could find enough spare change to buy pie, Hugh and Melissa's plans changed and they would meet us at Tracy's with hamburger buns.

Tracy and Kathleen met and married while at Hardin-Simmons, and I met and married Venèe three years after graduating from HSU. Hugh and Melissa married while we were all in graduate school together, and Hugh had to miss a week of playing cards with us during chapel because his wedding didn't coincide with our spring break. So Hugh had a two-week spring break/honeymoon and spent one of the weeks expense-free in Orlando at Disney World by peeling off a winning ticket from an order of fries at McDonald's. Our lives and our wives were remarkably similar. All three of the wives worked full-time while the three of us chipped away at master's degrees and part-time jobs. None of us had children, and we relished our simple gatherings of food, anecdotes, and games.

Venèe and I arrived at Ward's first. Tracy had the grill burger-ready, and the rest of us busied ourselves with the business of burger accessories. Raw meat sizzled to varying levels of doneness, and sliced tomatoes, piles of pickles and rings of purple onions sat apportioned on a plate. And when Tracy came inside bearing meat on a plate, the only thing missing were hamburger buns. At some point we thought Hugh was just late. At another point, we just thought he was really late. And at another point we decided he wasn't coming, and we ate our hamburgers on sliced bread.

By the time Venèe and I left, we decided that Hugh and Melissa had gone on to Abilene and didn't get a chance to call us before they left. But on Monday, when Tracy called, I wished that I wasn't so persuasive.

My only experience with anything like this had come from television, so when I got off the phone with Tracy, I plopped down on the couch, numb and plagued with fear.

After getting buns to bring over to Tracy's, Hugh, edging out onto an access road, pulled in front of an oncoming truck. Later in the day that Tracy called, he and I would drive to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas to see Hugh in intensive care. Hugh had jet-black hair that cascaded down perfectly. Long enough to emanate an aura of cool, yet kempt enough to keep old blue-haired Baptist women from looking at you funny. We both had long hair. Mine stayed long because I played the role of Jesus at more church pageants and productions to bring me dangerously close to having my own personal God-complex, and Hugh's stayed long because Hugh had long hair. When we saw Hugh for the first time, there were tubes and wires, random and complex. There were noises, strange and disturbing, and there were smells, sterile and foreboding. Hugh's head tilted to the left and chunks of bangs, sleek and conditioned that reached down in length from just above his forehead to just above his nose, no longer existed. Why it struck me so deeply at the time that someone had to shave away the locks he wore like some badge of courage seems misplaced now, but I realize now that we cling to insignificant details to protect us from what we do not want to know.

Days passed without knowing. Weeks grew out of days. That Hugh would live, we finally understood, but answers still lay hidden deep within our fallen friend. Every day Tracy and I went to class in the morning and drove to the hospital after lunch. After two weeks, I eventually had to quit my part-time job. I can't remember what happened to my GPA that semester, but jobs and grades, two of the once-most-important-factors in my life evaporated into the realm where the urgent trumps the important.

Some images fade, while others blend. Cradled in some recess of memory are the images of large picture windows and pallid hues of green cast from fluorescent lights reflected off industrial tile while men crafted from the steel of experience and expectation struggle to find the strength to hope. And in that moment where all I could find resembled doubt and fear, I see the face of Hugh's father as he begins to tell us the story of Abraham and Isaac. A story of the faith of a father asked by God to sacrifice his son. Tears crept from the corners of his eyes as Mr. Atkinson told Tracy and me that he was prepared to give God his son if God asked, and then Hugh's father dipped his head down to excuse himself from the room as the tears took control of his eyes.

When doctors finally transferred Hugh to the Dallas Rehabilitation Center, Tracy and I continued to visit as traces of our friend began to return. Just a few months ago,when I hauled myself from San Antonio to Dallas for Hugh's 40th birthday party, I reminded Hugh what he said about me as I stood outside the door of his room at the rehab center waiting to see him. Hugh thinks he lost part of himself during the year it took him to recover, but that moment, a moment just between friends, told me that the Hugh I had known since we were freshmen in college remained.

At the party, I met Hugh's mother again, and she told me about the hamburger buns strewn about the backseat of Hugh's mangled car after the accident. She hugged me the way a mother hugs a son and thanked me for my friendship with Hugh throughout the events of fourteen years before. Love and tinges of guilt kept me coming back to the hospital after the accident, but love alone brought me to the party.

Hugh's hair is shorter now; so is mine. His voice resonates at a different pitch these days, something about all the tubes from the hospital; and if you look closely at the side of his head, you will see the remnants of a bunless cook-out gone a direction no one would choose. But if you look Hugh in the eyes and listen with more than your ears, you might get him to tell you what he said to me that day in rehab, but I hope not.

Cereal Wars

2005-01-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad

During my junior year in college, the cafeteria added a new selection to the breakfast cereal bar: Cap’n Crunch. Not crunch berries, or peanut butter flavor, just plain Cap'n Crunch. By dinner, the supply the cafeteria had ordered for the week disappeared in crumbs woefully stranded at the bottom of the clear, plastic cereal dispensers. The raisin bran and corn flakes bins perched at both sides of the Cap'n Crunch sat full, and the Froot Loops, normally the popular kid on the block, or rather bin, stood a partially full and twice-looked at choice to the new kid in town. Every day we would walk past the industrial thick white ceramic cereal bowls to see if a new shipment of Cap'n Crunch had docked and leave disappointed that we would miss our eight essential vitamins and nutrients. There was the occasional cereal bar trip to gather enough Froot Loops to garnish a couple of scoops of ice cream, but milk and bowl would not unite again until the AWOL Cap't returned. Of course, had I thought back three years to when I last lived in my parents' home, I would have realized how appreciative I should have been for the multiplicity of choices I had, even without the Cap'n. Growing up, we rarely had any good cereal in the house. My parents didn't have an aversion to sugared cereal, just the prices of them. Even coupons couldn't bring them into a range my parents deemed appropriate. Instead, we had things like Post-Toasties, plain and unadorned Corn Flakes, Shur-Fine Raisin Bran, and the occasional store-brand-knock-off version of sugar-frosted flakes. I'm not sure how things ever balanced out in the cost department because we must have gone through 10 pounds of sugar a week because it took at least two heaping spoonfuls of sugar to make Post-Toasties taste like anything anyone under forty would want to eat.

Today, now that I am almost forty, the cereal selections in my own pantry reflect a more sophisticated palate and a concerted effort to eat healthy. There are whole grain selections. There are selections that look like twigs and foliage wrested from fields of plenty. There are selections devoid of anything artificial, and there are selections with heaping doses of fiber attached as the toy prize inside. But next to those colonoscopy preventative cereal sits an homage to my college days and my own poke-in-the-eye to Post-Toasties--box after box of name brand, coupon-purchased, sugar-laden, prize-inside cereal.

Fortified with eight-essential vitamins and nutrients and a part of a complete breakfast, these character-endorsed, marshmallow filled meals hold a place of honor on the bottom shelf of the pantry where they are easily accessed by every member of the family. Maybe those boxes are veiled attempts to assuage the specters of insecurities from childhood brought on by too many spoons of sugar tumped onto unsweetened cereal. Maybe those boxes are shallow attempts to garner love from children by appealing to the childhood cravings for sweets. Or, maybe those boxes are just tasty spoonfuls of, at least, eight essential vitamins and nutrients. If it's any consolation to anyone, we only use skim milk.

Oh, De Toilet

2005-01-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, the toilet in the downstairs cow bathroom worked all on its own. It’s actually what real estate people list as a half-bath because it only has a toilet and a sink. And it’s the cow bathroom because, for such a small space, there is practically a herd of cattle in there. There’s a border that goes around three of the walls with cows lined up one after the other in what my wife calls earthy and muted colors, and a roll of that border sitting in the end table in the television room waiting to go on the last wall. Apparently my measuring skills need work because I didn’t have enough border paper to finish the job and had to order more. When the paper finally came in, the household beautification urge had already left me, and I’m kind of used to looking up and seeing the blank wall staring back at me. I did, however, manage to save enough of a piece from that last project to cover the light switch plate in the room which adds a certain Martha Stewart touch to the room. I think I may have even gotten the idea from her while begging my wife if I could change the channel, thinking she really can’t be watching this on purpose. Who really has twenty-four hours to soak chicken before you fry it? In fifteen minutes, I could be back from the Colonel’s with enough fried chicken for dinner and leftovers for two days of school lunches. Along with the border there are two cow-themed wooden plaques, a clever little framed picture of the back-sides of cows under the words “Dairy Air,” two framed cartoons of frolicking cows, and a picture meant to resemble “American Gothic” with a couple of farming cows. On the sink there is a ceramic cow soap-dish and a ceramic toothbrush holder, although no one brushes in that bathroom, that came as a set and matched the cow throw rug that isn’t in there anymore because it got ruined one time when toilet did a remarkable imitation of Old Faithful.

Supposedly it’s our bathroom reserved for guests and technically off-limits to the three children who live in our house so it that it will stay clean for that unexpected visitor who drops by and just has to go. But that is never the case.

Aside from people rarely ever just dropping by and needing to go, something about the genetic make-up of boys makes them wait until the absolute last minute before they decide it’s time to heed the call of nature and then it is a frenetic explosion of fury to the nearest shrub or closest bathroom. Since my wife frowns on non-actual-bathroom urination for the boys, something about bringing them up with a modicum of social decorum, the last minute need for relief means finding the closest bathroom. So in reality, the downstairs bathroom rarely stays suitable-for-visitors clean. But in the blame department, I can’t heap all of it on the pre-pubescents in the house.

Usually, stacked in the corner or really anywhere on the floor, are sections of newspaper waiting to be read, along with a couple of books perched atop the tank for my leisurely perusal, and more than a few pieces of junk mail that piqued my interest over the last couple of weeks. I’m not sure John Steinbeck and David Sedaris would relish sharing tank space with Tivo advertisements and Captain Underpants, but it could be worse. For a while, I kept flyers for strips of sod you could buy, roll out across some open space, water and then watch flora of all type magically usher forth. Mix that with the assorted action figure left drowning in the sink and the occasional plush cast aside in during the throes of the pee-pee dance and the little half-calf bath is fit for only immediate family viewing and use.

But two days ago, after a little Sedaris, the toilet healed itself. For last three years after every flush, mine or the kids’, I have to remove the cow-tin plant holder that really holds cans of air freshener and whatever books are on top and perform minor toilet tank surgery. For reasons known only to plumbers and CIA moles, after a year of working flawlessly, the flapper inside the toilet tank decided it could no longer work with out a little help from the outside. The flapper is that little suction cup looking think that covers the hole inside the toilet bowl tank and lets the water out of the tank to flush out the contents of the bowl. In the downstairs half-calf bath, the flapper refuses to flap and water continues to run threatening both the aquifer supply for the region and our monthly water bill.

People who are invited on a regular basis to the house, times when we make sure the half-calf bath is clean, know the flapper issues and perform the surgery on their own. Occasionally some neophyte visitor will show up, need to go at some point, and eternal gurgling sounds of the porcelain maelstrom will beckon to me, a cry for help to make the sloshing stop. A sense of chagrin does consume me at the thought of houseguests reaching their bare hands into my toilet tank, but I’m more chagrined by my lack of handyman skills that have allowed the flushing faux pas to spew on for two years. But that all changed two days ago when I lifted the tank to perform my husbandly plumbing duties and the flapper flapped itself. For a brief moment, as water drained from one opening and filled in another, I basked in the euphoria of adequate plumbing. By the next flush, all was as it shouldn’t be, but two days ago, the toilet in the rarely-clean-for-guests-only-half-calf bath worked all on its own.

For the Love of Fruitcake

2004-12-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad
Years before I became the dignified urbane archetype for decorum I now am, I, in a genuine expression of holiday happiness, gave fruitcake as a gift. I was thirteen and a novice to the politics of gift giving. Naiveté made me genuinely think that the thought counted more than the gift. And of course, I knew nothing of the stigma associated with giving the wrong gift. Fruitcake, whether made by monks tucked away in the Alps or by Aunt Bessie who uses the family recipe that has survived pestilence, famine, and oppression is the wrong gift.

And in just the same way that marketing gurus have convinced society that paying $5 for a cup of too strong coffee made by and erudite in a smock who knows how to steam milk is chic, they have convinced the gift-card purchasing public that giving fruitcake is the grandest of social faux-pas and receiving one is the equivalent of catching a communicable disease that obligates the infected to pass it on to some hapless innocent. Fruitcakes are the butts of jokes, the bane of the advent season. They are relegated to the stuff of fodder and touted as good for nothing more than use as homebaked doorstops.

Surprisingly though, many of those who malign this fruity fiend have never tasted one. They have allowed themselves to fall prey to the type of middle-school-mentality-hijinks that turns Constance Weaver into a nail-biting Nyquil-alchie who makes out with her step-dad just because a popular girl said so as flippantly as she would order a deep-fried burrito at lunch from the concession stand. Some commercial or late-night comedian casts aspersions on fruitcake and the public at large swallows without ever taking a bite of its own.

And in the same way that I will never be able to educate the masses on the fact that it is five gold rings and not five golden rings, I will never succeed in removing the scarlet opinion emblazened on fruitcake by the prudes of popular culture. Most will continue to mock and deride the heavy laden cake, but I will continue to add it to my Christmas list each year. This year I received two as gifts. Maybe next year, those faint of tastebud will know exactly what to do with their unwanted and untasted fruitcake.

Sans Salsa

2004-12-21T22:43:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad
In the days just before the last of the leftover turkey finds its way into one more casserole dish that would even make Martha Stewart yearn for seconds of prison hash, and the final page of the calendar turns to December, there begins to appear in teachers' mailboxes tiny mementos heralding that most blessed of advents--the end of another semester of school.

There are baubles, trinkets that glimmer, jingle, and shine. There are cards with sentimental expressions of glad tidings and syruppy sweet hopes for a new year that make me think I need to make a dental appointment to fill the cavity I got from reading them. There are confectioned gestures of good will and chocolatey messages of mirth and merriness shaped like Santa or Baby Jesus in the manger. Add to that loaves of the banana nut and pumpkin spice variety, and this year I may not need any extra stuffing to pull-off the Santa costume. But of all the special deleveries that end up in my box, the one I long for more than snow on Christmas day comes cased in Ball jar and makes my tastebuds stand up and sing the Hallelujah Chorus--homemade salsa.

Ever since this colleague joined the faculty a few years ago, a jar of her homemade salsa has made its way into my box every year right before Christmas. Last year a dish of that salsa, along with some red and green colored tortilla chips, replaced the traditional milk and cookies for Santa at our house. A cause I championed since, by proxy, I end up creating the evidence of Santa's visit by taking an obligatory bite of the cookie left out and pouring the milk down the sink. Eventually the kids may notice that Santa's affinity for chips, salsa, and Diet Coke strangely parallels my own tastes, but for now the lactose intolerant story is keeping them in bed Christmas Eve.

As I ventured to my box each year when I sensed the piquant aroma of chile, tomato, and cilantro in the air, I never noticed if every box recieved a jar of salsa, only if my box had one. Happily I would seize my jar and leave with the sense that someone in the world thought enough of me to give me homemade salsa. Salsa with the quintessential mixture of spiciness and consistency. Hot enough to take ennoble the Diet Coke I have with it, and thick enough to cling to the chip without making me feel like I'm really eating any vegetables. Definitely a salsa fit for cherubic saints and childhood icons.

Sitting on a counter in the kitchen are the remnants of this year's holiday booty. There is banana nut bread, chocolate chip cookies, some of that hoity-toity Ferrero Rocher candy, a book of holiday stories, and a candle with candy cane striping, but no salsa. For the first time, I noticed the salsa in the boxes of others because there was none in mine. It was the equivalent of coal in my stocking. I had officially made the naughty list for reasons unknown to me. And then like swallows to Capistrano, every encounter I had with this colleague flew into my mind, each measured for its salsa-worthiness.

Perhaps it's the same feeling as being left off someone's Christmas card list. At first it's the ineptitude of the US Postal Service or a simple oversight, but eventually the realization that your value has decreased to less than the combined cost of a postage stamp and a single card from a boxed set sinks in like a carrot into Frosty's face. Maybe sending Christmas cards has gone the way of Salvation Army bell ringers at Target, but in San Antonio, salsa is a way of life and an indicment of all that is right in the world. I suppose that I could use this experience as an opportunity to reflect on my life and evaluate my actions and intepersonal relationships, but I'm choosing to cite the high price of tomatoes this year as the only possible reason Santa will get Pace instead of homemade this year. And if some modicum of self-evaluation leads to a resolution for the new year, it will go something like this: I resolve not to go another Christmas sans salsa.

Dark Christmas

2004-12-13T09:55:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad
Last night, the house at the bend of Cinder Ridge and Arlene Park sat dark, a caliginous protest to the myopic opinions of the judges in the neighborhood holiday lights contest. In my third year of earnestly attempting to place in the contest, I have once again experienced the phenomena that only beauty pageant contestants who don't make it into the top ten know. My yard, in all its effulgence, is only a bridesmaid; it is the coiffed and couture prom date stuck at home, and I am now the official Susan Lucci of the neighborhood holiday lights contest.

While I was successful in crushing the across-the-street-neighbor's feckless attempt to contend with my "decoratia nervosa" (an illuminating condition where the afflicted never feels the amount of his/her Christmas lights is sufficient), I have yet to crack the clique of holiday lights winners. One street over and almost directly behind my house sits the house that won third place. It has a front yard the size of Rhode Island, so a couple of light strands strung end to end makes it look as bright as noon on a sunny July day in Texas. And its dominant element or center of visual interest (I approach yard decor from a publications layout and design perspective) consists of a pre-fab multi-colored choo-choo train bearing gifts--the same pre-fab multi-colored choo-choo I've seen in almost every other house in our neighborhood and every other neighborhood in the city, as well as in every supermarket, craft store, and discount mart on the planet. The yard also boasts an Aspartame sweet rocking horse exactly like the one my next door neighbors have.

Up the street from third place, jutting out from the corner is the house that won second place. Two years ago this house won first place, and I am still trying to convince myself every time I drive down the main road in and out of the subdivision, that arson coupled with a nasty note calling them the blight of Christmas and the pustules on Rudolph's ass is not a good idea. But this year I thought I would skip the botheration of spewing my enmity that direction because it was obvious they weren't even trying this year. A few colored net lights cast casually across whatever shrub was closest and a purely cursory attempt at lights in the tree lingered as shadows of a dream now defunct. The eaves of the house stood light-less, and the second-story backyard deck, clearly visible to the street and always bedecked in some illuminating manner, only had icicle lights hanging down from the bottom railings. But what must have sent the judges in a chimerical dervish were the stuffed Disney characters plopped in front of each window garbed in lederhosen and Dickens-like attire. Two mice, a duck and sub-partridge in a pear tree were enough for second place, but it would take an entire gang to haul home the big prize.

On the same street where second place lives, sits the first-place bane of my holiday lights conquest: Snoopy and all the Peanuts gang. With a couple of wooden cut-outs made with complete disregard for copyright law, the dream of winning with a dislplay of lights bound by the concepts of balance, unity, distinctive focal points, and a nod to the Christ of Christmas became the football yanked away from me right before I have the chance to sail it through the goal posts. Not only am I the Susan Lucci of the holiday lights contest, I think I'm the Charlie Brown as well.

For one more night the lights on the house at the bend of Cinder Ridge and Arlene Park will eschew their obscure protest and remain unplugged. But the night after that, just a little after
6 pm when the veil of night descends over day, I will step onto my porch, flip the switch on the surge protector and thank the little people, the three Zboys, who think their dad's lights deserve to win every year. But next year, I'm sailing the competion right through that damn goal post--again.

Honk if you love Jesus

2004-12-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad
This morning on my way to work, Jesus blew right past me. Idling behind four other cars and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to music playing on the radio, I patiently waited my turn. Who knew that little road leading to Loop 1604 would become my road to Damascus where I would meet Jesus driving a black Honda civic.
For some reason, I thought Jesus would drive a mini-van, maybe a suburban, though that would be a little on the pretentious side. But there he was in a black Honda civic with tinted windows and one of the Jack-In-The-Box antenna balls.
I knew it was Jesus because it said so right on the back of his car in big silver letters with a dove next to it. Dangerously close to tacky, I expected something more--- miraculous. What I got, was tantamount to blasphemy.
Jesus passed me, the car in front of me; he passed all of us until he was radial to radial with the first car in line. He must be turning right at the stop sign and all of the rest of us are going straight. That must be it; of course it is. But surely Jesus would use his turn signal.
And then, in a move straight from the pit stops of hell, Jesus cut the line. I think he may have even peeled out, truly a philistine move and not the decorum expected from the savior of the world.
Hell, he was probably drinking and driving. It looked like a coffee mug in there, but we all knew what Jesus could do with a pitcher of water. Most likely, he had something sinful playing on the radio; one of those songs that when played backwards reveals some devious plot involving goat’s blood and sacrificial virgins.
I bet black-Honda-Civic-Jesus hated puppies and cute little kittens that play with string, and I bet he didn’t even know the words to “Amazing Grace” or “Jesus Loves Me.” Worst of all, he probably couldn’t get through all of the Ten Commandments or call his disciples by name. I bet he said things like, “Hey guy,” or “What’s up, fella,” because he couldn’t remember who was Thaddeus and who was Bartholomew. Oh the hypocrisy.
Tomorrow I’ll take a different way to work and maybe only run into some Samaritans; they at least nod when they blow past you. Damn Christians.

Damages and Bows

2004-12-06T13:28:00.000-08:00

Last night Mitch Album's The Five People You Meet in Heaven came on television. At the same time it was showing, Zachary, Zane, and Zion were upstairs draping their Christmas tree with an assorment of ornaments that range from Care Bears, Zion's choice, to Spider-Man and Batman, Zachary and Zane's choices. There are all the little dog ornaments that was the first theme of the tree, and there are the trinkets and creations from pre-school, Sunday School and the like that only a mother and the child who created them could love.

And while the litany of people Eddie meets in heaven continues on, I'm reminded of the chapter in the book that begins, "All parents damage their children." I'm reminded of the words spouted in anger and in the moment. I'm reminded of the promises broken along the way that were only little to me, and I'm reminded of every tear shed that never should have fallen. Looking back, it's easy to see all the faults I've made as a parent along the way, but then laughter and the lights on a tree remind me of all the right I've done as a dad.

Upstairs are three brothers who, aside from the rare and miniscule squabble, love each other. Brothers who when offered a treat will ask for an extra for the brother not there. For days the Zboys have asked, and asked again if it was time to decorate their tree. And when the day finally came, they approached it with all the excitement of waking up on Christmas morning. Dad climbed up in the attic for all their stuff, and Mom carefully draped it with lights and silver beads. After that, the tree became the creation of three boys working in harmony and brotherly love.

Now that the tree is up, the question has shifted. Now they ask when their individual Christmas collections are going up for display. Zachary has a Santa collection; Zane has a reindeer collection, and Zion has a snowman collection. And each year they look forward to adding a new piece to their collections almost as much as they look forward to presents.

So maybe I have damaged my kids in some way, but I think, just like Eddie in The Five People You Meet in Heaven, they've learned even more important lessons from me. They've learned that more than packages and bows, the things we'll remember from one Christmas to the next are not the gifts, but the traditions of our family and the time we've spent together. And if nothing else, they'll have copies of the family pictures we take each in our matching Christmas pjs.

Cutthroat Holidays

2004-12-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

Zboysdad
Usually just after I sort through the boys' Halloween candy, setting the really good stuff aside for me, I start hauling all the Christmas accoutrements we've gathered over the years down from the attic to begin my holiday obsession--decorating the yard for Christmas.

Last year when I did not place in the neighborhood lights contest, I attributed it to the pedestrian tastes of aesthetically-challenged judges and resolved to come back the next year with a display that pilots en route to the airport couldn't miss. But now, I have a new goal--crushing the neighbors across the street into the ground. For the past four Christmasses we've lived in our neighborhood, ours has has been that house, that house that everyone walks by and admires but dares not deign to attempt. Until this year.

Right in front of our house, the same house that has sat across from us in darkness for the past four years has shed its bah-humbugian shackles and donned lights for the first time. And because of a more hectic than usual fall schedule and some untimely wet weather, the neighbors even got a jump-start on me in the festive decking department. But they didn't stop with some obligatory net lights on the shrubs and a few casually strung lights up the trunk of a tree. They have actually attempted to match the shekinah brilliance of my holiday extravaganza. Little do they know, I am nowhere close to finished with my electric annihilation of there ill-advised coup.

Gone are any thoughts of good-will toward men or rescuing misfit jack-in-the-boxes and reindeer from the island of misfit toys. I don't even give a flip about the smile my lights may bring to the face of some casual observer who saunters by my display and basks in the hot-chocolaty feeling of benevolence stirred by the cascading twinkle of icicle lights. And though I love fruitcake more than I love most of the people I'm related to, by the time I finish with my yuletide yard, even the merriest of elves will harbor the same level of disdain for the neighbor's yard that fruitcake brings to the general public.

And then I will sit back, pour a big ol' cup of egg nog, I like that stuff too, munch on a stinkin' huge chunk of fruitcake and plan next year's shock and awe assault on any other neighbor foolish enough to ignore the melted mass of Frosty that used to be the house across the street. Happy Christmas!

Turning 40 with Hugh

2004-10-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Zboysdad
Underneath a side table in our tv room topped with trinkets, books, and framed feelings, sits a wicker basket stuffed with memories of the past preserved on glossy color paper. Parties, holidays, and those cute kid moments rise from the ashes of the past to live again. And nestled along with those more recent memories are some pre-marriage, pre-kid blast from the past glossy memories of days when calories burned exponentially and serendipity guided decisions--college, which is where I met Hugh Atkinson. We met during our freshman year in Psychology of Personal Adjustment, we graduated together, we went to graduate school together, we both turn 40 this year (although he'll be 40 first). As a kid, I remember marveling at the notion that my parents had friends that they had known for decades, and while I don't think I've become my parents, I marvel at the notion that two skinny kids from different backgrounds and different parts of the state have remained friends for the past 22 years. Hugh and I have been trading
e-mails, quite often on a daily basis, for the last seven years, and this year we plan to embarrass our children and our wives when we wax eloquently and long-windedly (yes, I coined my own phrase) at each other's 40th birthday parties. Only a few years ago, turning forty seemed impossible, short of a medical miracle, for Hugh; but Hugh is strong, and God is merciful. We are turning 40, we are still good friends, we are two kids with kids of our own, but most of all, we are lucky that 22 years ago on Monday,Wednesday, and Friday at 10 o'clock our schedules both read Psychology of Personal Adjustment.

And for those kids in my second period class, note the use of anaphora and asyndeton.

--Michael

High School Curses

2004-10-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Zboysdad
High school kids are a curse--not their attitudes, or their pedantically predictable music, but their metabolism rates. After an hour or so of trying to build up more than an appetite in the school's weight room, I come back to newspaper kids working in my classroom along with Sonic and Krispy Kreme donuts.Some days they spend hours after school working on deadlines and most of that time is spent eating. Despite concerted effort and incessant internal dialogue, I somehow always manage to yield to the power of wanting to be able to eat like I did a decade and a half ago. Today's sin down memory lane: New York cheesecake filled donut with cinnamon crumble top. Tonight's penance: a quick three miles on the treadmill followed by the Men's Fitness fat burning workout the next morning. Tomorrow those newspaper kids will probably have pizza and more Krispy Kreme, and so will I. Curses.

-Michael

Finding old friends facinates me.

2004-10-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, boredom, waxing reminiscently, or low blood sugar, I hopped on the HSU alumni e-mail page and scrolled through years of history and shared experiences. Once I get all of my grading finished for this nine weeks, benchmark testing is a curse from the bowels of hell, I may just actually shoot out a few blast-from-the-past e-mails. I did find that Paul and Teresa Gomez are in New York which means that I hope to see them when I travel with students up to New York in March. Of course finding Paul and Teresa can only mean that searching for Matt and Miriam isn't far behind. I did tell Miriam that I've been using a clip of her singing for the last five years or so in my classroom to introduce the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles. And though I haven't ventured back to HSU in the last seven years, and probably never will go back, I do hope to reconnect with the friends who remind me of younger days.

You can check the family out at www.lordofthecheese.com

--Michael