Another Person on My Path

God puts people on my path and invites me to take a walk with them. Last weekend, I talked with a friend about the feeling that my life has had limited significance, with no expectation that anything profound has come of it. I was referring to Judge Sotomayor, whose life had a rocky beginning but appears to be headed for a stunning ending: she’s been a student, a low-level legal employee; a lawyer; a judge; and now sits on the Supreme Court. It’s not that my life has been marked with “just” accomplishes—I’m just a teacher; just a mother; just a friend—but that there is little significant accomplishment to add to that. You know, the ta-da at the end of the event.

Well, when you voice those feelings, Someone hears them and responds.

This past week I received a phone call from a former student from w-a-a-a-y back in the day, a student with whom I’ve maintained contact since the 1980s. He has lived an incredibly diverse life, some of which is directly tied to his enrollment in a GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) class for which I was the teacher. The students were academically gifted, but had lots of creative energy that was going untapped, even though the majority of them were also heavily involved in student activities. One day, as I was gushing about live theatre, a student asked me just what’s so great about a live performance? I responded that you won’t know until you’ve experienced it. He said, “Well, then, let’s do a play.”

Of course we discussed the challenges of that goal, as well as the logistics: I believe that if students want it, they have to do it. I have no problem with canceling any student event that is dumped into the teacher’s or parent’s lap. Thus, if they began it, they would finish it. Of course we developed a strategical plan: if nothing else, I am a planner. Before I walk into the classroom, I have the entire semester planned (not set in stone, but planned). After a week-long discussion of the pros and cons of the endeavor, and after my promise to provide any support within my means, I handed over $75 from my wallet and said, “Let’s do this.”

It was the first play at the high school–ever—and it kicked some serious ass. I served as the director because someone had to occupy that title, but the students put on the performance. Other teachers became involved here and there, curious about how we were going to pull this off. Of the plays I offered the students as possibles, they selected Arsenic and Old Lace, and you can’t go wrong with that little gem. Long story short: it was one of the crowning moments of my career, but also the start of careers for some of those students!

Last week’s phone call updated me on some of the students who shared that theatrical experience with the two of us and then turned to his current acting career; yes, he’s a card-carrying professional actor, a career that began on our high school stage. His acting coach is a well-known “old-timer” from back in the day who has written a book on acting and needs someone to gently edit it. As my former student explained to me, “It’s a great book, but the skills need [my] guidance.”

I talked to the author directly, assured him that I would not change, just enhance, his manuscript, and that I would be delighted to accept this job as a favor to my former student. When the author felt that he had to give me something for my trouble, I told him that he can write a check to one of the charities I support in the Valley: they need the money to help people who need their services.

The deal struck, he sent me the manuscript.

Yep, He put people into my path and it’s been a delightful experience. The manuscript is an incredible teaching tool for others to learn about life skills, using acting as the vehicle to achieve what we all want in/from our lives. Of course, being the somewhat inwardly-turned person that I am in my personal life, I benefited from reading about how actors have to bring all that past experience to the forefront of their lives and use it to be the character they are playing. I can do that in my teaching, but I’ve never been able to do that in my life – which reflects back to the conversation with my friend about lacking the feeling of significance in my life. I have never been able to accept the old teaching saw that if I reach just one student each year, I have done my job well: one is not a number high enough for me.

If/when the author of the book publishes it, I’ll tell you his name and the title so you can look for it at Amazon dot com or one of the bookstores in the mall. Right now, he’s pinched for time to print some working copies of it as one of his former students is going to preview it in an acting class she teaches.

The chain of teacher/student stands strong, which is, perhaps, the significance of my life.

Anticipatory Aging

Last weekend, I was in La Jolla for a visit that included a favor for an elderly woman who lives in the same complex as my friend. M's apartment is on the top floor of her building, across the street from the seal cove, and the view is spectacular; however, M always keeps the blinds closed. Because I was assembling and then installing a small TV, I needed to see what I was doing and asked her if I could open the blinds.

Horrified, M said "NO" because the sun will fade her furniture! At age 95, one of her last concerns should be the sun fading her furniture when she could be wallowing in the most glorious view of the ocean from Mexico to Laguna from the window of her apartment. However, I opened the blinds, completed the task, and then reluctantly closed the blinds as directed.

I was sharing this story with a friend yesterday with an addendum that had him howling with laughter. I said that if I live to age 95, I'm going to live my life on the wild side, throwing caution and furniture fading to the wind. As a matter of fact, I continued, I'm going to have wild unprotected monkey sex and smoke a cigarette in the afterglow! Fading furniture be damned.

His addition to the picture: he'd open the blinds, stand stark naked in front of them, and literally let it ALL hang out!

Part of me would love to live to 95 just so I could anticipate this moment in time.

A Comment is not always a Call to Action

Tiger Wood commented during an interview about the final round of play at a recent tournament he ultimately won: if his opponent had not been on the clock, he would have played better. Some people play better under pressure and others don't: this opponent was negatively affected by both the pressure of being in contention with Tiger Wood and being on the clock to speed up his play. These things happen, observed Tiger: it's unfortunate; next question? I didn't hear any implied criticism, yet it's rumored that Tiger will be fined for criticizing the official who started the clock as per the rules that govern golf. It is further rumored that the official is "demanding" an apology from Tiger!

You'd think Tiger's observation was a confrontation worthy of another beer summit!

In another incident this past weekend, Secretary of State Clinton curtly responded to an ill-stated question from a reporter during a news conference. The way the question was posed, it assumed that former President Clinton was involved in the decision-making process, rather than current Secretary of State Clinton, a mistake that Secretary Clinton forcefully corrected. Sure, Clinton's comment could have been less caustic, but her response is not a reason to create an international incident where none exists.

Our skin is too thin when a comment is construed as criticism that requires a call to action. It's okay to respond to Tiger's observation and point out the rule upon which the decision to start the clock was based, but a response does not need to become a crusade to right what is so obviously not a wrong, such as another incident that happened locally.

This past weekend, a group of males in their 20s went out on the town and consumed too much alcohol before returning to their hotel. A couple of the men decided that a quick dip in the pool would help them sober up before going to the room and sleeping it off. One of the men never made it out of the pool: when the guys realized he hadn't returned to the room with them and found him at the bottom of the pool, it was too late to save his life. Swimming off a drunk is never a good idea, and it can end badly; however, it's just a drunk swimming accident. The hotel management, perhaps in an effort to combat death by drunk drowning, the first at this hotel, is no longer going to allow 24/7 access to the swimming pool, a total over-reaction to this incident.

Life happens, some of it good and some of it not so good, but our society used to be more pragmatic: deal with it and move on. We cannot continue to go through life looking for insult where none is intended and/or change the way we do business based on a single incident that ends badly. We all need to learn to change what needs to be changed, accept what cannot be changed, but more importantly, to exercise the good judgment to know the difference.

Negotiations? I Don't Think So!

Priceline says I can get a hotel in SB for up to 80% off: name my price and voila! It's a done deal.

Not.

I've been trying for 4 days to find a reasonably priced hotel in my home town so I can have some privacy and quiet during a family visit next weekend. I want to arrive on Friday, depart on Sunday, and pay about $100/night. I offered $125/night for rooms allegedly priced at $159-189, thinking that was both reasonable and fair: no deal. On the website, I found an offer for a nearby college town hotel, 2-star, which is all I need, going for $97/night, but I was locked out of that deal because I had bid on the other page of the website!

No slight to Fess Parker's beautiful facility on the beach, but I don't have $400/night to spend on a hotel. I'm going to be at my family home most of the time, even for meals, so all I need is a place to sleep, and I'm not willing to pay more than about $150/night for it.

I've given up on Priceline: Bill Shatner failed to negotiate a deal I can live with. I'll go look at some of the chain hotel websites and see what I can on my own and within my price range. Follow-up: I did go on-line and found a hotel with free internet, coffee in the room and a continental b'fast for $80/night. Granted, it's about 25 miles from my family home, but on the freeway? Piece of cake.

Hot Heaven

The craving began when I read one of the staff blogs at the local on-line newspaper site about favorite meals. I've never craved a red bean burrito and would not even think to put it on the list, but my mind happily ran through the leg o'lamb dinner, with mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, and mint jelly made from the mint that always grew well around the leaking faucet in the backyard. Or the payday dinner, sirloin steak, broiled medium rare, with baked potatoes loaded with butter and pepper, and just about any veggie fresh from the garden except yellow squash. Or homemade noodles wallowing in beef stroganoff (with mushrooms) with just a touch of sour cream stirred in, a far-too-rare treat best made by my former roomie's mom way back then. I can still taste her stroganoff and the homemade dinner rolls she made from scratch (yeast rolls) and served with a whole cube of butter. Scandinavian heaven!

Liver with onions intruded into my mental meanderings, the one food item that I always refuse. The slimy sight of it makes me nauseous, and the smell of it cooking stimulates my gag reflex. There is a family story associated with liver, onions, and my dinner being tossed off the second floor porch. When I say I won't eat it, I really mean I WON'T EAT LIVER no matter how long someone thinks it'll take to make me change my mind. I also od'd on casseroles during my youth and early marriage, so I try to avoid those whenever possible. Separate the ingredients, put them on plate and I'm fine, but stir 'em together in the same baking dish and it's just repurposed left-overs. Sorry, but there it is. Don't even start with scalloped potatoes and ham. Give me ham and potatoes and I'm there, but do NOT mix them with milk in a baking dish: PLEASE. And no, it does NOT improve the flavor of either the ham or the potatoes to sprinkle bread crumbs and cheese on top before baking: it's disgusting.

Yeah, there are favorite meals to enjoy and others to avoid, but there are also favorite foods, most of which begin with the letter "junk," that I stay away from more often than I indulge, but the seed was planted with the "favorites" blog. I first began the cinnamon roll splurge when the kids were young because the rolls come in the poppin' fresh packaging, and back in the day it was a novelty to pop the tube and bake the rolls. The cinnamon rolls with the orange icing, that is. My kids and I baked up two tubes of the rolls because we enhanced them into sinful by adding finely chopped walnuts and rolling two of the curled cinnamon strips together to make one ginormous hot cinnamon orange goodie. Somehow, it was better to eat just one big roll than several smaller rolls, but the bottom line is that every one of our rolls could be either two or three of the smaller rolls redesigned for devouring, depending on just how frisky we were feeling when the spirit moved us to pop the tubes of dough.

I don't bake during the day as it's too hot to heat the oven, but today I made an exception and enjoyed a huge hot cinnamon and walnut roll topped with orange frosting, along with a fresh cup of coffee and my feet perched on the edge of the coffee table. It doesn't get much better than that ... unless it's knowing that there are still three rolls for the taking and no one else around to beat me to them!