I have been reading about the high school boy who rang the wrong doorbell when he was supposed to pick up his younger brothers from a friend’s house and got shot in the head because he was black. And shot a second time when he was on the ground. He lived. But only because his guardian angel was helping.
The shooter, an old white guy, was taken into custody only to be released within 24 hours.
And then I couldn’t help but remember Emmit Till. From before I was born. And I cried for half an hour.
If I were to pick the five kids I loved the most in the 31 years I was a teacher, two of them were black. Only one was a white kid.
How could we not have learned from that picture of Emmit in his open casket? Thank God it is in black and white.
Forgive me. I can’t write more. I have to cry some more….
This 2019-2020 school year was my first as a retired school teacher earning extra money by substitute teaching. It ended before I was ready. I not only didn’t get a chance to earn all the money I needed, I did not get the chance to see some of the kids in five different middle schools I subbed for that I had learned to like and hoped to see again before the year ended. I did put in enough time to get rehired for next year. I even got to keep my sub badge so that I can go back if the schools ever reopen again. But I despair a bit over what I have lost. My health may not be good enough to go back to the job I love so much. In fact, I don’t really expect miracles to happen that would let me survive this pandemic. If I do go back to school next fall, it is more likely to be in order to haunt the hallways than to teach again.
The last few nights I have been sleeping longer than I have at any time since I retired in 2014. And I have had vivid dreams of being a teacher in a classroom yet again. But always in schools that are only vaguely familiar and are obviously new jobs with new kids that I haven’t seen or trained before. And yet, as it always is with teaching, they are all the same classroom, all the same schools, all the same kids, just in new packages that I haven’t seen before.
One of the things that is hardest about being a substitute rather than a regular teacher is the fact that one day, one class period, is not long enough to build a relationship with every kid. You cannot get to really know them in such a short amount of time. That’s why going back to certain schools is so exhilarating because you get a chance to cover the same classes again, see the same kids, and work on being a good teacher for them in the way I used to do it for kids that were mine for an entire school year.
And I was one of those rare teachers who actually likes kids.
Many teachers never get over the difficulty of managing a classroom and doing discipline. It is for them a never-ending battle for order and quiet. They only manage it by becoming fearsome ogres or anal-retentive control freaks. Most of those only ever consider discipline to be punishing kids enough to make them mind.
Those sorts of teachers don’t believe me when I tell them that the way to do discipline is not by quashing behaviors and limiting behaviors through punishment, but by encouraging the behaviors that you want. And by leading them into the excitement of reading a good story or learning an interesting new thing.
As a sub I went into the classrooms of punishing teachers and weak-willed teachers who let students do whatever they will. Invariably you meet boys who are convinced they are stupid and doomed to fail. They suspect their parents don’t like them. And all they want to do is stop lessons from happening by being disruptive. And invariably you meet girls who think the only hope for them is to capture the right boy (without any earthly idea what the right boy will be like). And they suspect their parents don’t like them very much. And all they want to do is fix their make-up, talk about boys with other girls, and talk boys into disrupting lessons to show their manliness.
As a substitute, I also went into the classes of teachers who knew the secret and actually loved kids. They had positive posters on the wall that could be paraphrased as, “There are wonderful things to do in this life, and I believe you can do them. You should believe it too.”
And they will say to their kids things like, “Look at this wonderful thing you have done. You are really good at this. And when you do things like this, nobody can tell me you aren’t a good and wonderful person that makes the world a better place.”
Kids need to see the evidence and hear those things from their teacher. And if the teacher is giving them that, they will even behave well for the substitute with very little work on the part of the substitute.
So, I have been dreaming about being a teacher again. It is a thing that I love to do, and I fear that, because of this pandemic, I will never be able to do it again. Even as a substitute. And if that is the case, then I hope that at least one person reads this and discovers the answer to the question, “How do you become a good teacher?” Because I believe I have it right. I know it worked for me. And I think it is true even if no one ever believes me.
Here I am back to doing D&D and Traveller on Saturdays. All of the art in this post was once used in conjunction with RPGs played with former students, and my own kids. I was always the game master in the past, and I used drawings and illustrations to help the imaginary adventures come to life.
Zoran-Viktor was a Mirin Ice Wizard from the Talislanta D&D campaign. The player of this character was Victor, a gifted dancer and actor from the school’s theater department. The Lawgiver was a powerful Non-Player Character in both D&D and Talislanta. The character design came from a metal figure I painted myself. Zoric was a Talislantan Thaumaturge, the player character of a weird kid who told x-rated jokes better than any other high-school boy I ever met.
Harun the Charmer was only ever used as a player-character once. The boy whose character it was provided the face I modeled it after. He was an absolutely arresting boy that had such a winning personality that people fell in love with him almost instantly.
He spent way more time helping another teacher grade papers than he did playing Talislanta games with goofy old Mr. B.
And I promise, only one of the facts presented here about Harun is a lie, in attempt to protect this young gentleman’s identity. We unfortunately lost him back in the 1990’s.
Crane the Sorcerer was an NPC trapped inside his own crystal ball by his own evil familiar well before my kids met him in the D&D adventure.
Viktor, the Snow Wizard of Ice Keep, was the father of Zoran Viktor. Victor loved playing Talislanta.
Venus Flytrap, my Monster High doll decorated with carniverous flowers, is the perfect pandemic mascot, as she guards the Vapo-Rub.
Stuck in the house all day with no outside activities to distract me, and limited socialization with the other denizens imprisoned in the house with me is more-or-less the perfect thing for a fiction writer with cancer of the imagination glands.
I have plenty of people to talk to, since , in this situation, imaginary people count too. And there is no end to the things I can talk about since ideas keep welling up in my head, even if many of them are totally silly ideas, and the rest are probably evil.
It helps to have a talking dog. Though my kids would argue that Jade isn’t really talking, that I am, instead, merely interpreting things I think she should be saying as if it were real speech. She does talk an awful lot about different kinds of meat and the moral imperatives of allowing your dog to eat people food. But I think it is only proper to commit to writing those things she says when we’re alone together, because, after all… a possible talking dog?
Everybody has a purple dragonette on the doll shelf that loves to play with dolls, don’t they?
But imagination is one of those things that sets people… I mean, human people, apart from all other life forms that we know. Imagination makes the man. What would we have made of ourselves and our world if we didn’t have it? Would we have invented the wheel? Fire? Term life insurance? I think not.
Peter Pan offers Alice a ride in his Skull-and-Bones Lowrider as ninjas attack Main Street Toonerville.
I may, in fact, be going a little stir crazy in the old hovel while trying like heck to avoid death by Coronavirus. I am easily as frayed around the edges as any hopeless hobo, with even my beard-trimming growing wildly erratic. Soon I may have to tell the imaginary people who surround me and question everything about me that it is not a beard any more. Rather, it is either a crocheted hippie neck-warmer rather than a beard, or maybe it has become a furred, frilly collar on my shirt like Shakespeare probably wore for the premiere of King Lear.
No, I am not going stir-crazy, or even a little bit insane. I am just letting the words unwind as they fill me up and demand to be unreeled in order to prevent an explosion in the brain.
Stan took Maria to the study and made her bring the decorative skull thing.
“It’s time we look for the miniature radio receiver,” Stan said.
“So, how will you do that?” Maria asked.
“With an exactor knife.”
“But, if you cut into it, you are doing what the owl guy said you can’t do.”
“Surely you don’t really believe in demons and curses?”
“I believe in Science, like you. But I also worry about things we might not know enough things about.”
Stan smiled at her. Typical teenager with some knowledge, but lots of superstition and ignorance on the other side of the teeter-totter of the mind.
He looked at the thing Maria had put into his right hand as his left hand picked up the razor knife. It was a beautiful piece of work. Shaped like a skull, it was decorated with flowers and vines in bright, looping lines. Someone had taken great pains to make this object worthy of its religious purpose. And even if you didn’t respect the dogma and arbitrary rules of religion, Stan did have to acknowledge that somebody in the world cared a lot more about it all than he did.
“Gringo, if you cut me, you will regret it for the rest of your shortened life,” said the skull clearly and in English.
“What? Maria, could you tell where that voice came from?”
“What voice?”
“You didn’t hear a voice?”
“Maria, I have a separate conversation to hold with you, Chica. But I have to threaten the stooge right now. Let me settle with him first.” Stan knew the voice was meant for both of them to hear that time.
“Okay, stupid one. There is a demon sealed into this paper skull. If you cut through the magical designs that hold it within, it will come out and possess you. You will kill pretty little Maria first, horribly with lots of blood, pain, and screaming. And then you will kill your wife even more horribly. And immediately call the police to confess your crime, not so you can pay for your crime, but to bring the police here to kill as many as you can, and then the demon will escape by possessing the cop who kills you.”
“Why is there a demon imprisoned inside of you?”
“He is bound there to provide the power I must use to perform the functions I have at Aunt Phillia’s. The things I must do for Maria to accomplish what she must accomplish among the Bones of the Lonelies.”
“Stan, maybe you should give the thing to me,” said Maria.
Stan was quietly thinking about any possible explanation that didn’t involve real demons to counter what the thing said, but he didn’t dispute it out loud. He put the thing in Maria’s hands.
“Maria, you know that Rogelio and Yesenia are both in the land of the dead though they are both still alive at this point.”
“Yes, I know…” She had tears in her eyes as she said it.
“There is a possibility that they will both die there and become permanent residents. You must now be honest about why you took Yesenia to the toy store to begin with.”
“I, uh… what do you mean?”
“You need to tell the Gringo Stan why you took Yesenia to the toy store.”
Maria looked at Stan. Stricken is the only possible word for how she looked.
“If you don’t admit it, you cannot go there and try to retrieve either of them.”
“I… I wanted her boyfriend to like me instead of her.”
“And what did you think would happen at the toy store when you took her there?”
She was ghostly pale. “I knew from the stories that something might happen to her that would separate her from Rogelio.
“And you got what you wanted. Why, then, did you take Rogelio there?”
She looked at Stan again. “I felt guilty. I had to…”
“You had to rescue her,” said Stan.
Her face crumbled and she was bawling.
“I can help you do that,” said the skull. “You will have to put your own life on the line to do it.”
Stan reached over to Maria and took hold of her shoulder. He pulled her to himself. She cried against his chest as he held her.
“Maria, it shows me you are a good person that you wanted to fix this.” Stan stroked the hair on the back of her head.
“You don’t hate me?” she sobbed.
“Of course not. You are my daughter now. No more question about that.”
These are not my two sons. The picture was drawn fifteen and ninteen years before they were born. Yet they were my two sons in the cartoon story this picture was lifted from.
Am I literally able to fortell the future? Of course not. But as an overly-sensitive artistical type one could argue that there is evidence in my art and writings that my reality now was at least partially embedded in my consciousness many years ago.
Estellia the Demoness
And truthfully, looking at the truth of things based on empirical evidence is what this point-of-view post is all about. We cannot always rely on the traditional concepts of good and evil as they have been taught to us. Sometimes you have to look at how the evidence stacks up properly, and just plain intuit a new way of seeing the whole picture. Yes, this is a portrait of a fifteen-year-old former student of mine. And she was definitely evil and difficult to deal with. But she went into nursing after high school. She works in the ER where her decisive ways and ferocious insistence on having things work out in her favor because that’s the way the established rules say it must be done turn into positive qualities that are probably saving lives in a Texas hospital as we speak. It is all in how you perceive the truth of a situation and then apply it.
Comedy, of course, depends greatly on rearranging your point of view. If you are going to make a joke about something, you have to re-mix and un-match the details in ways that still make a sort of sense to the reader or the hearer of the joke. I have taught at schools like Dudwhittler’s. If you are a teacher, you recognize that that school bus carries not only that which is funny, but also that which is very true. The teacher driving the bus is a tin man who easily rusts and cries too much, thus rusting further, but you can see he has earned his heart, even if he has to drive the bus on top of teaching so he will have enough money to buy food.
But probably the most anticipated thing from a new perspective that you were expecting since reading the title is a new perspective on the Coronavirus shut-down and economic depression. That alternative take is simply this… the pandemic, though extremely hard and painful, is a good thing that happened at the right time.
I am willing to say this, even though the way the virus has been mishandled in this country is going to very likely be the death of me, because there are benefits that we simply don’t recognize without a thorough punch to the gut and another to loose teeth.
It is a good thing because it will make it harder for Herr Fuhrer Pumpkinhead to win the next election, and he will probably take a number of corrupt Republicans down to the bottom of the sea with him.
It is a good thing because it is proving to us that we can survive on less and still make our way out of the bad situation.
It is a good thing because kids get extra time off from school, and probably also the chance to spend more time with the people who really teach them things we need them to know… like parents, grandparents on Zoom, teachers who don’t fear distance-learning technology, and trolls on the internet (Yes, I know that last one is risky and mainly learning the hard way, but it is also true from before the virus hit).
It is a good thing because the air is cleaner. And we have proven that we can make radical adjustments when it is a matter of life and death. And the environmental crisis is actually a matter of life and death.
So, now I’ve had my twisted say about my pretzel-minded perspective. And so you can now trash it, or possibly learn to like pretzels.
The Cobble Sisters, Shelly and Sherry were raised as nudists. At home they are always naked. They wish they could be naked everywhere they go.
Naked thinking as the main idea of this post is about more than taking all your clothes off like the Cobble Sisters do. It is about allowing yourself to think anything it is possible to think about no matter how others might react. And then publishing this thinking, sharing the uncloaked thoughts no matter what they are about. I know that some of you will probably read no further than this. But others will read on because, like me, they are attracted to the notion of the truth laid bare. They want to see it, no matter how much shock and ugliness is being risked. And don’t worry that I am going to post pictures of my own naked carcass because the naked truth about that is that I am not a very social nudist like the Cobbles, especially not Sherry, and I am certainly not an exhibitionist.
I will, however, show you artwork that is not in any way pornographic, but does show you the private parts of people both real and imaginary who do feel like sharing their naked truth visually. (And also, hopefully, tastefully. However, that is entirely up to the whims and prejudices of the viewer.)
At this point in the on-going story of Mickey’s incredibly awkward notions of nudism and naturism, I am totally going to share with you the distressing and undressed topics that my essay collection will attempt to lay bare. I know some things about being a survivor of sexual assault. And also as a result of that first distressing thing, I can also lay bare the truth about being suicidal, struggling with sexual identity, and the need for sex education before such things can befall mere children.
As a school teacher, I have learned a great deal about students’ thoughts about sexuality. I have heard stories straight from the students’ own words, both verbally and in writing, about dealing with homosexuality, transgenderism, body image, and relationships. I won’t reveal anybody’s actual names, but I can lay bare the facts as they were presented to me. A whole lot of naked ugliness, gracefulness, and even on rare occasions, beauty.
And I have naked thoughts about how I believe these things might actually be dealt with in the future, the how-tos and whens of sex education, how society might benefit from laxer rules about public nudity, how schools might be beneficially conducted in the nude, and other wacky notions that might get me banned in Florida and Texas, but might also be worth at least thinking about.
Basically not porn, even though the red panda is naked.
Thinking realistically about the times we are living in, I do know that Mickey-thoughts about nudity and naturism are a potential place for things to go way wrong, especially when books are being banned and schoolteachers can be fired for thinking that students should know about Rosa Parks, Roberto Clemente, and Harvey Milk. But I am old, and have practically no time left to me to get into “good trouble” for the good of the people and institutions I care about. And I am retired, so they can’t fire me. And having one of my books banned would probably be really good for me as an author. So, there is that. And besides, with my art, I hope to prove that the nude human body can be beautiful… even if it’s ugly.
Life goes up and down, round and round, inside, outside, happy, to sad, and down to the bottom of the sea, and finally up to the highest height of the mountain peaks. And I am navigating it all in an airship with holes in its wings that also has to serve at times as a submarine with leaks in its hull.
How’s that for a tortured metaphor?
Baby Butterfly Girl, Fish Boy, and Moana helping me obsess about the news.
I know I don’t have many more years to be alive. I am in poor health and it is getting worse. We’re facing tornado times with global warming. The house I live in is falling apart. I am trying to live one day at a time and savor every moment I have left. But there’s a large amount of pain. I have an awful lot of frustration built up over how hard it is getting to do any real writing during the average day. It’s hard to make all of that funny and laugh it off.
Still, I have not given up. This blog post is evidence of that. I pecked this one out with arthritic fingers and a lot of bulldog persistence.
Here are the things I intend to force through to publication;
The Haunted Toy Store
I feel like I have been drowning at the very bottom of the sea. But I am struggling back to the surface for another breath of fresh air.
I honestly hope you are not reading this blog to find advice on life, the universe, writing, or anything. That sounds more like something I myself might do, and I am goofy enough to think this purple paisley prosy thing is a humor blog. I don’t really give advice, good or otherwise.
Even as a teacher I didn’t tell students how to do things in a do-this, then-do-this, and then-do-this lecture format. If anything, I advised by showing them how I did things, leading by example. I taught skills and concepts by setting up tasks that let kids do things for themselves. Most people learn by doing.
This idea applies no matter what the learning goal is. If you want to do magic, you have to cast some spells for yourself. Roger Bacon’s students in the 13th Century learned to do alchemy and eventually chemistry by blowing up the laboratory repeatedly. If I am capable of any sort of artistical or literarical magic, I have achieved it only by trying to do it, trying to be creativical, and getting readers’ and viewers’ attention by being marketableical and somewhat ironical in my blogging with over-use of artificial -ical endings.
So, I treat this blog as way to generate ludicrous ideas and goofy content in order to fascinate readers and sometimes even make them laugh. And I have nothing more to write about than myself and my own experiences. It is obsessively self-inflicted observations about myself. Kinda like standing naked in front of the mirror and learning to laugh at warts and wrinkles. I believe in taking the clothes off of my life experiences and finding the naked truths that were previously hidden. And, no, that doesn’t really explain why it seems I like drawing naked people so much. It’s a metaphor, dang it!
Gilligan never realized how good he had it as the only realistically eligible bachelor on that island.
So, that’s what this blog is all about. I am explaining what this blog is all about. I am looking at my own experience of life, the embarrassments, the sad truths, the disappointments, the triumphs, all the most personal, private, and public stuff. And I am laughing loud and long. Because that’s what life is. Mastering that fundamental skill. Learning to laugh at life.
Here’s a brief summary of the only good advice you can possibly find by reading this blog. If you want to write well, start writing and teach yourself how to do it. And if you want to learn to laugh, look for what’s funny and laugh loud and long and clear.
As an atheist who believes in God, paradoxes and contradictions are something I am entirely comfortable with. So, it should come as no surprise that I don’t believe in ghosts… with notable exceptions.
Cool song, right? Did you listen to it? It’s a song about ghosts. It’s a lot older than I am. And the singer here, Burl Ives, has been dead since April of 1995. Hearing it today, at random, proves that Burl Ives is a ghost I believe in.
He came back to haunt me today as I am recovering from pink-eye, reminding me of my childhood and youth when he was the snowman in Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV around Christmas time.
He is also haunting me because 1995, the year he died, was the year I got married. I was married to my wife in Dallas in January. In March, we found out that we were going to have our firstborn child before the year was over. And we also found out that my grandfather was dying.
I was not able to make it from Texas to Iowa to see Grandpa Aldrich before he passed away. But he was told while he was in the hospital that we were expecting at about the same time that he got to hold my cousin’s newborn second son. Grandpa loved the music of Burl Ives. In many ways he was like Burl Ives. He even vaguely looked like Burl Ives. And we did get to attend his funeral. (My Grandpa, I mean.) And shortly after that, Burl Ives died and I saw the announcement on the news. This is one sort of ghost I believe in. He came to commune with me as I lay on my sickbed thinking about death. And on a day after finding out that my son, now in the Marines, is about to be discharged after five years and will be home next week. He is ghost of memory. A vibrant and talented spirit of the past who lives on through his work. And he brings with him the ghost of my Grandpa Aldrich, They are both no longer living, but lingering still in the echoes of memory, and still affecting life.
Dean Martin and Perry Como are also ghosts of memory.
Then, of course, there’s the whole matter of the ghost dog. Yes, I continue to see flashes and images and shadows of a brown dog in our house, larger and browner than our own dog, that disappear as soon as you look directly at them. My oldest son has said that he has seen the very same thing, so it is not merely brain damage or impending insanity on my part, unless it is something that also runs in the family. And it has been suggested to me by an elderly neighbor that two families ago, a brown family dog lived in this house and may be buried in the yard.
I believe it is possible that life and love in a family leaves its imprint in many ways on a house, a home, an inhabited place.
I know it can easily be put down to misinterpretations of things seen in peripheral vision, or even mental misinterpretations responding to subtle suggestions. I doubt that there is actually a protoplasmic or energy form that continues after death. But if there is something there, it is benevolent rather than malevolent. Ghosts, if they exist, are a good thing, not a bad one. It doesn’t scare me to live in a place that has a soul capable of absorbing and incorporating a faithful family dog.
Basically, I am insisting that the existence of ghosts is irrelevant. I do not require the artificial reassurance of belief in a life after death to make me unafraid of facing death. I am a part of everything that exists, and I will continue to be a part of it even after my body is dissolved and my consciousness is silenced. Even if life on Earth is extinguished, the fact of my existence is not erased or invalidated. The poet says, “You are a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should.” -from Disiderata by Anonymous
So, I am ill and thinking about death, for it is not very far away now. And I do not fear it. As I do not fear ghosts. For I don’t believe in them… except for the ones I do.
Catch a Falling Star 
From an Alternative Point of View
Am I literally able to fortell the future? Of course not. But as an overly-sensitive artistical type one could argue that there is evidence in my art and writings that my reality now was at least partially embedded in my consciousness many years ago.
And truthfully, looking at the truth of things based on empirical evidence is what this point-of-view post is all about. We cannot always rely on the traditional concepts of good and evil as they have been taught to us. Sometimes you have to look at how the evidence stacks up properly, and just plain intuit a new way of seeing the whole picture. Yes, this is a portrait of a fifteen-year-old former student of mine. And she was definitely evil and difficult to deal with. But she went into nursing after high school. She works in the ER where her decisive ways and ferocious insistence on having things work out in her favor because that’s the way the established rules say it must be done turn into positive qualities that are probably saving lives in a Texas hospital as we speak. It is all in how you perceive the truth of a situation and then apply it.
Comedy, of course, depends greatly on rearranging your point of view. If you are going to make a joke about something, you have to re-mix and un-match the details in ways that still make a sort of sense to the reader or the hearer of the joke. I have taught at schools like Dudwhittler’s. If you are a teacher, you recognize that that school bus carries not only that which is funny, but also that which is very true. The teacher driving the bus is a tin man who easily rusts and cries too much, thus rusting further, but you can see he has earned his heart, even if he has to drive the bus on top of teaching so he will have enough money to buy food.
But probably the most anticipated thing from a new perspective that you were expecting since reading the title is a new perspective on the Coronavirus shut-down and economic depression. That alternative take is simply this… the pandemic, though extremely hard and painful, is a good thing that happened at the right time.
I am willing to say this, even though the way the virus has been mishandled in this country is going to very likely be the death of me, because there are benefits that we simply don’t recognize without a thorough punch to the gut and another to loose teeth.
It is a good thing because it will make it harder for Herr Fuhrer Pumpkinhead to win the next election, and he will probably take a number of corrupt Republicans down to the bottom of the sea with him.
It is a good thing because it is proving to us that we can survive on less and still make our way out of the bad situation.
It is a good thing because kids get extra time off from school, and probably also the chance to spend more time with the people who really teach them things we need them to know… like parents, grandparents on Zoom, teachers who don’t fear distance-learning technology, and trolls on the internet (Yes, I know that last one is risky and mainly learning the hard way, but it is also true from before the virus hit).
It is a good thing because the air is cleaner. And we have proven that we can make radical adjustments when it is a matter of life and death. And the environmental crisis is actually a matter of life and death.
So, now I’ve had my twisted say about my pretzel-minded perspective. And so you can now trash it, or possibly learn to like pretzels.
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