October 11th, 2009

Day 11: ’Skine of the Times

Well, I’m not quite finished with the project I intended to use as today’s post but I’ve run up against my deadline here, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I’ve collected some of my favorite pages from my first five years of using a small Moleskine brand sketchbook as a sketchbook/journal (which I’ve carried everywhere with me in my back pocket, just like my keys and my wallet):

The raw images are at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwitch80/collections/72157622569131296/ until I figure out how to gallery-ify (absolutely a word) them properly on this site, you can view them here.

Tags: 14 posts, moleskine, sketchbook - 3 Comments »

October 10th, 2009

Day 10: Taking Turns

Early fall, I realize, is wonderful. It is when the haze lifts and the heat breaks and football starts. Still, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able disassociate it from the feeling that it’s time to surrender my freedom and begin a lengthy sentence at Gradetest McHomework State Prison.

As I think yesterday’s post revealed, sixth grade was the hardest of my academic career. Coming in a close second though, was first grade.

In the Bridgeport school district, in Michigan where I spent my early childhood, kindergarten was the, oh, say geology of the grade levels. (All we did was learn to draw the forms of each letter in the alphabet — an activity I excelled in — and to scissor out shapes along dotted lines — an activity which I’m ashamed to admit was the equivalent of…well, whatever the hardest part of geology is, for me. I got several crying-sad-faces on “cut along the lines” assignments, but I eventually mastered this skill, thanks to many well-supervised home practice projects during evenings and weekends.) What I’m trying to say here is Level-K was not treated as a full-fledged participant in my education. We didn’t even do nap time like they do in the beginning years in a lot of elementary schools, but this was only because there was no need, as we were only there for three hours. That’s right, kindergartners only attend school for a half-day.

So you can imagine my bewilderment when, once I began first grade, school went on for twice as long as I thought it would. It seemed like forever. Rather than eat lunch before or after we attended school (depending on whether one was in the morning or afternoon program that week) we consumed our food at school, in this giant room of substitute kitchen tables. This was particularly traumatic. I mean, what were we? Savages?

For months, I came home in tears. Was I really expected to submit to classroom life, for that chunk of time, five days a week?

I was never a fan of school, but somewhere along the way I at least grew accustomed to it and accepted the fact that — save 10 glorious weeks every 12 months — this was what my life was going to be like for the next 12 years and I should probably suck it up and try to get something out of it. It didn’t take me all that long to come to this conclusion, but, up until very recently, I’d remembered this as a struggle I’d made it through all on my own.

Of course this wasn’t the case. When I burst in the front door to our house, there was one person ready to accept at least a hefty portion of the weight that I had to get rid of. I was too bogged down by my problems to reflect on this at the time, but I have no doubt that during the most agonizing parts of my longest days of searching for rooms numbers and trying to comprehend math problems and being forced to socialize, this person was thinking of me and worrying about me and praying for me.

And this one person is now in the middle of the most difficult period of her life (at least in the time that I’ve known her). And, though the fact that I’d ever have to do this came as a total surprise, it’s now my turn to do the thinking and the worrying and the praying.…

And I guess it’s her turn to show me that she can get through this, and come out okay on the other end.

Tags: 14 posts, Family - 1 Comment »

October 9th, 2009

Day 9: The Crêpes of Wrath

I’ve been attempting to brush up on my French as Kate’s now in Montreal and we will definitely be going to visit her in the next year.

I have a strained relationship with French though, as it made a hearty contribution to the most picked-on-iest (absolutely a word) school year of my life.

I was in sixth grade and about halfway through the year we started a unit on France in Social Studies. Our teacher somehow found an actual, real-life French person that was in the area and was willing to come in and talk to us about her country.

So the Frenchwoman gave us her pretty standard presentation, which took up most of a class period. There was a little time for Q&A at the end and, of course, rather than ask about the place’s history and culture, all anyone wanted to know was what everyday objects were called in a different language. We learned that “chemise” was shirt and “crayon” was pencil. Then someone got us onto names. So many people were so excited about hearing theirs, that she elected to just go up and down the rows and do a translation for everyone.

When she got to me and I told her my name was “Bobby” and she said “Bobby?” to make sure it she heard correctly. It came out: “Booby.”

Yes, she actually said “booby,” quite loudly, in front of a group of 30 middle school students. I have no doubt that the soundwaves from the eruption of laughter were visible from space.

Our teacher half-heartedly tried to get the bedlam under control, while clearly fighting back the giggles herself. For the rest of that day’s class, and every day after for the rest of the year, I was hounded relentlessly.

What can you do in a situation like that? I was one of quietest, scrawniest, least-threatening kids at my school. Getting mad would have done nothing but egg people on. And who would I have gotten mad at? Every single other person in the world, all of whom obviously found my predicament hilarious? So I just rolled my eyes to indicate to all these people who were now focused on me that I understood that I was being joked about, and then laughed along a little bit and acted like I didn’t really mind being teased.

Of course I did mind being teased.

The callous, unreserved way in which everyone (even the one or two people that I sort of considered friends) in that room poked fun at me made it obvious just what little regard they had for me. Looking back though, I sort of subconsciously understood that we were even. I didn’t have much regard for them either. To this day, I can’t think of a single middle school teacher or classmate I liked.

When they poked fun at me for the “Booby” thing they were basically indicating that, in their eyes, I looked stupid, but bullies had already informed me that I looked stupid for a myriad of other reasons. I was used to it.

I honestly think what bothered me the most is that it was just so lazy. When everyone was still riotously entertained by this incident five or ten minutes later, I remember saying to myself: “Ok come on, that only sounded that way because this lady has a foreign accent because she is from somewhere other than the five-mile radius where all of us live and, it would appear, don’t travel outside very much.” To make matters worse, I never got anything more interesting than “Hey Booby!” followed by the heckler cackling incessantly. For like four months. No one ever built on it. It was as if these people were our earliest prehistoric ancestors, and they’d been delivered the gift of fire on a silver platter, and all they’d done was stare at it blankly from 50 feet away until the flames died out. Even the f-ing cavemen knew when it was time to jump on an opportunity and make something more of it. Ya know, maybe try roasting some of that mammoth meat. At least those cracks about my Kmart shoes and my lack of athletic ability and the fact that I had a big head showed some interest in word choice and powers of observation.

Yes, at the tender age of 11, I had to admit to myself that there is a large segment of the human population that would be perfectly happy if every humorous experience they ever witnessed involved, say, a loud fart or a fat person falling down.

Incidentally, years later I found out that the way you would say my actual name in French is “Ro-bear.”

I’m sorry but that’s pretty lame.

Tags: 14 posts, Recollections - No Comments »