not here to help, only to observe and pass judgment

My students are taking their standardized tests this week which leaves me with time on my hands during the day when I would normally be busy flapping my gums about anything from Woodrow Wilson to prepositional phrases, the catch is that I have to be quiet. This excludes many of the things I would do in my classroom when I have a free minute.

I could play one of the lame video games I have on my computer, LEGO Star Wars is a favorite but it is hard to quickly quit out of if my boss comes into the room and I tend to be expressive when I am playing video games (even lame ones) the last thing testing students need is for their teacher to let off a stream of expletives while they are trying to concentrate. This also is why I cannot grade any late or adrift papers that wander into my in-box. I also cannot clean my classroom or get my OCD on by rearranging something in the room. I have to find something quiet to do at my own desk.

I was sitting here typing something up for another lesson when it occurred to me: I should clean my computer. I have special LCD wipes for my computer and camera screens so I took those out but then I saw something in my keyboard – a sesame seed – and realized that I needed to clean my keyboard, too.

I have no knowledge of computers or their mysterious inner workings but I do know how to pop the keyboard off on my computer. I do not know what the shiny objects under the keyboard are or what the best way to go about removing the crumbs, eyelashes, and other refuse lurking down there. Knowing that computers, especially laptops, are exquisitely delicate, I knew I probably should not touch it or rub it down with a chemical. I decided the best course of action was to pick the computer up, keyboard dangling, and dump the rubbish out of the computer’s keyboard.

I am most annoyed by the sesame seed. Sesame seeds are found on carbohydrates: Big Mac buns, the crust of pizzas, and worst of all – in Chinese food. Someone has been eating carbohydrates and using my computer while doing it, ostensibly to leave evidence I was bound to find to rub in my that they can enjoy the carb laden sugary goodness of Mc Donald’s, Mc Donald’s, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Pizza Hut.

What is really annoying me is that the insurance people have not gotten back to me about fixing the other computer and I have been taking it out on my class. Specifically, when Fernando asked for the tenth time, “how do I spell weight?” I said, “W-e-i-e-i-o-g-h-t.” Then during the spelling test he asked, “How do I spell that?” when the spelling word was, “hamburger.” I said, “t-h-a-t” because I was appalled that (a) he had fallen for that trick twice already this year, and (b) that someone I see almost daily at Mc Donald’s does not know their food groups (Burgers, Premium Chicken, Fries, Ice Cream & Pies). He is an embarrassment to all the rest of us fat people. When I was his age I could not spell my name but I could spell enchilada. For the first time in my career, I feel the sting of failure. The only thing that makes me feel better is seeing ‘t-h-a-t’ on his spelling test.

Of course, I am concerned for the weight and their health and when considering their health I picked Fig Newtons as their snack during testing. I eschewed cookies for the snack that is fruit and cake. Chaos Bean insists that they are a healthy choice, probably only in comparison to cupcakes, or eating whole sticks of butter.

On a side note, the thing I miss more about being a debater than having structured, intelligent discussions with well informed people about substantial topics is being able to say “rubbish” while someone else is speaking or to admonish them that they should be ashamed of themselves for what they are saying. I rarely ‘shamed’ someone, because coming from shows loads of nerve or a lot of shame.

My cousin and I have a philosophical argument over what maturation in a human means. Her opinion is that maturation is growth into something new, better, and different while I opine that maturation is a deepening of what you already are. People do not become someone ‘new’ but refine who they always have been through the growing up process, or else we would call the process metamorphosis.

This idea surfaced in my mind this week when I ran into an old friend from when I was in Middle School that I knew in Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts is potentially the lamest, most useless endeavors I have ever embarked upon because I am not sure anyone learned what we were intended to be taught and the debate still rages, “should I have slept on my back or my stomach?” When I was a boy scout I was a pretty bad kid, I was a troublemaker but almost exclusively during that time period and almost always in that setting.

Sure, on an overnight school trip I kidnapped my German teacher’s toupee - I will admit to that now – and I was involved with the usual revolts against substitute teachers, fist fights, and my name keeps popping up in discussions about two teachers who had nervous breakdowns but I think I was only as bad or good as anyone else.

I was not really a troublemaker in scouts. My scoutmaster did not like me because he did not like my father who as a board member for the troop was no always cooperative. My father, even though he is a soldier, is not one to roll over and bend rules for people. As a result, I was branded a troublemaker, even though I was a pretty docile child. This experience prompted me to start acting out since I was being blamed for everything I might as well get in on the action.

We reached a nadir where my parents stopped believing the accusations and I really let myself go. Conversely, during this time my behavior was exemplary in school because I was shaking my mischievous jones at scouts and had no need to act out at school, church, or anywhere else. I was the honor student, altar boy that your mother told you to be more like unless you knew me at scouts. Where my scoutmaster had billed me as a pariah; my parents were billed as irresponsible morons. We were twice “Family of the Year,” much to his chagrin and in no small part to the utter fantastic Eddie Haskell mojo I was working. I really was a good kid, just not there.

What I learned, above all else, in boy scouts was the art of politics in the worst Machiavellian sense. If ever I achieve my dreams of evil genius it will be undoubtedly be their fault. I learned that I had to cultivate my own reputation and not let someone else do it for me.

This is not to say that I had everyone fooled. I was in the weird situation of having family overseas near us when most people did not. My Grandfather and my aunt were on to me and on more than one occasion were the ones who had to retrieve me from outings because I am smart enough to feign that my parents were out of town as well and I was supposed to be retrieved by a relative. On one such occasion, during the winter, my aunt arrived wearing her fur coat and Cossack styled fur hat to which I quipped to the scoutmaster in question, “Be careful, she’s as fierce as the original occupant.” I have countless short stories written about this woman. Certainly, I hope they are published before she realizes it and kills me.

Now there came a point, and there is always this point, where accusations are thrown around, people point fingers, and reputations are at stake – which I had nothing to do with the imbroglio that was brewing I was yanked (and I mean physically yanked) from that troop and placed in another before I insinuated myself into it for the fun of it because there is nothing more fun than an imbroglio or a good old white-trash brouhaha. The next day I was placed in another troop, one associated with my church, and was smart enough to know that I had better clean up my act.

It is always fun to run into people from that time because their opinion of me is pretty low and most people who know me in person have a very different opinion of me. They are aghast to find out that I am a teacher and I make sure (for the comedy) that they get the picture of me in my clerical vestments. I like to think that I am a decent human being, I was not then, and I enjoyed that a great deal.

I still enjoy pandemonium and I can still shoot you in the eye (or genitals) with a kinder egg yolk from twenty feet but as fun as it was to be bad life is a lot easier now that I have grown up and out of that and into a pretty stable adult personality. My cousin’s confusion with the whole maturation/metamorphosis issue is forgetting that we try on a few hats while we are adolescents but more often than not, we leave wearing the one we came into it with. I was Alex P. Keeton when I was in Kindergarten and I am Alex P. Keeton today. I know she would like to think that she was a different person than she was back then, and she is, but the core of who she is – her work ethic and her idealism, that center and drive her – is still the same even as we swap around our adjectives and honorifics in early adulthood.

Its also nice to know that Stan is still a quicker wit and funnier than I am.

It’s an Apple thing, you wouldn’t understand

Last week an electrical surge tore through my DSL modem into the AirPort and down to the iMac, one of the iBooks, and my iPod. Had Chaos Bean and I been home when this happened we would have accompanied this catastrophe we would have thrown ourselves around the living room in a manner consistent with Star Trek, complete with the ruining Chaos’ elaborate Queen of Naboo Pompadour. The other iBook was not connected to the DSL Modem so Chaos and I have been sharing this one for almost two weeks while my insurance gets its act together.

In order for the insurance to help us the computers needed to be diagnosed by a professional, and not just the conjectures of an elementary school teacher and his Chocolatier sister. Chaos and I decided to go to the Apple Store to find out their procedures for having such work done and to get prices for repairs. My insurance will either pay for repairs or replace the computers depending on what the technician says. The first Mac Genius (their academically acquired title) told us that our conjecture was indeed correct but that we would need to bring in the computers for examination. Yet another, unhelpful, Mac Genius tried to explain my insurance policy to me (sight unseen) and Chaos and I were worried because without a Mac Genius to tell us what we already knew we were going to be a one computer, ground line apartment.

We went home and I loaded myself up with thousands of dollars of irreparable Apple products and trundled that and Chaos into the car and to the Apple Store where another Mac Genius help us. Lucky for us, he was one of Chaos Bean’s people. He complemented her pompadour and recognized her jacket as being a Social Distortion jacket. I was a little worried at first because when I initially told him what happened he said he was sorry and touched my hand – this was until I realized that as a Mac Genius he knew that losing your computer, AirPort or iPod was tantamount to your Grandmother, your best friend, or your dog dying. Losing all of them at one time was like someone lined them up on a wall and made you watch while they were shot. People who do not have iPods, to include my incredibly unhelpful and obtuse insurance adjustor, will not understand.

We left the Apple Store with the paperwork we needed to have our computers resurrected from the ashes of our misery but with a new idea, a new purpose. I am betrothed and need not this service but Chaos Bean and I hatched the idea of having an “iDate” service. There are dating services for every group imaginable but there is no official, Apple Sanctioned dating service. I am betrothed to an Apple user but there is not guarantee for Chaos Bean. This is something that we have to consider when dating someone because we are at the age that we may end up marrying the people we date and having children with them – as opposed to younger people who have children and get married.

I want the best for Chaos Bean. I want her to find a nice Lutheran boy who likes Punk Rock, uses a Macintosh computer, and has enough ink on his body to reprint a copy of the Augsburg Confession in the original German, I can skip the “enough metal in his face to build a scale model of the Statue of Liberty,” but I can only speak for myself. Alex Vance, converting is the least of your worried before we send Chaos Bean and her dowry along.