The Red Balloon

I just watched “The Red Balloon” again. And, just as with every other time, I cried. It’s such a beautiful, simple little movie about a boy and his balloon. But to me, it’s so much more. Because the boy reminds me so much of my son Joe as a young boy. The haircut. The way he runs. And the simplistic way that he carries himself. That’s Joe. It always has been. To this day, he doesn’t ask for much from life. And he will always give more than he gets.

The other reason the movie resonates with me is because of Joey’s special relationship to balloons. Which even he probably doesn’t remember. But Joey, at some point as a young boy, developed a fear. Of losing, of all things, balloons. Every time he had one, he had an almost irrational fear of losing it, of letting it go, of having it blow away. To the point that his fears started to carry over into other things. So, like all concerned parents, we decided we needed some professional help. And Joey got over it. And he’s just fine now.

Only, every time I see this movie, I cry. I think of my little son, and how worried he was about losing something that was, in the big scheme of things, so small. And yet, to him, it was oh so big. I cry for him - and I cry for me. Because every time I see that movie, I’m reminded of my little son, my first son, who was oh so small, and so innocent. And now, he’s a grown man. Which must mean that I’m rapidly approaching being an old man.

I’d kill for a red balloon that never flew away. And for children that never grew up. And for time to just stand still. But I’m grateful for the memories. And I deal with the tears. Anyone have a tissue?

Dictionary, please

As a teacher in the 21st century, I find myself sometimes lamenting the loss of many of the things that I found comfortable both as a student and as a novice teacher. You know, back in the days before I really knew anything about teaching (or life for that matter).

One of the things that I miss the most is perhaps the most mundane of all - the dictionary. Not that I was ever a huge dictionary user. I mean, I’d use it from time to time, but mostly I was a pretty good natural speller, so referring to the dictionary was never really all that necessary - for that purpose, at least. But I remember, after leaving my Wall Street career and setting out on my own to find my fortune as a copywriter (before teaching came into the picture), one of the first things I bought for my new office was a Webster's paperback dictionary. Having it on my desk, along with a thesaurus (which was NEVER opened) and two books of “words that sell,” I somehow felt legitimate as a writer.

Today, of course, my students (and I, truth be told) rely on the computer to do our “dictionary” work. There are great websites that will allow us to check on the meaning of words if we need to and, of course, almost any word processing program worth a damn has spellcheck (I’ve used it three times already!).  But as a teacher, I’m not really all that worried about the proficiency of spelling, since most of that can be corrected automatically. But what I AM worried about is people losing sight of the meaning of words. I mean, really, isn’t that what a dictionary is. Dictionary.com, my go-to source for all things dictionary-like these days has this to day about what a dictionary is:

“a book, optical disc, mobile device, or online lexical resource (such as Dictionary.com) containing a selection of the words of a language,giving information about their meanings, pronunciations, etymologies,inflected forms, derived forms, etc., expressed in either the same or another language;”

Notice that there is no mention of spelling in this entry. But the word “meaning” is there. And that’s what I worry about - that people are forgetting that what’s important when using a word isn’t really whether you can spell it correctly or not (I mean, in the world of Twitter, does anyone really care about spelling anymore?) but do you know what it means?

Now, why would I be thinking about this topic today, when there is so much more to think about. Because this week is the Republican National Convention. And, amazingly, there seems to be some real problems with several of the keynote speakers and their “interpretation” of the meaning of certain words.

Let’s start with an easy one. The word “write.”  Again, according to Dictionary.com, the word “write”, when used as a verb, has, among others, this meaning:

“to compose or work as a writer or author.”

This definition seems simple enough. Combined with another reference, that having to do with forming words on the surface of some material, I think we get what the word “write” means. In fact, to be honest, I can’t think of anyone I know who would ever have to go look at a dictionary to see what the word “write” means.

So why is this such a foreign concept to several of the Trump clan? I mean, what can be misconstrued about the meaning of this word?  It would seem pretty straightforward.

So can anyone explain how Melania Trump can claim that she “wrote” her own speech and then, when we find out that many of the words came from someone else’s speech (i.e, the current First Lady), we find out that a speech-writer (there’s that word again) actually WROTE the speech after SPEAKING with Mrs. Trump. Now I really don’t care who cribbed from whom, but I do care about understanding the MEANING of words, and if Mrs. Trump thinks that SPEAKING to a speech-writer is actually “writing” the speech, we have a real problem with comprehension here.

Donald Jr. is also guilty of this misuse of the work.  On the one hand, he tells David Muir of ABC News that he “wrote” his own speech, and then he reveals that he used a speech-writer to write the speech. So, Mr. Trump Jr., did you or didn’t you WRITE the speech? Confused as to the question - see the definition of “write” above.

But, clearly this challenge of understanding the correct meaning of words is not limited to the Trumps. Oh no, not at this convention. So before we move ahead, let’s once again ask our friends at Dictionary.com for some help here. This time, the word is “pledge.”

Dictionary.com says:

“a solemn promise or agreement to do or refrain from doing something:”

Now before I proceed, a bit of full disclosure here. I’m not a Republican. Not NOW, at least. At one time I definitely identified more with the Republican ideals than the Democrats (and at one time I worked on Wall Street before moving to the public sector as a teacher). But, with the rise of Newt Gingrich (first) and the Tea Party (second), I rapidly found myself leaning, and then running, toward the Democratic party. Technically, I’m an “independent.” But I guess, not really.

But I digress. The reason I reference the meaning of the word “pledge” is because last night, I sat through what had to be one of the most bizarre (and, truthfully, sad) moments I’ve ever seen in a party convention, and at my age, I’ve seen plenty of conventions.

Last night, I sat through Senator Ted Cruz’ speech - you know the one where he NEVER endorsed the party’s nominee, Donald Trump. Even though a) Donald Trump got more votes than Ted Cruz did and b) Cruz and every other one of the 17 (or 16 or 18 or however many) candidates took a pledge to support the candidate that prevailed after the primary fight was over. Yes, Cruz took a “pledge”. Again, refer to the dictionary entry above if this concept is confusing.

Clearly, Mr. Cruz didn’t fully understand what the word meant, in the context that it was used. Perhaps he was using one of the ALTERNATE definitions of “pledge” such as:

“to drink a health or toast to.”

Perhaps Mr. Cruz thought, when he made that “pledge” on that debate stage all those months ago, that all he had to do was to raise a toast to Mr. Trump and then continue on his way, thinking he was still a candidate for President. Honestly, who the hell knows what was going through Mr. Cruz’ mind as he set about “writing” his speech (do I need to go through that again??).

In any event, clearly the Trumps and Ted Cruz would benefit from a new copy of Mr. Webster’s epic tome - the Dictionary. Perhaps someone will give them each a copy on their birthday. You know, birthday: “the day of a person's birth.”

Got a pothole? Call a teacher!!

The roads in New Jersey are crumbling. The bridges in New Jersey are rusting. The potholes in New Jersey are cavernous. So how do we fix this? According to State Senator Jennifer Beck, we have the state and school workers pay for it. How? By cutting their health benefits.

Yes, we fix the roads by cutting the health benefits of public servants. Because, after all, it's not huge trucks or the millions of cars that wear out roads. It’s sick public employees. Right?

It seems that we have a real block in this state about the possibility of ever raising the gas tax, even though it is so ridiculously low as to be nearly ineffective. I guess the legislators in this state take great pride in hearing “New Jersey” when news reports are discussing where to get the cheapest gas this Memorial Day weekend.

But if you think about it, what wears out the roads? Motor vehicles. And what do they run on? Well, unless you drive a Tesla or a Nissan Leaf, they run on, wait for it, gas! Yes, that’s right, that petroleum-based liquid that we in New Jersey seem to hold in the same esteem as Taylor ham (or pork roll, depending on where you’re from.)

So Ms. Beck thinks that the broken roads can be fixed by going around the concept of collective bargaining (do ANY Republicans work in union jobs??) and simply reducing the level of benefits “to bring it into line with what the federal government is saying should be a standard plan.” Because we all know that the federal government is the best possible example of how to run health care!! Obamacare, anyone?

How rich, that while Republicans all around the country are denouncing Obamacare, we have a state senator who is saying it should be the standard that we judge our state employees health benefits on. Who’s kidding who here?

Meanwhile, the state pension system remains on the brink of bankruptcy with no clear funding alternatives in sight because the state government (and the state governor) refuse to honor the terms of the law that the governor himself pushed for and the legislature supported.

I have an idea. How about we raise the gas tax to fund the pension?? If you want state workers to pay for the roads with their health benefits, I think asking the drivers of the state to pay for state pensions is only fair. Senator Beck, can I ask for your support??

Snowblower? Who needs a snowblower!

It’s snowing. No, I mean it’s really snowing. Like “blizzard warning” snowing. Like up to 20 inches snowing. And, of course, I have a snowblower. A dead snowblower. As in “there ain’t no way in hell that this thing is starting” snowblower.

Which is an inconvenience. And one that I could have avoided, had I let my mother have her way. She had been bugging me for months to let her buy me a snowblower. Over and over she asked. Sort of like when she wanted to buy me a new lawnmower. At that time, I put her off and put her off until one day she and my father showed up on my driveway with a new lawnmower in the back of their SUV. Of course, that was back before my dad’s stroke and now he won’t drive this far. Which probably precluded them from showing up with a snowblower in the back of said SUV.

So I told her I would go shopping. Which I did. And what I found out was that these damned things cost an ass and a half if they cost a penny. A decent snowblower is about $500 and there is just no way I’d feel comfortable with my mother spending $500 on an item that you are likely to use maybe a few times each year. At least the lawnmower gets used every week from April through October or beyond. But a snowblower??

Funny - but I felt pretty good about NOT buying the flipping thing and spending her money foolishly. That is until the snow started falling earlier tonight. And falling. And falling.

And now, I’m left with 50 pounds of salt, a driveway covered with cars and snow, and a trusty shovel. Oh well - it’s on with the boots, the overcoat, the scarf, the gloves and the hat. And stocking up on the Advil. It’s going to be a long weekend.

Requiem for a to-do list (or how I loved and abandoned my Franklin Planner)

I was sitting at my desk today creating yet another to-do list on a vertical index card, the kind you have a hard time finding at the Staples, when I realized that making to-do lists for me had changed significantly over the last 25 years or so.

I remember the day I was high enough on the Merrill Lynch totem pole to warrant my own Franklin Planner. For a time, all managers received some cursory training in how to use their Franklin Planner and left with their very own. The brown pleather binder a symbol of your status within the company. No one of any significance ever showed up at a meeting without their planner. To do so was thumbing your nose at the establishment.

For those unfamiliar with said planner, let me explain. In its classic form, it is an odd-sized six-ring binder filled with pages the color of the old financial ledgers. There are two pages for each day. On the left side, a daily scheduler, denoted in 30 minute increments, flanked by a to-do list with a legend of how to use it (check mark for completed, dot for carried over, prioritized by A, B, or C respectively). Just below the to-do list, a small expense box for recording your daily monetary outlays. The facing page was merely a lined page cleverly labeled “Notes”, which as the title implied, was where you took notes.

Each day, to mirror the virtues of Benjamin Franklin, you were to create a unique to-do list, classifying everything accordingly, and review your time schedule and your notes. At the end of each month, you were to create an index of where everything was and retire the month to the storage binder, to be replaced by the month 30 days hence. Thus you carried two months with you at all time - the current month and the next. And you re-created the to-do list every day. And you manually tracked your appointments. And you took notes on a page that was, truth be told, to narrowly lined to be of any use at all.

And then came the electronic day planner and there went the cache of the Franklin Planner. At least at Merrill Lynch. Blackberries became the new status symbol, and only those of us on the slower track still carried a day planner. I eventually ditched the ledger-green for a more fancy package (Monticello, with blue trim) and then tried the compact version, but eventually I was won over by electronics and now my calendar is maintained on Google and available on my laptop, my desktop, my phone and who the hell knows where else.

And I am on time for my appointments and I have a slew of phone numbers with me at all times - most of which I’d never call anyway. And I have yet to find a good way to create a to-do list. Because for all the inefficiencies of the Franklin Planner, the idea of a to-do list, written by your own hand, and recreated each day was, by far, the most valuable part of the planner. Because it reminded you, daily, of all the things you kept putting off. And putting off. And, you had the inherent pleasure of drawing a line through the menial tasks you completed each day.

Since the abandonment of my beloved planner, I have tried everything. Legal pads. Little legal pads. Pads inside little vinyl folders. Index cards. Vertical index cards. Pads labeled “To Do.” The “tasks” app on Google Calendar. Evernote. Something else electronic that I can’t remember now. And with all of these, I find that nothing - and I mean nothing - is ever going to be as efficient as my Franklin Planner To-Do list.

It’s not as though I forget about doing things now. I do a pretty good job, given the hodge-podge of reminders I carry with me. It’s just that now, for me at least, maintaining a decent to-do list is work, where before it was habit. And given that I’m trying my damndest to establish good habits, I lament the fact that no matter what I’ve tried, the habit of maintaining a to-do list has been lost for me.

But undaunted, I keep trying. Or looking for the next big (or small) thing. I’m open to suggestions.

Time Passages

My wife and I went to see the new movie “Creed” the other night. Which for most people would be no big deal. But to us, it was something of an event. And not because we almost never go to the movies anymore (which we don’t). But rather, because of our strange relationship with Rocky Balboa.

Rocky, it seems, has woven his way into our relationship over the years. In fact, you could say that the character has been intertwined in our relationship since the beginning. Because the very first date we ever went on was to a Rocky movie - Rocky II to be specific.

I remember it so vividly - the date was June 28, 1979. The Plainview Theater. And how do I remember this? Because, in my pack rat ways, I never throw out anything - including the actual ticket stubs from that day (what are today’s kids going to keep as mementoes - printed pages from some website??).

And, amazingly, there we were - she and I  - in another theater in another state some 36 years later, watching the same character on the screen. And I’ll bet I was the only one who had tears in his eyes at the end - and it had nothing to do with the actual movie.

Which, by the way, is very good. Go see it. And if you do, I think you’ll see why Sylvester Stallone is getting some buzz for a Golden Globe and, dare I say it, an Oscar. Because he’s actually that good. And the reason he’s so good is because he plays his character for what he is now - an older man who can no longer fight the fight. At least in the ring. Essentially, Rocky has become Mickey (for those who know every movie as I do).

Which leads me to the tears. Because, you see, pretty much every day I don’t see myself as what I am. I wake up next to the same girl I went to high school with. I drive a ridiculously old car every day to work. I still enjoy the same music and food and drink I’ve always enjoyed. I still play hockey with the guys every week. Essentially, when I think of myself, I think of myself as 25.

So seeing Rocky on the screen as what he is now - an older man - led me to look in the mirror and realize what I have been trying to, in essence, deny lately. That I’m not a 25 year old kid anymore. I’ve gotten older and, just maybe, a bit wiser. But the reality is that I’m well into the throes of middle age, having passed 50 a couple of years ago.

And it got to me. Right there, in a theater full of younger movie goers who were there more for Michael B. Jordan than for an aging Sylvester Stallone. A room full of teen and twenty-somethings, and me and my girl - just like we were in 1979, when WE were the teens amidst the “older folk.”

And, as I looked around, I realized that the passage of time is inevitable. You can’t fight it, so like Rocky (finally, in this film), you embrace it. You look back with fondness and wonder, and you look forward to all that is still to come.

And then you take the hand of the girl that has been there all the time. And you move forward, together. Into the great unknown. And suddenly, it’s 1979 all over again.

My Patriot's Day realization

Today is September 11, or I guess, Patriot's Day. Every year, I seem to find myself more and more concerned with how we remember the events of September 11, 2001. But today seemed particularly difficult, since, as a fifth grade teacher, I had to deliver some sort of lesson the the importance of "Patriot's Day" to a group that wasn't even born on September 11, 2001. And I realized, as I spoke to the children during my daily "Today in History" segment, that what is shaping these childrens' perception of historical events such as September 11 is the internet. Specifically what they are seeing on sites like YouTube.

And this scares me because there's an awful lot of crap out there about September 11. Conspiracy theories abound and the largely unregulated environment of sites such as YouTube provide a vast canvas on which to spread these theories. And, while I support free speech, I don't for one minute put any validity into these various myths surrounding the events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on that day. I had too much real interaction with the aftermath to believe anyone who wasn't actually there.

So today, I came to the realization that my role as a teacher and communicator is going to change.  While I still live with the fresh memory of those who perished, both known to me and unknown to me, I can no longer just live with these memories and keep them to myself. But rather, as an educator, my role now is to act as a living history book, sharing the experience and making sure that this next generation of students, those born long after this stopped being "current events" and started being a chapter in their textbook, do not forget what happened on that day, or the lives that were lost, or the heroes that we celebrate.

In some way, I am going to have to become like one of the many that I met this summer who participated in the civil rights events in Alabama in 1963. My travels took me to Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery where I not only got to visit the sites of these great events, but to also meet many of those who were there. Their stories and recollections took what was to me a "textbook entry" and made it alive. I read about it - but they lived and breathed it. I could not have been more thankful for the time they were able to spend with me, sharing their own personal histories.

And now, it is up to me, to continue to share my personal history and those that I am familiar with, with my own students. I hope they find it as enriching as I have.

Today is September 11, or Patriot's Day. Take a moment to pause and remember.

I did.