The Big Cheese

 Reading the first part of the chapter "Spooks" had me flashing back to high school. When Jason steps up to tie the cotton thread to the door knocker, I couldn't help but think back to math class and my time in the "spotlight".

Like Jason, I was pretty low on the social hierarchy.  I was squarely above the "picked-on" cadre of students - I sought refuge in the Who? island of anonymity. I hate coconuts. We were in Mr. Mozzarella's (we pronounced it incorrectly, like the cheese) mathematics class when he stepped out of the room for a minute. He told us to finish working on whatever "fun" math problems we had in front of us. Dutifully, we began to work as most honors students would.

How we pronounced the teacher's name...mozzarella!

Suddenly, a kid had the brilliant idea of locking out the teacher. I watched halfheartedly as a few resident "geniuses" tried to tie string around the knob and knot it so the knob wouldn't budge. Fail. Next, they tried to stack some chairs by the door. Okay - I had seen plenty of movies (mostly on TV - thanks WPIX Saturday Afternoon Matinee - as my parents rarely took me or let me go to the movie theater) where the hero has to keep the villain from getting into a room with only a chair as an option.

I couldn't watch the incompetent display of this simple maneuver reign any longer. Without saying anything, I got out of my seat and stacked two chairs together. I leaned the chairs towards the door so the back would fit comfortably under the knob.   Was I doing this for social acceptance? Was I doing it because 80s movie icons had taught me more about life than any of my teachers? Still couldn't tell you.

Jam the chair under the knob and presto! The person is locked out!

Whatever the case, when Mr. Mozz returned and was stymied by the unyielding doorknob, his face erupted into what can only be compared to cosmic explosions, possibly something akin to the Big Bang.  Sorry, Denzel, but King Kong had nothing on him. The door may have prevented his physical body from entering, but his world-class obscenities infiltrated our student-commandeered fiefdom.

Despite our innocent ears being shocked with R-rated bombast, we were a collective herd of deer, caught in a Hummer's blinding headlights.  Water bottles had long since passed the small tremors of a T-rex approaching, and were vibrating off several desks, landing like mortar shells on Normandy. Some students who fancied another day of life on this earth, ran to the door and let in the "Irate Cheese" as it came to be known.

All I could think about was if one of the other students would lift a finger and point in my direction (since my name probably escaped their collective memories). As the "Irate Cheese" surveyed the petrified class, my heart raced into mach 1. The class should have had an advisory sign before entering Mr. Mozzarella's classroom:

For safety and comfort, you should be in good health and free from heart, back, or neck problems, motion sickness, or other conditions that could be aggravated by math. Expectant mothers and the lactose intolerant should not enter!

Since other students were doing it, I glanced around to see who would be the beneficiary of this social blame game.

No one said anything. No points. No eye-gestures or head nods in my direction. Somehow I escaped justice. Was I finally accepted? Or had no one actually seen me do the deed? Did not matter. I felt awful and, like Jason, could not envision the easy-to-forecast response from the person being pranked.  We both didn't have the intention to prank someone, yet that's what we both did. Prank + Ignorance = Regret.  Maybe Mr. Mozz did teach me something in math after all.  This was so not ace.

The Faithless Preserve

Growing up in the town of Bellmore, students would often speak of Cedar Swamp Creek as if it was not just a source of water, but of the connective strain of disappearances over the years. It hides behind a fence just behind the high school I attended and cuts through a barbwire fenced off a government preserve called Faith Laursen Preserve (formerly Meroke Preserve), which lays a few miles south. No trespassing signs were always more in abundance than people in this area.

Legend has it that in the early 90s, a couple of girls from a cross country team took a route along the creek, finding a hole in the fence to get there. They followed the creek south, past the Newbridge pond, and down to the Laursen preserve. 

The Cedar Swamp Creek that runs through the preserve

 

Some say the girls found out what the Laursen family was doing to "protect nature" as they were known famously around the Bellmore-Merrick towns for doing. However, in her elder age, Faith Laursen grew more and more paranoid of teenagers taking the preserve for granted, which once was used during the Revolutionary War by the British to ambush the Colonials. 

Faith Laursen, a former girl scout, originally intended for the preserve to be about educating the youth about the importance of nature. Yet, as years passed by, she began to lose hope with teenagers who would rather come into the preserve to drink, smoke, and have sex. So it is said, one of the girls tripped alongside the creek, and as they brushed away the leaves, found a decomposing arm. Faith would give trespassing teenagers "back to nature" by burying them alive. And so...presumably, Faith Laursen, to protect her secret, had the two girls meet the same fate of being buried alive. 

Faith Laursen (left) and the Laursen family who established the preserve as "forever wild" in 1993

The girls' photos made it onto milk cartons and into the local papers, but no one ever found them. Having worked for local papers in Merrick and Baldwin such as the locally famous Bellmore and Merrick Life, no one ever questioned the Laursen family about the disappearance. They held too much clout. Even the parents of the two missing girls couldn't ring themselves to confront the Laursens - fearing what lengths they would go to hide their secrets. However, as adults never wanted to challenge the Laursen's popularity, teenagers would take it upon themselves to "investigate." 

The "creeky" bridge where it is rumored the Laursens have under 24-hour human surveillance.

To this today, teenagers dare each other to slip past the fences and follow the creek into the preserve (never using the main gate to avoid being spotted). While no deaths have been reported, several missing persons cases remain unsolved - high schoolers who were rumored to have been dared to spend the night down by Laursen Preserve. Faith Laursen has since passed, but her family has carried the torch of her sinister legacy: eliminating any source of disruption to their preserve. 

Teenagers who look to "disrupt" the purity of the preserve's nature are seldom heard from again. Their bodies most likely, decomposing in the deepest recesses of the preserve.

Just like Dean finding out about what Kit Harris did to the student who took a dump on his car, this "urban legend" was told to me through many older people - primarily other students. The people actual exist and their personalities seem to fit the stories told about them. Kit Harris comes across as an angry and odd man, so his rumored actions make a lot of sense. Faith Laursen, with her love of nature, seems like she would do anything to protect it.

Those High School Nights

Photograph by William Hohe

Nostalgia is a funny thing. It can be the inspiration we've been looking for on those dark days of our present; a framing device to reflect on one's sense of the world and how far they've come - a sort of self-characterization development across your own history. Or, it  can be the rose-colored memories that hide the mouse trap beneath its fuzzy surface, baiting us to disengage from reality to bask in our "glory days"  - a means of escape from an unrelenting life.

William Hohe's strikingly beautiful photograph that finished as a finalist in the NY Times' second annual photo contest for teens, embodies a teenage spirit that is both wistful and haunting in tone. As a teacher, I'm drawn back to my high school nights, sitting atop  the bleachers in the pep band, belting out the iconic notes of Chicago's 25 or 6 to 4 as the football team battled on the sacred inner grounds encircled by the track.



I had to be there. There was no choice. Well, there was always the fail an elective-you-should-never fail option, of course. There was no choice.

   

Photo courtesy of cbmn on Flickr

Bleachers are synonymous with high school - sporting events, pep  rallies, graduations, homecoming, and myriad other forms of suburban school traditions. Yet - strip away the crowds. Send the band home. Let the cheerleaders and football players, the "popular" students in school, enjoy their parties when the parents are out of the house. The janitors? Already sealed the last lock of the day.

Despite this one girl having her face brilliantly omitted in favor of an "any teen" shot approach, she engages in the innocent path of walking across a row in the bleachers, her hands extended just so to keep balance. Seriously, is there not one person who cannot relate to this simple child-like test of skill? William Hohe says it best:

"The common misconception in the adult world is that children and teenagers must always have a reason, an idea, a purpose for their actions, rather than walk and explore aimlessly."

This one girl embodies the essence of youth - the exploration, the curiosity, the carefree pursuit of simple delights. This is a great teenage escape from what Hohe refers to as "hover-parenting". And, please, let's take a moment to revel in the warm amber antidote that captures a sort of dream-like quality to the photo. There's a feeling of unity through shared solitude and freedom. We've all been here - maybe not the bleachers exactly but rather the moments when we feel no one's looking - singing in the shower, dancing to music or even just when an idea or emotion pops into your head.

As a teacher, I can only hope all students can break away from the rigid structures enforced in schools and at home to dabble in their own form of expression, exploration, and enjoyment.

Candy: The New Olive Branch

 Nothing brings greater commentary on the Super Bowl than the halftime show and...the commercials. In fact, the commercials have become such a "water cooler" moment over the years, that ad companies have decided to remove the water cooler moments by releasing the ads in advance of the big day. Unfortunately, my high bar for the ads generally renders most cringe-worthy or instantly forgettable.  Yet... one commercial struck an unlikely note with me this past Super Bowl Sunday.

Ok - I do love M&Ms already, so I am a bit biased towards the product; however, this is about the humor more than making me want the product itself. I tend to enjoy commercials which use everyday situations as a source of humor. This commercial has that in spade -- from the kicking of seat from the person behind you to the topical controversy about "mansplaining". While I still don't like celebrity intrusions on commercials that don't need them (see: Dan Levy), it wasn't enough to ruin it. Perhaps the use of Karens and mansplaining will not age well, and I will look back on this with a palm to the forehead, but for now, it stands above some of the others.

Stay Safe This Holiday Season PSA

Trying to come up with a suitable model for students to refer to while making their public service announcements about mask-wearing was a bit challenging. I knew that if  I simply made a mask-wearing PSA, too many students will try to emulate my video. So, essentially, I was stuck between making a "real" PSA for a different topic, or taking a more entertaining route as we headed into winter recess. Yeah - I opted to have some fun and use my creation time to demonstrate how to add creativity using technology. And thus, I began creating a holiday "safety" video that focused almost entirely on holiday movie mishaps. In hindsight, it's obvious my PSA would be completely ineffectual at convincing even a single person to stay safe during the holidays; however, my real intention was to establish a festive and entertaining mood both for the upcoming winter break as well as what creating a PSA could ultimately become. 

In creating the video, it took a few days to grab all the movie clips I wanted, trim them, and sequence them to fit the beats of the rollicking version of "Ode to Joy" I had also trimmed from a YouTube clip. I decided to use Adobe Spark as the model platform for the students since it had the ability to allow collaboration and save everything in the cloud. Sure, it has massive buffering issues at times, and couldn't allow multiple music tracks as Windows Video Editor or other equivalent apps would, but it served me well enough. Despite it being a frustrating experience at times, each moment a clip fit perfectly with the song, I felt a sense of pride. I must have watched segments of my video dozens of times before moving on. Certainly, I kept thinking about what movies I was leaving out, if certain clips ran a hair too long, or if I should reorder certain scenes, but I had a deadline to push this to students before winter break. I would have loved to add the radio mishap from Mean Girls or found a more high-res version of George and Clarence being thrown out of Nick's Bar in It's a Wonderful Life, but I just ran out of time.

Using Adobe Spark "slideshow" had its ups and downs

I feel I could have done a better job with the words I chose as I simply opted to lift some lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" to set the "ominous" safety warning at the start of the video. Still, having completed this video, I feel immense satisfaction for getting the timing pretty close to what I wanted. 

Remember to Give Winter A Chance

Winter is not my favorite time of year. That honor goes to autumn. My adult winters are a far cry from my childhood when dreams of snow days, skipping school, and suiting up for an epic snowball fight across the neighborhood danced through my head as much as sugarplum fairies. Now, my wintry cynicism has been iced ten times over as I recall my five-plus hour frightening commute home from work through a blizzard. My car refusing to cooperate with simple tasks like starting. The as-dangerous-as-advertised "black ice" waiting to ambush unsuspecting pedestrians. 

So, it comes with a surprising click of a link to read about how Scandinavians spend most of their days in an eternal winter. I too often forget the magic of winter. No, I'm not just talking about the spectacle of Christmas lights moving in time to TSO's Carol of The Bells. (Although, boy can I watch that at any point in the year).  Spending five years up at Binghamton University seems to the closest I will get to living somewhere in Scandinavia: long winters, dark days, etc. Yet...when it snowed, I found myself taking night walks around campus. Bundling up, I trekked trough the snow and warm amber lights surrounded by the absolutely, priceless sounds of silence. Except the soft crunch of my boots, of course.

The fuzzy, orange night glow at Binghamton University during winter

I guess this is what the Norwegians refer to as friluftsliv ("open air life"): it was a liberating moment for me - some of my best story ideas came from these late night excursions. Just like jumping into a cold pool - sure, it's cold at first, but you get used to it after a while. The same goes for winter. 

Even the Norwegian koselig of finding contentment around others during these dark days rings true. Back in January 2011 I went on my first skip trip with a bunch of my teen travel campers up to Smuggler's Notch Vermont. While skiing was beyond stressful (the pizza slice method of stopping does....not....work!), it was fun to go night-tubing, tell stories around an outdoor fire, watch the Jets upset the Colts in the playoffs and then engage in a melee, free-for-all in the snow in celebration. 

This year....oh boy. I'm going to need a little more Scandinavian magic to bring me back to these forgotten moments in my life. Coronavirus may alter some plans, but it just means it's time to be more creative than ever.

A Test of Morals

 In preparing to read about a story where the main character has to decide whether to kill an evil dictator-esque character or not, our class engaged in hypothetical discussions over whether there is ever a justified reason for killing someone else.

Over the course of today’s lessons, I discovered rather quickly that students were divided on whether they would take action against those who harmed them or family members in some way. Unfortunately, the “action” would be in the form of “killing.’ I tend to believe it’s easier to say you would do something “honorable” like protecting one’s family - yet, is killing really honorable - even if it’s “justified”? Notice my air quotes around these words? One’s sense of morality is tested in hypothetical situations too. How quick some people are to say killing is the answer. Not that we want to find out the truth, but it does raise the sense of hyperbole like when someone says, "I'm going to kill you" when they really mean they are extremely angry in the moment.

I would not have the courage to confront my problems - like Bugs here

People are more heroic in their minds than in reality. However, being heroic and honorable isn’t necessarily about retribution. In fact - it’s the opposite: restraint, forgiveness, and tolerance. That's where honor lies. These traits are much harder to come by. Do these possibilities make people cowards or heroes? Guess it just depends upon the situation one finds themselves in.