Entry 805: School Daze

I thought the title for this entry was an homage to a 2001 stoner movie starring Method Man and Redman, but it turns out that movie is called How High. School Daze is a Spike Lee joint from the late '80s starring Laurence Fishburne. I've never seen either film. The latter apparently is a musical comedy-drama based in part on Lee's own college experiences at Morehouse. As for the former, well, I'll just quote Wikipedia directly:

The film follows two cannabis users who gain admission to Harvard University with the supernatural help of a deceased friend whose ashes were used to fertilize a marijuana plant. 

I now want to see this film. It has strong funny-in-a-campy-sort-of-way vibe to it. I don't know why, but for some reason, the first thing that popped into my head for comparison is Weird Science, and as I recall I thought that movie was entertaining even when I rewatched it as an adult.

Anyway...

The end of the school year isn't quite nigh, but it's in sight. It's a bigger deal this year than usual, as each of my kids will be graduating to a new phase of life. Lil' S1 will be done with middle school and moving on to high school in the fall. Lil' S2 will be starting middle school and leaving elementary school. For S and I, this means we are just about done, officially, with the little-kid stage of parenting. The annual elementary school gala is tonight--it would be the final one for us--but we aren't even going. S's friend came into town from Boston to visit, so she doesn't want to go, and I would maybe go stag, but I got invited to dinner with some puzzle people, so I'm going to go to that instead. I'm not really that bummed about missing our last gala. It's a fun event, but we typically just talk to the same people we see all the time anyway.

The big topic of discussion in our household at the moment is where Lil' S1 is going to go to high school: his current private school or the in-zone public school. I want the public school, but I think I'm going to lose this one. Although Lil' S1 showed a willingness, a desire even, to switch to the public school earlier this year, he has become pretty resolute recently in his wish to stay at his current school. S is mostly with me, in that she wants him to go to the public school, but if he really doesn't want to go--and it seems he doesn't--then it changes things. As she put it to me, "I want him to want to go there."

So, I think the fear of the unknown will be too great, and she will ultimately push to keep him where he is, and then I'll have to fold or face two people mad at me in my family. I'll probably fold. Also, it's honestly not a huge capitulation on my part. I think he will be fine at either school. I hate paying tuition to an institution that I don't think it is that great, but if I don't look at our bank statements, it's not that bad. The thing is, I just don't know what we get from this private school that is worth the money. I guess from my perspective I have to tell myself that's it's for family harmony, marital bliss, peace of mind, and those things are worth whatever you can afford to pay for them.

Speaking of Lil' S1's school, there was an "incident" this past week that caused quite the hullabaloo among this little community. What happened is some teachers were trying to come up with groups for a grade-wide project, and they wanted to match kids with other kids with whom they would work well. To do this, they created a spreadsheet with the kids' names and some information about them--their race, their interests, their friend groups, etc.--and in so doing, they used informal, somewhat disparaging language about the students. Then they accidentally saved this document to a drive to which students have access (doh!). A few kids saw it, took screenshots, and showed it to their parents, and then all hell broke loose.

There were really only two demeaning descriptions in the doc--the teachers characterized somebody as a "mean girl" and said another kid was "small and very ADHD" (and even that is more infelicitous than pejorative)--but that was enough to set off an email chain of seemingly infinite length, prompt an open letter to the school, and lead to not one, but two Zoom meetings--one with the school administration and a parents-only prep before that.

What exactly got resolved? I'm not sure. I don't think anybody got fired or disciplined, but maybe that's coming. Hopefully nobody loses their job over this. It doesn't rise anywhere close to that level, in my opinion. This is more like an-apologize-and-move-on type of thing. My big takeaway is that everybody should be under the assumption that anything they write to anybody online could be made public at some point, and so they should act accordingly. I don't really care that the teachers sometimes categorize their students in less than flattering ways (they're humans and that's how humans communicate), but it shows terrible judgement to put this down in writing. That should be the lesson for the kids: Every time you send a text or an email or share a document or otherwise communicate in a way that leaves a record, you have to think, "What would happen if this gets out?" If the answer is, "It would lead to public humiliation for me and possibly be cause for discipline from my employers," then maybe don't send it. 

On that note, until next time... 

 

Entry 804: What Does The Fox Say?

No entry last weekend, you might have noticed, because I went to a crossword puzzle tournament and had no time for blogging. It went well, and I had a great time. I don't compete but rather help administer the competition. I also hang out with a bunch of people I quite like but only see once a year: my ami-puzzlers. I'm trying this new thing where I use the prefix "ami" to indicate a friendliness--actually beyond a friendliness, an adoration or bond, perhaps, there's no good word for it, which is the problem--for people I like a lot, but I'm not quite friends with. I've come to realize that the English language is completely bereft of words or succinct phrases to indicate a relationship between an acquaintance and a friend.

It's weird too, because we probably have way more people in our lives that fall into the "ami-" category than we have actual friends. I have a decent number of actual friends, people to whom I am not related (neither through blood nor marriage), whom I hang out with semi-regularly, whose phone numbers I have and could text anytime for trivial reasons without it seeming weird, whose children and spouses I know, whose careers and interests I'm familiar with, etc. But I have at least twice as many ami-folks in my life, people who don't fit the friend criteria I just laid out, but whom I still very much like and enjoying spending time with and wish nothing but the best for, people with whom I might very well be friends in the future or would have been friend with under slightly different circumstances. A lot of coworkers fall into this category, also a lot of neighbors and parents of my sons' friends. I've been going to the same gym for over seven years now, and I've gotten to know a lot of the instructors and other patrons, and it would be nice to have a way to convey this more elegantly than "this guy I'm friendly with who goes to the same gym as me."*

*Sometimes you can convey this by putting how you know the person before the word "friend," my "gym friend," my "work friend," etc. Weirdly, doing this indicates that you aren't actually friends. 

That's where "ami-" comes in. You can just attach it to the beginning of any relationship, and it instantly conveys a friendliness that goes beyond mere acquaintance. Oh, hey, there's my ami-barber... I was getting lunch with my ami-colleague... An ami-dad and I were talking at our kids' baseball game... It's beautiful, and I recommend you all start using it too, especially since there is a decent chance I will never mention this topic again. I'm very good at ideas; I'm not so great with the follow-through.

In other news, before I left, I had to retrieve a baby fox that had trapped itself in our window well. In our backyard deck, we have this little pit, about five feet deep, that leads to a basement window. It's usually covered with a iron grate and deck furniture, and we don't even think about it. But late one night, about a week and a half ago, I heard this weird noise--a sort of high pitched sound, somewhere between a screech and a yelp--and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I finally decided it was a weird bird call and went to sleep.

Then the next night I heard it again, but more intensely, and it was super clear right when I walked by that basement window. Thinking maybe it was an animal merely occupying the well, not stuck in it, I banged on the window to chase it away. It was silent for a bit, and then started making the noise again. So, I shined a flashlight through the window (which took a tiny bit of courage--shining a light into a dark area not knowing what you're going to see is a bit nerve-wracking) and saw a frightened little fox. It clearly was wandering around under our deck, had fallen into the pit, and now couldn't get back out. My first thought was Shit, now I'm gonna have to go get this thing, followed by so, that's what the fox says, it's not actually "hakki-hakki-hakki-ho".

Weirdly, S was still awake even though it was about 11:00pm, so I told her what was going on, and she got out of bed, and we went out to the deck together. It's an effort just to lift off the grate, but we (mostly I) managed to do so, and then I tried unsuccessfully to scoop up the kit (that's what you call a baby fox) with a snow shovel. It had the instincts to call for help, but also the instincts to evade that help at all costs. I was going to have to go in. It was visibly terrified and trying to run away from me, but it had nowhere to run. I was worried that it would try to bite me, so I kinda trapped it against the wall with a bucket and slid it up until it could reach the ledge, at which point it vanished under our house. We put the grate back and that was that.

Well, almost... The whole time I was doing all this, I was trying to remember who actually sings "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)," and I kept thinking it was The Elvi's, but I knew that wasn't right, because that was a local band I used to see flyers for in college. So, I had to look it up before I could sleep in peace. (Ylvis, that's right, so close.) I told this to S, but she couldn't have cared less and just wanted to be back in bed as quickly as possible. That's the difference between her and me.

Until next time...

Update: I came home tonight after meeting up with some friends and saw this guy hanging out in my neighbor's yard. Too big to be the one I saved, but maybe a relative?

 

Entry 803: Death and Taxes

There's a cliché that the only constants in life are death and taxes. I had my fill of both this week. Well, the death part might not have happened yet, but it seems imminent. My elderly neighbor collapsed twice in the past three days and is now in the hospital for some sort of emergency procedure. I'm no medical expert, but I feel confident stating that the recovery rate for a man in his mid-90s from whatever it is that ails him is not super high. And he was almost bedridden before this. He seemed to be chair-ridden. He would get up in the morning, make his way to a chair, and basically sit there the entire day. S and I are just waiting for the grim, inescapable word from his wife. He might be able to make it back home, but if he survives to see autumn, I'd be surprised.

And when he goes, there's a good chance his wife will join him shortly thereafter. She has already had a stroke, about a year ago, and I saw this with my own grandparents, where my grandma, who was hanging on decently, deteriorated extremely quickly after the death of my grandpa and died just a few months later. It's like she just didn't want her husband to be alone, and once that was no longer a possibility, she surrendered to the inevitable.   

I would say that all this is sad, but I think that's the wrong word. It's more hard. I don't feel melancholy; I feel a sort of helplessness. As the Flaming Lips put it, "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" (Great song, by the way.) Since moving into this neighborhood, inhabited by a lot of elderly people, I've definitely realized this. Two people in the house to one side of me have already died in the past five years (and a third one is close), and now, it seems, two more on the other side are well on their way. I lived the first 45 years of my life without ever once being asked to lift an old person who had fallen and couldn't get up, and now it seems to be a semi-regular occurrence.

It also doesn't help my general mindset on this matter that my parents just came out to visit last week, and my mom spent most the trip in her PJs lying in bed or on the sofa. She got hit with a bug, and although she recovered, it really laid her up, and it had me slightly concerned. My parents aren't yet at the same stage as my neighbors, but they probably aren't that far behind. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I'm not that far behind, as I don't think we are going to crack immortality in the next 40 years, despite what you might find from "life maxxers" on YouTube.

Maybe that's a silver-lining of being focused on the nonexistence of others. It distracts me from thinking about from my own departure from this mortal coil. It is so much worse to think about your own death, not just because it's your death (though of course that's part of it), but because you lose your frame of reference. There's still something when somebody else dies. When you die there's a good chance there's just nothing, and contemplating nothing will mess your head, even if it's not in the context of your own demise. An existential freakout is a double-whammy: You are going to die, and you will never understand why you (or anything else) ever even existed in the first place. It's no wonder religion is still pretty popular these days.

Well, at least I'm gainfully employed while I still exist, as I was reminded when I did our taxes a few days ago. As I've said before, I get so resentful every tax season, not because of the amount we pay, but because of how ridiculously confusing and time-consuming it is to figure out how much you owe. I used TurboTax, and the estimated time was one hour and 45 minutes. It's been over twice that, and I'm not even completely finished yet. Maybe we need to go back to having somebody do our taxes for us, like we did last year. But the thing there is that you still have to spend the time gathering all the necessary documents, which is a large part of the overall workload. I imagine the CPA is basically just entering all the stuff into a computer program the same way we are. That's not nothing, but it's also probably not worth the relatively hefty fee, especially considering we paid almost the exact amount last year as we did the year prior when we did our taxes ourselves. Also, if I do our taxes it gains me some emotional capital with S. That's also not nothing.

Well, that about does it for this morbid entry. Until next time...