(Warning: Adult Content Below)

Do you ever lie in bed at night and remember me?
Not the shouting and the tears,
But the way it was in the beginning…

The way we couldn’t keep our hands off each other,
How I trembled the first time you unbuttoned my blouse,
How shocked you were the first time my hand slipped inside your jeans.

How pretty you thought I was in the morning,
How I'd wiggle close to feel you stiffen against my back,
All those last minute quickies that made us late for work, or class, or parties…

How even near the end, when things were jaded and tense,
You’d still beg me to come back to bed
And spoon just for ten minutes more…

I loved you so much it physically hurt.
Did you ever really feel that way, too?
And why do I now, lifetimes later, still want to know…

Do you ever wake in the morning like I do?
Tasting the salty tears of memory dreams,
And reach over expecting to find me still there…

- A.

Friday, April 21, 2006, 7:15pm

I can’t believe it’s already Friday again! I’ve been bad about posting this week. I promise to be better next week. I was planning to catch up on Wednesday. I even scanned in those letters for my post below, but I ran out of time and had to run to my tutoring job. I was going to finish up last night after work, but we had a big storm that knocked out our cable modem. It just now came back on. It’s been like the Swiss Family Robinson over here! No phone, no internet, no cable TV… What’s a girl supposed to do? Laundry? Vacuum? I’m afraid that’s what it came down to… SHUDDER!

FIVE THINGS I’M GRATEFUL FOR THIS FRIDAY

1. Those guys that climb tall ladders and fix things like downed cable lines
2. I-Pods
3. 80’s Music
4. Dasani
5. Snuggles dryer sheets

THE POWER OF A SINCERE APOLOGY

In going through my sub folder, I found these apology letters that two students wrote. It cracked me up and I thought I would share them with you. To place the letters in context I’ll give you some background info after the images…





I was subbing at my favorite middle school where the kids are very polite and overall very well behaved. On this particular day, I was covering 7th grade Language Arts for a teacher that runs a very tight ship. She deals harshly with students that don’t behave, especially when she has a sub. Unfortunately, she also has a habit of assigning busy work when subs are there. If you’ve ever had to assign busy work to a group of AP students, you know the joy I was in for. Some of them whine, some of them refuse to do it, and some of them finish really quickly so they can pester the sub with bizarre requests that will hopefully get them a pass out of class. But that’s all part of the job, so I braced myself for a “fun” day and dove right in.

The whole day was amazingly smooth until I got to 7th period. I expect the kids to be a little chattier at the end of the day, but this class was crazy. (Crazy for them, anyway. I’ve had much worse at the high school, but I didn’t dare tell them that.) They wouldn’t stay in their seats, two girls had the giggles, a boy was accusing his friend of stealing his pencil, the usual shenanigans. At one point, I was leaning over a desk, helping a girl with her grammar worksheet, when I felt something hit me. I looked up and it got deadly quiet. The metal end of a pencil eraser was lying nearby. I couldn’t believe it. One of those sweet little darlings had pegged me square in the keister with an eraser! My first instinct was to burst out laughing, but I took a deep breath and put on my best “indignant teacher” face.

“Who threw that?” I asked. No one said a word. A couple of girls at a table across the room looked up guiltily, and as I headed in their direction, their eyes became huge with terror. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. As soon as I touched the desk she spilled her guts. “It was me. I’m sorry Mrs. S. I didn’t mean to hit you. I was trying to hit John.” That’s why I love middle school. Most of the kids just aren’t sophisticated enough to make up a good lie, so they tell the truth, often to their own detriment.

Once again I swallowed my laughter. I told the class how unfortunate it was that I would have to leave such a bad report for their teacher. Several students started freaking out, a week of silent lunches looming in their future... “Please, Mrs. S, don’t give the whole class a bad report based on a few students. That’s not fair!”

I thought about it a minute and agreed that they had a good point. If a few students could ruin it for everyone else, maybe they should be given a chance to redeem everyone else, too. I struck a deal with them. If the two biggest trouble makers could write me a good apology letter, I would leave a neutral note instead of a bad one. But not a good report—they’d already blown that.

So with a couple of minutes left in the day, they gathered around the two students I chose and made them write these letters. I found it highly entertaining to watch. But more importantly, I hope it taught them that a sincere apology can make a difference.

Few people these days seem to grasp how powerful a heartfelt “sorry” can be. It’s so much easier to blame someone or something else than it is to take ownership for your own actions. We’re all human, why is it so horrible these days to admit when you’ve made a mistake? Maybe it’s our licentious society that makes everyone afraid to admit anything. I just don’t know… But I do know that with me, at least, a sincere apology still goes a long way… (Grammatical mistakes and all.)

- A.

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot
From “The Waste Land”

Friday, April 14, 2006, 1:44pm

Ahh….it’s Friday, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, my dogs are snoring, and I don’t have to go into work today. All is right in my mini-universe…

FIVE THINGS I’M GRATEFUL FOR THIS FRIDAY

1. Blue Toe Nail Polish
2. Caller Id
3. Silk Pj’s
4. Perfectly Sharpened Pencils
5. Oatmeal Creme Pies

DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES? I do, I do…

Especially if you can fit them in a good story. I love hearing stories, anecdotes and jokes. I could listen to my great uncle tell crazy stories all day long. I don’t even think half of them are true, but I love listening to them. And they seem true when he’s telling them. I get all excited and can’t wait to tell my sister or husband about the outlandish things our ancestors supposedly did.

But every time I try to re-tell the story, it just seems to fall flat. The problem? I STINK as an oral story teller. And I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I’m not shy. I’m a pretty good conversationalist. I’ve been in plenty of plays and public speaking situations. I’m an okay writer, too.

But there’s something about live story telling that’s different, special. Story telling truly is an art. And people who are good at it have no idea how hard it is. There’s this seven year old boy that I tutor who’s a natural. Every day he has some new story to tell me. One day it was his great great grandfather’s iron toe that was melted in a fire. On another day it was the mosquito as a big as a bat that he killed with a bb gun… The truth never gets in the way of his fabulous stories. And even though I know what he’s saying can’t be true, there’s just something about his expressions and voice that make me wonder a tiny bit…

My mom has the gift. She’s the queen of whoppers. She can tell a story so ridiculous and so believable at the same time that you won’t be sure what day it is by the time she’s done. I used to cry every time I sneezed because she had convinced me that when you sneeze three times in a row a donkey falls dead somewhere… (Hey mom—what was up with that?) But most of her stories were happy ones, full of wonder and magic. And I believed every one.

My husband is a great story teller, too, though he doesn’t think so. In fact, that’s probably one of the main reasons I fell in love with him. I could listen to his voice for hours. Our first two years of dating were long distance, and we spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone. He’d call me at work and read me my horoscope every morning. At night, he’d re-tell me the plot from his favorite TV show or movie. I loved listening to his soft, southern drawl, mostly Texan with a hint of Georgian. It didn’t matter much what he was saying. For someone that hates public speaking, he is an amazingly good story teller. He has a way of describing the action that allows you to “see it” with him.

Did anyone see the SciFi presentation last weekend of Arabian Nights? I loved it. My husband just didn’t get how I could be so transfixed to the screen. “I don’t know,” I told him. “There’s just something about it. I love hearing the maiden telling the stories; I love the exotic settings and all the magic and absurd situations. I get why the sultan couldn’t stop listening to her.”

And I think that’s what makes a good story teller. When they’re talking, they’re able for a brief moment in time to make anything seem possible. I think they’re able to do this because good story tellers have an instinct for being totally “in the moment” of their story. (Something I have a hard time doing. I get too cerebral and start editing myself.) Good story tellers BECOME the story while they are telling it.

Good story tellers aren’t hampered with the truth either. They’re not liars; they just see a difference between a story and an actual event. And they don’t have any hang ups stretching things if it makes the story better.

But the thing I like most about a good story teller is their ability to make me feel like the story is being told just for me. That as a listener, I am an integral part of the story too. That there is nobody in the world more important to the story teller at that moment in time than me. A good story teller makes you feel that you’re connecting with another human being in a very real, satisfying way.

And that is why I will always stop and listen to someone’s story. That is why I find the stream so fascinating. And that is why I believe in fairies…

-A.

Thursday, April 13, 2006, 2:31pm

I’ve always believed that when it came to most social issues that I was in the silent majority. That there were tons of people out there just like me that believed in equal rights for everyone. We just didn’t shout it from the rooftops because we didn’t think it was necessary—the hardest stuff had already been done. Let the more zealous, motivated people out there continue to fight for what we all know still needs to be accomplished. The rest of us are just average citizens. Let’s leave rocking the boat to the activists. We’ll support them silently. Besides, haven’t we earned, just by being born Americans, the right to sit back and enjoy the freedoms that others worked so hard to procure? There’s no danger of back sliding, is there? Those voices out there trying to restrict the freedoms of others are actually just a very vocal minority, right? They’re crazies, right? No one’s going to actually listen to someone that proposes RESTRICTING our citizens’ rights, are they?

IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP!!!!

I’ve been asleep for too many years, trudging along, trying to secure my piece of the pie, safe in the knowledge that other people were keeping my freedoms safe and working hard to fix what was still wrong with our almost perfect society. But guess what? That’s not enough anymore. Not only do many of our citizens still lack equal rights, but rights are now being TAKEN AWAY. Maybe you think racism no longer exists, maybe you don’t believe women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, maybe you think it is okay for the government to invade your privacy, maybe you don’t support gay marriage, maybe you aren’t concerned that healthcare in our country, especially that for seniors and underprivileged children is tragically insufficient, maybe you hate smokers… Maybe you don’t care about any of these things. But believe me, the cause you DO care about could be next on the list. Because when anyone loses a freedom, we all lose, and it makes it that much easier to take away the next right. We in the silent majority can no longer remain silent. It’s time to do the right thing. (I’m sure if they reinstated Prohibition, a lot more of us would get off our butts. And I’d be leading the pack, believe me…)

I can’t tell you what the right thing for you to do is. It’s not my place to judge you or tell you what your moral obligations are. That is different for each of us and no one has the right to impose their beliefs on someone else. But I hope you will decide for yourself what is most important to you and do something about it. Speak out, teach your children what’s right, write a letter, send an email, sign a petition, protest, march, join an organization, etc. You don’t have to do it all. Even one small effort makes a difference, spreads ripples and awareness.

So I’ll make an effort to catalog for you here what’s important to me and what I’m doing about it. I invite you to join me and do the same. I want to hear what’s important to you and what you’re doing too. The more we band together, the louder our voices become.

The first thing I want to tell you about is GLSEN’s National Day of Silence, which will take place on April 26th. Here’s a blurb from The Day of Silence website (www.dayofsilence.org ):

“The Day of Silence®, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN®) in collaboration with the United States Student Association (USSA), is a student-led day of action where those who support making anti-LGBT bullying and harassment unacceptable in schools take part in activities to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment - in effect, the silencing - experienced by LGBT students and their allies.

500,000 students from approximately 4,000 schools will take part in this year's Day of Silence® on April 26, 2006.”

I recently became an educator member of this awesome group. Since I don’t have my own classroom yet, I have to be happy this year with just spreading the word. Their cause falls in line with my most important goal in life: to help young people become happy, safe, well adjusted adults that are confident in themselves and their ability to productively contribute to a society that accepts them for who they are. Just to reiterate—these are my words. I’m NOT a spokesperson for GLSEN. To learn more about GLSEN and their goals, please go to their website: www.glsen.org. They have an educator section with handouts, tips and all kinds of ways to help stop bullying and spread tolerance in our schools.

I hope you’ll join me in trying to do just that.

-A.