District 9 was amazing. Discuss:

My father was in Haiti during the earthquake.

I first read about the quake at about 6 o'clock and did not hear about his safety until 2 hours later. Those were 2 pretty harrowing hours. I watched the news reports climb their death tolls from dozen dead to thousands dead. I read about how many buildings collapsed or slid down hills, crushing citizens everywhere. All communication was cut off. Cell towers had fallen, phone lines were broken. My family couldn't get a hold of the hotel where dad was staying.

It turns out that hotel was the only building left standing in the vicinity after the earthquake. My father's mission trip (he was painting an orphanage mainly) had gathered there to then go to a good-bye dinner. After the quake, I guess they tried to help move some of the fallen concrete. They found crushed people. Someone had a phone that worked (maybe a satellite phone) and they called some friends who called my sister and said that the mission group had survived the quake. That night, the group slept outside and the hotel had a portable generator for some electricity.

In the morning, the group decided to go to the airport. They passed many, many bodies at the side of the road, their heads covered with sheets. Somehow they were flown to the Dominican Republic, and dad emailed my family from there: "I'm okay. More later." He called my mom last night. Mom said he sounded tired. He said little about what he saw, but just kept telling my mom that he took photos of the devastation. "You won't believe it," she said he said. (Some of these details I got through the family of my dad's friend who also went on the trip. Dad is not much of a storyteller, he says his memories don't work like stories do. Also, he is a pretty quiet reflector, so maybe he has written about it in his travel journal.)

He leaves from the Dominican Republic in a few hours. He'll land in Florida and then fly to O'Hare and drive to Milwaukee from there. He'll get to Chicago around 1am, so I'll probably refrain from seeing him until the weekend.

I was so scared.

This blog has become a place where I write to simply excise some thoughts from my head. More therapy than artistry. I apologize to any readers who are looking for interesting things here, but mostly this is me just dumping out my brains and seeing what's left in them.

I think I have realized that I go on shopping sprees while feeling blue. In the past three weeks I have bought more books than I can read and looked at about 3 times as many more. Just now I was even at the Book Cellar (my plan being to go in, get a 2010 Moleskine, and get out), thinking of buying one of three new books while Amazon was at my house delivering a package (which I guess I had to sign for and was not home to do so—dang it!). Also, I have bought myself flowers and food. And I'm not much of a stress-eater. In fact, the food is in small amounts, generally healthy, and some of it does not get eaten. I just want to buy it. It's like all these books and exotic iced teas and cherries and flowers and things are supposed to make me happy, even though I know they won't and their distraction time is minimal at best.

Tomorrow I go back to work. I think it will be good for me. I used to think I could be a hermit, but I know now I would go crazy if the only thoughts I had around me were my own. Being alone has become being lonely, and even kids are better than nothing.

I was reading Orhan Pamuk's new book, The Museum of Innocence, but it really started to get under my skin in a bad way. The narrator is obsessed with a girl who he bumbles a relationship with and spends the rest of his life longing for her. In a lot of ways the book is a love letter to Turkey (where the book takes place) in other ways, the book is a meditation on the negative aspects of love, obsession, and regret—which I think I don't need right now.
Instead I've returned to the lovely and insight-drenched Home by Marilynne Robinson. Here the plot is about a long-lost, misfit son coming home to stay with his elderly father and his younger sister (the sister is taking care of their father, come home after a failed engagement). The father seems to welcome the son with open arms while the sister is displeased with the situation. She is bitter about her life upending and jealous of her father's affections to the son. But, I'm about half-way through the book now and the feelings of the father and sister have changed. The sister now is understanding, wanting to help her big brother Jack, while the father is becoming angry, mistrusting his son and himself. I am amazed as to how well Ms. Robinson is able to describe the thoughts and feelings of Glory (the daughter, through whose eyes we see the daily goings on). It is some of the most believable stuff I've ever read. Anyways, I think a book about regret and redemption is a better fit for my emotional state.

The other night, amid the hugs and glass-clinking, I realized that it was going to be the year 2010. (I say "going to be" because the people I was with decided to celebrate the new year on Eastern time, because they had decided that they could not stay up so late as midnight.) 2010 was always a weird year in my mind because I had seen the movie of the same name with my father as a child and it was a weird and sometimes spooky little film. ("What's going to happen?" "Something wonderful.") But I doubt 2010 will be anything like the movie (though it will no doubt have weird and spooky moments, as do all years).

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I watched Taxi Driver for the first time last night. It was on Hulu. I don't know if it was the perfect movie to watch while depressed or not, but it made me think, "Well, at least I don't want to go hurt people."

Actually, as I'm sure many of you know, it was a good film. I loved the visuals. The slow pans over things, the lingering shots. The way lights at night effected the colors of stuff. In fact, the colors as a whole were pretty incredible. And so see all those people so young! I never understood why Cybill Shephard was thought of as pretty until I saw this. Also, I'm always up for seeing Albert Brooks. (I don't know why. His movies are never great. I just like to see/hear him act, I guess. I love him in The Simpsons and Finding Nemo.)

If I were to have one complaint with the movie, it would be the sound effects used during the shoot-out at the end were such stereotypical gun noises that they almost sounded cartoonish and it took me out of the film. I think there was even a western-esque ricochet noise in there.

But that's a minor complaint.

I've always been fascinated by New York in the 70s. Maybe it's from watching too much Sesame Street in the early 80s, but I actually like the aesthetic of the dirty, dirty city. (Though I would not want to live there.) The combination of the lights, the seedy people, the colors of urban filth, that invisible layer of grime that seems to coat everything: I eat that stuff up. I think that's half of the reason I like the shows Taxi and Barney Miller so much is because of that aesthetic. And it seems in the 70s no one really knew what they were wearing. Those sunglasses Iris wears in the diner—they're crazy! Big hair, floppy hats, suits too narrow, washed out colors, places where clothes should hug swing free and visa-versa. (I wonder if someone in 35 years will blog about how much he loves the look of things in the first decade of 2000s.)

I am swinging around in bad moods. It's hard to get a foothold on distractions. I even went to buy an RPG video game with the purpose of it being a distraction, but it hasn't helped. I also bought a sad book—the new Orhan Pamuk—thinking maybe I could just revel in sadness and that might distract me. I was able to do so for a few hours, but eventually I found my mind wandering, comparing the narrator's doomed love affair to the broken relationship between me and Melissa.

Part of me dreams she'll call me and say, "Can we start over?" And I would say yes before she could finish the sentence. Part of me believes she will never do that and I'm a fool for letting those hopes linger in my mind. Part of me wishes I could think bad things about her, or get angry enough to feel glad we're done, but there's nothing to even ignite those thoughts in my mind. I don't want to be angry, there's no reason for it.

And I don't want to move on.

I told that to Saara the other day and she wondered aloud why we think that way. Why do we, when so deeply hurting, say to ourselves, "I refuse to get better. I will be sad for the rest of my life." Is it a real thought? Is it our brain letting ourselves respect the value of the thing we lost? Is it a defense mechanism so we don't go do something emotionally drastic, like putting us on hold until we can move on? I don't know.

But this sadness is lasting, that I can say for sure. It's been a week, and although I am no longer sobbing to the point of choking anymore, I still feel bereft and hollow.

I struggle with hope. I struggle with what it means or what it could do or how it makes me feel or how it will make me feel or how much it does or does not reflect reality. My father gives us children's books each year for Christmas and writes a very heart-felt and poignant message inside each one. This year he gave me a book called "Mister Rabbit's Wish" and inside he wrote, Some suggest a wish is for redemption, others say, "Be careful what you wish for..." A few know a wish is a statement of hope. This Christmas I wish you that .... Hope.

For those of you wondering, I deleted my Facebook account. (Actually, Facebook calls it "deactivating". They like to leave the window open for you to return, and all of your stuff will come back.)

After the break-up, I was on the verge of depressed insanity and pretty much decided to commit virtual suicide rather than truly hurt myself. Dramatic, I know, but it's how I roll when really hurt. I hope no one takes it personally. Most everyone I cared about on there keeps in contact with me through other means, anyways. (All I'll really miss is the family photos Chad posts.)

Again. Sorry if it hurt anyone's feelings.

Just some corny writing to help me cope with bad thoughts. You probably want to ignore this.

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The other day one of the 3rd grade girls came to my desk and saw my desktop image of Melissa. She asked me who it was and I said it was my girlfriend.

"You have a girlfriend?!!" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"She's really pretty," she said.

"I think so, too," I said.

"No. I mean it. She's really, really pretty," she said seriously, like she needed to make sure I knew she wasn't just saying it. Then she asked how long we had been dating. I said four months.

"That's it?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Well, then you need to aim for a year," she advised. "And after that, two years. And then you should get married."

"Oh?" I said smiling. "Is that how it goes? What if I don't want to wait two years to ask her to marry me?"

"Well, hey," the girl said, "if you love her, then rock on." She shrugged when she said "rock on".

"You sound like you're saying all this from experience," I said.

"No," she said. "I just watch a lot of The Simpsons."

I've had a headache that comes on every afternoon for the past 2 days. I don't know if it's related to stress or eye strain or illness, but it's pretty pervasive, and food and pills don't do a whole lot to fight it. All I've noticed that seems to work is low lighting and sleep. There's a slight stomach-element, too, so I worry about the flu or some slight food poisoning (and I have spent some time in the bathroom this evening, if you must know) but I won't cross those diagnosis bridges until I get there.

On the other hand, turning off almost all the lights has made for an interesting atmosphere in my apartment this evening. The yellow glow of streetlights is leaking in every window. For a while I watched thick snowflakes blow around the lamps, but now I think it has turned to something closer to rain. I can see the silhouettes of wires and branches bobbing in the wind. There's a howling sound and I can't tell if it's the wind blowing or the elevated rolling by. The snow has melted on my windows into drips which make odd shadows on the opposite walls. The radiators clank and hiss. Airplanes rumble above the clouds. (It's always odd to not see their lights floating past my window at nights.) In fact, the sky is glowing a dark green, like an echo of the streetlights' amber.

Now the snow is icy. It blows against the window and sounds like sand tickling the glass.

Saint Etienne has been one of those bands I think I believe I love more than I actually do. For each of their albums, I probably like a half the songs, adore a fifth of them, and could skip the rest. But I maintain that they're one of my favorite bands. Maybe it's just that I like their ideas and what they're trying to do sometimes more than the end result. (I have oddly similar feelings about The Fiery Furnaces.)

Anyways, as some may know, they recently re-released their first album, Foxbase Alpha, but remixed and re-worked by producer Richard X. The songs are the same, but not, some sounds are amplified, echoed, or erased. New sounds and effects are pumped in or submerged behind the vocals (which remain the same). It's a fun little thing to listen to.

Back in the day (and by that I mean "the mid 90s") I remember really liking Saint Etienne's use of crazy little samples of dialogue and music from all different sources. Sometimes it seemed like their little pop songs were bubbling up from the various game show and Saturday movie sound bites. (Especially on the album "So Tough".) I think the sound bites and samples are my favorite part of the "Beta" album. Some of the clips are the same, but Richard X has inserted some new fragments of talk and street sound to surround the music.

I think the idea was to make the same songs, but using the styles and effects of today. In some places it's (as I said) a lot of fun, but I have to confess that in other places I miss the old hip-hop drum beats and the clacky guitar riffs. I almost feel like I'm listening to the album through a lens.

[And it's odd, too, to sonically travel back—though not quite—to Foxbase Alpha/Beta. The oddest thing is hearing reworkings of songs I haven't listened to in ages. Thanks to iTunes and the iPod, I decided years ago to not transfer certain songs onto my computer from CD. And since I almost never listen to my old CDs, I just about never listen to those old songs. But now here I am again confronted by songs I deemed unworthy of a iTunes rip. Some of them I'm like, Why didn't I want that. And others (like "Wilson") I'm like, Oh yeah—I can keep forgetting about that one.]

On Tuesday evening, close to 7pm, Melissa called me and asked if I was busy. I was not. In fact, I think I was anti-busy, which means I was watching one of the Spanish-speaking channels, which is my last resort for television entertainment. I asked her what was up and she told me she fell down and hurt her ankle and worried it might be broken and wondered if I could taker her to the hospital. Of course I said, Yes.

So, I went to the house where she was. She had been picking up her son from the afternoon babysitters and was going to take him home. But she tripped on the step outside their front door on the way out and fell. I got the house and went to the front door and an old woman told me there was no Melissa there. I looked at my address and showed it to her and she said I was at the right house. I said, She's really tall, dark hair, has a son. The old woman suggested that maybe Melissa was in the basement apartment and showed me the way to that door. I knocked on that door this guy answered and he seemed to instantly know who I was and why I was there. He led me around the corner, and there Melissa was laying on the ground. As I remember it, she was laying on a bunch of coats, but it may not have been that way. Her son was there and he enthusiastically said Hi to me. I said Hi back. Also, his friend was there, who I always in conversation call by the wrong name, so I just nodded a hello to him so as not to call him by the wrong name in front of his parents. (Which I guess Melissa did on accident a little bit before I got there. My reach is long.)

So, Melissa and the guy and I struggled to get her to her feet and she ended up putting her hands on my shoulders and hopping up the troublesome step to my car. Her son nervously asked when he would see her next, and Melissa—between winces—said his father would get him soon. I called out that we would call him and let him know how his mom was doing.

So, we were off to Cook County Hospital because Melissa has no insurance. Down on the corner of Creepy-Fat-Coat-Guy Street and Short-Bundled-Woman-Pushing-Cart Avenue. (It sucked.) On the way, Melissa got a call from her ex who suggested that she not go to the ER, but go to Human Resources who (for some reason he never explained) would be unable to deny her medical aid. She thanked him for his advice and hung up after telling him he still needed to pick up his son.

After circling the hospital several times, looking for some kind of welcoming entrance, I decided to just drive up to the emergency room door and have Melissa hop out and we'd hop into the ER. Everyone seemed to be ignoring us, until some guy came out with what looked like a padded dolly and told Melissa he'd wheel her inside and I would have to move my car. So, I got into the parking garage and walked back to the ER where Melissa was talking to an unhappy, red-headed woman in festive scrubs. She was told she had to give up the chair and had to move into triage.

I thought triage would be cool, with lots of blood and agony, but the only agony I saw was homeless people yelling at each other. (That's not true, there was also a Muslim woman who was near fainting who murmured things with a pained voice to her husband while he tried to get her to drink from a bottle.) Melissa had to get her vitals taken and she was given crutches. We waited and read the latest New Yorker together and she was called to give her statement about what happened. I was asked to leave the office so that she could tell the truth if it was me who broke her ankle if need be. Then we were taken to another office where she again said her story (sans me) and then was taken to the ER waiting room.

My father told me that Cook County was the inspiration for the show "ER". I don't see how that could be possible, as that ER was filled with homeless and poor all either thinking they had swine flu or trying to find a warm place to catch a nap. No one looked hurt or sick, aside from those who were wearing surgical masks. And they just looked silly. Melissa was called and she left and I was told to stay in the ER waiting room where I texted my friends and tried to keep in communication with Melissa and played a lot of Bejeweled on my phone. I also read some of Dave Eggars "The Wild Things" until I came to a spot where the book had been sewn together incorrectly and they repeated 10 pages and dropped out 10 pages. That made me mad, so I downloaded "Bookworm" for my phone and played that for a while, as while getting texts from VIPs. Melissa noted she had a sprained ankle and a chipped bone and she'd be out soon. It was getting late, almost midnight, and I was struggling to entertain myself. I had watched people move around the waiting room to new seats for no reason, seen them devouring honey-buns from the vending machine, seen them fall asleep, heard them yell at each other or talk about what city was kindest to the homeless. Then the young woman sitting next to me said, "Excuse me. I think she is waiting for you." I looked up and Melissa had returned, now with a cast on her foot and was waiting for me at the entrance to the room, 100 feet away.

Alas, we had a long trip ahead of us—and by that I mean getting to the parking garage, and the walk that took me 3 minutes to navigate took us about 10 in crutches. But we escaped and drove off to get Melissa some sweet, sweet Vicodin.

So, maybe you've asked yourself, Whatever happened to Benjamin after he wrote about heartburn, earaches, and boils at 4 in the morning last week? If this has been on your mind, do read on. If it's never crossed your mind, but you're curious now that I've brought it up, read on. If you really don't care, stop reading and wait a few days because I may have a rant coming up soon on this blog.

So, it turns out that the heartburn wasn't from the food I ate or the hour I went to bed, but rather a rare reaction to the antibiotics I was taking. The acid reflux was so bad that my esophagus was burned and has hurt for the past week. Today was the first day I ate food and didn't really struggle to swallow or control my breathing to ease the pain as food went past the burn. (For those who are curious, "What does a burned esophagus feel like?" I'll tell you: it feels a little bit like heart burn, sometimes with the same tightness at the base of the sternum, but more often than not, it feels like a painful lump is in your food pipe that your swallowings have to squeeze past. It is excruciating, and larger swallows equal larger pain. For a week I I've had difficulty swallowing anything larger than the mass of a Wheat Thin.)

Fortunately, as mentioned in the previous post of my anatomical agony, I had an appointment with my regular doctor who was convinced I had high blood pressure. I went in and my blood pressure was okay, so I got to talk about the boil and the acid reflux and the esophagus burn. He gave me a new prescription of antibiotics and I threw the last of the old medicine away. He also gave me some rantidine, which is a nice antacid-like pill. Sadly, before I had gone to see the doctor, I had taken one of the old antibiotics and I could feel the acid lurching up my esophagus, blazing a new trail of suffering. By the time I got to CVS to get my new pills, I was holding onto the shelves in the cereal aisle, trying to breathe deeply to alleviate the pain.

Well, the new pills have been nicer to me. I still can't eat anything acidic or spicy or fatty or caffeinated, which has ruled out almost all foods everywhere, healthy or otherwise. I've had a lot of crackers, applesauce, and macaroni in the past week.

I'm really looking forward to having a sloppy pizza when this is all over.

I had Indian food for dinner and then got super tired. I went to bed and woke up at 1am with the worst heartburn I have ever had. Like I could feel it in the back of my throat bad. So I've been sitting up for almost 2 hours now and taken a heartburn pill, but to no avail. Maybe I need another.

The whole thing upsets me because I kind of feel like I can't get a break this month health-wise. (A sob story of unparalleled misery, I know...and thinking about it, it's only been the 2nd half of October that's been rough.)

In August I was told by my doctor that I had high blood pressure. I said I did not. They asked me if I wanted to go on some medication, I said I did not. The doctor and his intern kind of looked at me and said, "Well, what are you going to do?" I said I would just eat better, exercise, and loose some weight. The looked at me like, Yeah right.

But I was determined and did go for some nice after-dinner walks and started back again on my diet and lost some weight.

So, with a renewed sense of self-beauty, I took a long bath a few weeks ago, letting the hot water balance my humors (or so they would say 700 years ago) and relaxing. My sinuses were a little tight, so I thought the steam might do me some good. I let my head go underwater and heard the water fill my ears. (This is such a weird noise to me. Like the sound of something being rushed and then the quiet thunderings of my own heart and nervous system, the water rolling at the walls of the tub.) When I emerged, I cleaned my ears gently (because no hot mamacita is going to nibble on waxy ears) and thought nothing more about my ears for a few days.

Then the pain started. I hadn't had an earache in probably 29 years, so the pain almost felt oddly new. It lasted a few days and began to make me irritable and dislike sleeping (when I had nothing to do but focus on the pain). Finally I called the doctor, but he wouldn't be able to see me for a week or so. After googling several sources of ear-pain, I worried I had an infection and went to a walk-in clinic near my work. There a doctor looked in my ears and said that wax was compacted against my eardrum, causing the pain. She said it could have happened for any number of reasons, or for no reason at all. (She included my swabbing as a reason.) Then they filled my ears (figuring it better to do both than just one) with hydrogen peroxide, which fizzled loudly and stank on my fingers after wiping the dribbles. The the nurse came in with a small spray bottle with an odd hose attachment and a weirdly-shaped container she asked me to hold under my ear. She then put the hose nozzle in my ear and blasted hot and cold water into my ear canal. This was pretty painful. When she was done, she held the container in front of me and said, "Look what was in there." The container was filled with a repulsive-looking, chunky, brown fluid. I announced loudly and clearly that I did not want to see the stuff, saying it looked like "ear-vomit". She moved to the other ear and blasted that one, too, then put the drainage in front of me telling me to look at it. She went back and forth between the ears until she stopped and said, "That was a big one; you don't want to see that." I wouldn't take the bait and sat quietly. I know she wanted me to ask to see it, but I wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

So, ears drained and feeling a bit too empty, I thought I would just go on with my life.

The next morning I awoke to find a boil had returned on my back. Oh, man...

I had an appointment with my regular doctor a week and a half later to check my blood pressure (which was fine at the clinic on ear-washing day), so I thought I could hold out until then.

I could not.

The pain became so excruciating that I decided to visit the walk-in clinic again. A doctor there saw me and was all ready to drain the boil (he even was prepping me for how cold the numbing spray was going to be by spraying the tip of my finger) when he saw I was on blood thinners. He freaked out and insisted that my INR be tested before going through with the procedure. I knew the INR test would take a day so I was upset, and tried to convince the doctor that I wasn't going to bleed all over the place. He insisted, and so the interns came in to take my blood. As is always the case with interns, they couldn't get the needle in the vein and ended up having to poke me 2 times to get some blood out of me. I went home with a prescription for antibiotics and sweet, sweet vicodin. The vicodin helped.

It didn't help much the next day. The pain was so bad, I was walking crooked and trying to keep my shirt from rubbing against the boil. It was red and white and the size of Bubble Tape container (can you tell I work with kids?). I called the doctor while the kids were in the library and asked if I could have the surgery (the previous day, he said if my INR was too high, and my blood too thin, he'd have to send me to a hospital where they could drain the boil and have the right supplied needed if I bled all over the place). He said my INR was just below his limit and told me to come in.

I did that afternoon and a different doctor saw me. The intern that took my stats kept asking me if I'd had a tetanus shot recently. I said I didn't remember. She said I should have one. I remember hearing they were painful shots (but maybe I was mixing them up with rabies) and said, "Doesn't that go in my leg?" The intern furrowed her brow and said, no, it went in the arm. "It won't hurt," she said, adding "today. Tomorrow it will hurt. Like someone gave you fifty birthday punches in the arm." (Making me wonder when birthday punches became a unit of measuring pain.) She gave me the shot (and yes, it feels like I should have a bruise there today) and the doctor came in to perform the draining.

She swabbed the area with alcohol and put a covering over me and then said she was going to give me the shots which would be the most painful part of the procedure. She wasn't kidding. I think she injected the novacane (or whatever it was) right into the boil. The pain was searing, absolutely excruciating. I described it then and there as being "delicious". The doctor said she'd never heard anyone describe it that way before. I said I was being facetious. She then prodded me with the scalpel asking if I felt anything past pressure. I said I did. "Really?" she said, "You feel that?" I said, yes. So she had to shoot me up with more novacane, though this time was less painful than the others. Then she cut me open and drained me out and I hardly felt a thing! (There was one moment of sharp pain where I yelped.)

[The astounding thing is last time I had this boil (and I mean this boil as in I've had it 3 times in the same spot now.) I don't think they used enough novacane because I felt everything and it was sublimely painful to have them squeeze the puss out of a open wound, as you can imagine. Interns, can they do anything right?]

Then I was taped up and told to keep the bandage on for 2 days. This bandage smells like a sharpie marker and itches, so I am anxious to get it removed later today.

Now if I can just hold off on going to bed less than 3 hours after I eat, I should be fine for the rest of the month!

There actually have been several things I've been meaning to write about on here since I last posted almost a month ago. My ear situation, more thoughts on coming to the end of something, existential meanderings.

But instead I'm going to write about cars.

So, I was tooling around the blogosphere and came across some blog where they invited people to pick a car that represents them from the year they were born. I liked the idea, so I'm stealing it to fill this space.

I won't lie, when I was a kid, nothing looked cooler than a Corvette. The glow-in-the-dark Corvette slot car I had was the sweetest pretend ride I could imagine (and I think I stepped on it and broke it. Boo!). So, my first instinct is to pick a 1975 model Corvette.



But, really, is that car indicative of who I really am? I mean, am I sleek, stylish, and with plenty o' power under the hood? Am I made for trips to the beach and seducing young women? Cruising with the hood down all night? I dunno...

So, what if I'm not really a Corvette at heart? What would be a better car that means "Benjamin"?

Some options...



Actually, I think when it all comes down to it...



... I'm probably a Mercury Bobcat.

There has been some gentle rain for a few days now, off and on. Generally that means I have to watch out for allergies (oh, mold—curse you and your spores) but since we have had hardly any rain at all for weeks, it's a nice change.

Tuesday was the 1st day of fall and I suddenly realized that Chicago did not have a massive storm this summer. Almost every year I've lived here, there has been a flood-like thunderstorm (usually at the end of August) which causes all manner of damage out by my work (regularly co-workers have their basements flooded); huge, road-covering puddles; and violent winds that tear trees apart.

I guess it's good for all my home-owning friends and for anyone with a propensity for getting their car crushed by a falling tree (which I have seen the after-effects of more than once in this city), but I almost miss it.

School is in full swing again. Here's a little dialogue from my classroom the other day.

student: You have a hole in your head.
Mr. Chandler: Yeah. That's my mouth.
student: No. It's on top of your head.
Mr. Chandler: Oh. You mean where I have no hair?
student: Yeah. Who cut it off?
Mr. Chandler: Nobody. It just fell out.
student: Yeah, right.

I go back to work next week. Just meetings, but I'll be setting up my classroom and thinking about what I'm going to do this year. (I think I'd like to teach the alphabet through nursery rhymes and fairy tales this year.) Then the kids come.

Kids.

My sister and I were talking the other day and she's looking for work, but we invented some alternate careers for her. (Incidentally, she and her boyfriend did a fantastic presentation on sparkling wines for family and friends over the weekend and I suggested she become a wine-monger. She was dubious, but I think she could do it.) Anyways, she said she didn't get kids and didn't know if she even liked kids and then said I was a good teacher because I liked kids. And my immediate reply was, "I don't like kids!"

And, of course, that's not entirely true. I do like kids, but I thought about it. Kids are different from grown ups, that's for sure, but I don't prefer kids over adults, or visa versa. I think the truth is I like people. I like talking with people, being around people, learning with and teaching to people. Getting into their lives and letting them into mine. That kind of thing.

But kids can be exhausting (so can adults, but for different reasons) and frequently I and many of the parents and other teachers I work with say, "Kids have changed. They didn't act like this X-number of years ago." And, it's true. They've even changed during the time I've been teaching.

But how much of that is just the differences between generations? How much of that is just the natural progression of societies? I stumbled across these two quotes this morning, and it gave me a smile and made me think, "Well, I guess everything's how it always will be..." Here they are:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

—Attributed to Socrates in Plato's "Republic" (380 B.C.)


"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise
[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint"

—Hesiod (8th century B.C.)

Props to Jac for sharing.