I figured today was going to be a bad-luck-sort-of day because the signs and omens were all against me. I forgot to buy dog food yesterday. And I also forgot yogurt for the Princess’s breakfast in the morning. Not only that, the Simon’s Cat game on my phone made me lose the daily challenge three times and the phone ran out of charge before I beat the stupid thing.
George Appleby and his wife (Red Skelton’s Hen-pecked Husband sketch)
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What’s worse, the first and only thing my wife said to me this morning was, “Michael, stop looking at me with such an angry face!”
I admit I wasn’t smiling. But I was not mad about anything. Should I have been?
“I’m not angry. Are you just saying you think my face is ugly?”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
Yes, the signs and omens were not in my favor today.
What is destined to go wrong?
Car accident on the way to Walmart?
Didn’t happen.
The price of yogurt went up to the point that I could no longer afford it?
Nope, again. But the bill at Walmart had 13 dollars on the front of the price. !!! 13!!! The unluckiest number? I added a candy bar to get the price up to 14 dollars. The candy bar was 88 cents. The total= $13.95. “Oh, no!!! An impending stroke when I carry the dog food into the house!”
Nope. Didn’t happen there either. Is bad karma building up on me for my next teaching job?
Maybe. We find out with 6th graders on Tuesday.
Or maybe I am just fixated on the bad signs and omens too much. If I worry too much about it, I might become George Appleby.
But then again, my wife probably deserves to be covered in toothpaste.
On Wednesday I subbed again for a science teacher at Long Middle School. They were eighth graders, the chest-thumping apes at the top of the monkey-house food chain. There was an AVID class with too many at-risk and under-disciplined kids in it. And the Long ESL classes contain too many rabid monkeys who don’t understand monkey-English well and are liberally dispersed through-out the harried eighth-grade teachers’ day. In other words, the Wednesday job caused me brain damage from which I haven’t recovered from fully at this writing.
So, today I am obsessed with finding the magic necessary to avoid having any more teacher-meltdowns and brain injuries like that 6th period debacle. (“Debakkil” is a magic word, but it is an evil magic word),
In the Disney animated classic Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother uses a magic spell called (in a song) “Bibbety Bobbity Boo”. In the course of singing the song, the old F-G turns a pumpkin into a carriage and mice into horses, the swayback horse into a driver, and the dog into a groom. I need a spell like that to remedy the monkey-house meltdown syndrome that I was victimized by.
So, here is how “Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo” will work.
The spell is cast initially on a male student, a monkey-like being swinging from the light fixtures, but obviously smarter than the other male monkey-students. You could magically turn his raggy clothing into a ball gown and embarrass him completely (which would be true to the metaphor, but would turn him into your worst nightmare)… but don’t. Instead, tell him that he is smart enough to be a leader. Put him in a position of power, making him in charge of a group, and telling him his consequences will be either a reward for good leadership, or the blame for the bad behavior of the group. Remind him that he has natural leadership skills. If he speaks to others respectfully, they will be respectful to everybody. If he shows them how to behave properly, they will use him as a positive example. He will get the credit for the good things they will do.
“Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo!”
It works. We had a poster project to do in groups of four. They were supposed to create a diagram of the mechanics of the four seasons of the year, with a sun and four representations of the earth with its axis and equator tilted properly in relation to the sun. That’s the kind of assignment that can result in the explosion of the science lab or the total cannibalization of the substitute. But I made it successfully work in four out of five classes.
Why did it go wrong in that last period? 1. Classes that are out of control for the regular teacher are impossible for even the best sub to control. 2. Too many students in one classroom are impossible to control when you have more groups than work tables. 3. Supplies run out at the end of the day, and empty pens and markers become projectiles. 4. Eighth graders all need to take mandatory naps in the afternoon (using sedative darts and a dart gun when necessary) but no school or principal is aware of that fact. 5. Cranky afternoon baboons grow longer fangs than they had in the morning.
So, Mickey must revise and rework this particular spell for the afternoons. And he must refuse the next job coming from this particular teacher.
My most-recently-published book is now available for free from Amazon. I have tried this free-book promotion idea with other books, but this is the newest book I have available. I need to give away a bunch of books, so help yourself to one with the above link.
Nocturne 6 – Highly Heated Moments (The White Thread)
Rocket Rogers and Phoenix walked together towards the community baths in the Palace of 1,000 Years. Not far behind them walked Friashqazatla, better known to all as Freddy due to pronunciations and the intricacies of the Zaranian language.
“You do know that he’s following you and not me,” said Phoenix. “It’s you he seems to be queer for.”
Rocket looked at his literally hot-headed friend with a sense of embarrassment. He didn’t know what to do about Freddy’s apparent hero-worship.
“Hey, Dog-Boy. If you’re going to follow us around like a puppy, you might as well be one. Didn’t Ged-sensei teach you how to transform?” Phoenix could be needlessly cruel it seemed.
Freddy looked at them with sapphire eyes. Then he stripped off his blue jumper and his blue turban, transforming into the black wolf as he did so.
“Good boy!” said Phoenix. He signaled to the black wolf to come to their side, possibly to pet him. But when Freddy padded up within reach, he used his pointer finger to set the wolf’s tail on fire.
Freddy immediately changed back to his dark-skinned humanoid form, putting the fire out before being burned by making all the flammable fur go away.
“That was mean,” said Freddy, sitting on the wet floor of the bath house naked.
“Why do you have to follow us?” asked Phoenix hotly.
“Well, um… I like Rocket and want to be his friend.”
“He’s already got me for a friend.”
Then both of them looked directly at Rocket. He blushed a bit. “Yeah, um… I think I may have room for more than one friend.”
“Suit yourself.” Phoenix dropped his black kimono and proceeded nude to the bathing pool currently occupied by Taffy King and little Mai Ling.
“If you’re willing to risk it, you can bathe with us,” offered Rocket. “But I’m not gay, if you were wondering.”
“That’s good. Me neither. I just want to be your friend.”
Rocket dropped everything but his cowboy hat, helped Freddy up, and together they went over to the same pool and slipped into the water. Phoenix had already used his Psionic powers to heat the water to a level barely able to be tolerated by humanoids.
“Do you always have to make it so hot?” complained Taffy. Rocket liked being around her when she was nude. She was not human in the way he was, but only her saurian eyes made her noticeably different than him.
“If you don’t like it, you can always get out,” said Phoenix with an evil grin.
Rocket quietly lowered the water temperature a little, not quite enough for Phoenix to notice, but enough to protect Freddy and the girls from being broiled like cooked lobsters in a pot.
The warm water was actually soothing on sore muscles after the rigorous workout they had been doing under Ged-sensei’s direction.
“So, Taffy, what are you gonna do for a boyfriend now that Alec has found a new squeeze?” asked Phoenix with a suggestive leer.
“Alec was never my boyfriend. Just like you will never be. But I am still open to other options. Boys who aren’t so mean and evil, I mean.” Taffy smiled at Rocket.
“Well, I like that,” muttered Phoenix as he apparently made the water even hotter.
“How do you do that?” Mai Ling asked Phoenix. “I really like hot water for baths.”
“Really? How hot?”
“Phoenix! Don’t you dare!” Taffy glared at him with green lizard eyes.
“Would you like to see how hot you can stand it?” Phoenix offered, sounding a bit more sincere than usual.
“I really would,” said the little girl. “But maybe in another pool? And don’t cook me, please.”
Phoenix shrugged. He and Mai Ling got out and walked to another pool.
“Remember, Phoenix. She’s a very good shot and is useful in combat!” Rocket shouted.
“Don’t worry, Rocket. I might be in the market for more than one friend too.”
As soon as Rocket turned back around in the pool, Taffy planted a kiss right on his lips.
“Mmmph! Ah… what exactly was that for?”
“How would you like to be my boyfriend?” Taffy asked point blank. Then she kissed him again. Longer. And he didn’t mind at all. But when they finally came up for air, Freddy was looking at them both with an embarrassed grin on his face.
I entered the classroom silently. Death doesn’t have to make any sound when it enters a room, but I remember many times when I entered a classroom in a fully enraged-lion roar. Probably too many times.
This time it was a small lesson to a small class. Little Mickey, ten years old, was sitting there in a front-row desk. He was wearing that stupid purple derby hat that he always wore in his imagination. And he was wearing nothing else besides.
I gave him that old death-eye stare of disapproval. He grinned and shrugged. “Hey, I like to write about nudists, okay? They tell the truth more than most people.”
I simply nodded.
Sitting the next row over, in the front seat also, middle-aged Mickey was slumped in his seat like the cynical, world-weary teacher-thing he actually was. I nodded disapprovingly at him too. “I know, I know,” he said. “My time is running out. I have to get started on my writing plan for real this time. My stories will never get written if I don’t.”
The third seat in the third row contained Old Coot Mickey with his wrinkled clothes, his long Gandalf-hair, and his frizzy author’s beard. He grinned his goofy grin at me and nodded at me cheekily. “I’ve got fourteen novels written and published now. Taint my fault that nobody ever reads ’em. They are mostly good stories, too.”
I rolled my eyes at the dark ceiling.
On the chalkboard I wrote out. Today’s Lesson Is…
“I know! I know!” shouted little Mickey, naked except for his purple hat. “The next novel is A Field Guide to Fauns. It is all about nudists in a nudist camp. I am definitely down with that!”
“Is that really a good idea, though?” asked middle-aged Mickey. “I think I was meant to be a writer of Young Adult novels, like the ones I taught so often in class. I know how those books are structured. I know their themes and development inside and out. I know how to write that stuff.”
“But the little naked guy has it right. You have ta be truthful in novels, even as you tell your danged lies.” Old Coot Mickey made his point by punctuating it with a wrinkled hand thumping on the top of his desk. “You have written novels with characters forcing other characters to make porn films in The Baby Werewolf, and sexual assault of a child in Fools and Their Toys, and lots of naked folks, and betrayal and death… All of that is the kinda stuff kids really want ta read. And them stories don’t glorify that stuff neither. Stories can help fight agin that stuff.”
“Remember, that stuff is hard to write about because I actually went through some of that stuff in my own life. It’s possible for even a fiction book to be just too real for a YA novel.” Middle-aged Mickey had entered fighting mode with his fists on his hips.
“But the underlying truth is why you had to write those stories to begin with. You have truth to tell… But in fiction form,” argued little Mickey.
“And horrible experiences turn into beautiful survival stories and heroes’ journeys with time and thoughtfulness and art,” said Old Coot Mickey.
I agreed with all three of me. I nodded and smiled.
“But you are Death, aren’t you?” asked middle-aged Mickey.
“And you’ve come to take away at least Old Coot Mickey!” declared little Mickey.
“You’ve got me all wrong,” I answered all three of me. “I am not Death. I am Nobody.“
My model railroad layout used to feature a model town I called Toonerville. The town continues to exist as models I have built and/or painted sitting on book shelves and tables.The streets of Toonerville are narrow, but basically book-shelf straight.Some folks who live there are poor. The old woman who lives in a shoe is one of those.The residents of the big house on Mel Gibson Street are relatively rich.But all the residents of Toonerville are plastic people.The plastic people of Toonerville have a movie theater to go to, but The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart is the only movie that plays there. It hasn’t changed in 40 years.There’s also a theater in what used to be Chester Wizenut’s barn, but it is closed for winter and winter has lasted for twenty years in Toonerville.In downtown Toonerville, the clocks never move, and they aren’t even correct twice a day.The Congregational Church was moved downstairs for repairs.Grandma Wortle’s house, Lemon-Sucker Manor, is large and wealthy-looking, but the old lady who lives there is such a miser, she makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus.But Toonerville is a happy place with more than one trolley car, and it makes me smile to go there and chill for a while.
Yes, I am writing this post in response to another hard day of substitute teaching. 6th graders! Aaargh!
But the real point of it is that most of the problems I had are due to every teacher’s daily nightmare… discipline management.
This is all that remains of my classroom rules poster from the 1980’s.
Teachers, even substitute teachers, are expected to keep an orderly classroom. But the truth is, no adult human being can make a twelve-to-eighteen-year-old member of the monkey house do anything… or refrain from doing the most harmful thing that occurs to the immature monkey brain.
It is just as Carl Sandburg once suggested in a clever poem. If you tell them not to put beans in their ears, the only thing they will definitely want to do is put beans in their ears.
So, this post is my list of excuse-a-mes for why the classes I taught yesterday all had bean-filled ears.
Excuse number one; 6th graders! Aaargh! Yes, I had four classes to teach, and three of them were made up solely of 6th graders. They are the squirrel monkeys of the middle-school monkey house. Unable to sit still and be quiet on their best days, they were super-stirred and hormone-activated. It is, after all, February, a week before Valentine’s Day, the hormonal-monkey holiday. It was a writing class and they had a writing assignment that they are supposed to be working on for the next week. And the generally accepted rule among monkeys; Do no work for substitute teachers, no matter their educational backgrounds in English and writing.
Excuse number B; To maintain discipline you have to know the kids. Here’s the most pernicious problem that substitute teachers are saddled with. I had never seen over ninety-five percent of these squirrel monkeys before… not in their natural habitat… not even in cages at the zoo. Boy, do the nerd-like teacher-pleasers who are actually classroom comedians and attack-monkeys in disguise really mount up in that particular saddle and ride you for the rest of the monkey-rodeo you thought was going to be a writing class.
Excuse-a-me Three; There are too many monkeys in the monkey house. Especially the Avid class of 30 super-heated seventh and eighth grade warm bodies that I had to teach as a bonus-penalty for being a “good” substitute. AVID is a special program for troubled and at-risk kids where you put them together with a good teacher and treat them like gifted students and set their lovely little monkey-feet on a path to college. Except, this under-funded special program that works spectacularly well in some schools, is basically misused and abused across Texas where practically all kids who are not white or not wealthy are at-risk for one reason or another. I got to walk into a classroom cold with these thirty high-risk monkeys because no other sub had signed up for this particular nightmare job. No lesson plans were available. No attendance sheets were ready. And it was a science lab, so the room was filled with kids who had helped themselves to rulers and yardsticks with which they were conducting sword-fights. The teacher next door who was giving a test found for me a stack of worksheets to give out. I located a class list to use for attendance. And then I proceeded to put them into seats with work to do and threatened several lives and put one overly-aggressive girl in temporary time-out and denied restroom privileges to scores of kids who probably weren’t going to actually explode into showers of pee. And I didn’t keep them quiet, but when the bell finally rang 50 hour-long minutes later, no one had died a horrible death. And they all had their clothes still on. And it appeared that the structural integrity of the classroom was still sound enough for one more class period. And I, of course, had to quickly rush back to the 6th graders for the worst class of the day.
Excuse-a-me Finale; The sub in the room next door was more incompetent than I was on this particular day. That isn’t really an excuse for my poor showing, but it at least made me feel sorry for someone besides myself. Some of his students came to me as their next official class, already charged up for a super-fun murder-the-sub day. Some of the students who came to me had to go to him for their next period and tried to stay in my room instead. Some of his students went for extended tours of the parts of the campus where they knew no assistant principal or security guard would be. There were fights in that class. They were banging on the the walls. They were noisier than my classes. The poor young guy had none of the substitute survival skills that I had, and I was too pressed to help him at all. But he was young and healthy. He had apparently been there for a couple of weeks as he was doing a long-term job for a history teacher who was having a baby. So, he will soon learn that he does not want to become a Texas public school teacher in his future.
So, as a disciplinarian, I was really dumb for a day. I do know how to handle these things correctly, and I will make future posts about the How-to-s of that. But for today, it is enough to say that I survived to teach another day.
I was a substitute teacher for seventh graders on Monday. And I experienced a bit of the time-warp sensation that becomes a big part of the lives of old people… especially crazy old coots like me.
My whole-day sub job was definitely happening on the 3rd day of February, 2020. And yet it took me back to 1988, 1996, and 2002 all in the space of three 50-minute periods.
I was visited by three former students from the past. They looked almost the same as I remembered them. They definitely acted exactly the same. And they had exactly the same kind of classroom behavior as they did before. And what was equally confounding, they were all in the seventh grade yet again and in the year 2020, apparently inhabiting new bodies with new names attached and attending school again at Dan F. Long Middle School in Carrollton.
Raul was a feisty comedian-type kid, too lazy to do the actual work, but more than up for a titanic effort at disrupting a class in order to avoid doing the actual work. He was up and out of his seat repeatedly, harassing the resident weird kid to make him bellow, and then blaming everybody in the room except for himself about the paper-wads and mini paper planes that flew when I had my back turned (an old trick from ’88), He got in trouble yet again, though this time it was not me who would be calling his mother to explain the need for some capital punishment at home.
And in that same class, Heather, Cotulla cowboy cheerleader from my seventh grade class in ’96, sat two rows over from Raul. Secretly laughing at everything Raul did, and laughing even harder (though without actually making a sound) at every punishment I gave out.
And two periods later, freckle-faced Pearl from 2002 was sitting in her customary front-row desk, laughing at all of my jokes that the other kids in that Advanced-Placement English Class for seventh graders were not quite sharp enough to understand.
If you teach for long enough, you realize that you are really only teaching the same kids over and over and over again. Names change, the years change, the technology and society around us change, but the kids are always the same. Heck, on Monday, three of them even looked the same.
Teachers are routinely put in charge of other people’s children. As a teacher, you are responsible for the care and well-being of under-developed human beings which you not only have to keep safe and clean and diapered (well, figuratively only, hopefully), but you also have to spoon-feed them whatever curriculum the wealthy, white pettifoggers with no teaching experience (I’m talking about you and your kind, DeVos) have foolishly decided is the proper thing to stuff into their little under-developed brains. And the kids never really change. The names change, but nothing else that is important. The pettifoggers eventually change, but not enough to make any real difference.
So, there you are. You are left with the task of nurturing future people. And everybody criticizes. Except, usually, other teachers. And you have to learn to love other peoples’ children. And, I discovered I still do. I still love even the bad ones, even after I have given up the game and no longer have any class of my own. And I don’t love any of them inappropriately, either. I know better than to touch them, especially the radioactive ones. Unless it is about touching the heart and the mind metaphorically. I know I posted before about hating 7th Graders. But you have to know them better than a substitute gets to know them to hate them. Loving them generically is much better for the soul, and even as a sub, I can still do that.
Now, you probably remember that Trav Dalgoda was sitting up in orbit around the planet Farwind on the ship he now commanded with lots of toys to play with. He had particle beam weapons and ion weapons that could reach the planet from space. You can probably imagine he was in Goof Heaven and everyone else under his command had to be in Nervous Hell.
“Don’t you want to stop playing with those red buttons, Trav?” asked Dana Cole sweetly.
“Oh, I love these weapons. I haven’t played with things like this since that gigantic forest fire on the planet Samothrace. You could see that one burning from space, I’ll tell you what.”
“Still, you know, there are other things to do besides constantly targeting different things that are visible on the planet.”
“Yeah, I know. But… what, for instance?”
“Well… I. uh…”
“You know, you look pretty in that uniform.”
“Thank you, Trav. I’m so glad you finally noticed.”
“Oh, I always notice you. You are one hot hoochie mama!”
Dana frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I really like you. In fact, I think I’m gonna need you with me always. Hey, I can get an unobstructed target lock on the industrial complex at Cyber City! Cool deal!”
Dana nervously undid the jacket buttons of her uniform. She had nothing on underneath, and the full glory of her cleavage and her navel were revealed. Her hands were actually shaking. This seduction might be needed to save lives.
“Notice anything else about my uniform, sailor boy?”
“Yeah, Little Jester, your front came undone. Better button up so that you won’t be out of uniform.”
Dana’s jaw set grimly. Some forms of stupidity are too immense to be believable. Never-the-less, no matter how exaggerated it may seem, there is almost always an example somewhere of every kind of idiot behavior.
“Did you notice how I had your ancient artifact set up on the bridge?” Dana pointed at the evil coffee machine where it was percolating with eerie green lights in the middle of the bridge. The other bridge officers walked around it as if it were a sleeping baby, an excessively evil sleeping baby. Tiptoes were almost not enough.
“Ah, yes, my beautiful Tesserah! I love the way it gleams and smells like napalm in the morning.”
“Maybe you should examine it more closely. It’s been thirty minutes since you looked at it last.”
Trav’s grin was maniacal. He strode over to the pulsing artifact. He put both hands on it. “Ah, has oo missed yer daddy? I wuv oo, yes, I do.”
The behavior made Dana almost sick to her stomach. As he petted the thing and nearly made love to it, she couldn’t help but think this was the worst assignment she had ever drawn from the evil creepers of Expedition One.
I finished up a final proofread and formatting project on the novel I am re-publishing on Amazon, Magical Miss Morgan.
And, you know what? The story made me cry again. An unbroken record. It is about the fifteenth time I read through it. And every single time, the little three-inch-tall fairy is killed again, and I can’t keep my eyes dry.
He’s not even based on a real person as so many of my characters are. It’s not like it is someone I know and love. It’s a fairy. Not even remotely real. And I’m the one who decided he had to die in the story because because good comedy stories always end with at least one main character dying… Don”t they?
Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates
But I can’t help feeling things about the characters in my stories. I don’t love them all. I hate some of them. But, they’re the ones you are supposed to hate. They are villians, bad guys, characters based on real people who hurt me in real life.
Silkie and Donner are fairies.
It’s not just my stories that make me feel. I have read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities twice, and both times Sydney Carton made me cry. I read Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop only once. And Little Nell made me cry so hard I could never reread that book. And there’s Simon in The Lord of the Flies, and, of course, the old Yeller dog in Old Yeller by Fred Gipson… I’m a sucker for heroic deaths and tragic losses. They touch and twist my little blue heart.
Miss Francis Morgan, school teacher
But I cried for the fifteenth time, and I survived it. I will probably cry again if I read it again. That is what life is like. That is what fiction is for. To make me think and feel and… love.
Catch a Falling Star 
Something Unexpected
I finished up a final proofread and formatting project on the novel I am re-publishing on Amazon, Magical Miss Morgan.
And, you know what? The story made me cry again. An unbroken record. It is about the fifteenth time I read through it. And every single time, the little three-inch-tall fairy is killed again, and I can’t keep my eyes dry.
He’s not even based on a real person as so many of my characters are. It’s not like it is someone I know and love. It’s a fairy. Not even remotely real. And I’m the one who decided he had to die in the story because because good comedy stories always end with at least one main character dying… Don”t they?
But I can’t help feeling things about the characters in my stories. I don’t love them all. I hate some of them. But, they’re the ones you are supposed to hate. They are villians, bad guys, characters based on real people who hurt me in real life.
It’s not just my stories that make me feel. I have read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities twice, and both times Sydney Carton made me cry. I read Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop only once. And Little Nell made me cry so hard I could never reread that book. And there’s Simon in The Lord of the Flies, and, of course, the old Yeller dog in Old Yeller by Fred Gipson… I’m a sucker for heroic deaths and tragic losses. They touch and twist my little blue heart.
But I cried for the fifteenth time, and I survived it. I will probably cry again if I read it again. That is what life is like. That is what fiction is for. To make me think and feel and… love.
Magical Miss Morgan will soon be back in print.
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