Tag: time

T is for the Trip Through Time, and Teachers

Nine of us went from K-9 together: Carol, Lois, Karen, Diane, Irene, Bill, Bernie, David, and me.

I grew up in Binghamton, NY, and when it was time for me to go to kindergarten, I was supposed to go to Oak Street Elementary School, based on where I lived. But both of my parents worked outside the home, and there would be no one home at lunchtime.

It was determined that we would instead go to Daniel S. Dickinson School so that we could go to my maternal grandmother’s house at lunchtime. She was only a half dozen blocks from my home. Incidentally, I don’t think Oak Street was any closer to MY house than Dickinson. The school was named for a 19th Century US Senator, as well as the first president of the city of Binghamton in 1834.

One of the peculiar things about schools in Binghamton at the time was that they would start in September AND February. Those of us born in December to March, maybe a month earlier or later, began school in February. The February class was always far smaller than the September class. One’s first semester was the B semester, the second the A semester. So when I went to school in February, I’d be in kindergarten B, e.g.

Dickinson was a K-9 (kindergarten through 9th grade) school, located on Starr Avenue at the west end of Dickinson Street, appropriately. The K-6 kids entered on the south side of the building, and the 7-9 children on the north side. It had clocks with Roman numerals, including the 4 shown as IIII, rather than IV.

Kindergarten: my teacher was Miss Cady. She was my mother’s teacher as well, which should indicate her vintage. I remember taking naps on a yellow rug; on one occasion, I actually fell asleep, and woke up to an empty room!

First through fourth grade: I don’t remember this stretch as well, because every single teacher we had in the B semester was gone by the A semester in September. I don’t know if they moved away or what, though at least one had gone on maternity leave, since she came back and taught my sister Leslie.

Fifth grade: Miss Marie Oberlik. She was of a certain age. She lived only three short blocks from the school and I walked by it almost every day. She taught us to count to 10 in Russian, which I can still do. I got 100 in the spelling final.

Sixth grade: Mr. Paul Peca. I’ve written about him. By that year, we had only 16 students in that class.

Additionally, we had:

Music: Mrs. Joseph from grades 3-9. We had these ancient blue books, which I was quite fond of. I loved them so much, in fact, that I found a book with a similar roster of songs a couple of years ago called America Sings, and bought copies for Leslie and me. Her husband was our 9th-grade biology teacher.

Gym: Mr. Lewis from grades 3-8. Every semester we had to do marching around the gym until it met his high expectations. (Column left march!) Then we could do something fun like softball or volleyball. Later on, perhaps as a result of a presidential fitness initiative, we were supposed to do certain activities, such as climbing ropes, which I was particularly bad at.

In 7th grade, kids from Oak Street, and from the Catholic school next door, entered our school. Mr. John Frenchko was the English teacher in 7B, 7A, and 9B; he was also the school’s assistant principal. Miss Gertrude Kane, who has the same first name as my mother, taught English 8B, 8A, and 9A. She had blue hair. She liked doing accents, and I foolishly let her know that I didn’t think she was particularly good at it. In the three marking periods, my grade went from A to B (after I made my comment) to C. I got a 90 on the final, yet got a C as a final grade.

By the end of 9th grade, we somehow had, again, only 16 students in the class. Nine of us went from K-9 together: Carol, Lois, Karen, Diane, Irene, Bill, Bernie, David, and me; if I had gone to Oak Street, obviously that would be untrue. Indeed, all of us except David, who stayed an extra semester so he could play basketball, graduated from high school together. They’ll all be turning 60 soon, and I’m likely to mention two or three of them in the coming months.

The school song:

Hail, Daniel Dickinson
Pride of our fair Binghamton
May we ‘ere our praises sing
With loyal hearts and true
May all our words and deeds
‘ere uphold thy glory
Guide us our whole lives through
Hail, Daniel Dickinson.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

The 34 Hour Day QUESTION

Have you discovered a breach in the time-space continuum?

 

I came across this article that referenced “the experts” providing guidelines of how much time you should spend doing different tasks. The total is 34 hours a day, give or take. USA Today did a report some time ago that put the number as 42 hours a day.

So the question must be:
What items on your own list tend to fall by the wayside?
or
How the heck do you do it all? Have you discovered a breach in the time-space continuum?

For me, I should clean more, but the weekly routine is enough of a drag. Definitely would exercise more. And reading sometimes gets the short shrift.
***
It was 93 degrees F (34C) in our attic last night at 9 pm. It’s officially too darn hot.

The Lydster, Part 95: Time

I was fascinated by cereal boxes, specifically the various B vitamins and how some of them, such as niacin and riboflavin, actually got their own names, rather than a mere alphanumeric designation.

Someone recently told me that children don’t really develop a strong sense of time until they are eight years old. If this is the case, then I really look forward to the Daughter’s next birthday.

As the person who gets her ready for school almost every morning, I can say that there is no correlation between what time she gets up and when she goes out the door for school. There have been mornings that I have to, almost literally, drag her out of bed, but then she becomes more alert and gets to school in plenty of time. There are other mornings she wakes early, yet we are rushing to get there before the late bell; in the latter case, it also imperils me catching my second bus of the morning and getting to work on time.

Some of the time issues involve play. But the vast bulk of it is her reading something. She reads everything – books, comic books, cereal boxes. And I realize that it is some sort of cosmic payback because I was THE SAME WAY.

When I was a child, I read the newspaper. I read the information on the back of my baseball cards. And I was fascinated by cereal boxes, specifically the various B vitamins and how some of them, such as niacin and riboflavin, actually got their own names, rather than a mere alphanumeric designation. So I was often late to things. I don’t think the Daughter’s quite at that point – YET – but I fear it’s coming because it’s probably genetic.
***
Time – Pozo Seco Singers

Random Post-Funeral Thoughts

The week before my mother died, I had nothing on any credit cards, save for any recurring expenditures.

TIMING

My father died on a Thursday; we had the funeral on a Sunday, and he was buried on a Monday. My mother died on a Tuesday, and our first inclination was to have the funeral on the following Saturday. But, instead of working on the obituary or the program on that day, we sat around telling Trudy stories. I think, in some way, we died my father’s death the way he would have wanted his death to be handled, quickly and efficiently; it also helped that we knew my father was going to die at least the day beforehand. Whereas mom’s death took us, and indeed her long-time doctor, by surprise; her heart was still strong, even after the stroke, and we were having conversations about placing her in some medical facility after she got out of the hospital the very morning she died.

Once Saturday was off the table, we considered Sunday, but it was Super Bowl Sunday, on which my mother’s mother died; I remember getting the call during the 3rd quarter of the game in 1983. Besides, it was just different. My dad was the hare, my mother, the tortoise, and we all know that slow and steady win the race.

So, it was a Tuesday funeral, which had an enormous number of people outside of the family wanting to speak, and a Wednesday burial at the Salisbury National Cemetery in Salisbury, NC, about 40 miles from Charlotte, Section 8, Plot 358, next to my father. I read a few passages from the Proverbs reading my eldest niece read the day before, then sang a little, then I, then my sisters, in turn, shoveled some dirt on her cremains, then we sang some more. Then we went to Waffle House, which was one of my father’s favorite places. I believe I had only been to that gravesite once since his burial there.

FOOD

One of the traditions in the South, at least in my parents’ circle, is for people to come over, often bringing various food items, usually homemade. And by “come over”, I don’t mean that they call and ask, “Would this be a good time to come over?” I mean that they just show up. I became aware of this tradition ten and a half years ago; can’t say that I’ve gotten USED to it. But it was (mostly) nice.

MONEY

The week before my mother died, I had nothing on any credit cards, save for any recurring expenditures, such as the newspaper. Can’t say THAT right now. The next bill will be a whopper; it will include:
The funeral parlor. When my father died, the same funeral parlor accepted the promise of payment from his insurance; not so this time. So it went on my credit card. I’ll get reimbursed eventually. But it was the least amount of money we could spend, which would have pleased my mother, $840.
The obit. I totally miscalculated how much it was going to cost: $472.75. I’ll probably eat half of that.
The niece’s last-minute plane ride from California. Somewhere north of $600, which I hope to get back eventually.
The hotel. Once my wife and daughter arrived, the house would have been too crowded with my sisters, my nieces, and a family friend. Five nights, $330; not bad actually.
*Miscellaneous stuff, including a meal after our bizarre visit with the funeral home – was she high, merely incompetent, or uncaring because we weren’t spending enough? She couldn’t even spell Charlotte, and at one point, my sister threw her out of our meeting.
This doesn’t even count the train tickets or the rental car, which are on my WIFE’S credit card. BTW, 3 days out on Amtrak is a better rate than 2 days out, which is WAY better than one day out.

TECHNOLOGY

I had access to the home computer, but I didn’t have one of my own. My wife actually brought the daughter’s laptop, but it was uncharged, and she forgot the plug, so it didn’t work.

Of course, I had to focus on the funeral stuff and managed to write four blog posts in the 12 days I was down there. Viva the blogger’s reserve, which I was trying to create for our vacation this fall. C’est la vie.

The hotel had one (count’em, ONE) computer in the “business center”, which was often occupied. Once I was on it – at 2:48 a.m. – and some young woman came down and said, “This is the ONLY computer here? I have to do my homework!” I ceded it to her at 3 a.m. after I’d spent an hour on it. BTW, it needs a new keyboard; the a, c, e, m, and n were unreadable.

The house printer didn’t work. The hotel printer was quirky, at best.

I used my cellphone more in that two-week period than I had in all the previous two years.

One Twitter tweet, one Facebook post. Just no time for it.
***
The train ride back from Charlotte to Albany last Friday.

 

The Time Traveler Meme

I’m now a Presbyterian, not a Methodist.

I found this particular Sunday Stealing rather interesting.

Emily’s Rules:

1. Depending on your age, go back 10, 15, 20, or even more years.
2. Tell us how many years back you have traveled and why.
3. Pretend you have met yourself during that era, and tell us where you are.
4. You only have one “date” with this former self.
5. Answer these questions.

Okay, as we start, what year is it and how old are you?

My sense is that younger people are picking smaller numbers, so I’ll randomly pick 25 years ago, which would be November 1985; I’m 32. As it turns out, that’d be the year in which the movie Back to the Future is set. We probably met at a comic book show.

1 . Would your younger self (YYS, from here) recognize you when you first meet?

Not sure. My skin, specifically my face, is much lighter because of the vitiligo. Given the fact that sometimes I don’t recognize myself now, quite possibly not.

2. Would YYS be surprised to discover what you are doing job-wise?

Well, no. He’d say, “THAT’S what you should have gone to grad school for in the first place. What WERE you thinking with that Public Administration detour?”

3. What piece of fashion advice would you give YYS?

Actually, none. He didn’t care about fashion, and neither do I.

4. What do you think YYS is most going to want to know?

Would I ever find love? Would I get married? Would I ever have children? Would I ever WANT children? And if I DID have children, would I be any good as a father?

5. How would you answer YYS’s question?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Surprisingly, yes. I guess so.

6. What would probably be the best thing to tell YYS?

Well, assuming it wasn’t things like which baseball teams to bet on in 1986 – “The Mets over the Red Sox in the World Series. Really.” – I suppose I’d counsel more patience in affairs of the heart.

7. What is something that you probably wouldn’t tell YYS?

About my father’s death.

8. What do you think will most surprise YYS about you?

That I’m a father. And that I own a house; I was always a renter. And that I’ve written SOMETHING for public consumption – on this blog, as it turns out, every day for 5.5 years; he didn’t think I had that much discipline, and frankly, neither did I, even 5.5 years ago. And that I’m now a Presbyterian, not a Methodist. Oh, all sorts of things.

9. What do you think will least surprise YYS?

That I’m a librarian.

10. At this point in your life, would YYS like to run into “you” from the future?

Yes, but he’d be surprised how much more patient I am now.
***
And speaking of time travel, read my recent posts about going to the Peter and Paul concert, post-Mary; and the Beatles, Again? – don’t forget LENNONYC on American Masters tonight on PBS.

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