"Oops," I said, unnecessarily.

Please picture the following:

I, Mike, and Danfriend are at Chick-fil-A about half an hour before closing.  I order a kid's meal (6 piece nuggets, if you must know) and Mike gets a chocolate shake.  I wait with the tray for Dan, while Mike goes and sits down in a booth with some bud-buds.  When Dan is ready, I pick up the tray and attempt to walk to the booth, but the way is blocked by "Caution: Wet Floor" signs. There is a woman mopping the floor.

I attempt to walk around the signs, and she says: "This section is closed!"

Okay, I think, and I attempt to go the long way around, only to find that my way is blocked on that side by a row of chairs.  As I try and squeeze through them, the woman says again, "This section is closed!  I've already cleaned it... I don't want to have to clean it again."

"No problem," I say.  "I'm just going through to sit with my friends."  I gesture to where Mike and the buds are sitting, in a section still populated by diners.  Exasperated, she agrees, and I continue through the closed section, heading toward the booth of friendly faces.

Halfway through the clean section, I swivel to maneuver around a table and feel an odd weight shift on the tray I carry.  I look down just in time to see Mike's untouched chocolate milkshake topple off the tray and explode on the freshly-mopped floor, splattering the tables, chairs, and walls of the area that, if it's not too much trouble, the cleaning lady would really rather I avoid.

There is a painful silence as every head turns toward the explosion.  The woman hasn't figured out yet what's happened, being on the other side of a partition mopping another area.  She knows something is up, but she's not yet sure what, as I stand helpless in the middle of the restaurant, milkshake dripping from my jeans onto the floor. 

Silence, and then a precocious young lad rushes to the scene from his family's booth to stand, hands on hips, and shout: "Clean up on aisle seven!!"

It was one of the most perfectly constructed moments of my life, and I thought I would share it with you.

Sub Days?

...sigh.

God Kills Another Puppy

I was once lamenting the impending demise of Acres of Books with fellow bibliophile Val (not Kilmer) who remarked: "Every time a bookstore closes, God kills a puppy." If this is true (and I see no reason why it shouldn't be), then Heaven's doggy door will be a-swingin on Saturday, when Borders on Third Street Promenade gives its employees their last bag checks.

Since Borders is a mega-chain, not a unique treasure, though, maybe the puppy won't be quite as lovable as the one dispatched in Acres' honor. Maybe a puppy less like this:

And more like this:

Cute, but not unbearably so.

Whatever the associated puppy looks like, the closing of a bookstore is always a sad thing. This sadness is usually associated with an uncomfortable elation, since bookstore closures are often accompanied by closing sales. And, with such ridiculous savings to be had, the life of a vulture is a little less... um... gross.

Anyway. Carrion bird metaphors aside, bookstore closing sales are freaking tasty treats. Borders @ Third Street is offering 40% off everything, except Paperchase items, which are 75% off. Plus, all the fixtures are on sale, prompting me to ask Brian on more than one occasion: "Yes, but what would you do with it?"

I browsed half-heartedly through the shelves, which were, on Tuesday, already sparsely populated mockeries of their former selves. A half-dozen books from various sections in the store would be stacked on a random shelf among a haphazard collection of DVDs, greeting cards, and the occasional coffee cup. And everywhere were books I'd seen elsewhere and thought about getting: the Hapa Project's book, collections of religious scriptures, novels I might one day want to read by authors I know I'd love if I just gave them a chance. I had to keep reminding myself that 40% off was 60% on, and if I only half wanted the book... well, you do the math. And I was doing the math on a small stack of treasures when I was pleased to overhear the following:

Sixteen Year Old Girl: Oh my God! I love this guy!
Obliging Father: I don't know who that is.
SYOG: William S. Burroughs? He was one of the Beats.

SYOG went on to give her father a mini-lesson on Burroughs, the Beats, and the significance of the newly published And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks. It was so cool. In the end, the line was just a little bit too long to convince me to whip out ye ol Visa card. And I was happy to leave my stack of treasures behind, in the hope that another girl and her father might bond over them and the closing sale that made them 40% more buyable.

Here's to books, and bookstores, and the puppies whose fates to theirs are forever tied.

Teacher Supplies: Goodbye to another Long Beach tradition

As part of our Long Beach renaissance since returning from our road trip, Mike and I have been spending time and money in parts of our city we'd like to see return to glory. Topping the list is Belmont Shore, that part of Second Street that used to be home to independent shops and eateries, became a dumping ground for expensive boutiques and chain stores, and is slowly getting its identity back. When I was a kid, my family used to go down to Belmont Shore most weekends, eating lunch at Hamburger Henry's (best burgers EVER), strolling down for dessert at Grandma's Sugarplums (chocolate-covered everything!) and spending untold hours at Dodd's Bookstore (the whole front room was Dover classics). There was a random restaurant that had fake snow on the roof, and my dad would always lift me up to touch it. All of these landmarks are gone now, of course, replaced many times over by cafés and clothing stores that appeal to the tiny dog owners (syntactic ambiguity!) the BSBA courts. I'm not bitter, I just miss it.

Regardless of the changes over the years, including the closing of Hamburger Henry's doors, which was apocalyptic for our family, all of our trips to Belmont Shore– every single trip– included a visit to the Teacher Supplies store. If you've spent time in this charmingly wood-shingled store, you know what I mean when I say it's magical. In one corner of the store is an extremely satisfying collection of toys, puppets, and board games. In another, an extensive library of children's books, ranging from the newest Caldecott winner to books that were old when my papa read them to me twenty years ago. The rest of the store is populated with all the oddly-shaped, fantastically-colored odds and ends that are endemic to classrooms, this store, and no where else. Blocks that teach addition, maps of California missions, cardboard designed to hang on peg-boards, and countless other tools of the profession designed to delight and encourage the student imagination.


All of the above hopes to serve as explanation for why, on November 1st, about two months into my teaching credential program, I was dismayed to see "Going Out of Business" signs in the windows that peek into this extraordinary store. Retirement Sale! Up to 75% off! These are not banners you want to see hanging on a treasure like this, one that has endured and endured since 1971 as the rest of the street has changed, morphing into something a little less magical.

Stephen and I went in last week to look around and say our goodbyes. As I meandered through the children's library, I noticed how many of the books were dog-eared and well-loved by children like me over the past thirty years. Next to the ones that, judging from their age, were very likely the same copies of the books I thumbed through as a kid, there were new books addressing today's children: books about Obama, books about gay parents, books that should be discovered and browsed through in just such a city as ours, in just such a place as this.

The signs outside had led me to believe that maybe, after almost forty years of operation, the owner had gotten tired of running a retail store and had decided to travel, or to otherwise enjoy a well-deserved retirement. I was sad to see Teacher Supplies go, but I understood that change comes, even to places we most want to remain the same. But, as I stood in the store I overheard a conversation between a woman buying an extravagant marionette and one of the store's familiar long-time employees.

Puppet Purchaser: You're going out of business, hm? Don't you do good business here?
Friendly Face: Well, the toys do very well, but the teachers just don't have any money. We can't afford to make the store all-toys, so we have to close down.

Ouch. "The teachers just don't have any money." No money for foil-adorned #2 pencils (in bulk), no money for bright cardboard strips to border bulletin boards, no money for the boxed set of Jataka Stories lesson plans I found hidden on a top shelf, and no money to keep a Long Beach treasure in business.

I went into the store to buy something symbolic to put in my own classroom someday, as a relic of this place that meant so much to me as a child who loved to learn. I saw that the stock of the entire children's book section was on sale, along with the fixtures, for about a thousand bucks, and I almost gave Mike a call.

Taylor Mali on what teachers make

Danfriend showed me this video, and it's pretty much great. I thought I'd share it with you.



I have a feeling I'll be watching it many times over the next few years...

More Sub Days, and More to Come!

Hiya-

I think I'll have a real blarg in the next few days, but here's a tantalizing hint: today, in the mail, I got a package of letters from a 7th grade homeroom class apologizing for their collective behavior when I subbed for them on Wednesday.  I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it's definitely weird.

Also, I hope everyone had an astonishingly good Halloween.  I, for one, am Chicken Hat.

Sub Days 2 & 3: It's a Learning Process

Last week I subbed two half-days at Garfield Elementary in West Long Beach. I can definitely say I'm getting better, though some of that confidence obviously comes from being able to tell the students that their teacher will be back in three hours. But it turns out that a lot of being a competent sub (and, remember, that's what teachers are hoping for. If you're actually good, that's just being an over-achiever) is pretending you know what you're doing. You know, act like you've been there before, even when you've got something called "recess duty" and you have no idea what you're supposed to be doing.

I mean really. They're playing some version of kickball that makes no sense to me.

Here are some things I've learned. Future educators, take note!

1. Bring a water bottle. For serious, this has been my number one difficulty so far. It takes a lot of spit to constantly ask kids to sit down and be quiet, and when all the little childers have their ice cold Sparkletts sitting unappreciated on their desks, wasted condensation dripping onto folded paper towels, it's almost too much to bear. My first day I cupped my hands and gulped faucet water from the back of the classroom during recess. On Friday, I seriously contemplated taking some birdie sips from an abandoned Aquafina while its owner was at lunch.

2. Wear reasonable shoes. Last week I felt that my status as an authority figure was undermined by my Converse sneakers when I had three separate second-graders comment that we were shoe twins. For Tuesday's gig, I wore these slip-ons (I think Sarah Jessica Parker would call them "flats"?) that I'd gotten from Target but never worn. By Friday, my pinky-toe blister had gone down enough that I could wear my comfy four-year-old boots. Besides the fact that a first-grader asked if I'd been born in Texas, by the end of the day I could barely stand up. So. I need shoes that are comfortable, are appropriate in every situation, and won't make me look like a Texan. I've already got them, but they're against dress code.3. Pick your battles. During my Tuesday gig (in a fifth grade classroom), I was teaching a lesson on sequence words. I started with the sentence "I got picked for kickball," and invited the students to add words to the sentence and, eventually, add sentences to the story. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for making up the lesson on the fly, and the kids were pretty into it. One girl in the back corner just couldn't stop talking to the people in her group, most of whom seemed to want to participate in the lesson. I called on her to add a sentence to our story.

Girl in the Back Corner: I kicked a home-run.
Me: Okay. Can you add a sequence word to that? Something that tells us when it happens in the story?
GitBC: Oh. I kicked a big-ass home-run.

Ugh. What do I do here? I don't want to give her the satisfaction of stopping the class and making everyone focus on her while I reprimand her. So I don't react. I keep pressing her until she gives an appropriate answer, and then I move on and finish the lesson. Success, or close enough.

4. Read the signs. Not in a mystical, crystal-bally kinda way. In a "check to make sure you're not parking in a Tuesday street-sweeping zone" kinda way. Nothing like losing two-thirds of your day's pay ten minutes after walking into the job.

5. Don't let it get to you. On Friday, I was a "roving sub," spending 45 minutes in each of four different classrooms. My last assignment was in a Kindergarten class, which I limped to in my boots, bending all the way down to a knee-high drinking fountain on the way. The kids were returning from recess in a single-file line, and I followed them into the classroom. Halfway there, the last five kids in line stopped, turned around, looked at me, and busted up laughing. Busted up! Inexplicably!! It was. So. Weird. That is all.

I might spend this next week doing some more classroom observation, so I'll have some time to let these life lessons marinate before I try and convince my feet to get back into their shoes. Substituting is odd, folks, but I think I might be getting the hang of it a little bit.