It’s your move with C0_Dee!

I had no idea who C0-Dee was but he was a hell of a Scrabble player. Our matches were slugfests. Earlier his month he beat me 409 to 405. A real heartbreaker.
It was after that loss that I broke the plane. I brushed my finger over the little icon in the top of my iPhone and sent a message of heartfelt congratulations across the ether to who knows who or where.
“Nice match,” I typed. “See you tomorrow, my friend.”
The next morning, I had a response. At 3:04 AM, C0_Dee said, “Lollllllllllll ok nice com back though lol.”
I was disappointed.
I don’t know but I kind of figured that someone able to deliver body blow after body blow the way C0_Dee had would be more than able to speak in complete sentences.
But it wasn’t enough to make me stop playing him if he was a him. And I began to create excuses for his lack of facility with the English language. Maybe he was autistic. A savant with words who is tragically unable to use them for anything but triple word scores.
More games and I came up with other theories.
He’s was a currency trader in an office building somewhere in Kuala Lampur hovering over multiple computer screens as billions of dollars passed through his hands. That would certainly account for his play at odd hours and his odd use of English.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I asked him.
“Do I know you?” I asked. “Or are you a perfect stranger?”
“Stranger lol.”
“Well, stranger, you have really pushed me to improve my game.”
“Lol yeah u play good ur damn self u can look me up on facebook so we can c who we r lol.”
“Is C0_Dee your Fbook name?”
“No damany Eastman.”
Damany Eastman. I had a name and within seconds I had him on Facebook. The mystery was solved and I was face-to-face with my own prejudices because I could not have been more wrong about my opponent. He wasn’t autistic. Wasn’t Asian. Finacial whiz? Probably not.
Damany Eastman sits with a baby girl on his lap,his black face shaded by the brim on his oversize Yankee cap. Other pictures show him flashing the ‘East Coast’ sign to the camera and another is of his face half-covered in gauze, the fallout from a pickup basketball game that turned rough.
I asked him to friend me. He hasn’t responded…
…but it’s my move with C0_Dee!

Stand and deliver what?

Did you ever see Stand and Deliver?  Every teacher has seen it at least once for some course or another.  It is inspirational.  Yeah, Mr. Holland’s Opus was pretty good, too.   And the one with Hillary Swank…what’s it called?  Freedom Writers?  That was good too.  But, for me it’s all about that Jaime Escalante and his East LA burros scoring fours and fives on the AP Calculus exam and then heading off to UCLA and Stanford.


That was cool.  That was the shit!


I wanted to be him.


But I wasn’t.


I did my job.  Nothing too special.  I’ll take credit for a glint of special here and there.  Students from years ago return and ask me to perform my interpretive dance of The Great Leap Forward…but consistent output isn’t really my thing.


And eleven years passed.  No, twelve.  I think.


Anyway…Jaime Escalante.


I got another shot to be Jaime.


I took an opening in my district’s alternative ed. program.  While Jaime had East Side LA toughs, I was going to save a handful of misfit suburban middle-schoolers.


But what are latchkey kids from the sprawling quarter acre lots west of the city good at?  Those kids in East LA were victims of circumstance.  It wasn’t that they hated school.  The schools they went to just weren’t any good  (Obviously, their teachers weren’t being held accountable and needed to be tested more).  Jaime’s kids weren’t sociopaths who actively sought to obstruct learning at every possible turn and juncture.  Jaime drew on those kids’ identity as Mexicans, descendants of ancient civilizations that had been, among other things, really good at math.


"It's in your blood," Jaime crooned to his students.  "Math is in your blood, man."


But, the kids I greeted every day had consistently selected themselves out of the main stream by systematically turning what were perfectly good classrooms in perfectly good schools into Edvard Munch maelstroms of chaos and horror.  Oh, the horror!


That’s what they were good at.  They were really good at it.


Expert.


After three weeks, I was feeling like the Black Knight in Holy Grail; no arms left, stubs for legs, bleeding and and, still, in a fog of delusion, calling my fight 'a draw'.  


I was losing.


What was I going to do, bleed on them?


But last Friday, I stumbled on something that just might be their thing.


I wasn’t going to do it.  Almost bagged it.  It wasn’t going to work, anyway.  Maybe I would try it the next Friday when my co-teacher for Peer Relations class would be there.


But that’s not my style.


My style is more like this:  When I have something copied, stapled and ready-to-go, damn it, I’m doing it!


I gave them a Mock Trial.


Just a simple one; The Case of the Missing Lunch.  It was all scripted like a play but by the time they had picked their roles from the hat, carefully highlighted their lines in hot pinks, yellows and greens, and arranged the classroom to look like a courtroom, the period had ended.  I had never, until this day, imagined that my students would beg to stay and finish the case.  They didn’t even do that after my performance of The Great Leap!


Back to Señor Escalante.


Arguing.  That's what my burros are good at.  These guys can argue anything.  It’s in their blood, man.


Exhibit A:
Me:  Why did I call you out in the hall?


Student:  I don’t know.


Me:  Yes, you do.


Student:  No, I don’t.


Me:  You were making birdcalls.


Student:  No, I wasn’t.


Me:  Yes, you were.


Student:  It wasn’t me.


Me:  I was looking right at you.  I was three feet away and I watched you whistle.


Student:  It wasn’t a birdcall.


You get the idea?


Court is in session!

I don’t normally give advice which is a good thing.  But one of my reader’s (not Jane) sent me a letter that I just could not ignore so, for those of you waiting for more of the mad-capped hijinks you have come to expect from the life of a suburban teacher, watch out because I’m goin’ Ann Landers on ya’ll, bitches!


Anyway…


Here is what my friend wrote.


Dear Kimbob,
I am a middle-aged man who is very much in love with his wife and I would have to say our relationship is the strongest it has ever been.  I have never thought of cheating on her but lately I have been feeling kind of guilty because I have been playing online Scrabble with an old flame.  My wife knows that this woman is one of my Scrabble partners but in the last few weeks our word play has become more exclusive to the extent that she is the only person who will still play with me.  My wife and I have played Scrabble in the past but I am such a Scrabble Jackass (see Ze Frank for more on this) that she makes up excuses whenever I suggest we play.  Now when I lie in bed I am waiting for my iPhone to chime signaling that it’s my move.  The games are some of the best I have ever had!  Last night my wife offered to help with find a word but I just rolled over and used the “Y” in achy to spell ONYX on a triple word score for 62 points.


Should I tell my wife?  I can’t stand all the secrecy but the Scrabble is amazing.


Signed,
Word Playa


Dear Playa,
Get a life and stop being such a Scrabble jerk.  The real concern is that nobody wants to play with you anymore.  Why is that?  I’ll tell you why.  You have a lack of self esteem and you need to win at Scrabble to prove you are still a man.  My advice is to take off your apron and be one for a change.  Oh, sure, you can pretend with someone who doesn’t know you but the fact that you have no Scrabble partners should be telling you something.  So, you have a good game here and there but what does it really matter?  Soon enough you will be right back where you started; a Scrabble Jackass (thanks, Ze, that's exactly it) celebrating another victory alone.


Sincerely,
Kimbob

I'll have a Tang...make it a double

I’m fine.  No, really, I am.

A little embarrassed.  But that’s just empathy.  It can’t be a good morning for Francona, Pedroia and the rest of the gang.  For one thing, some of them will be wondering where the next paycheck will be coming from.  There’s the houses to sell in Newtonville, Marblehead or whatever upscale suburb the Red Sox players and front offices gravitate to.  Weston?  Boxford?  Gotta be one or two in Boxford…

But I’m fine.  No open houses for me and I don’t even have a resumé to dust off.

Am I going native?  It’s true, I don’t even mind the Yankees.  At least, not these Yankees; Jeter, Rivera and Posada.  They’re just not Nettles, Hunter and Munson.

No comparison.

A-rod?  Hate him but so do most Yankee fans.  It doesn’t really count.

I don’t even hate those nutty kids from Tampa Bay.  Can’t really blame them for being hungry.

Enlightenment?  Have I reached a higher plane?

Possibly.

But I have another theory.

I don’t want to sound like I’m crowing but as a Boston native (yes, I call myself that) I have had a really good last decade with the Patriots, Sox, Bruins and Celtics.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that Boston fans will never have it so good again.  It was nice while it lasted and if it lasts a little longer, cool, but I won’t cry if it doesn’t.

Here’s the thing.

2004.

It was great but…

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t make it feel as great as I thought it would be.  It exposed the myth, you see.  Like the wizard behind the curtain, your team winning it all is cool but it does not make you any better looking, bring world peace or make you a better lover.

What I learned was that the high you get from winning is not as low as the low you get from losing.  Bucky Dent in ’78 was a much lower low than Damon’s flare and Roberts’ sweeping slide across home on that crisp October evening (full moon, too).  Those Bruins.  When they blew the 3-0 lead to the Flyers?  That was horrible and I could not believe that the sun rose the next morning but when the very (almost) same team did the very same (almost) thing in reverse to the hated Montreal Canadiens…
They just don’t balance.

They don’t balance because…

Well, they just don’t.

Here’s an idea.  When Mr. Dent lofted Mike Torrez’ one-and-one pitch into the screen that used to sit on top of the Green Monster, I cried.  I cried because I knew that I would have to wait at least another year before I could taste that sweet fruit of victory that seemed to hang so low for my Yankee-fan cousins.  They teased me.  But then I drank of the nectar and I discovered…

Dang, it’s Tang!

Ordinary.  Better than a cold bath.

So, as much as I would have liked for the Boston Red Sox to have won just one or two more games out of the 162 they played this spring, summer, and fall, I know that even another blingier-than-bling World Series ring on David Ortiz’ meaty paw would be kind of, well, great but not any better than great.
I was talking to my brother the other night.  My brother the Yankee fan.  It was before the boys of summer played their last regular season game of 2011.  He had a proposition for me.

“Let’s root for the same team,” he said.

Go Manchester United!

Coffee, doughnuts, angry girl

I remember this feeling.  The same one I had every day of my first year of teaching.  What have I done?  Can I do this?  I don’t think I can do this?  When will it get better?  If I’m so smart, how is it that this little posse of 7th-graders can have me so tied in knots, struggling to make it through the day with a thimble-full of sanity left in the tank?


I walk down the hall to my classroom and flip the lights to chase the gloom.  I hang up my coat and unload my backpack into neat piles on my desk; graded papers here, lessons in the manila folders there, laptop.  Another morning and another attempt to impose order on the day.


I visit the main office to check my mail and, there, on the counter is a Dunkin’ Donuts box of coffee and a tray of a dozen doughnuts lying open.  Boston Cremes, jelly, glazed, all my favorites. Teachers love doughnuts.  More than cops, teachers love doughnuts.


I had half a mind to flop down in the chair and spill my guts to anyone who would listen but my principal was already deep in conversation with someone.  Her back was to me but I she was nodding and I could tell they were both smiling.  Old friends? 


I felt better anyway.  Hot black coffee and a Boston Creme are magical together.  Spanish was in full swing by the time I headed back to my room and, not wanting to interrupt, I wandered down to see the English teacher and pick her brain about how we should approach our first Peer Relations class.  I had brought in a cooperative game consisting of two joint compound buckets, about four-dozen tennis balls and sixteen lengths of sash cord.  It’s called Nuclear Waste.


I’m not sure how the conversation shifted to her first year in the alternative program.  Maybe she could read my mind but she said that the kids circulated a petition to get her fired.  It was rough, she said.  There was this one girl she remembered being especially tough.  Perhaps she was the one who started the petition, she didn’t know, didn’t remember.  But this girl had a real temper.  So angry.


There was this one day when the girl just flew off the handle, throwing desks, ripping things off the wall, yelling, screaming, and like a twister, she left and rolled down the hall spinning as she went all nails and hair.  She went into the bathroom and continued to destroy everything in her path.  The mirrors, towel dispensers and, one by one, the stall doors.  She ripped them from their hinges and sent them pin-wheeling into the hallway.  One, door, two doors, three doors…


And then she stopped.  Behind that third door, there was a little kid.  A girl from the day-care program had gotten lost and gone to the wrong bathroom.  And there she was, staring back at this cyclone of anger and destruction, an innocent kid, mouth open, frozen in wide-eyed fear.
“That’s it!”  The angry girl yelled as she rolled back down the hall through her own trail of discussion.  “That’s it!”  Kicking the door open to the classroom she had left and slamming it behind her.  “We need to have a meeting.”  She opened the door again, this time in quiet control and explained to the faculty and onlookers that had gathered there that she knew she was in trouble but asked if she and her classmates could have a few moments for a team meeting.


“It’s over,” she began.  “We can’t do this anymore.  I’m scaring little kids, now, and that’s not cool.”


She and her classmates spent the better part of an hour talking and when they finally opened the door, they had drafted an apology for their behavior and a plan to make it up to the little girl they had frightened.  It was almost Halloween and they suggested a costume parade.  The angry girl and her classmates would be the judges and organize everything including the prizes.


When the day of the parade arrived, everyone got a prize.  “Everybody deserves to be recognized,” they said.


“And the rest of the year was better?”  I asked.  There was a long pause.  It was still a long year.


“But that coffee in your hand?” she said.  “That angry girl brought it in.  It was a ‘Thank you’ from her.”

Thank you.