Load of Bollix

I can’t say that I typically become reflective before a birthday, but I am this year. Maybe it is because I’m entering a new age demographic (the “you have no good eggs left” bracket). Maybe it’s because I have the time to be reflective--I’ve also been thinking about my future, and I’ve decided that when I’m 65 I will teach chair yoga to other old people on the beach in Florida. Or maybe it’s just that Frank Sinatra and I share a birthday, so I’m always humming Frank Sinatra at this time of year. You'd smile too if you shared a birthday with MBP. As any Frank fan will tell you, when you hum Frank, you hum “My Way.” And if you’re reflective and Frank croons: “Regrets, I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention,” you turn this into a mental exercise: what are my regrets on the cusp of 35? I thought of things that were kind-of regrets, but then I dismissed them. Should I regret that I trashed my HS boyfriend’s locker after he dumped me? No. It’s a funny story now

The Dalai Lama says that change in the world always begins with an individual who shares what he or she has learned and passes it on to others. Thus, I offer you what I have learned thanks to my ongoing Ken Burns’ documentary binge. 1)       I have roughly the same glasses as all the men in the Lyndon Johnson administration. 2)       People in the 1960s look like they smell bad. 3)       People in the 1860s look like they smell bad, but they had the excuse of living over 100 years ago when germ theory was just in its infancy. 4)       Excessive facial hair is GROSS and can’t possibly help with the smell (see 2, 3). 5)       I should have read my US history textbook more carefully, especially since my high school history teacher referred to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”. 6)       I taught history for almost 8 years, and I straight-up did not know about the extensive trenches at Petersburg so I AM A FRAUD. Apologies to my students. 7)       Th

In this post, I do my best impression of Lewis Black, because I’m angry and say f@%* a lot. I f@%*ing hate summer. I hate stepping out of my house and sweating immediately. I’m tired of watering a tomato plant steps from my front door and confronting Jurassic Park in my yard.   For the record, natural mosquito repellants don’t f@%*ing work. Your options are to either slather yourself in DEET and go Silent Spring or wear a f@%*ing burqa to water the garden. Even my beloved Huntley Meadows is crawling with large bugs and snakes and loud kids dumped off at summer camp because their parents don’t want to deal with them all day. I can’t blame them. If I had a kid that loud and obnoxious, I’d dump them off at camp, too. I exercise at dawn because that’s the only time it’s not miserably hot and humid, and I still wilt in the sun and have a shorts/socks tan that you could see from space. I get a rash from sweat, sunblock, sun, general hatred of the season, or all of the above. And si

Mary Patterson was a high school history teacher for the last seven years. Today is her last day of school for reals and here is what she had to say about it. Dear scholars, Next year, in US history (also known as propaganda), you’ll learn about one of my historical crushes, George Washington, the reluctant leader to whom we largely owe our country’s existence. You will learn that when he left office, he published a “farewell address” as his parting words of wisdom to the new country.    Since I am leaving you at the end of this year, I too shall give you some words of “wisdom”, although unlike George Washington’s wisdom, mine is not ghost-written by Alexander Hamilton.   Or is it? Look up ghost-writer if you don’t know what that means. Advice 1: Watch the company you keep and the crowd you bring. This gem comes from Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, aka Nas. Surround yourself with good people. This is important. If you hang with turkeys, then chances are you’ll be one,

Today, someone peed on the book bag of one of my favorite students. When he came to my room and told me, I almost burst into tears. This young man is so artistic and clever. He’s always drawing. Always. He’s incredibly talented. He left his bag in the bathroom when he changed for an English presentation (into an Oscar Wilde costume, no less). The saddest part is that all of his sketchbooks were in his bag. After months of hard work, the last few weeks of public school are pure anarchy. Truly. You can pee on someone’s stuff and there are no consequences for you. It is like ripping a giant Band-Aid off the world’s hairiest man in slow motion (or woman. Gender is fluid). It’s excruciating and drawn-out. It’s what happens when you train young people to take a crappy test, then stay in school for another month and a half. No one tries anymore and literally anything goes. If you are like me, than this makes you angry and sad. I resigned my position as a teacher largely because I f

I’m tired. I am sitting in a mountain of papers that I can’t possibly keep up with and can’t meaningfully grade. Even if it was graded meaningfully with prolonged comments on their writing or their ideas they’d just look at the grade and demand to rewrite it or throw it away on their way out the door (my favorite). There is another mountain waiting to be copied. Technology is the solution. Make a game. Let them use their phone. Go paperless without computers to go paperless. What would that fix? Would they magically start reading on a screen instead of reading a book? I’m racing to a finish line for a state test that measures minimum competency..   When the test is done, babysit. Babysit 160 kids who have been programmed to believe that school ends in mid-May. They’ve been raised on this, so why should they think differently? My students are apathetic and sometimes rude. There’s always random kids running or yelling in the hall. They aren’t ever yelling nice things. There’

Once upon a time, when I was, like all people in the greater Washington Metropolitan Area, that most-nebulous of jobs—a consultant on a government contract—a colleague gave me a book entitled, “Working with You is Killing Me.” Partly a joke, partly serious, he knew I was having a difficult time working with another person on staff, and he knew it made my working there quasi (full-on) miserable. I freely admit I never faithfully read the entire book, though I have on occasion, over the last ten years, thumbed through its contents--“Change Your Reaction, Change Your Life,” “Fatal Attractions at Work," and my personal favorite “The Business of Boundaries." This book came to mind as I sat at my kitchen table in the daylight-less morning of daylight savings time, reading the BBC, like all normal people at 6 AM on a Saturday. I came across this headline: “ Schools should teach pupils how to spot ‘fake news’ ” If you, like an American teenager, cannot be bothered to re

My not going to work sends one message only: We have a sub, so we can snap chat in the dark for 90 minutes while an overly dramatic History Channel documentary plays in the background.    If I do go to work, I can do all of the following: Bang my head against a wall, or more often, my desk. Repeat directions for the umpteenth time. Answer stupid questions (they do exist, and you know it). Deal with unending nonsense from other adults that keeps me from doing what needs to be done for the kids. Patiently correct a child when they say something so egregiously ignorant/sexist/racist and they don’t even know it. Provide a space for kids to ask questions about their world in what I hope is a non-partisan, safe atmosphere. Be a female role model who gets shit done. I have no authority. All I have is a reluctant audience of 160 young people before me, but in that I have a stage. I have a platform. I can explain, guide, and impart life lessons such