Like Sands Through an Hourglass

I pour through beer!

To me, there are few sensory impulses that conjure up lost memories quite like that of the sense of smell. There are those occasions where I detect an odor, a scent, a perfume...something long lost in the confusion of the years, repressed and packed far away into the darkest, web-adorned recesses of my mind. When I see a picture, it reminds me. When I feel a certain touch or tickle, I've most likely felt it recently anyway, so the novelty is gone. When I taste a food, I've tasted something, again, that I've had recently, chiefly due to my obsessive-compulsive nature and my ratcheted routine of following a consistent (-ly bland) diet. When I hear a sound, a song...admittedly, those can take me back, too, but I routinely listen to the repetitive auditory fodder that I've kept spinning in the same, inevitable rotation since 1992.

To smell, though, something I haven't sensed in a long time...oh, Christ, that can take me back. When I walked into one of my comrade's rooms today, I instantly picked up a sweet, strong smell that grabbed me at my soul and jerked my being back to 1982, to a spring day in 2nd grade with Mrs. Smith at Lake Harbin Elementary. I suddenly was reminded of fresh crayons, construction paper, that crumbling paste that we so often tasted (if not devoured...hello, low test scores), and of the happy days of songs and play that so filled our little 7-year-old hearts with glee.

Those were good times, to be sure. To paraphrase Steinbeck, "no care then, I knew not sin. And we have not been happy since".

+++++++

I would be a complete pessimist if I agreed with that last statement. Life has been good, though not overly easy, but it has been rewarding and, so far, healthy. Honestly, it hasn't been that hard. I've plenty of sin, but I remain happy and will continue to be happy regardless of any transgressions of past, present, or future. We all learn much, and our education is never ending.

Thank God school does, though.

I'm no saint, but I'm no horrible sinner. What "sins" I've committed are relatively self-inflicted, not harming others. My scroll is relatively sparse with charged punishments, thank you very much. Thanks to Mrs. Steiner, too, I remain the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.

Memories.

I digressed a bit, but back to the subject of the olfactory. Since my grade school days and my era lacking sin (which was probably more brief than I'd like to admit), I've experienced a great deal and much of that experience has been quite nice, indeed. Of all the scents that my nostrils take in, there's one that always hits the spot, regardless of how much I may have worn that odor through my nasal passages:

Beer.

Yes, it sounds sick and depraved, and, perhaps, it is. To me, though, the hops and that crisp, alive smell just rips me back in time, to a time when things are good, great, wonderful...sublime and supreme.

Last week was rough. The kids were testing, and, as any school teacher can tell you, adjusted schedules outside of the daily grind makes the child go wild. The afternoons were bitter and my passion for the job dissipated rapidly throughout the week. By week's end, I was finding myself sipping out of a beer bottle in the afternoons. The late afternoon hours are wonderful for this...the sun is setting, the contrast of the light and shadows on the trees brings out the depth and texture of the landscape, the little creatures are scurrying about eating the vegetation on the ground and playing in the cooler hours of the late day. I grilled these afternoons, because the only thing that nearly rivals the scent of a beer is the wafting smell of searing meat. This can swipe me back to many a tailgate in Athens, a Greek festival as a kid, a south Georgia Jazz Festival, a pep rally pig roast in the middle of a country field.

Beer, though, invokes the spirit of the muse of utter bliss. I don't know if there's a muse for that, maybe a god or a cherub, but there's someone watching over that one, and everyone loves it when this guy pays us a visit. I took a good, deep drag off of the bottle and let my lips pop off the end of the bottle like a suction cup releasing from a window. The scent drifted up, and my head grew light, my body rose and travelled northeast to Athens and plopped me right down in a chair outside of Rocky's Pizza during another late afternoon, a Saturday, during the Twilight Criterium. Being surrounded by people, by friends, by music and beer, all during daylight hours...drinking wasn't being done in the shameful and hidden corners of bars. This was out in the open, celebrated. Beer was great. The day and time were better.

Another time I often drift back to was the free outdoor concert that Widespread Panic held in the late 90's. Another comes only with Corona, putting me on a beach during Spring Break, not drunk or stoned or womanizing, just sitting there drinking a beer as the skies turned red and the sun went down. Someone was playing a guitar, someone smoking a cigarette, someone was laughing and we were all pink as slamon with cheeks of bright red and hair bleached blonde by the coastal sun. We were out of our trunks and into khakis, t-shirts and light cotton shirts. Nothing could be better in the world, no matter how fantastic you may have described it to all of us. You couldn't beat it.

I drink Guinness I think of my friend Marc, I drink Michelob Ultra and I think of my friend Keith. I drink scotch (not beer, but you get the idea) I think of Vegas. I drink a wine cooler I think about the Redcoat Band and Jacksonville, Florida (who knew Jacksonville would've been considered a good place?). If I drink a good import, I generally think of New York or Alexandria, Virginia and watching the Kentucky Derby at an Irish Pub that had a little corner for Ronald Reagan reserved.

It's not the taste, though...it's always the smell. Somehow, the taste doesn't matter all that much, but the bouquet makes it complete. The drink will lighten your head, but the scent will lighten your soul.

Next time you have a beer, try it for yourself. Take a drink, then take a whiff. If you don't go back to something good, you just haven't been living.

Recent Poll Shows 70% of Americans Believe the War is Lost

Subsequent polls also showed that most Americans:

- Can't find Iraq on a map.

- Don't know what happened in India in 1947 after the British pulled out.

- Read headlines on papers but not the information contained within most of the time.

- Only express concern about the middle east when gas prices rise.

- Don't understand what effects the price of gasoline, but damn sure feel that the president has something to do with it.

- Believe in exorcisms.

- Believe in ghosts.

- Believe in bigfoot.

- Think the summer season is caused because the Earth has moved closer to the sun (believe it or not, the Earth is actually slightly closer on it's elliptical orbit during our winter months).

- Think that your digestive system can be cleansed with mystical liquids and through colonics, and that old foods are still lodged in the colon.

God, I love this country! The one great thing about teaching is that you know you'll always be needed...ignorance and stupidity are fast becoming our largest national commodity, and it ain't going away.

So, a guy goes to the doctor...

To get an annual checkup. After the doctor runs his tests, he tells the patient that he's "pretty healthy".

Worried about the "pretty" part, the patient asked the doctor, "Doc, will I live to be 80?"

"Let me ask you a few questions first," posed the doctor. "Do you drink alcoholic beverages or smoke cigars or cigarettes?"

"No," replied the health-conscious patient. "Those things are all very bad for you".

"Okay, so do you eat fatty foods, lots of red meat, french fries, fast food," asked the doctor.

"My last doctor told me those things were bad, and that movie about fast food...ugh, I avoid all that stuff".

"Do you spend a lot of time outdoors, in the sun, sailing and fishing or hunting or boating..."

"Nope," replied the patient.

"Alright, then," stated the med. "Do you gamble, drive too fast, have lots of sex?"

"No, I avoid those even more than the fast food," stated the proud patient. "So, doc...will I live to be 80?"

Replied the doctor, "why would you give a shit?"

Teacher Request Results in Student Protest, Parent Demonstrations

Dateline: Knoxville, Tennessee

Apparently, the three "R"s aren't getting it done in school anymore, or so says one local middle school teacher.

Students at Bill Clifford, Jr. Middle School staged a protest in light of comments made by 6th grade science teacher Johnathon Longfellow, and community reaction that has followed has been equally heated.

"This is the most heinous things I've ever heard out of a teacher in my life," claims Martha Newberry, mother of 6th grade student Newt Newberry. "Mr. Longfellow needs to be removed from the classroom immediately!"

"I mean, we were just sittin' there talkin' and stuff, and all of the sudden, Mr. Longfellow goes off and says that horrible stuff," added Newt, in tears. "I mean, we're doin' nothin' wrong. He thinks school is all serious and stuff".

A group of about 40 parents and 80 students gathered near the flagpole of Clifford Middle School Monday to demonstrate their disdain for Longfellow and the methodology he applies to his classroom. Some parents plan to attend the Wednesday evening School Board Meeting to demand his dismissal.

"Honestly, you'd think I hit one of the kids by the way they're acting. Apparently, it's much worse to try to challenge them than to beat them," said a calm Longfellow as he was placing his personal effects into the trunk of his car. "In all my years of teaching, I've seen some bizarre things, but this event rests firmly upon the apex above them all".

Longfellow, a 24 year teaching veteran of the small southern school district, has seen the days of classroom education change in many ways, but the events of Monday morning, according to the educator, is indicative of the direction in which education is slowly sliding.

"I was attempting to lead the class in a critical thinking activity about global warming, based on information we had - strike that, I mean, I had - gathered off of the internet for them. As we were arriving at some conclusions, I challenged them to look at the information and to try to arrive at a decision on the causes of global warming, you know, whether it was being accelerated by man or if it were caused by inevitable forces of nature," claims Longfellow.

"After taking another 20 minutes to explain what 'inevitable' and 'accelerated' and 'nature' and 'man' all meant, I realized that most were not paying attention to the information and were simply repeating things they'd heard on TV, which are largely based on misinformation or, what's worse, politicians".

"Yeah, he was talkin all faggoty and stuff, usin' big words like 'indivisible' and stuff," said Raine Porter, a student of Longfellow's. "I mean, who he think he is, Dr. Doolittle or somethin? He just a teacher."

Continues Longfellow, "so, I told them to actually read the information for a change, working in groups (Longfellow claims that half of his students cannot read on a second grade level), and to come back to me in 20 minutes with a scientifically rational answer. Of course, I spent the next ten minutes explaining 'rational' to the group".

It was then that this little school turned heads across the nation. With one bold statement, Longfellow may have brought his teaching career to an end.

"So, ten minutes go by and we get back together. When asked for better responses, they simply stated the same thing they had twenty minutes before, except this time they claimed that they had the facts to back it up. When I asked them for the facts, they could not find any, and cited the television again. I pointed out that two of the articles - one about the "Little Ice Age" that ended in the mid 1800s and the fall line across Georgia that indicated that half of the state was once underwater - provided evidence that icecaps have melted once before and that it was more a force of nature than of man. I told them - and this is the apparent source of grievance - that 'if they took a minute to actually think for a minute, much of this would not be so hard'".

The powderkeg lit, students exploded into a frenzy.

"I started textin my friend, like "lol, he so crzy" and she texted me back with "nfw, o no he dint, he tel us 2 think?" Yeah, we were callin' our mommas right then and there," stated Porter.

"Apparently, they all had cell phones and they had all been very active during class with them. A parent actually showed up to my classroom door five minutes later. It's funny, I've tried to get that parent in here at least three dozen times throughout the school year, and she finally showed up today" said Longfellow, obviously disturbed. "I never knew that asking so mundane a thing would result in such fervor".

It's no surprise that a call for intelligent action in the classroom has created such a disruption at the Middle School. For example:

- In the Fall of 1999, parents directed a rally on school grounds against an administrative decision to implement a 30-minute-per-weeknight math homework policy to try to boost the school's math scores by practicing basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Parents complained on the basis that they couldn't help their children with the homework, despite its simplicity. When the former principal retorted by telling the parents that "if your kids paid attention in school, there'd be no need to help them". The comment resulted in the immediate dismissal of the principal and an abandonment of the policy.

- In 2002, the literacy program at Clifford Middle attempted to implement a writing policy program that encouraged thirty minutes of creative writing skills in class per day. After two months of the program, students rejected the efforts, claiming it intruded on valuable "talkin' time". Parents argued in favor of the student.

- In 2004, a Resource Office for the school was fired after giving an anti-drug speech called "Drugs are Bad - Pushers Are Worse". Parents of the students attending the speech successfully sued the School Board in a class action defamation suit, claiming that the R.O. was telling kids that their own parents were, indeed, worse than drugs.

Since 1992, tests scores at Clifford Middle have dropped from a one-time high of 98% success rates to an abyssmal 5% "barely meets" rate on CRCT testing. In the same span of time, free and reduded lunch applications rose from 2% in 1992 to 100% for the 2006-2007 school year. These numbers are surprising given that the communities that attend Clifford Middle have the highest per capita cell phone usage in the state and contain fifteen Mercedes Benz and Hummer businesses that enjoy the highest lease percentages amongst nationwide dealers.

"I guess it's a sign of the times," sighed Longfellow as he placed his articles in the trunk of his 1983 Honda Accord. "I shouldn't have said it in such simple English. If I had said something like 'provided that you fired off neurons that ran the course of your medulla oblongata and generated electricity in the gray matter of your cranium, you'd find it all elementary'. They wouldn't have understood three words of that...fact of the matter is, 99% of your readers wouldn't either".

When asked what he might do next for a profession, Longfellow remained pensive. "Perhaps I'll choose something more rewarding, working with things of greater intelligence and common sense".

Where and with whom that will be?

"Maybe in Antarctica, working with jellyfish" replied Longfellow.

Welcome to the Lighter Side...

Well, there are at least three of you who read my screeds, so I figured I'd offer a slightly lighter side to my rants and ravings.

This would be the calming ying that accompanies my raging (and often dominant) yang.

Thanks for reading, enjoy...