“Tim and I are going to the beach right now. You should come!”

“Dang it. Can’t. I have to teach Sunday School second service, so no beach for me, I guess. . .”

At that moment, an older man and his wife were entering the sanctuary when the man paused and made a half turn towards me.

“You don’t have to teach Sunday School! You get to teach Sunday School!” he said, and then waltzed into the sanctuary with his wife as if he hadn’t just said the sharpest words I’d ever heard directed towards me in three years of going to The Bible Church.

Alice and I gasped at each other. Even though Alice has the appearance of being as buttoned-up a church lady as she can be, she has a vibrant sense of humor and a sort of innocent wicked streak, and she’s loyal as the day is long. She raised her eyebrows at the couple’s backs and then turned to me.

“I know you didn’t mean it that way. Sheesh! Some people, huh?”

“Well of course I didn’t mean it that way! I mean, of course I get to teach Sunday School! I just meant, I mean, I have to teach Sunday School because I’ve committed to teach it! I mean, aren’t there multiple meanings of the phrase, ‘have to’? ‘I’m committed to teach Sunday School.’ There, would that have been better? Sheesh!”

“You know,” Alice leaned toward me, “that was actually the former pastor of this church. He’s visiting this week.”

“Whoa. . .well, I’m glad I made such an awesome impression on the guy. . .”

Alice went to the beach with Tim, and I went to set up my classroom for Sunday School. But I couldn’t get what that guy had said out of my mind. I couldn’t figure out the right way to feel about it.

I toyed with guilt for a while. Yes. I’m a jerk. I act as though teaching Sunday School is this big ordeal, and I always speak way too brashly at church. . .I need to keep my mouth shut and be more cheerful in general. Guilt never works for me for very long, though. A pastor once told me that guilt is from the enemy, whereas conviction is from the Holy Spirit.

So I moved on to play with anger. I hadn’t spoken brashly. I’d just used language, like anyone else would, to explain that I couldn’t go to the beach with Alice. What a jerk! Where does he get off, giving me some kind of correction when he doesn’t even know me? See, this is why I don’t like old guys/pastors/churchy people. They think they know everything. But the thing is, I actually really do like old guys and pastors. And I am a churchy person, myself. And he hadn’t really been a jerk. And even if he had been a little bit of a jerk, I’m not a fan of anger, either. It’s hard to learn anything when your fists are clenched and your teeth are set on edge.

I decided to just forget about it. Except that I couldn’t. I can’t help it; I’m introspective to a fault, and I can’t take criticism of any kind without trying to make sense of it and make peace with it. And this pastor, with his terse little correction, had really gotten under my skin.

Had I really spoken out of the things I had stored up in my heart? How did I really view teaching Sunday School? Has it been a have to? Or has it been a get to?

I think I have to admit that I tend to look at service as something that’s kind of a bummer, but somebody has to do it, and in the case of Sunday School, that somebody might as well be me. I don’t have any kids or a husband that I get to go home to and fix lunch for after church (a fact about which God has been subjected to endless whining from me) and I’ve been a professional teacher for almost seven years. I can keep order in a classroom, and I can make sure kids learn something. I’ve heard my share of sermons on Paul’s explanation of celibacy in 1 Corinthians and how just because you are single doesn’t mean you get to just sit around doing whatever pleases you. So okay. I’ll teach Sunday School. I guess that’ll just be my cross to bear, because I’m single (do you even care, God? Does our church need Sunday School teachers that much, that I need to be 30 years old and still single?) and because I’m such a good, selfless person. Maybe if I do this awfully nice thing, God, You’ll finally be proud of me and notice me a little, hmmm? Not that I need that. I’m so humble and selfless I’ll do it for no recognition at all. But, You know, maybe You’ll see my Selfless Sunday School Service and realize that I’m really coming along, here, teaching these kids, and that’s when I’ll really get Your attention.

The trouble with this whole little charade of mine is that it reveals a very murky theology. The reality is that were God to speak to me, I think He would say something like this:

Alex. You’ve had my attention since the day you were conceived. Even before that, actually. Calm down. I love you so much I prepared a bunch of really cool stuff for you to do that you will enjoy the heck out of if you’ll only come to it with the right spirit.

The truth is that teaching Sunday School is an amazing blessing. If you come to it every Sunday, excited to see God working in the lives of young people, I guarantee you will be extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to get a look at His beautiful story, happening in real time, right in front of you.

From all of my years of experience in the classroom, I already knew that the best way to learn something backwards and forwards is to teach it. How true that has been with Sunday School! In the past year I’ve learned about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago, Paul’s travels in the book of Acts, the prophet Ezekiel, and countless other stories in the Bible. Some of these things, I have to admit, I had never heard of (I’ve only been a believer for three years). Some of them I knew about already, but never had any great insight into until I tried to explain them to a roundtable committee of 10-year-olds. . .most of whom had been Christian longer than I had!

Not only have I developed new and deeper understanding of His word, I have also developed meaningful relationships with a group of kids. These things take time and work, but what beautiful fruit they yield!

When I look at service as a gift from God, everything becomes brighter. When I know that His love for me is at full intensity no matter what I do, it makes me want to serve Him more. A trip to the beach can wait–I get to go teach Sunday School!

Read strong!

But writing a blog to students feels weird. I found I couldn’t really trust it for curriculum because the majority of students either can’t get access to it or wouldn’t bother reading it. And I find I get constipated as a writer when I know students are going to read my work. If I TELL students to read my work, that’s even worse.

The problems are:

1. I’m Christian, and I teach in a public school, where sharing my faith in anything but the most cursory manner is not only illegal, but also (in my opinion) unethical. However, my faith is my favorite thing to write about in the world.

2. I’m really, really far from perfect. And if you’re a teacher, you have to keep this illusion going that you basically are perfect. I mean, sure, you might slip up every now and then and say “Aw, HECK!” when you stub your toe, and maybe you got jealous of your little brother when he got a nicer bike than you in fifth grade. But that’s about the limit to the allowable imperfection. Nominal imperfection only, please. That’s what we like in our public role model adults. Which is at it should be. Except it makes for boring writing. And also, I’m not nominally imperfect. I’m real deal imperfect.

So, um, what do I write about? I love to write, and people keep telling me I ought to write a book about something. I’ve done some research on it, though, and in order to write a book, you have to like, write stuff. Which I don’t do. Unless it feels like there’s some reason to write something. Is putting my writing into a public forum a good enough motivation for me to write regularly?

Actually, I think it is. My expectation is that pretty much nobody will read this, because it will be boring. And I’m not planning on publicizing it to my students anymore. So I’m going to write whatever I want (within reason).

And what I want to write about, lately, is Sunday School.

Yes. Sunday School. I’ve been teaching Sunday School every week at my church for over a year, and I want to write about it. A lot. A real lot. It’s funny and beautiful and interesting and God keeps showing up and I love it. And nobody gets how awesome Sunday School is. The truth is, it’s really kind of a joke, Sunday School. The pastor will pay it some lip service, if he’s a good pastor. He’ll talk about how church is actually just to keep the parents busy while the kids are in Sunday School, ha ha ha. But if you watch what actually happens in a church, really, nobody actually cares what’s going on in Sunday School. I mean, people hope the kids are getting saved and that the teachers are nice but also capable of managing to keep the room from disintegrating into chaos, but that’s about the extent of it.

And I hate to say it, because I don’t want to be a dissenter, but that’s really not enough. At least in my opinion.

I was only saved three years ago, and I did not grow up in a church-going family, so I don’t have many stories from my personal childhood about church school. But I have many unbelieving friends who have stories about it, and from the sounds of it, Sunday School is capable of inflicting a lot of damage on the spiritual formation of kids.

Now, personally, I get a little irritated when we go overboard with the problems of church/life in general keeping people from the Lord. At a certain point, if you’re going to love Jesus and follow Him, I think you have to think through the evidence and accept the difference between God and sin, regardless of the tragedies that have befallen you, whether or not they were caused by people who alleged to be working in His name.

Still, it would be nice to have a Sunday School that encouraged children towards an authentic relationship with the Lord, instead of either leaving them totally apathetic towards Him, or even worse, actively repelled them from Him.

I’m a professional teacher, and I have a master’s degree in curriculum studies. I take education very seriously. I consider teaching to be my vocation, given to me by God. And I’d like to try my hand at applying my teaching skills, experience, and knowledge, honed in the secular world, to bringing children to a true understanding of who God is, and developing a strong, authentic relationship with Him that would continue for the whole of their lives.

That’s such a tall order. But I can’t think of anything more important, or more rewarding, that I could do.  And I want to write about it because I am so passionate about it and so excited about it, but I am also full of questions and doubts and I would love so much to find out what other people think. What do other Sunday School teachers do? What have they found that works? What have they found doesn’t work?

I pray that this blog is fruitful, and that it blesses children and humbly serves the Lord’s purposes.

Read strong!

All I’m saying is that 17 days off from school this year may SEEM like a good idea if you are a teenager, sort of how all candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner SEEMS like a good idea when you are 8 years old, but it really isn’t that good of an idea at all.

I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and I can’t come up with a great solution to this problem.  In my experience, when nothing comes to mind, it means there isn’t an easy solution. There’s just a lot of lousy compromise options that make the best of a bad situation. Sometimes it seems like life consists almost solely of things that fit that description, actually.

The best solution? No furloughs. I’d rather just have everybody in school on Fridays. I’d have taken a pay cut without furloughs, no whining. I’d take anything over this furlough thing. There’s a reason we have schools, and as much as people like to dump on them, it’s actually not that easy to pull off all the things schools do without, well, schools. If you ask me, the State of Hawaii has lost its mind, because schools are one of the most essential, invaluable parts of our community, and not something you can barter around like the price of eggs or bricks or oh, I dunno, oil. We know the cost of everything but the value of nothing, apparently.

But anyway. This isn’t a blog about me being bitter. This is a blog about a proposed solution. It’s not a great solution. It may not even be a possible solution. It’s not a solution that’s going to solve the problem. It’s a solution that will sort of inadequately help a very small number of students. But it’s something.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’re one of my students. I put a link to this on my facebook page, and most of my facebook “friends” are students and former students. Which means that the furloughs affect you, and also that you know me. And you know that I’m a Christian. I’m not going to talk about this idea in my classroom. It wouldn’t be appropriate (there are conflict of interest issues, and church and state issues). Furthermore, I actually don’t think most of my current students would be that interested in it. So if you are reading this and you are one of my current students, be aware that this is outside of school and not in any way affiliated with school. I can’t teach you anything that I would have taught you in school, and I can’t help you with the homework I assigned at school. That may seem weird, but it makes sense if you think about it.

Anyway. . .

Interested people at my church met on Sunday to discuss this problem. We had a lot of ideas. But we don’t really know what people need, and we also don’t really know what we are capable of providing.

But we want to help. You know, if people actually need help. And if they need help that we can give. As you know, I’m certified to teach grades 7-12. As you also know, I don’t really have much of a life. Here’s what I came up with for high school kids.

Discipleship with Dante

My proposal is that I would offer an hour and a half-long class called “Discipleship with Dante”. The class would be open to anybody who wanted to take it: public school kids grades 9-12, homeschool kids, college kids, and even adults. I’d probably offer it at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning on the Furlough Fridays.

I’ve been wanting to teach a Dante class with an emphasis on scripture and journaling for a long time. If this were to be approved, I’d submit a syllabus with a detailed plan of what I was going to do each week. It would be more in-depth than the version I give kids in 8th grade, with more emphasis on the Jesus side of things (I mean, I’m teaching at a church, so it makes sense). It would give the high school kids a productive way to spend part of their Fridays off from school, but still leave them with time to do their homework (I know the secondary school kids are concerned about the “homework packets” their teachers have said they are planning on assigning for the furlough days).

I was also thinking that after the class, I’d stick around and offer an hour or two of “homework help” for kids who need a place to get those homework packets done. Kids who came for “homework help” could also be Dante kids, but they don’t have to do both. I’m pretty strict with high school kids. It wouldn’t be a time for goofing off. It would be a place to get help from peers and from me on whatever the teachers from their regular school assigned. Sometimes it really helps teenagers if there’s an adult around making sure they are actually being productive. I don’t want to sound horribly harsh, but if kids weren’t being productive, I would ask them to leave. I’m the kind of teacher who hasn’t sent a kid to the office in years–I have my own ways of handling discipline, and I’m no pushover. But I don’t kick kids out with no warning, and I am very big on keeping the relationship with the kid even while I’m disciplining them. There would be rules for homework help time, there would be a contract signed by parents and students prior to the program starting–I’d be as formal as I can be, because that’s what would distinguish “Homework Help” from just kids hanging out at Taco Bell.

What if I have to be absent for some reason?

I am a pretty faithful attender of stuff I make a commitment to, but I get sick or have emergencies just like everyone else. Because I’m teaching upper-level kids for whom childcare is not a concern, I would probably either cancel the week before, or if there was an emergency, I’d make a phone tree for the people taking the class. I’d also ask people taking the class to let me know if they were going to be absent.

Would I have an assistant/another adult in the room?

I don’t know who would fill this role, but I’m open to it. Truthfully, I spend my entire day at Kailua Intermediate with just me and 147 kids, no other adult in the room, and I do fine, but if there’s somebody available to help, I sure wouldn’t say no.

What about money?

To be honest, I want to offer this class so badly I’d do it for free. I just think it would be a neat way to disciple others. Dante has helped me understand God so much, I’d love other people to be blessed, too. I’ve taught Inferno to 8th graders for five years, and I taught it to The Well (the college/career group at my church) a few years ago. The idea of being able to use scripture in a study of Dante just thrills me. It’s a really great study no matter what age you are. But I think when people pay, they value things more. I also notice that when I am paid, I tend to take things more seriously and prepare more carefully. Not to be horrible or anything, but I do see that in my own behavior. I was thinking along the lines of having a suggested donation of $100 for a school year’s worth of my class and/or homework help, payable to Kailua Community Church. KCC would buy the books (they are around $11) , and then people could pay KCC for the books. If people couldn’t afford the $100 or just didn’t feel like paying it, fine. If they wanted to pay more, that’s fine, too.

So that money would go to KCC. Now, if I were really going to teach this class right, I’d like to offer a sort of binder of resources, the way it is done with the Discipleship classes, and that binder of resources would cost the church money in xeroxing. It also would cost the church money for the electricity.  So I think the board should figure out what percentage of money collected should go to the church, and what should go to me as a stipend.

How many people can take the class?

As many as God leads to the class, I say. When I think about this, I kind of figure it will be a miracle if anyone signs up at all. Still, adults always are saying they wish they could be in my class, and the kids I teach always come back to me from high school and say they wish they could take my class again–so here’s your chance! I think I’d need a minimum of six people to sign up, and I guess a maximum of thirty. Maybe that’s foolish. I’m just so used to teaching enormous classes, it doesn’t really put me off.

For homework help, I think a maximum of twenty kids and a minimum of six.

How would the schedule go?

A few proposed options (open to discussion/change):

8:30-10:00 Discipleship with Dante
10:00-10:10 Break
10:10-12:00 Homework Help

10:30-12:00 Discipleship with Dante
12:00-12:45 Lunch (bring your own lunch and keep it in the fridge at the Androtti House, or go get lunch in Kailua if you’re an older kid and want to drive)
12:45-2:00 Homework Help

As you can see, these options do not take childcare under consideration. Kids would have to find their own way to church (although I might be able to pick some kids up and bring them to church, if necessary).

What about on Fridays that are not furloughs?

I would consult the people taking the class, but I’d probably have Dante class in the evening or afternoon of those Fridays, depending on demand.

So that’s my idea. I’m okay with it if it doesn’t happen. If you think it’s interesting or you have suggestions, let me know. Either comment here or email me at grape700@hotmail.com. Or leave a comment on facebook underneath this post.

Read strong!

I don’t mean that everyone has some kind of amnesia problem that makes them literally forget their identity. I mean everyone wants to have a definition; some kind of understanding of what one’s life means, what one’s life is worth, what one’s role to play is in life. If you don’t believe me that this is a universal human need (and maybe you shouldn’t; I’m not entirely sold that every person ever has had this feeling. It’s only a theory), listen to grownups at a party. They usually get around to asking questions about what a person does for a living. Often, this point is brought up during one’s introduction. What do you do? Oh, I’m a schoolteacher. How about you? Occupational therapist. Ah. Identity of the person in front of me immediately established. With a lot of people (I would venture to say most people, although of course some people feel this much more strongly than others) the what-do-you-do-introduction is like a game of rock-paper-scissors. Occupational therapist beats schoolteacher beats bank teller beats fast food worker beats unemployed person beats drug addict beats street criminal and on it goes. If this little synopsis makes you uncomfortable and irritated (hey! My MOM is a bank teller!) you are on the right track for the rest my little epiphany about Susan Boyle, here. Although I have more to say before I get to her.

With children it is (slightly) more subtle. All children have the same answer to the what do you do question. I go to school. But rest assured, they are looking at each other all the time to figure out who they are in relation to who everyone else is. Okay. He is tall and is a swimmer and is kind of quiet, so the girls like him. But he seems shy and intimidated, which means if I am a little bit mean to him, he’ll do anything I tell him to do. She has costly-looking shoes and nicely-styled hair and a lot of friends, so I’d better be really nice to her.

I know I do this. I size people up all the time. I want to know who I am as much as anybody else, and I often rely on other people to tell me. If someone smiles at me and agrees with something I say, then I know that I am quite a decent and intelligent lady, and if someone sends me a crabby e-mail about something I’ve done that in their opinion I ought not to have, then I know that I am not that great after all. This believing what other people think of me gets less and less as I get older, but in adolescence I had it so badly it was almost unbearable.

Lots of people have figured out that letting others tell you who you are is ultimately a zero-sum game. It’s no secret that it is terribly unpleasant and unreliable to take your self-worth from the opinions of fellow human beings. They so rarely actually know what they are talking about, and when they DO know what they are talking about, it’s often even worse, because what makes them so great that they know the truth about us? Didn’t we just see them picking their nose, or yelling at their child in an unbecoming tone, or putting it’s when it should have been its? This is why we so often hear adolescent children proclaim that they do not care what anyone thinks of them.

But the trouble is, even if you don’t care what people think of you, you still want to know who you are. Which leads many people to come to believe that the best person to tell you who you are is you. And that can be quite a satisfactory answer, and a great deal of poetry and novels have been written to that general end. The oeuvre of Ayn Rand comes to mind, or that William Henley poem about being the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.

Now. Being the master of your fate and the captain of your soul is well and good, and tends to impress many, many people. Until you make an error about yourself. You had always told yourself and anyone who’d listen that you were an outstanding Scrabble player, for example, and then you made the mistake of playing against a really clever seventh grader and setting her up perfectly for a triple word score and she crashed down on you with all seven letters and there was no way you could recover from that in time for second period and you lost fair and square to someone 18 years younger than you and suddenly it is plain as day that you AREN’T that hot of a Scrabble player, after all. This happened to me on Friday, actually.

The cognitive dissonance involved in this situation leaves you with two options. You can either become the most irritating, oblivious person ever and ignore all evidence to the contrary of your self-proclaimed excellence, or you can admit that your assessment of yourself must have been a bit flawed all along and perhaps in some cases (only some, mind you) you aren’t really the final word on who you are.

Which puts you right back to where you started. If you don’t really know who you are, then perhaps others do. But as I’ve said before, others tend to be unreliable on the subject, as well. And who are they to judge? The whole thing is quite frustrating if you think about it too much. Which is why most people don’t.

I’ve begun calling this phenomenon the “Better-Than-But-Not-As-Good-As Game”. As in: “I am better than YOU but not as good as YOU”. The Better-Than-But-Not-As-Good-As-Game is what we play when we try to figure out who we are using other people or ourselves as the rubric for the assessment. Eventually I shortened it to the “Better-Than Game”. And then just: the BTG.

Once you get the hang of identifying the BTG, you begin spotting it absolutely everywhere. Last Wednesday night I was watching one of the first Holocaust documentaries ever made, Night and Fog directed by Alain Resnais, and as I was watching the shocking and horrifying old footage of walking corpses and warehouses of human hair I suddenly thought. . .Better-Than-YOU-But-Not-As-Good-As-YOU. By which I mean that the Nazis’ whole agenda was pretty well defined by the BTG, though of course they took it to the extreme point where there was no one as good as them. I may as well point out that I also think the BTG is a good general definition of the sin of pride, which is, according to Dante, the root of all other sin.

So what has any of this to do with Susan Boyle, the Scottish woman whose audition on Britain’s Got Talent is now viral on YouTube, and whose name is inevitably preceded with “never-been-kissed” or “dowdy” in all the media attention surrounding her? Glad you asked.

Susan Boyle was on a competitive talent show: literally, a BTG. So one might argue that my dismay at the timbre of all the attention surrounding her is ill-conceived. And it probably is. But.

I implore the media to stop being so self-congratulatory about looking beyond Susan Boyle’s dowdy, unsexy, unsexualized, furry-eyebrowed, double-chinned, frizzy-haired, middle-aged, single-living, cat-owning exterior to praise her lovely singing voice. My God, isn’t this big of us! they all seem to be saying, we aren’t really ageist or sexist or materialist or horribly prejudiced against overweight people at all! Those scolds in the public had us all wrong all this time! All along, it was really only about talent! You see? When a painfully ordinary-looking person comes on with a great, large, angelic voice, we praise her to the rafters and have a media circus just like we do with Britney Spears!

Not that I begrudge Susan Boyle one iota of the attention she has been getting. I welled up at her audition video just like everybody else. But I must strongly disagree with the media’s implication that Susan Boyle proves that they were never playing the BTG after all, that our whole culture isn’t dripping with it, alongside the sarcasm in Simon Cowell’s miserable comments.

It’s all in the judge’s remarks after Susan Boyle finishes singing. All that snarky, backhanded meanness about how “everyone was laughing at you until you opened your mouth”. So what you’re saying is that Susan Boyle is worthless without her talent? That the only thing standing between her and mockery and scorn is a lovely singing voice? I know she went on a talent competition, which does up the ante on the expectations, I suppose, but I do not think we should be any too excited about a society that plays the BTG with this level of cruelty. Whoever gave Simon Cowell the right to tell Susan Boyle who she is before she opens her mouth? Perhaps he has the qualifications to tell her the level of her talent after she opens her mouth, but anything beyond that I think we can safely say is out of his pay scale.

What about all the Susan Boyles who can’t sing a note? Does Simon Cowell laugh at them, sitting patiently at the bus stop, as he whizzes by in his undoubtedly shiny and expensive car? Or does he just ignore them, not even seeing them, really, just part of the wallpaper of his incredibly important life? Lest I get too haughty and self-righteous at Simon Cowell, I should point out that I probably ignore the Susan Boyles nearly as much, although I at least have the decency to ignore them from a 1995 Toyota Corolla that mostly consists of rust. My point is that I do not think we deserve to be self-congratulatory about praising Susan Boyle until we are able to be kind and humane to all the dumpy women who live alone with their cat, are a little bit odd, and are prosaically lower-than-average in every possible respect until the day they die. And I don’t mean that we should be this way to show how nice and unprejudiced we are by looks and age and those things. I mean we should be this way out of an inherent sense that we truly are no better than anyone else, though of course that also means that nobody else is any better than us.

And in my opinion, this understanding cannot come from anywhere except God. Simon Cowell cannot tell Susan Boyle who she is, but neither can Susan Boyle tell herself who she is. She, like all of us, needs an outside source; something perfectly reliable and perfectly good, to tell her this information. And I think that source is God, who finds us all equally sub-standard, no matter what we do, and who loves us all equally perfectly, despite that fact.

I spend the bulk of my time among secular people. The most popular attitude that they express to me about my faith is the same attitude that I saw recently in the New York Times (see Judith Warner’s Easter blog): they process my love for God as nice, warm-fuzzy feelings that spirituality brings, without the uncomfortable inconvenience of a God who laughs at the attempts of others to define me, and laughs still harder at my attempts to define myself. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, Christianity in its fullest understanding is a source of unspeakable comfort. But to get to that understanding involves accepting a few unavoidably difficult premises, and Susan Boyle is a nice crucible for understanding all of them.

Until we stop playing the BTG game, all we do when we praise Susan Boyle is substitute one Better-Than trait (talent) for another (sexiness). The only way to stop playing the BTG is to put God into the judge’s seat, instead of Simon Cowell. If you were feeling uncomfortable listening to the judges’ backhanded compliments, it’s because the BTG leads to terrible places, and we all know this, and (worst of all) we are all guilty of it.

Susan Boyle is valuable because she is a human being. That’s it. When your mother told you that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, she was only part right. If you’re comparing the book in that aphorism to people, it ought to be that you shouldn’t judge a book, full stop. Would everyone please just enjoy her singing and stop smirking?

I liked the way the author. . .

I noticed how the author. . .

I don’t get why the author. . .

If I were the author I would have. . .

I’d compare this author to. . .

This book reminded me of. . .

The main character. . .

The character development. . .

The narrative voice. . .

The structure of the book. . .

The climax of the plot. . .

The resolution of the main character’s problem. . .

The genre of the book. . .

I’d say a theme of this book is. . .

I wish that. . .

I don’t agree with. . .

I understood. . .

I didn’t understand. . .

Why did. . .

This is how I read this book. . .

I rated this one a ___ out of ten because. . .

I used to think. . .but this book made me think. . .

I always thought. . .and this book confirmed my opinion because. . .

Read strong!

Before Sheree, we were all content with our elementary school existence: reading books, playing Superhero tag, forming crushes on boys and never, ever, EVER telling the boys about it, wearing whatever clothes our mothers bought us, having sleepovers in which we gorged ourselves on Little Ceasar’s Pizza and Pepsi and played My Little Pony horseracing, and going to ballet and swim practice and Juniors (Girl Scouts). Everybody knew everybody else; we had all been going to school together since kindergarten, and none of us had any idea of changing anytime soon.

There was the kid who could draw stuff but the teacher always yelled at him and nobody really understood why but he was an okay kid; the kid who was awesome at kickball, the kid who smelled weird and knew all the lyrics to Simon & Garfunkel songs, the kid whose mother dressed her in Laura Ashley dresses and patent leather mary janes every single day as if she were a doll, except she was the best basketball player in our grade and it was always kind of incongruous to see her shiny blond hair and shinier black shoes stomping all over the boys on the courts as she hit foul shot after foul shot with no effort at all. The kid who won mathletes every single time, when most of the rest of us couldn’t even get through the first two problems, but we didn’t care because we all got Swedish fish just for showing up. The kid whose mom wouldn’t let anybody sit on any of the furniture if you went over to her house, because it was too nice for kids, and didn’t invite me to her birthday party because her mom said I was too messy, but I didn’t care because standing around that house made me nervous, anyway.

All us kids were sort of neutral in each others’ heads. We all had our roles, and the teachers always liked some better than others, and the mothers sometimes whispered things to the other mothers about the kids who weren’t at the sleepover parties, but none of us kids really noticed any kind of social disparity, or if any of us did, I at least was oblivious to it.

Until Sheree. At the time, it seemed like Sheree caused the whole thing, but looking back, we were all on the verge of a huge change and we didn’t even know it. We just happened to have a poster girl for what we were all destined to become; a focal point that encapsulated all that we never even knew we wanted to be.

On her first day in our classroom, Mrs. Bowen had her sit next to me. I just stared at her. She was wearing a light pink, cable-knit sweater, silver, dangly earrings, and stone-washed jeans with pristine, white, high-top L.A. Gear sneakers. Her bangs were shellacked into a wave sticking out of her forehead, propeller-style. She had no self-consciousness at all, and fit into our classroom about as well as Miles Davis would have. We all just stared.

My role in Mrs. Bowen’s room was the kid-teacher. You know, the one who reads everything and does all the homework and helps everyone else with theirs, not because I was particularly altruistic, but because I was a busy-body and it bugged me if people weren’t doing their work correctly. Basically, I was bossy and used to being the smartest, or at least thinking I was. Mrs. Bowen was a rookie teacher, but she had my number down cold. She always put troublemakers next to me, because I would nag them and annoy them into doing their seatwork better than she ever could.

So when Sheree slid into the seat next to me, I immediately began bossing her around, telling her what page we were on, which problems to do, that sort of thing. And right away, the compliments began.

“Oh my GAWD, you’re so SMAAAART,” Sheree would gush. “I can’t figure out number five for ANYTHING. How do you find the lowest common denominator, again?”

I’d sit and show her number five, and pretty soon I’d go onto numbers seven and nine, and before I knew it, I’d done Sheree’s whole worksheet for her while she drew hearts on her notebook. This became the norm for every worksheet we ever got, and I didn’t care, because I was always bored and looking for more homework, and Sheree would always assure me in her enchanting southern accent that I was “so SMAAAAART”.

Sheree polarized our classroom into popular and not. Soon enough, the whole fifth grade was partisan. She didn’t do it on purpose; it was just that suddenly we all saw what we were supposed to look like and act like, and the ones who followed suit got to be popular, and the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t understand that they should want to were not popular. I knew what was going on but was powerless to do anything about it. I was not born with the gene for popularity. I tasted popularity every summer at Girl Scout Camp, where my energy and inability to let myself change my behavior to make boys like me weren’t terminal qualities, but when I got back to school these became insurmountable liabilities and I resigned myself to few friends and more than my share of mockery from the others. But that was all after Sheree. Before her, I was just another kid, just like all of us.

The strange thing was, despite the mockery that her presence inspired towards me from other kids, Sheree was always very nice to me. My family lived in a house on a tiny cul-de-sac that was on the opposite side of town from the enormous cookie-cutter suburb where most of the kids who went to my school lived. I had to take a mostly empty school bus forty five minutes to get to school. Sheree’s recently-divorced mother had moved into a rental house that was on my bus’s route, so Sheree actually sat with me on the way to school almost every morning.

“You’re so POPULAR!” Sheree would exclaim, to my puzzlement. I wasn’t having low self-esteem, but the plain fact was that I was as far from popular at that school as Sarah Palin would be at a poetry slam. I knew it, everyone knew it. The bus driver knew it (she made me bus monitor based on it). Why did Sheree think I was popular? It made no sense, but she had no reason to lie to me. I’d have done her homework for her even if she were mean to me. Homework was what I did.

One day I couldn’t take it anymore. “No, I’m not,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I’m not popular. I’m kind of weird, actually. Why do you keep saying I’m popular when I’m not?”

“But of COURSE you are,” said Sheree. “Aren’t you?”

“Not really,” I said. “Maybe if I wore some makeup. How do you get your mother to let you?” Sheree wore eyeshadow every day in a color that matched her outfit, a fact that had not escaped my notice. Soon after Sheree had shown up, I had begged my mother to buy me some eyeshadow, but was sorely disappointed with what she got me: clear mascera, clear lip gloss, and beige eyeshadow. Clear makeup. Thanks mom. That’ll work well when I have a makeover party with my imaginary friends.

Sheree stared at me, blankly. “Your mother doesn’t let you wear makeup? My mother taught me how to use this. It’s really easy. You just look for the color that matches your top and then it makes your eyecolor POP! You just have to ask your mother; maybe she doesn’t know you want it.” There was no irony in Sheree’s tone, no mocking. She was genuinely trying to help me. Her eyelids sparkled violet. Suddenly, eyeshadow was the only thing I wanted in the whole world.

I hatched a plan. My mom was going out of town for a long weekend, and I knew what I was going to do: take makeup from her makeup kit under the sink and find a shade that matched my top. She’d never know, and my dad is blind in one eye and would never notice something like that, anyway.

Of course, when I went into my mother’s bathroom, her makeup kit was gone–she had taken it with her on the trip. Bitterly disappointed, I considered my options. I searched the bathroom to no avail, and wandered into the kitchen morosely. It was there that I noticed the pen mug, and the purple highlighter marker it contained.

Purple highlighter. Yes.

I grabbed it and rushed to the bathroom, where I carefully closed my left eye and filled in the lid with bright purple ink. And then, before surveying the effect, I did the same to my right eyelid. I blinked, and stared at myself.

You know how when you really, really, REALLY want something to be true, you can believe in it as long as nobody else shoots you down? Like farting in class, glancing around to see if anyone noticed, deciding that nobody looked up so you must be in the clear, only to hear Kate Armstrong (more about her later) say, “Did you just FART, Courtney?” (I was called Courtney, my middle name, in grade school; my parents liked it more than I did) and the whole class crack up? That’s how it was with my purple-highlighter eyeshadow. I looked at my face so quickly it was a blur in the bathroom mirror, and golly if I didn’t look just like Sheree.

She confirmed it later, on the bus to school that day.

“You look so PRETTY, Courtney, you really DO!” she said. “What kind of makeup did your mother buy you?”

I smiled. I had gotten away with it. Excellent.

“It’s not makeup. I used a marker,” I explained, inwardly wondering why women ever spent money on makeup at all, since my way had been so much more convenient.

“Oooooooooh. . .” Sheree paused, and looked at me strangely. “Well, I wasn’t gonna say nothin’, but. . .it does look a little. . .strong.”

Rats. Maybe the cosmetics section at the CVS wasn’t a giant hoax, after all.

A word about Kate Armstrong. We aren’t related, although I always kind of wished we were, because she and her brother (they were both in my grade because Kate had been held back early on in elementary school) were so much more popular than I was. Kate was very pretty, her hair shellacked easily into the bang-propeller, and she had an easy way about her that made her slide into any table at the cafeteria with no trouble. She had a kind of general cluelessness and an amiability, that coupled with her permed hair, made her resemble a well-meaning, if bumbling, golden retriever. She liked almost everyone, including me, but she had a special gift for blurting out things that you were hoping to keep quiet. Like classroom farts. And. . .

“COURTNEY ARMSTRONG, DID YOU PUT HIGHLIGHTER ON YOUR EYES???” She ran up to me before school even started, and announced these words as subtly as, well, the highlighter itself. Every kid within a 25 yard radius swiveled head to see the freak who didn’t understand that makeup is for people and markers are for paper.

“. . .NO,” I said. Always deny in a Kate Armstrong confrontation. Even though it never works.

“YES YOU DID! YES YOU DID! YOU PUT HIGHLIGHTER ON YOUR EYES! OH, COURTNEY, WHY’D YOU DO THAT? IT LOOKS SO WEIRD!”

“. . .does not!”

“YES IT DOES! Courtney,” her voice lowered, “we have to get it off you! C’mon, let’s go to the bathroom! We have to wash that stuff off you!”

Thus were cardboardy brown institutional paper towels applied vigorously to my eyelids, with slimy pink handsoap foaming liberally. It didn’t work. The highlighter was color fast. I had to go through the day that way (and the week–it took a while for the color to fade).

I think I must have blocked the rest of the day out. Nobody was as kind as Kate or Sheree had been, that was for sure, and with bloodshot eyes framed by neon purple lids, I must have been a terrible target. I can’t remember, though. One thing is for sure: I’ve never voluntarily worn eyeshadow since.

Read strong!

The Endless Night

by Ian Arcuri

If the sun could rise, defeating the night

creating light that could shine through dark lands

of dismal kingdoms that plead to be bright

if only the sun could hear men’s demands.

Oh, the joy that light would bring mankind!

This dreary time of defeat and darkness

children are born to a land dubbed unkind

their shrill cries ring out through the emptiness.

Once sharpened blades are dulled from lack of use

while nails rust in this dank and dark abyss

hammers suffer time’s rough, harsh abuse

while man cannot use them because of this.

The dark of night still shrouds this mournful place

a time of sadness light cannot erase.

Josh Bell Sonnet

by Jenn Scoville

One thousand seventy people pass him by

avoiding eye contact and true beauty

shutting their ears while racing against time

donating money because they feel guilty

plugged into ipods and cellular phones

the few of their new electronics

wonder if that tune is one they know

but despised by those who walk in “fly kicks”

hidden under the noise from the subway

cell phones ringing and feet kicking the ground

begging for attention on a busy Monday

when everyone is rushing to town

but I hear and see you at one glance

all I need is one more chance.

Doughnut Sonnet

by Roland Bargiel

Happy I leave with doughnuts in my hands

which I will eat until my jeans are tight

and do so ’til my corpulence demands

I never, ever take another bite.

O happy day! On which I will not fight

my burning want to crunch and stuff and graze

on only jelly doughnuts through the night

licking icing, relishing the glaze.

O happy joy! I could do this for days

or months or years–perhaps until I die

which by that time my fatness will amaze

and in a pile of doughnuts dead I’ll lie.

I’ll eat my doughnuts to please me alone,

and eat and eat ’til every doughnut’s gone.

Read strong!

I also ordered $125 worth of books from amazon.com, paid for by the poetry slam bookdrive money that was donated before Christmas. They just came in today and now I’m completely overstimulated because I love nonfiction so much and I want to read all the books before I let the chickens read them.

Nonfiction actually covers quite a lot of territory in a bookstore. There are memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, how-to books, sociological studies, books on religion, philosophy, self-help, psychology, travel guides, cookbooks. . .if you walk into any bookstore, you’re going to find more nonfiction than fiction for sale. In the real world (as opposed to the school world), people generally read way more nonfiction than fiction. I know I do. I like fiction well enough, and I probably read about 15-20 novels/year. But I read over 100 nonfiction books/year. I devour sociological studies like candy, I love books on religion, memoirs entrance me, and because I don’t have enough money to really travel, I live vicariously through travel guides.

This quarter, when I say nonfiction, I mean nonfiction. I’m giving you a lot of freedom in what you pick. My only caveat (that means warning/exception) is that you can’t pick something cheesy and below your reading level. The Guiness Book of World Records is not allowed. Neither is Ripley’s Believe It or Not. No thin celebrity biographies that are filled with pictures. You need to pick something with some meat on its bones. I think a cookbook would probably not cut it, unless you can write a really good literature letter about recipes. . .I once had a kid who was OBSESSED with cooking; he might have been able to write a decent literature letter about a cookbook.

A good way to choose a book is to go to the library and do a search on a topic that interests you. I’m not asking you to write a report on that topic, which for most of you guys means to google it and glean some info from the web. I’m asking you to read ONE book on the subject. The whole book.

But there’s another way to choose a good nonfiction book, too. And that is to consult my list, or ask me directly for a recommendation. A good author can make any subject interesting. The best nonfiction book I’ve read recently was called Absolutely American by David Lipsky, which is about West Point, which is the Army Academy–they educate and train Army officers there. Now, I don’t have a burning interest in West Point, or the Army. I would never have done research on those topics. But I heard an excerpt from the book on This American Life, which is pretty much my favorite podcast ever, and it sounded really well-written, so I got it out of the library and was completely addicted to it for the next three days. Like crack, that book. I LOVE it when books are like that. (I have three copies of Absolutely American in my library).

Here’s an initial list of nonfiction books that I’ve enjoyed. Anyone who wants to add to the list (including friends who are not my students but read this blog) should write a comment on this blog including a nonfiction title you’ve liked!

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Very exciting book about various people trying to survive in Alaska. Krakauer’s style is to take one main story and interweave it with historical background and interesting subplots. One of my favorites by him is Under the Banner of Heaven, but it has a lot of violence in it and is controversial in its portrayal of the Mormon church.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen

The first one might be over a lot of seventh and eighth graders’ heads, but the second one is shorter and a little simpler. Pollen sets out to prove that the American diet is making us sick and that we should try to eat less processed food, in favor of whole foods. Did you know that at the cell level, most Americans are made entirely out of corn? Almost everything we eat is really made of corn. Kind of scary.

A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson has written many, many books, and you should read all of them, because they are all funny and relentlessly engaging. He is an American citizen who spent twenty years in England, so he has a very interesting perspective on English-speaking culture. He has written several books about the history of the English language, and several hilarious travel guides. The title mentioned above, however, is probably his most ambitious work. It’s a conversational book about the history of the natural sciences. That may sound boring, but this author is so interesting that trust me, it’s not boring at all.

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich suspected that minimum wage was not enough to live on in America, but she wanted to prove it. So she lived incognito in three different cities, froze her bank account, found minimum wage jobs (she waits tables, is a cashier at Wal-Mart, and cleans houses for The Maids), and wrote about what life was like trying to survive. Her conclusions may make you see America differently, or at least make you understand why it’s so important to get an education.

Aging with Grace by David Snowdon

When I first read this book, I became completely obsessed with nuns. I made everyone in my family read it, and then all of us were obsessed with nuns. The book is about a study that David Snowdon did on old, retired nuns. His goal was to find ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. His findings have amazing implications for how we live our lives. The writing is SO engaging; he makes a scientific study read like a narrative, and you get to know all these different nuns. Super interesting.

Okay, I can’t write an annotated bibliography, here. I’m just going to list some titles.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (7th or 8th graders)

Marley and Me by John Grogan (7th or 8th graders)

Ship of Gold by Gary Kinder (7th or 8th graders)

Infidel by Aayan Hirsi Ali (for akamai 8th graders only)

Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (for akamai 8th graders only)

Blink or The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (for akamai 8th graders only)

I have lots of books on the top shelf of the READ THIS bookcase that aren’t on this list. Give it a look-see. You might find a book that changes your mind, or even. . .your life!

Read strong!

I’ve been trying to learn the Hawaii State Song, “Hawaii Pono’i”, for four years now. It’s a pretty song, but it is in Hawaiian, which means that to me, it is just a random assortment of nonsense syllables. I like to think that I’m a pretty savvy individual, but I just can’t seem to learn the words to this song. But when visitors come all clamoring for the low-down on the “real” Hawaii, here’s what I sing:

Hawaii pono’i (this actually is the first line)

nan kuli’ i’ i (west side town with two extra i’s to fit into the rhythm)

mele kalikiki (merry Christmas in Hawaiian, with an extra ki to fit in)

maka a a (the “mas” part of Merry Christmas, with two extra a’s to fit)

Kala ka a ua (big street in Waikiki with an extra syllable)

Kamehameha e (this is actually correct–you always need one or two real things to make the lies go down easier. Kamehameha is a super important king in Hawaiian history, and I’ve made up tons of facts about him. I don’t know what the “e” means here, though. Something about a spear or something, I think.)

Aiea Kailua (Aiea is the only town in America that has no consonants, and Kailua is my town! Yeah Kailua!)

Oneawa (my street!)

The kids in my homeroom think this is hysterical, because they had to sing Hawaii Pono’i every morning in elementary school. Every year they try to teach me the right words, but it just never takes. This is what I sing at the UH volleyball games. Nobody ever seems to notice.

Aloha!

Before I go into how we met Johann, I’d better give some background about Adrienne and Rob. Adrienne is my best friend from childhood. We were similarly socially awkward, as all hip people must claim to have been in high school, of course, except Adrienne has no aspirations whatever of being hip and I only suffer forays into hipness at my most deluded moments. The truth is, we’re both just nerds, then, now, and forever. There’s no danger of us becoming The Flight of the Conchords, so weird we’re actually cool. Nope. Even though we did make up some pretty sweet songs, back in high school. For example, when our social studies teacher in eighth grade showed us the made for tv movie Escape from Sobibor, which was her requisite holocaust movie, this was the song we made up in response (to the tune of “Lightly Row”):

Sobibor

Sobibor

You will die for sure, sure, sure

Sobibor

Sobibor

it is not much fun.

Sobi, sobi, sobibor

you will, you will, die for sure

Sobibor

Sobibor

Death camp of Poland.

For some reason, nobody thought that was as funny as we did.

After college and life separated us for several years, we were reunited at Adrienne’s wedding, for which I was a bridesmaid. I saw her again a year later, when I had a long layover in NYC and she and Rob met me to have dinner and watch Wicked on Broadway. It turned out that she is still pretty much exactly the same as she was in high school, and obviously I haven’t changed at all, either, so she and Rob decided to come visit me here in the Aloha State over Christmas.

I booked us a three day trip on the Big Island, which I’ve been to seven or eight times. Ordinarily, the Big Island is not a tourist trip for me. I always stay at the same B&B in Volcano Village, read two books, drink wine and play Trivial Pursuit with Kim and John, eat a lot of Thai food, and take at least five naps. But that plan wasn’t going to cut it with Adrienne and Rob, because this was a once in a lifetime trip for them, so I planned an itinerary that crammed every activity I’ve ever done (and quite a few that I always meant to do, but then the hot tub and a glass of reisling seemed like more fun and way less effort) on the Big Island into three days.

Enter the Green Sand Beach. This is a geological anamoly that, as far as I know, can only be found on the Big Island. According to the guide book, 600 million years ago (I make up geological facts about Hawaii to tell tourists and students all the time, and my benchmark era for all the volcanic stuff to go down is 600 million years ago, which I always say in the voice of the movie preview guy–600 MILLION years ago, in a world far, far, under the sea, a plume of magma burst from the sea floor, starting the beautiful island chain we now know as. . .Hawai’i) a freak, olivine vein of lava poured into the sea. Over time, it has been eroded by the wind, sand, and ocean into a unique and amazing Green Sand Beach made of pure olivine sand.

Most of that, like all of my Hawai’i “facts”, is from my own friendly and insane imagination (my motto: “making stuff up is easier than looking stuff up!”), but I’m pretty sure at least one or two parts are true.

After hearing about The Green Sand Beach of Pure Olivine, Adrienne and Rob were dead set on seeing it, which meant that we were going to have to drive our two-bit rental car down to South Point and then hike two miles out.

Now, no franchise rental car company on the Big Island will rent you a car that you are allowed to take down to South Point. You have to sign a special contract specifically agreeing NOT to drive down the South Point road. This will become important information later. South Point road is paved and everything, but narrow and bumpy and above all, extremely desolate and just. . .weird. Weird like the heath where the witches hang out in Macbeth. Hardly anyone is there, the wind never lets up, it’s all crumbly black lava fields and tall, whispering grasses and a giant, defunct wind farm. It wouldn’t take a great deal of imagination to think that South Point was haunted. The Green Sand Beach of Pure Olivine beckoned, however.

It was late afternoon and the sun was already beginning to set. We hadn’t eaten lunch and had just finished snorkeling at Pu’u O Honua O Honaunau. Adrienne and Rob were not to be put off, however. There is no trail to The Green Sand Beach, just an amalgam of criss-crossing 4×4 tracks cut deep into the red mud with no rhyme or reason. You follow the jagged coastline and hope to stumble upon The Green Sand Beach. We imagined it must look kind of like The Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.

Flashback: in high school, Adrienne nicknamed me “Slow Girl” (not very creative, I know, but you can’t expect too much from her–later on she became an engineer) because in her opinion, I took way too long to gather my stuff and get to the next class when the bell would ring. Adrienne ran cross country and has very long legs. She walks kind of like a cross country skier without skis, striding the shortest distance between any two points, and I’d scurry down the hall, dropping compasses and graphing calculators and world history textbooks, trying to keep up.

I had totally forgotten about The Adrienne Stride until hiking to The Green Sand Beach that afternoon. We figured we only had about an hour and a half before the sun went down,the hike was going to be about four miles round trip, and nobody wanted to get caught out on the Hawaiian Heath in the dark. Adrienne was off like a shot, on a crazed mission to The Emerald City, and I was tracking her exactly the way I used to through the halls of Queensbury High School.

After an hour of this intense run/walking, we encountered a large bluff that was next to the sea. Adrienne stopped and turned towards me with shoulder shrug. She was too far in front of me to be audible, but her pointing indicated: Emerald City? Could it be?

Oh yes. The Green Sand Beach was yonder. Thrilled that we actually found it, we galloped down the steep wall, only to find out that The Green Sand Beach should really be called The Kind of an Ugly Goldish Beach. Remember when you had your big box of 64 Crayolas, and all of them would get worn down to nubbins except for Burnt Sienna and Inch Worm and maybe Electric Lime? This beach was a combination of those three colors, and believe me, nobody would ever use this color for anything in the coloring book. Unless, of course, you had a Big Island coloring book. Then, for once, those three crayons would get their day in the sun. But honestly, if I were coloring that coloring book, I’d just pick out good ol’ reliable “Screamin’ Green” and pretend I’d seen the beach of The Emerald City. Because the reality is kind of a let down, and I say believe in Santa as long as you can.

Rob took 50 or 60 pictures, and we decided to turn back, because nobody wanted to try to make it back to the car in the dark in that creepy, desolate place. The urgency was lost, though, because we had accomplished our goal, so Adrienne and I could actually have a conversation on the return trip.

Most of the snorkelers at Honaunau, where we had been before The Green Sand Beach of Disappointment, had been speaking German, which led Adrienne to deliver a rousing commentary on the ins and outs of German tourists (Adrienne lived in Germany for three months in graduate school). The whole discussion occupied us for most of the way back to the car, but the basic points conveyed were:

• Ain’t no tourists as hardcare as German tourists
• German tourists are EVERYWHERE, and they never plan stuff, they just fly by the seat of their pants and go with the flow
• German tourists consider the weird stuff that happens due to lack of planning just part of the adventure that goes along with traveling
• Always ask German tourists to take your picture if you are traveling, because they are awesome at taking pictures and have the best cameras, so they will not ask tiresome questions about how to use yours
• German tourists are generally extremely -atured, and laugh at everything, even things that Americans would find hugely irritating and inconvenient

Now, that may seem irrelevant, but it becomes important later.

You know how when you finish a hike and get back to the car, there’s this wonderful feeling, like, yep, that nature stuff is fun and we sure had a great time, but good thing the car is there, thus rendering optional walking and consequently being exposed to the elements? And then you hop in your car and maybe you had a snack waiting there, you take off your muddy shoes and turn on the heat, and the whole having-to-deal-with-the-outdoors becomes but a distant memory as you roll on towards your next delicious meal prepared by someone else with minimal inconvenience to yourself.

It’s a nice feeling, right?

Except Rob couldn’t find the key.

It’s funny how the implications of something like that come to you in stages; how you start problem solving like a madman, how you travel down the road of the immediate future in your mind. . .I guess this means we won’t get back to Volcano Village in time for the Thai restaurant; wait, how will we even get back to Volcano Village? Is this where we now live? Oh no, this means the lease on the car is null and void, because we weren’t even supposed to be here anyway; are we going to die of hypothermia tonight? I’m hungry; I wonder if the mongeese have rabies?

There had been a moribund-looking family following us, and they returned to their rental Mustang just as we were discovering this mess. Rob walked up to them and explained the situation and asked if we could use their cell phone. They reluctantly conceded, and looked terribly impatient as I called every option for help I could think of, all of which were going to entail huge inconvenience and expense, as well as a long wait. Everyone we called kept putting us on hold or hanging up on us, or the phone would disconnect. Thai food was slipping outside the realm of possibility. Something had to be done.

While I was making desperate and totally unfruitful phone calls, Rob and Adrienne were trying to keep the Mustang Family placated at having to extend a helping hand to fellow human beings (I’m a little bitter about that Mustang Family; considering the straits we were in, they could have shown a little more patience, I think). The father kept telling Rob he should just break the window, and Rob kept explaining that he would have done that, except he couldn’t see the car key inside the car, which would make the solution an expensive boondoggle that would still leave us stranded, albeit with water and phones and a better windbreak.

It was when the father actually went and found a large, pointy rock for Rob that I knew we had to just let the family go on their way. So I turned the phone off, and Adrienne handed it and a $20 to them for helping us out (I placed a LOT of 411 calls on that phone). And suddenly we found ourselves looking up at a tall, gangly, balding man with a pleasant, benign expression. The Mustang father beamed: I found this guy! He’ll help you!

Oh. . .thanks, we murmured, to the dust of the Mustang’s rapidly departing tires.

We turned towards the tall man. “Do you mind if we use your phone?” Rob asked.

“Ok, sure, but I am not knowing if it works here, actually,” said the man in accented English. This man was around my age, maybe a couple of years older, and suddenly it was incumbent on me to turn on full throttle every charm spigot I own. Admittedly, I’m not great at flirting, but when Thai food hinges in the balance, you’d be amazed at how adorable I can be.

“Oh, THANK you,” I said, looking up at him with adoring, melty eyes. “You just can’t IMAGINE what a tight SPOT we’re in right now! It’s just CRAZY! We will pay you ANYTHING if you could just let us borrow your phone, those jerks at Enterprise keep cutting me off, thank you thank you thank you. . .What’s your name?”

“I am. . .Joe.” He smiled, pushed some buttons on his phone, and handed it to me. I looked at the screen.

German.

Adrienne’s eyes went wide.

“You know, I am thinking I was going to stay here overnight in my car, yes?” said the German guy. He had a lovely SUV with lots of room. “But you are staying in Volcano?”

“Yes, yes, Volcano,” we all chorused.

“Well, I was going to stay here overnight and hike to The Green Sand Beach in the morning–”

Adrienne nudged me. German! she hissed under her breath. Staying overnight in one’s car on purpose is NOT Adrienne’s idea of normal tourist behavior. Except, of course, for Germans.

“–but if you like I can drive you to Volcano, is okay!”

“Ooooooh, that would be SO NICE of you; OF COURSE you could stay overnight with us at our hotel, it would be NO PROBLEM AT ALL,” I gushed. Gushing was necessary; Volcano is about a two hour drive from South Point.

Finally! A plan that would get me to Volcano in time for Thai food! Yes!

We went over to the car to deliberate. Being from Long Island, Adrienne and Rob have very little trust for humanity in general, and though it was looking like Joe the German Guy was our only hope, Rob pointed out that someone was bound to break into our rental car if we left it there, and all of our stuff was inside, so we might as well break into it ourselves and bring our stuff with us in Joe’s car. This didn’t really seem logical to me, since South Point doesn’t exactly seem like a hotbed of criminal activity, what with it being miles and miles away from civilization, but a change of clothes sounded pretty good by then, so I didn’t say anything.

So Rob picked up the rock that had been proffered earlier by the Mustang Dad, and started to break one of the windows. Which turned out to be a lot more difficult than you might think. He had to really whale the crap out of that window. Adrienne and I couldn’t even watch.

Finally the deed was done, and we dove into the car, me heading straight for the Portuguese sweet rolls I bought earlier that day as a treat for my church friends. Too bad for them. I was starving.

“Um, guys?” said Rob.

I looked up, cheeks full of delicious bread.

“I found the key.”

Awesome! Whooooo! Except. . .what do we do with Joe the German Guy?

“We have to take him back to our hotel,” I said. “We have to. He was nice to us and those other people sucked. What, now we’re going to be like, oh, we don’t need you anymore, have a nice time sleeping in your car tonight?”

Adrienne and Rob agreed, although I could tell Adrienne was freaking out a little as it dawned on her that we were going to have to have a stranger sleeping in our hotel room for the night.

We informed Joe of the change in plans and invited him to come back with us anyway.

“Well. . .I am thinking. . .why not?” said Joe.

Adrienne looked at me. German!

On the long drive to Volcano, Adrienne became more and more agitated. What if the guy kills us? What if he rapes you? What if he steals all our stuff? Ohnoohnoohnoohno.

I spent my junior year of college in France and I know a thing or two about Europeans. I’m not saying they are perfect or anything, but in general the culture seems a lot more laid-back about helping a brother out over there. In Europe, borrowing minor stuff like a quarter to make a phone call or to make the change come out right at the store, or bumming a cigarette off someone, just isn’t looked on as a big deal. Hostel culture is bigger in Europe, too; people are used to communal or makeshift living arrangements, at least in temporary circumstances. Crashing on people’s floors and couches seems a lot more normal over there. Or maybe that was just a byproduct of the fact that I was pretty young at the time.

Anyway, Joe the German didn’t really give me any weird vibes. He just struck me as quintessentially. . .European. We spoke of German tourists on our way back from The Green Sand Beach, and lo, a German tourist appeared.

So that is what happened. Joe followed us back to our hotel, we bought him Thai food, took showers one at a time while the others ate, and went to bed. I felt kind of bad, because Europeans probably would have produced a bottle of wine or vodka or something, and stayed up all night making Joe (we knew that couldn’t really be his name and asked him about it, and he sheepishly admitted that his name was Johann, but he couldn’t stand how Americans pronounced it so he always just calls himself Joe when he is in the states) our new best friend, but what can I say. I can only flirt in emergency situations. Otherwise, my social skills pretty much just sublimate. I was so tired I fell asleep almost before I even put my head down on the futon. Johann slept on a mattress on the floor.

He left the next morning after we made him eggs and insisted that he not pay for any aspect of the last evening, and I regretted not getting his contact information just in case I ever need a floor to sleep on in Bavaria.

So Johann, if you’re out there, thanks again for being nice enough to offer us a ride, and sorry we weren’t more fun. It was a weird night. And you should tell that exgirlfriend of yours to just move to Bavaria even if she can’t find a job, because true love always finds a way.

Read strong!