Grown-ups in 3D

My dad used to read us headlines from the Weekly World News and The Onion and try to pass them off as fact. Looking back, this is a hilarious parenting move that I may adopt someday, but at the time it was confusing. Like when you have a nagging feeling that you’re getting punked, but can’t quite figure out how. As a kid, I didn't draw the distinction between the lowbrow crazy of the Weekly World News and the highbrow commentary of The Onion. In fact, without any context, I wasn’t totally sure either publication was so different from the Wall Street Journal. My early understanding of current events was spotty at best.

When I was maybe 19 (with a marginally clearer understanding of the world and a desire to get paid for writing things—ha. ha.) it occurred to me that writing for The Onion would be the dream job. I assumed I'd sit around on a beanbag chair alternating between dark coffee and gummy bears while cracking jokes with bespectacled coworkers until someone in charge called a lunch break. At the end of the day I'd crank out an easy 1000 words that perfectly satirized some element of society and peace out to the local dive bar where I'd continue cracking jokes (sophisticated ones, mostly) over tall boys of PBR. I'd be living the writer lifestyle only instead of Penniless Solitary Angst I'd have Salaried Communal Comedy. Trading up, obviously. I researched internships, but my teenage dream never became a grown-up reality.

I no longer wonder if The Onion is hard news, and I no longer want to work there (read: I'd sell my unborn first-born for the chance), but I do place The Onion in an elite category of comedy I reserve for other gems like Jon Stewart (my dream man) and Arrested Development (RIP). And while I don’t believe the articles to be fact, I see the grain of truth in every one.

Last week, right before I left to chaperone a school trip to New Orleans, I read an Onion article that struck a nerve (or chord? I’m bad with idioms). The article was about the impending extinction of the grown-up—a rare breed of human that knows how to pay taxes (and does so on time), resist impulse shopping and start a stable career, among other things. As I was reading, I realized I could check off very few of the boxes that would label me a member of this dying breed. I was waiting for my take-out salad at Nectar on Court Street (RED ALERT: don’t grown-ups cook?), and I looked around at the other patrons also reading The Onion, wondering if they suspected from the moment I walked in that I might not be a real grown-up. A post-pubescent poser—poorly playing at adulthood.

A few years ago, several people forwarded me a Dave Barry column on what he calls the new phases of life. In addition to active retirement (skipped that paragraph), Barry inserts a new phase in-between college and career called The Odyssey. Like Odysseus on his epic journey, The Odyssey stage of life involves doing exciting things (one-way tickets to far-away places, Teaching for America, short-term publishing fellowships in Southern India, or whatever) that don’t last long, but allow you to get out and see what’s what before buckling down and starting a career and—God forbid—a family. Maybe The Odyssey is a nice way of validating the fact that you couldn’t quite get your shit together in a bad economy, but it does sound pretty sweet, right? If you choose to accept your Odyssey you’re buying yourself a little time before settling down into the dark realm of the grown-up. But now with grown-ups facing complete extinction, I wonder if The Odyssey phase will just keep on stretching. For many peeps in their twenties, that seems to be exactly the route life is taking.

I’m in a confusing position. After college, I took a one-year fellowship in urban education in Boston, expecting that to be the start, not end, of my Odyssey. I think people forwarded me that article to soothe my anxiety—to tell me it would be okay. Either that, or they knew I was a bit of a wreck and had no idea what to do with my life. Or both. So I took this fellowship, figuring it would allow me to do something worthwhile while also writing and figuring out the next step. I had cut ties with my boyfriend and had no ties to SoCal to begin with; an Easterly Odyssey seemed like a good move.

And so I packed my bags and skipped from LA to Boston to start my Odyssey. Thanks, Dave Barry, for validating my post-collegiate existence!

Only unlike many 20-somethings, my Odyssey came to a screeching halt when I decided to take my one-year gig to the next level and become a TEACHER. Right up there with the most grown-up of jobs. A job that comes with a real salary, real benefits and—most importantly but least happily—really real responsibility. I have no idea what I was thinking. My Odyssey was apparently finito, and adulthood loomed unpleasantly.

This choice to teach leaves me wondering whether I’m a real grown-up. Once I go down that path, I start to ask myself if I want to be a grown-up or if I’m content with faking it. Or maybe, I could be a hybrid half-grown up—a mutant form evolved to keep the species semi-alive. Highly advanced.

On the one hand, I spend my days telling kids they’re taking too long in the bathroom and that they need to lower their voices. That holding hands in school is inappropriate even if he’s been your bf for a whole two weeks. I have to answer to bosses and return emails promptly; I am held accountable every single day of the week. The last few men I've dated have been slightly balding. I pay rent. That’s real, baby, that’s being a grown-up, and I’m not sure how it happened.

But on the other hand. Because there’s always another hand. My dad did my taxes for me, I can never say no to another drink, and I just bought an all-lace tank top from the sale rack at Madewell because…no, there’s no good reason for that. I’m not sure these confessions—alone or in sum—disqualify me from adulthood, but they don’t help my case.

My Odyssey seems to be over, cut short by the stark reality of real life. People treat me like a grown-up and expect me to live up to the name. And when it’s all said and done, I can play the part pretty well, as long as I’m still allowed lace tanks and vodka. Frequently. Though grown-ups like our parents may be facing extinction, it does seem a powerful (?) new form is waiting in the wings. Call them fake grown-ups or Odyssey-goers. Call it faking it until you make it. Whatever it is, the shoe fits for now.

El ñoqui y el vino

My junior year of college, I lived with a red-wine guzzling, fresh pasta-making Italian family in Buenos Aires. Each afternoon, my surrogate father Rolo would don a chef’s hat, unbutton his shirt to reveal manicured chest hair, turn on Beethoven’s Ninth and cook, both championing and disrupting gender stereotypes with his own particular brand of machismo. He also deigned to wear pants (one of the few things we had in common). On the 29^th of every month, Rolo rose before noon to prepare homemade Gnocchi.

Gnocchi is a bit of a food anomaly. It defies categorization and transcends the typical, yet it is deliciously no-frills. Gnocchi is dense and absorbs any sauce like a starchy sponge. Half pasta, half potato, these bite-size Italian dumplings have provided much-needed consistency—both texturally and emotionally—to my life ever since.

Like my host family the Frangellas, Gnocchi immigrated from Italy’s boot to the southern cone of South America during the 20^th century, unsure of what it would find in the land of gauchos, tango, vino y carne.

In Argentina, where superstition and tradition are life, Gnocchi is religiously consumed on the 29^th of each month. While this gastronomic tradition provides unity to the polarized nation, its origins defy continuity; every Argentine has a different story. Rolo’s explanation for the monthly ritual involved a wealthy Italian prince and a tragic famine. My host mom Rosario’s story was all Italian perfume and the unstable Argentine economy. Granted, my Spanish was still evolving, but these two clashing tales provided me with inconclusive insight into the tradition’s origins.

Underneath your plate, you place pesos—for prosperity, good luck, happiness and/or good sex. The more pesos you put, the more gnocchi you eat, the more _____ you get. Whatever it is, I can dig it. Every month on the 29^th my multi-generational host family gathered in their tiny apartment to consume plate after plate of Gnocchi—smothered in red sauce, meat sauce, cream sauce, green sauce, brain sauce or plain butter for purists. And skeptical vegetarians.

From February to July, Gnocchi on the 29^th marked my time in Argentina. In February, I consumed Gnocchi nervously, my Spanish abysmal and my comfort level low. In July, I ate Gnocchi confidently but nostalgically, knowing this 29^th would be my last in Buenos Aires and hoping that the coins beneath my plate would bring me much of, well, something.

Returning to the States from Argentina was hard. I missed the beat of Buenos Aires, the sexy roll of ñ on my tongue, the steamy Latin-ness of it all, and my not-quite-family family. And out of this longing for the foreign-turned-familiar, Gnocchi Night se nació. For a year, three Claremont friends who also lived in Buenos Aires came over each month on the 29^th, and we recreated an Americanized Gnocchi night in my minuscule California kitchen. And, like it did in Argentina, the evolution of the year was marked in Gnocchi.

At first, Gnocchi night was sentimental. We ate late and talked long—pretending our workload was as beautifully non-existent as it was in Argentina. We peppered our language with Argentine slang and greeted one another with the saucy Argentine beso. We rehashed the city: our favorite bars, sultry bottles of red wine, and unsavory but memorable city scents. Time zones away from our beloved South American city, we became a cult of Gnocchi

We bought the Gnocchi in $1.99 packages from Trader Joe’s. Though Rolo would disown me as his not-daughter daughter if he knew, these prefab Gnocchi served our purpose and fit our budget. We drank a $3 bottle of Malbec and chose two sauces for variety. The night ran for less than $15.

Victor takes charge of the Gnocchi preparation. He personifies them as holy and sacred, wondering why we must kill so many innocent Gnocchi just to fill our stomachs. He hovers above the pot of boiling Gnocchi, enraptured by their quiet simmering. When Gnocchi are ready, they announce their maturation by rising to the top of the pot, one brave soul poking its head out to test the not-so-proverbial waters. Then the rest climb, bubbling up from their watery depths with a triumphant gurgle. Victor sounds the alarm, and we gather to watch the rising of the Gnocchi—a deeply religious experience, better observed in silence. We fill our plates and clink glasses to this culinary wonder. Then we eat—respectfully, savoring each fallen soldier.

One month, when we discovered that raw Gnocchi bounce, we invented Gnocchi ball, developing our skill—a quick flick of the wrist, a firm bounce to avoid backlash. Cleaning up my house after college graduation, I found hardened Gnocchi hiding behind the coffee machine and in kitchen drawers that were foolishly left open during a match.

We tasted Gnocchi raw, surveying its uncooked properties, and we poached Gnocchi in red wine (by accident, when one bounced in a glass during Gnocchi ball, but aren’t great ideas born from mishap?). We debated homemade and regretted the busy schedules that prevented it.

“What if we ate Gnocchi cereal with milk?” Victor pondered one night at the Gnocchi table as we scraped oily pesto from our plates and polished off our last bottle of wine. In our Gnocchi haze, we all nodded like this was a perfectly normal suggestion, so he kept going. “Or, what if we wore Gnocchi as earrings?” he postulated in all seriousness.

In January, Victor posed a serious problem: “Guys,” he said, “There’s no 29^th in February. It’s a leap-year.”

We went to San Diego for a week of debauchery before graduation, which happened to fall over May 29^th. In my rented beach condo, we celebrated our last Gnocchi night before the clan parted ways for post-collegiate adventures. No one knew what the future would old (in Gnocchi-terms or otherwise), but the evening was heavy with finality. Sitting on a long stone wall looking at the Pacific, Victor had an idea: “guys,” he said urgently, “we have to let one gnocchi escape to sea.” And so we did. Together, we unleashed a brave, marinara-covered Gnocchi into the gurgling Pacific. We may have held hands and we may have chanted, but I’d been drinking for five days straight, so it’s hard to say. Becky traveled to Southeast Asia that following summer, and emailed to say she thought she saw our little traveler wash off on the tropical shores of Bali. I also think I spotted it on the sunny shores of the Charles River in Boston.

Last year in Boston was Gnocci-free. My life there was too crazy; I barely knew what day it was at any given moment. My kitchen was a permanent wreck, and I felt like cooking Gnocchi amidst the squalor would be sacrilegious. Once, I cooked Gnocchi on the 29^th and ate it alone; it was as depressing as it sounds. The 29^th passed like the 28^th and the 30th, and my Gnocchi intake was tragically low. I felt the Gnocchi-ball skill I’d developed fading from my muscle memory. On most 29ths, one of the original Claremont crew would send a Happy Gnocchi Day text or email, but the gesture was small without the food to vouch for it.

In August I moved from Boston to Brooklyn—a city that boasted food-fascinated friends, a more grounded lifestyle and a big dining room table that creaked longingly for dinner parties. As I settled in to my new digs, I realized I wanted Gnocchi back in my life—I wanted to mark the months of my first year teaching in something other than demerits and gradebooks. With willing friends and a Trader Joe’s two blocks away (how else would I have picked an apartment?), I revitalized Gnocchi night. We’ve done homemade sweet potato and Mark Bittman’s ricotta recipe. We’ve done lots and lots of bottles of Argentine red wine. After a brief hiatus in life, Gnocchi’s returned, and I like to think it’s here to stay. There’s very little I don’t like about a tradition that involves friends, food and wine.

If you’re in New York on July 29^th, consider yourself invited. No bottles of wine over ten bucks allowed. Must be red.

On-Task Tweeting

Read This:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/education/13social.html?pagewanted=1&ref=education

And now read two caveats:

1. The classroom in the picture looks nothing like my classroom. We definitely don't sit in circles. Circles are for yuppie white kids--Montessori kids and Waldorf kids. Maybe it's a little shapist, but my school prefers rows. Now, you make the jump about the demographics of the classroom in the article's photo versus the demographics of my classroom. The inference shouldn't be too hard.

2. I hate technology in the classroom. More accurately: I am bad at technology in the classroom. My progressive, med-school-esque teacher-training program in Boston (http://matchschool.org/matchcorps/teacher.htm) emphasized the "Meat and Potatoes" lesson plan over the five-course meal. Scrap the Youtube clips and dance moves, just go for the basics: handouts, overhead transparencies, pencils, books. Technology makes me sweat. Literally. The projector works only 80% of the time, I'm constantly tripping over cords, kids can't see, and I never find the techno payoff to be that significant in terms of student achievement. If I can avoid technology, I do.

And now read some rambling:

Now that that's outta the way, this article is pretty cool. Prompting classroom discussion by use of Twitter feed? I just got a Twitter, so I'm finally hip to the hashtag (#EmmaandPaulandMajken). Like wifi on the airplane (seriously, how do they do that?), classroom-sanctioned tweeting makes me feel like I'm living in a futuristic robot world. Article says allowing kids to tweet their thoughts during classroom discussion increases respect, balance and participation. Everyone loves that stuff.

The teacher in the article makes a valid point that brings me back to my days behind rather than in front of the projector--a hypothetical seat I like to take once in a while for perspective. For a shy kid, piping up in a crowded classroom is unnerving. The discussion is fast-paced and dominated by the boisterous kids (you know the ones -- maybe you were one). For many kids, it's easy to sit back and let it flow without your input rather than inserting yourself. For some, this tendency holds true all the way to college--all the way to your career. It's to your advantage to nip it in the bud.

Most everyone thinks classroom discussion is important, so for years, teachers have tried to counteract the impulse to sit back by making participation trackers, homeworks that target discussion the next day and any other old-school strategies that prompt more equitable, but still high-quality, classroom discussion. It ain't easy.

So maybe tech's the answer, even if it makes me reapply deodorant at ten in the morning. If kids can participate virtually, a medium with which they're all too familiar, the discussion may become livelier and more balanced. It ensures that kids are adding their two cents even if they're really...not. Even if they're still silent during discussion. Silently tweeting, but still.

Maybe if kids are tweeting their smarts during class, they won't have to SEXT during class. They really do that; it's real.

Despite aforementioned perks, I'm not totally sold on the idea, and it's more than just technophobia. I think my hesitation relates to why I'm also not sold on the Kindle. You lose something real when you're typing or touch screening rather than talking or flipping pages. Discussion--classroom or otherwise--teaches eye contact, manners, elaboration and dissent. These are valuable skills that might get lost with over-reliance on your Twitter feed or any other social media turned classroom tool.

While I probably won't implement the twitter feed discussion any time soon, I respect it because it lines up well with my try-new-things philosophy--in life and in education reform. Technology is here to stay--so I better make peace--and if that means tweeting while teaching, I guess I dig.

Sage Advice from Supermodels

Kate Moss famously said, “Nothing tastes as good as productivity feels.” Or something very close to that. I’m not one to talk up supermodels, but Kate knows what’s up.

I’m an efficient person. I never pulled all-nighters in college or begged professors for extensions in my sweatpants. I never sat in the library bemoaning a looming deadline with a blank screen in front of me and my body convulsing from too much library coffee (okay, once or twice). I rarely wait until the last minute. Not really my style. I’m not sure if I was born productive (proudly checking off my to do list in the womb) or if I turned productive after realizing just how incredible productivity feels. Productivity is more addictive than your favorite vice—your high of choice. Maybe a productivity campaign is the solution to the nation’s drug problems. DARE to be productive. I’ll call Barack (speed dial one).

Over the years, I’ve used various methods of productivity-promotion. I used to rely on a certain brightly-colored planner made in Ashland, Oregon (a town on the California border known for naked street dancing, Avant-garde Othello and apparently organization). I have a stack of planners in my bedroom in Portland that chronicle my life in terms of boxes checked and commitments no longer pressing. One year, I created daily Moleskin to do lists, because—like the rest of Brooklyn—I fall prey to the hipster notebook. That smooth black cover just makes me want to get shit done, be creative.

Last August my life changed in many ways (boy out, job in, new city), but mostly in terms of productivity.

When my friend Ian first heard me refer to my Flexi-Friend (Flexy for short) I think he thought I was talking about some sort of sick comfort-object/vibrator hybrid—wait, has that been patented?

Every week, you and your Flexi-Friend must have a “meeting with yourself.”

You take your Flexi-Friend everywhere. Just in case of emergency. It’s just so…flexible.

Okay, not the best name, but a rose by any other name…

At the end of my program in Boston, a Brooklyn-based charter school type named MAYA came up to the Bean to give us an hour-long professional development session on the Flexi-Friend, her patented, tried and true organizational system that she claimed was taking over progressive education in New York. MAYA is a fast-talking New Yorker who wears tailored outfits from Banana Republic, has perfectly highlighted hair and I suspect an addiction to something harder than her Flexi-Friend. She scared the crap outta me.

She was a living, breathing infomercial, only I couldn't change the channel.

“The best thing about the Flexi,” she cooed in her New York accent to a bunch of tired 23-year-olds, “is that it can be tailored to your needs! Your Flexi-Friend is YOU!”

Right, MAYA. I wanted to vomit on her low-heeled pumps.

I’m a proud cynic, so after promising to use my Flexi-Friend (there was an oath), I threw it in my bag and promptly forgot about it.

To get things straight, the Flexi-Friend is really nothing special. It’s a clear plastic tabbed notebook in which you’ll find things like your weekly worksheet and thought-catcher (cute, huh?). In essence, there’s nothing better or different about the Flexi-Friend; it’s a glorified planner.

And yet.

When I started teaching in September, I felt overwhelmed in a new way. I grasped for that glittery feeling of productivity that I bragged about in paragraph 2, but my arrogance was weakening. The workload felt insurmountable, and I touched my eyelids at night, knowing there must be permanent lead weights up there. I wasn’t having any fun. As someone accustomed to productivity and the life-work balance that ensues, I was angry that my work was showing me who’s boss.

So I pulled my Flexi-Friend out of a box from the Boston move and decided it was high time I met with myself. I closed my door, put on a little mood music and got to work.

For some reason, the introduction of the Flexi-Friend into my life reinvigorated my sense of productivity and purpose; I remembered Kate’s wise mantra. Though on the surface it’s in no way superior to other methods of “getting your life together,” the Flexi felt shiny and different. It tracks your daily, weekly and monthly workload. It reminds me who I need to tell what, and it encourages me to cross things off in brightly-colored Sharpee. Of course, the sweetest high there is (more than just the toxic smell).

I take it with me everywhere and look at it constantly. In fact, just looking at my Flexi-Friend centers me. I’m not sure if it’s the Flexi-Friend or a mindset adjustment, but come December my life had re-calibrated and rebalanced.

During a meeting a few weeks ago (not with myself), my boss articulated the key to productivity success that I think I'd always known. I believe a strong sense of efficiency is what allows teachers (maybe even laypeople) to work a stressful job and lead a fulfilling life. She said that when making a to do list, you must grant equal importance to work things and life things. Getting a pedicure or brunch with friends should be given equal weight on your to-do list as grading vocabulary quizzes or lesson planning. You should put absolutely everything you want to accomplish on your Flexi-Friend to do list. No thing is too big or too small (I’ve had everything from ‘eat lunch’ to ‘stop acting insane’). That way, balance is written into my Flexi-Friend, and I can make sure it happens.

And so, the cynic cowers in shame, MAYA is unknowingly proud, and I meet with myself every Thursday morning so that I can keep on riding the efficiency high.

Mind Your P's

The best and worst parts of yesterday started with P, which appealed to my OCD complex with alliteration, but not much else.

Punching and Portland.

Relatively speaking, my school is a very calm place. We have a strict management system that usually does its job well. Save a few outliers, kids know what to do, and they do it. As charter school teachers, we're so unused to the normal behavioral woes of public school, that chatter in the supposedly silent hallway and pen tapping seem like egregious offenses. We're spoiled, maybe hazardously so. Especially as a first year teacher, I've had to deal with very few of the painful hurdles that might characterize the experience in a more typical New York public school.

That is, until yesterday when things took a sharp downturn. Cue P one: The (Perilous, Premeditated) Punching.

It was the end of the day, and I had my homeroom for a brief 15 minutes before sending them down to the cafeteria to take a state test. My only job was to pass out the test, have them bubble in their name and race ("but, what if I identify as African American AND Hispanic?" Pick a bubble, kid. That racial identity ain't gonna get any easier) and line them up to head downstairs. This should be a simple task, only it wasn't.

One kid in my advisory has a vision impairment that's unfortunately quite, er, visible on his face. Seventh graders are cruel, so this makes him the target of much subtle bullying (probably even CYBER-bullying, which is the hot new trend in harassment). I had to give him a large print test booklet, which was comically-sized about three times bigger than the other kids' tests. Thank you, New York State, you couldn't have just added in more pages? (Note to self: write strongly-worded letter to New York State's testing department). Despite brainstorming, I could think of no strategic way of giving him his test booklet without the other kids noticing. Maybe as a fourth-year teacher, I will able to finesse situations like these a bit better, and my classroom will run like a scene out of the Sound of Music only without the Nazis. I, of course, will be Maria.

In the time it took me to answer the hundredth question about where to bubble your race, the five kids surrounding large-print-test-booklet kid had pounced--sly comments about his test, his eye, whatever. And then there was the Punching: right in the face of the worst bully.

Shit. That's a new one. My teacher training gave me the tools to handle many classroom situations, but Punchings did not make the cut. It was only a year-long program.

He kinda deserves it, right? Making fun of something that someone can't control--like a physical impairment--is the worst form of mean, and it'd been going down all year. The other kids rally around it because there's no easier form of friendship than mocking others--together. I felt my blood start to boil. This is not what I wanted to be doing at 4pm on a Thursday afternoon. The reason teaching is so hard (and interesting on a good day) is that no matter how well-planned you are, you still have to make hundreds of quick decisions every day--some tiny, some huge. By Thursday afternoon, your brain starts to hurt and you really just wish people would stop asking you things.

Here I had one puncher and one punchee plus a classroom full of of shifty-looking kids, most of whom were participating in or allowing the bullying to continue. Before consequences were doled out (because even when you're the target of cruel bullying, punching still lands you a suspension), two other teachers and I hosted an impromptu lecture for the advisory. The kids sat stiller then I'd ever seen them as we took turns explaining the long-term effects of harassment, the idea that even passive-participation in bullying is still bullying, the fact that our homeroom had become an unsafe space. As the words were tumbling out of my mouth in what I hoped was a bad-ass tone of voice, I started to have some serious "how the hell did I get here?" thoughts.

I was giving a lecture I hadn't planned after handling my first-ever classroom punching (a badge of honor on my girl-school vest). I was an authority figure, a major grown-up, apparently. I was too mad and tired to feel the power, though. I just wanted the kids to get along, but that's a lot to ask of kids. They don't understand compassion or repercussion, empathy or cruelty. The boys might be taller than me, but their grasp of reality is still very, very short. That's why teaching middle school is about teaching life and character as much as reading and writing.

The kids were finally dismissed and I plopped down at my desk with a killer headache and a killer craving for a really cold beer or my bed. Everything felt wrong and confusing.

So I tackled the one thing on my gargantuan to-do list that I knew would make life make sense again: booked a two-week trip to Portland for July. Nothing like spending $400 to make life right again. Cue second P.

(Pretty and Predictable) Portland.

There's something about hometowns. When everything else feels insane, I know that Portland is always there with its welcoming arms of delicious food, foggy coastline and backyard BBQ's where everyone wants to give me a veggie burger. Portland is the remedy to what ails me; it's rejuvenating. Even though the city has changed (the hipster percentage has tripled, we're pushing our urban growth boundaries and my liberal hood has been taken over by blonde Republicans), there's a certain constancy and normalcy to home that just feels right. Things in the great PNW make a little more sense to me. My parents are getting weirder, but they live in my old house where all my books are. Nothing grounds me quite like my book collection (woah. nerd alert.) The trees are greener; the beer is hoppier; the air is fresher and so are the brunch ingredients. These are things I care about.

By five, the day had improved exponentially. Punching was behind me and Portland's on the horizon.

Here are other P's I dig: Pancakes, People, Poetry, Passion, Petulance (just the word), Pride, Preamble, Pragmatism, Posture, Public Policy.

So mind your P's and Q's.

Sparky

Last week, I went on a date. I’m okay at first dates—not amazingly charismatic and sexy, but I hope not get-me-out-of-here dull. In a way, first dates are the easiest part of dating: You have little to lose and endless boring shit to talk about provided you’re reasonably non-awkward. During an inevitable lull, revert to college majors, siblings, favorite bars, hometowns, your jobs, yak yak yak and yak. If a first date is bad, you’re done in two hours, eating chips and salsa in your kitchen like it never went down. It’s the subsequent dates that tell you something—for better or for worse.

If anything, first dates are Spark-o-Meters.

So I went on a first date. At a cute bar on Atlantic that I’d never been to before. He was Dan, a half-Jewish law student who wore flannel and funky Pumas, and I was (in fact, I still am, though he is past tense) Lauren, a full-Jewish teacher who also prefers to wear flannel and funky Pumas, though I avoid that look on a first date so there’s no confusion about sexual orientation. We had a nice time drinking IPA (I love snobby beer) and talking about the West Coast and education reform (only my two favorite topics). During the date, I was perfectly content, even enjoying myself. We said goodbye, hugged, and his hand lingered a beat long on my lower back.

A few days later, he called. TV shows tell me that’s what I want: for him to call. Thank you, vaguely-misogynistic sit-com. But I saw his name flash on my iPhone screen, and I practically cringed. I did not slide my index finger across the screen and say hello, nor did I politely call back. This storyline repeats itself.

So what's wrong with me?

No spark. Spark-o-Meter rests firmly at zero. Not really worth a call back. Nice dude, great on paper, but I already have more friends than free time. That’s not what I’m after on a first date.

I’m hunting Spark.

I have no idea what Spark is or how to describe it, but I know it when I got it. And it’s damn good. When you Spark with someone (and Spark is mutual, partner work. You really can’t Spark alone), you just know. Things suddenly change; the lines get a little brighter. Of course when you’re with him, but even when you’re not. PDA on the 4 train is no longer nauseating. Working out feels better than it should, and you want to walk outside listening to nineties pop music on your headphones even when it’s only partially sunny. When you’re Sparking, you get little done at work, but you don’t care that much. You stay up too late and make poor choices. Spark feels worth it. When you’re riding high, you want more where that came from. Spark is more addictive than nicotine, only there’s no patch. No gum.

I’ve had Spark a few times. Notably, dear diary:

I Sparked in Central America underneath an active volcano, and it felt so good that I wanted to quit my teaching job before it started, rent a motorcycle and drive all the way to the Panama Canal. He was the organic chef at an organic ranch and he was organically spicy. I walked to town in my blue Chacos to call Majken on a dusty Spanish Teléfono with the last of my pesos. For advice. She said no dice—come home. Duh.

I Sparked during the first few months of college when I was barely a grown-up and had a bad diet coke and vodka habit. The Spark felt so Sparky, that I wound up in a janitor’s closet surrounded by purple Lysol and dirty mop buckets.

I Sparked at an Irish bar in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day with a guy from Philly whose eyes were the exact same color as mine, but I only saw him that one night.

Most recently, I Sparked on Superbowl Sunday on a Brooklyn rooftop covered in ice. With a man who deals in words, and I certainly can’t be held accountable when there are men with words involved.

I’ve felt Spark come and go. Like waves at high tide on the Oregon coast, Spark recedes quickly. Back where it came from, to be captured by someone else.

I’m getting increasingly concerned about Spark. I crave it, but I’m not sure it’s any good for me. I can’t help but notice that none of my Sparks (aforementioned or omitted) have lasted. Sparks are easily crushed beneath a high heel, putting out the potential for a perilous fire. Once the spark is gone, what are you left with? The men with whom I’ve Sparked are not the same men who’ve been right for me or good to me. I’m left to wonder if true Spark is dateable or if Spark only exists in a parallel universe that is mostly bad news. I’m afraid that time and real life may corrode spark. And fast. Turns out, Spark might have issues.

By that same token, Spark doesn’t seem to grow with time. Hence, I don’t pick up the phone when Dan the flannel Man calls. Instead of going with the safe bet, I continue to hunt spark with my trusty bow and arrows, short skirts and banter, banter, banter. I hold out hope, though, that sparkability and dateability (words just recently added to the OED. By me.) are not mutually exclusive. That they can exist peacefully side-by-side—each slightly dulled by the other, but beautifully symbiotic nonetheless.

POINTSCORE!

Unfortunately, today turned out to be the most boring day of my life.

I spent the day scoring the open response section of the New York State Language Arts exam at the Crowne Plaza Laguardia Airport. Initially, I thought the day might be a nice break from Monday teaching, but one thing I love about my job is that the days fly by despite being just short of 12 hours.

Even with planes whizzing overhead, today did not fly anywhere.

The first two hours of the trying experience were spent training, calibrating and norming so that we could grade the responses fairly and objectively. Keep in mind, I support state testing. Tests keeps charters accountable, give charters funding and give teachers a good read on how their students are progressing. However, today tested my belief in the test. Even after hours of training, total objectivity seemed like a tough target to hit.

Over shiny hotel pastries and lukewarm coffee, the assembled teachers learned how to grade the open responses on a somewhat-random 0,1,2 scale. The trainers were a group of 60+ women from Long Island dressed mostly in bright red suits or twin sets (not sure if they planned it). They all had long careers in education. I suspect this gig makes you some easy post-retirement cash come May. In stark contrast, the trainees were all charter school teachers, which means they were all young, bright and somewhat feisty. As the women tried to teach us which textual details counted and which did not, the charter crew started to get predictably heated—borderline antagonistic.

“So you’re telling me this response would earn a one simply because the scholar (yes, we sometimes call them scholars) wrote 3 million instead of 3 thousand? That’s absurd!”

“And this one! You give this a two when the student clearly has no grasp of subject/verb agreement? That’s unjust! That’s perpetuating the problem! The cycles of poverty!”

I’m exaggerating only a very little bit.

I thought there might be an all-out brawl, so I did what I always do in these situations: sit back, put a vaguely disinterested look on my face and let the drama play out. There’s no point inserting myself; it’ll only prolong what is definitely a pointless conversation.

The statewide rubrics are imperfect but set in stone, and a wide-eyed charter school teacher from East Harlem isn’t going to be able to change what counts and what doesn’t. Who fails and who passes. I care about consistency and norms as much as the next guy, but I also care about not being at Laguardia airport for longer than I have to be if I’m not waiting to fly somewhere warm.

Once we’d been sufficiently trained, we moved on to phase two. Thousands and thousands (maybe gajillions) of open responses had been scanned into POINTSCORE, the latest in test-scoring software. Yeah, betcha didn’t know that exists. We were each set up with a laptop and a login number. We were forbidden cell phones, coffee, or Gmail—the trifecta that sustains me. We plopped down and began to grade. The responses flashed up on the screen, one illegible set of handwriting after another. As soon as you graded one, another would appear. My eyes started to glaze and my foot tapped uncontrollably as I clicked. And clicked. And clicked. I had no idea what time it was. My mouth was dry. I looked around to make sure I wasn’t surrounded by mutant teacher-bots. They looked mostly fleshy.

Every so often the head grader would bark out your ID number and you would step back to her computer where she would cajole you into changing a grade (usually for the better). So much for objectivity.

The passage I was grading was a poem about a wonderful teacher named Mr. B who affected thousands of students before his teary retirement. I’m not joking—it was straight-up teacher propaganda. One response I graded was literally—and only—a stanza copied directly from the poem. It earned full-credit because the specific stanza so painstakingly copied did, in fact, answer the open response question perfectly. Interesting. And another, beautifully-written character analysis based on several inferences, received a zero because the conclusions gleaned were too inferential. Kinda messed up, right? Rewarding plagiarism while penalizing independent thinking?

The day finally ended. My head was throbbing and my stomach was growling because the vegetarian option at the provided lunch was soup made with chicken broth. In the car back to South Brooklyn, I tried to think of a few good takeaways to soothe my overall frustration. The day gave me perspective, at least. It showed me how the other charter kids are doing and gave me a useful baseline. It also gave me perspective about the test in general. We can spend months prepping and stressing over performance and results, but in the end there’s a lot of room for human error, subjectivity and mis-clicks on the computer that even POINTSCORE can’t detect. I’m not sure there’s a better way to get the job done, though. So at the end of the day, it is what it is. At least now I’ve seen the test from every unpleasant angle, making the whole process a bit more transparent. I suppose I should start encouraging plagiarism…

To Sleep or Not to Sleep

I’m definitely not an insomniac. My favorite writing professor in college wrote a thick book about insomnia called Sleep, and I read it wondering if I’d finish every chapter shaking my head in disbelief at the accuracy with which her words described my own sleep patterns. But they didn’t. I never screamed, “oh my God, that’s me!” after an eerily-accurate description. So, I’m definitely not an insomniac, but I’m also not awesome at sleeping. Sleep doesn’t come naturally for me. Like relationships and like my hormonal seventh grade students, sleep is temperamental and unpredictable. Though I recognize the extreme beauty of sleep done right, it is not an easy or blissful facet of my life.

I once slept walked out of a foreign hotel room and woke up scared in an elevator without a room key. I have rearranged my bedroom furniture, sworn crudely at bedmates and changed my sheets and clothes all without knowing. I am a fast-talking somnambulist.

More than one man has left my bed in the middle of the night because my sleeplessness is contagious and, I'm sure, annoying. At 5am, my company is not worth a sleepless night for a working man. This is slightly embarrassing at the beginning of a relationship.

In high school, I tried not sleeping because I decided it was boring. Think of the things I could get done during those hours typically wasted on rest! I don’t think that’s a super normal mindset.

I’m not one of those people who can sleep anywhere or easily adjust to new bedtime situations. New sheets, new people, new temperatures—it all throws me for a loop.

I keep reading and reading because when I put down my book and turn out the lights, I’m scared about what may or may not happen next. To sleep or not to sleep. When my eyes won’t shut and my brain won’t quit, I start to get anxious—unreasonably so. I start to get sweaty and unhappy. I start to get furious. I worry about things ranging from the absurdly benign to the absurdly overwhelming: Did I remember to make that overhead transparency of the parts of speech? Is the skirt I picked out for tomorrow work-appropriate? Even if I bend down to pick something up? Will I ever have a great boyfriend again? And so it spirals.

Deep breath. I’ve tried everything. Moving my pillow to the other side of the bed, counting down from 100 and slowly relaxing each muscle in my body. I’ve tried Tylenol PM (and feared an addiction) and Buenas Noches—small blue pills left over (and most likely expired) from study abroad in South America. I’ve tried slightly harder substances and found the results to be too unreliable.

Since becoming a teacher, the bulk of my sleep anxiety has fallen on Sunday nights. Sunday night anxiety is typical for any person who works a normal job, but the effects may be magnified for teachers. At the beginning of the year, things were really bad. I would wake up on Sunday morning already fearing Sunday night. Of course, the anticipation is a thousands times worse than anything that happens on Monday, but that wisdom failed to alleviate the stress.

About a month ago I had dinner with my friend Rhett who was visiting from Boston. I like many things about Rhett (handsome, tall, kind—do you read my blog, Rhett?), but I especially appreciate him for being a practical and rational person. Over pints of beer and pizza, we somehow got onto the subject of sleep. Rhett, too, struggles with sleep--maybe most people do at some level. He works a stressful job, and frequently suffers from sleepless nights. Only, unlike me, he wouldn’t use the verb suffer to describe them. Rhett explained that he long ago realized that if he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he might as well get out of bed, get some work done, make a snack, read a long-form article from The Economist. In short: chill the fuck out. He reasoned that there’s no point getting upset or anxious about something over which you have little control. The following day may be brutal, but you will function just fine. Unless you’re a serious insomniac, there’s no point in freaking out. Sleeplessness is about acceptance not irritation.

Huh.

This seems like a simple realization, but I’d managed never to come to it in 24 years, and I consider myself to be fairly thoughtful. Rather than drugs, new-age moves or midnight panic-attacks, maybe I just need to calm down, chill out, and accept the fact that I may not get a beautiful eight hours each night. I will still teach kids in the morning and keep my dinner plans at night. I will still be mostly nice and mostly normal when 6am rolls around.

So that’s what I’m trying out. Sundays should not involve freak-outs, outpourings of emotion or futile hours spent bemoaning what’s to come. Sunday should be about what I intend to do for the next few hours: cook goat cheese and asparagus pasta with my roommate, have a dance party that alternates between Lady Gaga and The Beatles, watch a mindless movie while calmly grading a few papers, compare weekends with my mom on the phone. Then I will try to sleep. But, in a blasé, I couldn’t care less kind of way. If I can sleep easily, more power to ya. I mean, me. If I can’t, that’s cool, too. I will get up, drink decaf tea and read Sloane Crosley’s new book in my underwear.

I’ve spent too long letting sleep get the best of me, when I should be bossing sleep around. I don’t take no shit from sleep; sleep takes shit from me. And when 10pm rolls around, and I feel a freak-out coming on, you better believe I’m gonna read my own blog entry.

Dairy for Dinner

A couple weekends ago, I visited my aging grandma in DC. And I mean really aging. Pushing 90, though she still drives a car. Conveniently (okay, I planned it), my dad was also in town to provide a generational buffer.

I left the District with a bouncy ball in my jeans pocket and an egg of color-changing Silly Putty at the bottom of my backpack. Both objects belong to my dad—who is, of course, normal dad age despite his penchant for small toys—and I wondered how long it would take him to notice their absence.

I inherit several things from my father: the unbreakable nail-picking habit, the incessant pot-stirring, the intellect (the vanity), the bad sleep and the urge to do something with my hands like bounce a jewel-toned rubber ball or squeeze Silly Putty deliciously between my fingers. In public. Quirks aside, I was glad to have him in DC.

The visit was fine, but when you only see an elderly person once or twice a year the mental and physical deterioration that should be—and realistically probably is—gradual becomes startling. Upsetting. Since my grandfather’s death almost two years ago, my grandma has sunk inward and started to forget things.

Her memory trips me out. Makes me think of post-modern literature classes in which we debated collective memory, parallel memory, memory loss, memory gain and memory re-construction. Makes me think of Sethe’s re-memory in the haunted house at 124. If such a thing is possible, I think I read Beloved almost more than I read The Awakening during my time as a women’s college English major.

When I got to the house my dad grew up in, I plopped down in my grandma’s funky sixties-era kitchen and waited for the typical “what will you eat?” Jewish grandmother question. Despite my pretzel rods and Corona Light on Amtrak (I’m as classy as I am health-conscious), I was famished.

The query came, but in a slightly altered form. “What will you eat: brisket or yogurt?”

We looked at each other. I cocked my head.

Interesting choices. Hot new fusion or red-alert sign of aging?

First off, I’m a vegetarian. Brisket is the meatiest of meats. She should know this. She does know this. I’ve been one for years. We’ve discussed it. She’s tried to convince me out of it.

“Remember, grandma, I don’t eat meat.”

Cringe. Telling your Jewish grandma you don’t eat meat is almost as bad as telling your Jewish grandpa who is also a red-meat-worshipping TEXAN that you don’t eat meat. He literally barks in joy when he eats a particularly fine steak. To date, that was one of life’s hardest conversations.

I shouldn’t feel bad about my tofu confession. She knows this.

“WHAT? Since when?”

“A few years. Since I OD’d in Argentina. Remember?”

“Oh. But you'll eat my brisket, right?” she asks, fanning the fridge to tempt me toward the carne.

She does make a mean brisket.

“Sorry.” I respond. I’m at the point in vegetarianism where my flesh-cravings have dwindled to disgust. Slow-roasted brisket is not an ideal reentry into the world of meat.

“Well,” she proclaims, hands on her hips. “At least Josh eats meat!”

Josh is my brother. Josh is 21. He has been a vegetarian since he was four. Since the neighbor kid Lucas (Mucas, as I hysterically called him) dissected a bird in front of him in their backyard fort, or so he says.

I dropped it, but I was worried.

Her memory is strange. Weeks ago on the phone, she recounted a story from third grade at PS89 off Flatbush in Brooklyn (what goes around comes around?) with an impressive amount of clarity for something that happened 80 years ago. She and her best friend Fanny got in trouble during cursive class and had to have a mark taken off their class board. The details were exquisite; she was charming. How could this same woman forget I’m a vegetarian?

“So how do you get protein?” she asks in alarm like her poor granddaughter might be on the brink of a life-threatening protein deficiency. I am not.

I pause and weigh my options over the drone of the still-ajar fridge. I can:

a) Explain that Americans are protein-obsessed, and that iron is the only real concern of a vegetarian diet.

b) List the various healthy proteins I regularly consume (nuts, beans, dairy, gummy bears, etc).

c) Just cave and eat the fucking brisket.

OR.

d) Brilliant.

“Honestly, grandma, I mostly get protein from yogurt! Didn’t you say you have some?”

She beams, and I am her compliant, beautiful granddaughter again. I added in the beautiful part.

Although I don’t want Activa yogurt for dinner even a little bit, the dinner debacle is thankfully behind us. For Jews, that’s not small change. My grandma will forget I don’t eat meat again in 15 minutes and offer me brisket (yeah, that happened), but in those brief minutes I get a crystal-clear story about how her romance with my grandpa developed overseas and over letters.

As long as I can avoid the brisket, that’s memory I’d rather get.

Number Seven Pick

This week in things that are a little messed up but mostly funny:

The seventh grade is taking 50 children to New Orleans to do Katrina relief work and also fun stuff like alligator swamp tours and crawdad bakes.

We announced it to the kids and their families about a month ago by showing what we imagined to be a moving slideshow of the city immediately post-Katrina. One slide showed a grave family sitting on top of their mini-van in a flooded street. A nervous parent (I believe the trendy term is helicopter mom) stood up and asked, "Will they be going on water rides?"

I think this trip will be good for our kids (and their parents), most of whom have barely left Brooklyn.

Personally, I'm stoked about the trip because a) I've never been to New Orleans and b) I won't have to teach for a week.

There's a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that chaperoning 50 kids on an airplane and then in a muggy new city might not actually be that fun, but I try to banish the thought when it nags too hard.

But that's not the messed up/funny part. Although, I'm sure it will be a week from Monday.

There are seven chaperones for 50 kids, so we have to split them into groups of seven. Check that division. The split is done strategically and meticulously, but lacks compassion. Kids were given no preference.

There's a draft. Straight up.

On a classroom whiteboard is taped a picture of every kid who's earned the trip. We come into the room prepared, serious, our picks in hand. We've contemplated who we really don't want and who we'd kill for--which combinations have potential to make or break our weeks in the dirty dirty.

Before the draft officially begins, everyone gets one veto. I picked a kid who, although not outwardly offensive, has made it his mission to ruin my first year of teaching. I also think he looks vaguely maniacal, so I'd rather not drive through a swamp in a nine-person van with him sitting shotty. The other teachers thought my choice was weird considering the bevy of other possible vetoes, but I stood my ground.

In a rule that does not mirror baseball (at least I don't think), first picks were given to those who showed up on time to the 1:30 meeting. I was there at 1:38 after mediating a minor spat at recess, and so was handed last pick. All's fair in love and war.

There were various strategies. Some went immediately for the shy kids, others went for personality. Some picked based on which random combos would yield the most hilarious results. One teacher carefully collected a group of misfits (I tried not to think about Flannery O'Connor). A particularly kind-hearted math teacher picked based on which kids would learn the most from each other. Isn't that beautiful?

My first five draft picks were perfect: three sweet girls and two nerdy boys. No one had dated, no one had ever fought outside the McDonald's under the JMZ and no one makes regular trips to the school counselor.

But my planning was hasty. As the draft came to its nail-biting conclusion, and the wall of pictures was rapidly depleting and getting more and more nasty, I realized the error of my ways.

My last two picks were unavoidable, and they were not pretty. A sassy girl who'd been suspended for the past two days for fighting, and a boy who wears transitional sunglasses and makes a point of telling me I look pretty every morning. While I know it must be malicious, it's hard to trade consequences for compliments, and so he persists.

Overall, though, I'm pleased. Despite the aforementioned outliers, my group has potential. Well, potential to be semi-normal, which is asking a lot from seventh graders.

I notice the six other teachers doing the same thing: contemplating their draft picks, predicting what the season has in store. Strangely, everyone seems mostly content.

Lesson learned? Some teachers' trash are other teachers' treasure? That doesn't sound quite PC, but it's basically true. Some kids mesh with you while others don't, but that doesn't mean those kids are bad kids. At the end of the draft, every kid in the seventh grade had one adult who was willing to fight for him or her. Willing to say something redeeming. It's comforting to know as I'm doling out demerits or watching a gradebook score add up to F, that all kids have good qualities, even when I fail to notice them.

Even my veto kid. Maybe...

Productivity Fail

Sitting at my desk today, looking through an open window at green leaves and the East Side of Manhattan, my productivity hit rock bottom. When you have a 9-5 (when you are apparently a real grown-up, son), the onset of warm weather feels like a tease. Like the boy at the party who flirts and gets your number, but will definitely never call.

In Southern California, weather was eerily constant. I never knew the thump of a city turning from winter to spring or the personal elation brought on by the shift. In SoCal, weather just is; nothing cycles. A season change was easy to miss, its effects on mood minimal. Nobody compared brands of SAD lamp. After four years, I knew I needed to move on because the weather wasn't.

I remember the spring productivity equation well from last year--my first year in a city that truly seasons (a new use of the verb). And you better believe Boston seasons with the best of them. Come April, my frozen thoughts melted inside my brain, my bare legs tingled in the sun, people looked sexy again, and I suddenly craved white wine and ice cream. At the same time.

The city came alive with strangers no longer bemoaning the cold. All I wanted to do was spend money, sit in parks, listen to summer playlists of years gone by and play with my friends who'd been inside for the past five months. Instead, I had to work about 70 hours a week schooling kids who wanted to be schooled even less than I wanted to school them. I was not pleased.

This year appears to be no better. I almost wish I was jaded.

The glory that is spring comes with its set of problems, namely the productivity fail. When all I want to do is sit outside in a sun dress, my job still demands I do exactly what I was doing in December when sitting outside in that sundress would have yielded frostbite. Sitting at my desk today, I felt like a recovering junkie craving sun drugs. I think my hands were literally shaking.

So, instead of working, I did some other things:

1. Went to the main office five times in 30 minutes for animal crackers. Do adults get to eat animal crackers?
2. Googled my name. Googled my parents' names. Googled my ex boyfriends' names. Then repeated on Google Image.
3. Watched the first half of the 1969 Romeo and Juliet movie before screening it for my class. (Good thing I did, though: certain parts are definitely R rated, and despite the productivity fail, I would like to keep my job).
4. Crossed out all the days in April in my calendar.
5. Applied deodorant. Surreptitiously.
6. Looked at my favorite blog: http://hotguysreadingbooks.tumblr.com/
7. Researched summer kickball leagues and contemplated whether or not straight girls play.
8. Deleted things from my desktop. Kinda with purpose, but really more randomly.
9. Wondered if my coworkers were being productive. And, if so, how. Looked around the room suspiciously.
10. Bought a ticket to see Cut Copy at the Bandshell in Prospect Park.

Crap.

Now I have double the lesson planning to do tomorrow, which is fine, except tomorrow is also supposed to be over 70 degrees. If history repeats itself, I have no reason to think my productivity will skyrocket, but it needs to. Like, really.

I wonder if I'm unique in my complete inability to work when the weather turns. Maybe it's because my years in the east LA desert confused my sense of normalcy. Are there people out there who go about their business as if nothing's changed when really the greatest change in the world has just occurred in our pretty city?

Need help.

Word to Your Mother

My mom taught me to be a feminist years before I knew the word existed and even more years before I cared what it meant. Years before I highlighted Friedan and Faludi, years before I rejected chauvinistic boys and years before I graduated from women’s college.

She is equally amazing at being a lawyer and being a mother, but I’m not sure she knows it.

My mother is not just any lawyer. She works for a legal non-profit that gives free legal help to people who can’t afford it. She specializes in helping women who are the victims of domestic violence and has become an authority on the topic. It took me years to realize how cool this is and that not all moms did that. While she was busy raising my brother Josh and me (not simple children), she was also helping hundreds of women who were just trying to raise their kids, too.

She’s not just any mother either. She forced me to go hiking and tide-pooling in the rain until I admitted the Oregon outdoors were pretty awesome. She’s good at getting pedicures and gets a bingo in almost every Scrabble game. She taught me how to form the possessive and made us homemade pizza on Sunday nights. She praised me when I succeeded and gave me a dose of tough-love when I messed up. When I got my wisdom teeth out at age 24, she held the gauze in my bloody mouth and made sure I took my Vicoden. Apparently, mothering keeps on going.

In the Limited T00—where Tweens shopped in the nineties—my mom refused to buy me clothes that were too tight or too short on my half-formed body. There was yelling and there were tears, yet in the Banana Republic dressing room last weekend, I heard her voice saying, “I think you’d really better go a size up” and, of course, I listened. Because she is my mother, and I trust her—even her imagined, semi-judgmental voice in my head.

My mom will always be the first phone call.

She’s barely five feet tall, but she packs a punch. She is the perfect combination of adorable and fierce. So, today, even though I somehow ended up many miles away from my mother and I didn’t even send a card, I’m a pretty lucky daughter.

Happy Mothers' Day!

You Are What You Eat

Read This:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/nyregion/at-new-yorks-private-schools-rutabaga-fries-not-tater-tots.html?_r=1&ref=style

There are many varieties of education reform, some curricular others culinary. The Times is exhaustive in its coverage.

I’m not really one to judge: I’m a proud vegetarian and prouder food snob. I’m from Portland, Oregon, where food snobbery is as common as putting a bird on it. As common as dudes who never leave the city limits rocking head-to-toe Pata-Gucci. The similarities run deep between my hometown and current city. I’m quite comfortable here in Portland East (er, Brooklyn). Like Pollan, Safran-Foer and half this borough, I think food is important.

But I think other things are important, too. Like margaritas, sunshine and educational equality.

Parents who shell out $35,000 a year for private school tuition should expect healthy food for their kidlets. But do they need gourmet, Batalli-approved cuisine to fuel up before AP History? Is fennel and gorgonzola penne tossed with fresh virgin olive oil a vital part of college-readiness?

Maybe, maybe not—actually, I don’t really care. What I do care about is the other end of the spectrum. While private schoolers uptown are chowing down on roasted beet salad with goat cheese made in the school creamery, what’s nourishing their public school counterparts here in Brooklyn or up there in Harlem? School lunch isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, but there are comparisons to be drawn here.

If paying 30 grand gets your kids Babbo in the school cafeteria, what does paying zilch get you? Informal research suggests a healthy diet of half-frozen mozzarella sticks, expired chocolate milk and gray ravioli. Eat your heart out, Michael Pollan. Doesn’t seem quite fair, but who can argue with the difference thousands and thousands of dollars makes in the education game of LIFE?

If you pay top dollar for your kids to have a stellar education, you should expect top-notch eats. By that same token, you should expect top-notch teachers, curriculum, resources, field trips and technology. But what about your public school counterparts? Because their parents pay nothing, does it follow that they get crappy teachers, half-formed curriculum, shoddy tech and dated text books? You get what you pay for, and if you’re paying zero, I guess you get about that much.

Fair, Right?

Wrong. Private schools can do whatever they like (why not make the most of the tuition dollars flowing in?), but there’s something broken about a system in which the disparity between public and private schools is that extreme and ever-widening. Parents who send their kids to public school have a right to know that their kids are safe, healthy and getting schooled real good. Same as the private school parents.

I’ll give a five-star Yelp review to the Horace Mann cafeteria (if I could ever get a res), but I’d also like to know that the rest of the kids across the city are well-fed at lunchtime. Just like I’d like to know that the majority of kids across the city are learning how to read and crunch numbers with appropriate personnel and resources, no matter what their parents pay.

So bring on the rutabaga fries!

In Fair Verona...

I love Romeo and Juliet; after Othello, it's maybe my fave. I've read the play about a dozen times, and I've seen the 1996 movie version about eight-dozen times, though that was mainly because of Leo's fresh face and floppy hair. I played a shark girl in my high school production of "West Side Story" (Jewish was about as close to Puerto Rican as things got in Portland. At least I have big hair). I even thought about seeing "Gnomeo and Juliet"--the play's most recent film iteration. I thought better of it, but you get my point.

Now, I'm teaching Romeo and Juliet. After leggings coming back in style, this is the best and worst thing that's ever happened to me.

We use the NO FEAR (!) Shakespeare edition, which includes the original text as well as a translated version on the right side of the page. For kids reading four grades below grade level, iambic pentameter is a bit of a stretch. Heroic couplets, mayyybe...But still.

While I know some of my students will end the unit with an appreciation for Shakespeare and perhaps true love, some will certainly do the play a disservice. After day one of R&J, I have reluctantly come to terms with this.

Choice quotes from today:

Upon finding that Mercutio is a master of the "Sexual double entendre" (thanks for that footnote, NO FEAR Shakespeare).

Kid: "What's a sexual double entendre?"

Fair question.

Me: "Like, when your teacher says something that's not sexual, but you somehow make it sexual. Except on purpose. Because Shakespeare's a genius!"

Kid: "Oh, like donuts?"

And then, upon meeting Benvolio: "Isn't Benvolio a type of pasta? In a blue box?"

Finally, the nurse enters, and: "What's a wet nurse?"

And that's a TOTALLY fair question. Totally. But how do you explain the concept of a wet nurse to kids who can't hear the word donut without laughing?

If Billy Shakespeare is rolling in his grave, he clearly doesn't support ed. reform in the inner city.

Asshole.

Teach Me How to Dougie

Watch this:

http://www.wgci.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=421790&article=8521810

Michelle looks fly in what I can only assume is J. Crew's spring line. Her toned arms accentuated by a color I could never pull off. Swoon.

Her hubby is busy ridding the world of OBL and inspiring make-believe MLK quotations, while Michelle's doing the Dougie with inner city girls in Chicago. That's what I call a power couple. Way sexier than Bill and Hill. I'm not sure which half of the Obama dream team impresses me more this week.

I watched the video with a group of 7th grade boys this morning before first period. (See, I'm fun! Watch that relationship building in action) They were less impressed by Michelle's moves than I was. Probably because while Michelle does the Dougie better than me (even after months of practice), these boys do the Dougie way, way better than Michelle. Then again, these same boys are also far less impressed by William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" than I am, so maybe we just have different taste.

One kid informed me after watching Michelle kill it on the blacktop : "No one does the Running Man anymore."

Right.

And another: "Who's that lady? She can't dance."

Shit.

Yet another: "Is Chicago an all girls city? How far away is that? I gotta get there!"

High fives all around.

They don't care about Michelle even when she's doing the Dougie.

Life is different when you're a 7th grade boy. Can't win 'em all.

The Email Impulse

My ex-boyfriend Bryan lived in London for a year despite being California through and through. I visited him there one foggy January when we were broken-up-ish. On a whim, we went to Bruges—a claustrophobically romantic city about an hour from Brussels. In Bruges, we subsisted on cones of French fries smothered in weird-tasting ketchup, snapped smoochy close-ups on bridges above still canals, feigned interest in Flemish art and, of course, argued about abortion rights (Bryan is a Republican. It was a confusing time in my life.) The trip was fun, but we agreed Bruges maxes out around 24 hours; we had 48.

Fast forward about a year. Bryan and I are back where it started in Southern California, but our relationship is un-amicably over. We fought hard and then tried to be friends and then yelled and made up and made out and drank red wine on the floor. Okay, that last part was just me. Even after all that, it was still, definitely, over. Fin. Ya. I got what I wanted, and yet. He was not my person, not my phone call, not my go-to, not my shoulder, not my lips. Breaking up is breaking habit: you have to stop from texting, from wondering, and from thinking what if. These things are easier said than done. No matter how special and amazing a relationship was, it may expire. Just like that. You’re on the 405 flying at 95 MPH in a navy blue Subaru (hypothetically…), then you’re down to zero without slowing on the exit ramp. Like the relationships from which they hail, break-ups are a dangerous game.

But back to Bruges. For whatever reason, Bruges has become somewhat hip. Key word: somewhat. Colin Farrell and a midget starred in a dark comedy called “In Bruges,” which is actually worth watching; it was dubbed the European Culture Capitol of 2009; and the New York Times ran a “36 hours in Bruges” article in the travel section that inflated the city’s actual cool factor but was personally relevant nonetheless. Even 36 hours is a few too many when the only art is Flemish and there’s no Heinz for your fries.

Bruges’ coolness is convenient. Every time I see an article or anecdote about the city, I paste the link into an email that I send to Bryan. I’m hard-wired. Before signing LEL, I may end with “hope you’re well!” or if I’m feeling particularly cheeky: “I miss you.” Because I do miss him, in a certain way, when I think hard about it. But, seriously: no one cares that much about Bruges. Bruges was years ago. Bruges is an elaborate farce.

Another example. Spoon is Bryan’s favorite band, so I email one morning when I’m bored at work: “B - Did you hear the new Spoon CD? Hope you’re well! LEL.” Nothing more, nothing less. Takes five seconds, and we’re suddenly, briefly, deliciously, back in touch. Of course he heard the fucking album—it’s his favorite band after all. And while we used to listen to Spoon in his black Camry with the windows down and the SoCal smog filling up our lungs, that is no longer something he and I do together. So why the friendly email?

Every time I send one of these emails (post, not pre, unfortunately) I ask myself: why, why, why did I send that? Bryan reads the New York Times and could easily unearth the article all on his own with a few errant clicks. Question is: had he found it first, would “36-hours in Bruges” be sitting pretty in MY inbox? What sick inner motive compels me, time after time, to send benign emails to a boy who is not my person, who maybe hates me a little, and has definitely moved on?

So, I’m a little insane, but one of those high-functioning insane people.

I take comfort only in the fact that the email impulse is mutual. Last week, Bryan sent me an article called “Why Date an Illiterate Girl,” (Read it: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads/) a thought-provoking piece that sets up a dichotomy between girls who read and girls who don’t. It is written either by a douchebag or a genius, though in my experience the two are far from mutually exclusive. The girls who don’t read are the ones you reluctantly marry but never really love. They are the status quo. The girls who do read (voraciously, passionately) are the ones who tell the stories, who know the intricacies of plot and the power of vocabulary. The ones who drive you crazy. The ones you can’t stay away from, but who expose you for failing to measure up to the literary heroes of the lit they love.

I read the article about fifteen times, letting the sentences wash over me. In my self-satisfied brain I knew (okay, I invented. I maybe even grasped at straws) why he’d sent it: I am a girl who reads, and his current girlfriend is totally illiterate. Or, you know, metaphorically. Though that shouldn’t make me happy, it did. Bryan and I will not get back together, nor does either of us want to, but I got some perverse pleasure in thinking that perhaps I played the role of literate girl in his 26-year-old life. I gleaned the precise meaning I wanted from the article, from his decision to send it to me, and I was unabashedly self-satisfied.

Here’s the kicker, though: after reading it over and over, I proceeded to forward the link to a different man who had recently broken up with me (I know: who does that?) Our brief fling sparkled at first, but he folded his cards quickly. Like most things, it went. I should have let well enough alone, but the urge to email this same article to him was intense. Almost as intense as the urge to send an inebriated text message the weekend before. Staring longingly at Gmail, my fingers were almost itching. This is how even smart women get bad reputations.

I knew this second boy would like it; he’s definitely a man who reads. Whether the dichotomy holds true for men, who knows. But, there was more to my sloppy-seconds forward than that. I wanted him to know he’d missed out on a girl who reads, and might never find a Faulkner Fiend again. That he might get unwittingly trapped with an illiterate girl, trying desperately to teach her letters while he festered inside. In the suburbs. I was mad at him for ending something I thought was real, and hoped he’d read between the lines. Not only that, but that what he’d find between those well-crafted lines was, well, exactly what I wanted him to find. I have a spiteful streak, apparently. Beware: girls who read may try to use words as weapons, whether borrowed or their own.

Who knows what he found, or whether he cares, because we aren’t going to drink black coffee and talk about the deeper implications of literacy—not in relationships and not in sub-Saharan Africa. He, too, is no longer my person. The smartest thing for me to do is slam on the brakes and screech to zero. The most foolish thing is to send little emails. No matter what their perceived meaning, it simply doesn’t matter. I can be a girl who reads, and he will still not like me, not find me sexy or interesting, passionate or dangerous. I can be a girl who reads and Bryan and I will still never have what we had in Bruges. What’s really twisted is resending an article from one lost boy to another (Peter Pan referenced absolutely intended) all to fulfill some nagging impulse. In the end, it’s not bettering or satisfying to copy, paste, link and re-forward. Bruges, Spoon and literacy are rickity platforms. In my mind, they give me reason to maintain a semblance of connection even once it’s really, really gone.

Maybe I’d be better in the epistolary era—like Cecile Volanges in Dangerous Liaisons—when letters to the steamy Vicomte de Valmont took expensive ink to write and time to send. When the steps to communication with ex-lovers required greater foresight than a finger slip. Maybe I’d even be better in the early nineties when people didn’t email or text message and I’d only have to wonder—like Elaine on “Seinfeld”—whether he got my voicemail or if my name blinked on his caller ID. Staying in touch (faux or authentic) is a little too easy in 2011, those one-liner emails or forwarded links too seductive. I am powerless against the sexy lull of the send button, and I don't think I'm the only one.

What it comes down to is that it’s more comfortable to be in contact than out of it. Links and music and articles that remind you of him, him of you, or us of we, grant legitimacy to our past experiences and expired relationships. A quick inbox search verifies that we existed together before drifting apart to lead separate lives. That there were things we did together, things we talked about, things that made us special. Random tidbits grant us an excuse to rehash, remember or reconnect. Simple communication provides a fearless space and a removed language to remind us that these things were real and good—that these people were our people.

When things end, perhaps they need to slow not stop. For me, at least. Either I'm highly literate or moderately insane (go ahead and swap the adjectives if you want). I gawk admiringly at reckless LA drivers who careen down the ramp to stop at the red light at zero, but I feed on the safety of 35 where I get time to slowly depress the brake before it hits the floor. But then again, no one’s ever called me a good driver.

Cookie Detritus

Even though I know my students are probably happier with Chewy Chips-a-Hoy or Munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts (which remind me too much of Boston), I decided to bake cookies to congratulate them for getting through two intense days of state testing. The idea was very un-me to start with. Spurts of mother-instinct are few and far between.

Maybe in an attempt to push my upper-middle class upbringing or maybe just because I felt bad for doing some minor yelling lately (violating Lemov's rule of emotional constancy in the classroom), I wanted to do something nice. Mostly, I’m a nice person. I got my roommate and fellow middle school teacher Abby on board for Operation Cookie Bake. In a bold move, we opted for M&M’s instead of chocolate chips, knowing the kids would be easily fooled into thinking these colorful cookies were fancier than your average Tollhouse. Perhaps, the substitution was mistake number one. And here’s clichéd phrase number one: hindsight is 20/20.

I’ve made a lot of cookies. Borderline thousands. One summer in high school—in between barista shifts and pool dates—I perfected my oatmeal-chocolate chip recipe until my mom reminded me that even your own cookieswill make you fat when eaten in excess. Right. I’ve baked cookies in Lake Tahoe, where the high altitude demands careful recalibration of recipes. Some might call it chemistry. Until tonight, I had no reason to question my cookie-baking abilities. In fact, I reveled in them. Unlike teaching itself—which is frustrating and unpredictable—cookie-baking is an endeavor that takes little time and yields instant, delicious results. There is a specific process and an attainable finish line. Making cookies is fruitful and relaxing. Done and done.

We assembled the ingredients, including 16 bags of M&M’s (dark, milk and PRETZEL to spice things up). While jamming to Bob Marley (duh), we quickly whipped up a triple batch of Abby’s mom’s favorite recipe. Together, we have over 100 students, and even the ones we can’t stand deserve an M&M cookie (at least a small one).

Everything was going according to plan until we started putting the dough onto the greased cookie sheets. It was sticky. Too sticky. All-over-my-fingers-sticky. Stuck-to-the-roof-of-my-mouth-sticky. Not-good-at-all-sticky. Throwing caution to the wind, we baked anyway. When I flipped on the oven light, I noticed after about two minutes that our carefully formed balls had melted into a flat, thin sheet of cookie dough with bright M&Ms protruding freakishly like the zits on my students’ faces. Appetizing was not the first adjective that came to mind. Clearly, we’d skimped on flour during the tripling process. Without the vital thickening-agent, cookies are more liquid than solid. Oops.

We waited it out for about two more minutes until the burning smell started in earnest. Taking the "cookies" out of the oven, we let them cook for a few minutes on top of the oven, hoping the residual heat would bake away the salmonella and magically form the paper-thin sheet back into melty upper-middle class morsels.

Starting skeptically at the huge amount of quickly liquefying batter, I knew we had to persevere. I’m nothing if not stubborn. I was going the extra mile for my students, god damnit. They were going to eat my cookies tomorrow, and they were going to like them. And if they didn’t, they will simply have to fail reading class.

Things turned from bad to worse quickly. After about 10 minutes, with 30 more “cookies” tucked safely in the oven, we cautiously extricated the cookies from their sheets to the cooling racks. They crumbled and smushed and fell. They were not cooked, not even close. They were full of holes like delicate--hideous--lace doilies. They were little mounds of salmonella waiting to poison 100 middle schoolers on the day of the state exams. I could see the New York Post headline now: “Charter School Shut Down After 70 Students Contract Salmonella from Teacher’s Killer Cookies.”

Even the best laid plans.

After trying to salvage as many as we could, we finally started flinging the sloppy cookies onto a plate, watching the mound of greasy cookie mush grow bigger and more disgusting with each new bit of colorful detritus. It was reminiscent of something the college dining hall might invent and serve for “late night” during final exams, topped with vanilla frozen yogurt. Freshmen (stoned, stressed or both) would dig in and wonder only later why their jeans stopped fitting.

College rocks, man.

The bottom line was clear: neither of us could take these cookies to school. Aside from the salmonella factor (which is big), the kids would be unimpressed (they might mutiny) and there would be half-baked cookie crumbles all over the classrooms, squished M&M's under hours of foot traffic. It would be ugly. No one would call me a super teacher; the kids would not worship at my feet and beg me to bake my famous M&M cookies once more before the end of the year. No, that would not happen.

“Well, that was a pretty big failure,” Abby stated flatly as “Easy Skanking” came on over the iPod speakers. God bless Bob for trying to get me to chill.

“Yup,” I agreed.

Defeated, we scooped the cookie mush into the trash and started to wash pans in an attempt to hide all evidence of our failed endeavor from our third, more homemaker-ish roommate. We'd ruined cookies. Cookies ain't hard.

Not only did I have nothing to show for the last two hours of my life and nothing to bring to class, I had failed at a task that should be simple. Fun, even. I worried about my future potential as a baker. Then as a teacher. Then as a wife, mother, grandmother. I focused on Marley and took a deep breath. I calmly reminded myself while spooning dough covered M&M’s into my mouth that the Duane Reed by the Jay Street stop opens at 6am, and I happen to know there’s a sale on Easter candy.