Zeus, the god of Storms and the Sky
In the early 90’s a fellow teacher became acutely aware of the effect the role-playing games I was playing at home after school had on the cognitive abilities of the fatherless boys I was constantly entertaining. She suggested that maybe, if it was working at home with a few students and former students, it could also work in the classroom with all students.
This, of course was a daunting classroom activity to carry out, but enough of a creative challenge to my story telling abilities that I simply had to try.
I began with a cheap RPG book about adventuring D&D style with characters from Greek Myth. This was an opportunity not only to play adventure games, but to teach a little bit about history and a lot about mythology.
So I created generic character sheets using my own personal copier, my own copy paper, and my own overhead projector plastic overlays.
I created adventures that could be conducted on the overhead with dice and each kid having their own set of skills and useful items. We conducted Olympic games and included mythological creatures like Tritons and Centaurs as player characters. We learned about the city of Olympia, the city of Argos, the city of Corinth, Athens, Sparta, and even Atlantis.
I let students draw their character from a hat on strips of paper that contained a boy option and a girl option. I even let students trade for the character they wanted and we learned negotiating skills along with problem-solving skills.
Demeter, goddess of fertility (which you can’t say in a junior high classroom, so goddess of crops and farming.)
Most of the stories were driven by a kidnapping where the beautiful daughter of one of the players was kidnapped immediately after the Olympic medals were awarded. The villain would take her to his evil island base, and the players would have to work together to buy or steal a boat. Gods and goddesses could be called on to intervene, and sometimes they actually did. Another story line began with the sack of Troy, during which the players either murder or witness the death of a young Trojan boy who just happens to be Heracles’ son.
That story took the players on a quest of penance to visit the underworld and retrieve the boy in the same way that Orpheus tried to rescue his lady love Eurydice. Potentially, Heracles would even join the quest himself if none of the player characters were the actual killer. And, of course, all sorts of encounters with monsters would ensue.
I ended up using about as much of my personal resources as a story-teller and a cartoonist to create those adventures as I had available. But I had students tell me that the week of classroom time spent playing that problem-solving myth game was one of the most memorable learning experiences they ever had. I never tried it with a high school class, only middle school, and then mostly with 7th graders. But I think the experiment was very successful from about 1992 to 2004, and it taught me even more about teaching than it ever taught them about mythology.
One of the fascinating features of a table-top role-playing game is the freedom it gives you to go where you could never go in real life. In Dungeons and Dragons we have taken the campaign under the waves among the water-breathers.
Catch a Falling Star 
Uber Dooby Doo
Yes, I am an Uber driver. I have combined passenger fares and meal deliveries 118 times in the 4 months I have been doing this. I have made a few hundred dollars in that time that have at least temporarily allowed me to continue to buy food for my family as I try to pay off my bankruptcy debts.
And there is absolutely no way to explain why anybody in their right mind would ever want to do such a job, so I won’t try that. I will, instead, try to explain why someone like me who taught middle school long enough to get brain damage actually kinda enjoys it.
You see, a teacher does his job each day by standing in front of a motley mob of hormone-crazed immature higher primates and talking to them with the insane hope that they might actually listen, and even more insanely believe that they will learn something from it. And as a side benefit, you get to listen to them talking to each other and to you. You learn about who they are, come to appreciate them as unique individuals, and sometimes even love them (though never in a way that will get you thrown in prison; rather, only through Christian agape-type love).
Driving Uber is the same thing with all the responsibilities and consequences greatly reduced. You take somebody somewhere, talk to them if they want to talk, don’t talk to them if they are giving off “Shut-up!” radiation, or just deliver food to them, and then Uber gives you money… like magic.
I can effectively Uber drive because I spent seven years driving all the way to Garland, Texas from Carrollton in order to do my teaching job. Forty-five stop lights and a thirty-five-minute to three-hour commute. That’s a lot of city driving for practice. And of course it is driving experience in Texas where any idiot who can get behind the wheel is allowed to drive, and many of them have guns. I have learned how to do defensive driving pro-actively and aggressively.
I have put up with paying passengers who are backseat drivers and complain about every passing motorist and lane change. I have experienced an Uber navigator app that sends you to the wrong location routinely and sometimes advises you to make a u-turn in the middle of a major highway intersection. I have had to juggle two meal deliveries at once on opposite sides of the city. I have also driven drunks to liquor stores to buy more crazy sauce. (You wouldn’t believe what kind of wild stories you can hear from drunk guys.) And restaurant managers that I’ve worked for more than once are often relieved to see me rather some of the drivers they have to deal with.
So here’s my assessment of life as an Uber driver. I don’t make much money, but I can make enough. The hours are good because I can drive at any time of day or night and for as long as I feel like doing it. I don’t have to do it at all if I don’t want to. So it is practically a perfect job for retired and sickly crazy old me.
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