Mr. B's Class - Day One

Day One

     Good morning (or whatever time it is where [and when] you are), and welcome to Mr. B’s class. I am truly glad to have you here and sincerely hope you get something from the time you spend with me. Fortunately for both of us, the class is not 45 or 90 minutes long. You are free to come and go as you please. If ten minutes is all you can take, fine. If you find something interesting and spend two hours here, that’s also fine.

     There is no homework; there are no quizzes or tests. There are no papers to write or speeches to give. As I say to all my classes, there are three things that if you tell me, I have to tell someone else. First, if you threaten to hurt someone, I have to pass that along. If you threaten to hurt yourself, I have to let someone know. And if you are being abused in any way, shape or form, I have to tell. If you tell me you do drugs, I won’t like it, but that is your business as long as you know eventually there will come a time when you will either end up clean or dead.

     I also say that if you lie to me once, it will be a long time before I can ever believe or trust you again.

     And, finally, a saying almost every student who has spent time with me knows, “You don’t have to like everyone, but you have to get along. 

     Before we get too far along, it’s only fair that you know a little bit about me: I am Mr. B.  I am originally a Flatlander from Massachusetts where I was born and grew up in what was a liberal middle-class family with both parents and a younger brother. I currently live in rural New Hampshire where I have been for 44 years, the last 37 of which were in a place called Rumney (population 1,480 at the 2010 census). I have moved from my liberal to to a middle-0f-the-road moderate. 

     I am the third most interesting person in the world. The first is that beer-promoting bearded guy who won a staring contest with his own reflection and goes to Spain to have the bulls run from him. The second is all of the rest of you and your experiences and stories! I am third.

     I was genuine card-carrying member of Mensa, but gave up my membership. I know a little bit about a lot rather than vice-versa. I am a retired high school Language Arts teacher and an occasionally published writer with my pieces having appeared in A 6^th Bowl of Chicken Soup for the Soul (turned into a segment on the Chicken Soup TV series), Yankee magazine, Grit magazine, and various New Hampshire newspapers and tourist publications. Besides my dabbling at writing, I am also a Justice of the Peace (so understand what I mean when I say, “I want to marry you!”). I am also currently ‘casually working’ (an oxymoron?) on several writing projects (of which this is one). And I usually don’t bite.

     Everything that follows is true (unless it isn’t), and everything included in this book either comes directly from my life experiences or has been personally collected and selected by me for inclusion here, and as I am unique in all the world (as you are), that makes this book also unique. I am only going to suggest what a work (essay, story, quote, etc.) might be saying; if you see something else, good for you! While there are parameters, there is a lot of room for interpretation. As a result, I learned from my students as I hope they learned from me.

     In my three score and ten years on earth (as of this writing), I have become who I am because of everything that has come before – good and bad. No one else has fully shared all of the same experiences I have, has had all the same friends who have who have come and gone in my life, read all the same books I have read, seen all the same movies and TV shows I have watched, visited the same places I have visited, et cetera (pet peeve time: if you look at the two Latin words I just wrote, you will see they shouldn’t be abbreviated ‘ect.,’ which many people don’t ever seem to get. When you looked at [and I presume mentally pronounced] the actual words, you will see how ‘etc’ is the correct abbreviation. There is no extra charge for that lesson [or any of the others scattered about along the way ahead]; your admission price covers it all.)

 
     It occurred to me that our what should be ever-changing perception of life is based on those things I have read, seen, experienced, etc. So, what follows is a look at some of those things that have made a difference in my life and how I have learned to see and deal with the world (even though I am still a work in progress and still just as failingly human as all the rest of you). It is chock full of what I believe to be essential life truths (yes, my truths, but I like who I have become and how I think, so I feel they are at least worthy of your consideration), some straight talk, life lessons, allusions (not illusions, allusions – an allusion is a reference to someone or something else the writer [or speaker] expects the reader [or listener] to know - for example, if I was walking in a school hallway with a colleague and there was a young couple in front of us holding hands, I might say, “Check out Romeo and Juliet up there.” I would expect the listener to at least know who Romeo and Juliet are and what I mean), subtle (and not-so-subtle) humor, intended and unintended symbolism, etc., but it is really meant to just be read and maybe thought about. Allusions add a depth of understanding for the reader, thoughts beyond just the words on the page.

     Because you as readers are all different, when you are finished with this book you will all take away different things – you will get whatever you get, and I can virtually guarantee (warning: weasel word [whenever you see ‘virtually’ in an ad, substitute the word ‘almost’ or ‘not’]) you will all get something somewhere along the way. I hope you occasionally smile, get angry, laugh out loud (rolling on the floor laughing your, uh, posterior off if you wish), cry, roll your eyes, ponder, and get in touch with what I offer. It is my style to be reader friendly, to write as if you are sitting right here with me with me talking to you, so sit back and (I may be a bit presumptuous here) plunge right in - the writing’s fine.

     First, I want you to understand that you are okay! Really! There is nothing wrong with you despite what others may try to lead you to believe, and try they will. Bullying does not have to do with you; hard as it is to understand at the time, it’s the bully who has the problem. When people try to bring you down, it’s because they are below you. Knowing that does not solve the problem, but it’s a start. Bullies are among the worst people in the world, and if you believe in karma, they will eventually get theirs!

     If you do some looking online to better understand bullying, there is much to learn. “I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: ‘The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.’ In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.” – Bertrand Russell (a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate). This topic deserves an entire examination, but not now. There will be no bullying here! Quite the opposite! I want you to grow to like and appreciate who you are.

     When it comes to literature, it does one well to read the works offered more than once. The first reading is for some familiarity. The second often helps the reader start to make sense of what’s offered, and the third really lets you start to see more depth.

     I would like to start with a short poem by Carl Sandburg called “Phizzog.”

Phizzog

This face you got,
This here phizzog you carry around,
You never picked it out for yourself
at all, at all—-did you?
This here phizzog—-somebody handed it
to you–am I right?
Somebody said, “Here’s yours, now go see
what you can do with it.”
Somebody slipped it to you and it was like
a package marked:
“No goods exchanged after being taken away”—
This face you got.

     First, the word ‘physiognomy’ (a real word) means simply the appearance of a person's face or a person's facial features – Sandburg familiarized and lightened up the word by using ‘phizzog.’ Through a roll of the genetic dice, you look the way you do, which should be fine, but the media has taught that instead of people just being people, there are good-looking and less-good-looking people. It’s easy to say that it’s what’s inside that really matters, but that got lost somewhere along the way.

     In my book (no pun intended), people are people and it is what’s inside, your heart, that makes people good or bad, not how they look. I try to put all labels aside and judge people by whether they are good people or not. With many, it’s fairly clear (through their words, but more importantly, their actions), but with others (many of us), there are plenty of shades of gray (maybe not 50, but plenty.

     Read the following short poem by Leonard Cohen. It says so much more than the words on the page:

“All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann”

EYES:……………………………………Medium
HAIR:……………………………………Medium
WEIGHT:………………………………Medium
HEIGHT:………………………………Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten
NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten
INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green saliva?

Madness?

     Of course if you have never heard of Adolph Eichmann, we have a problem. In short, Eichmann was just an ordinary-looking person who headed the Gestapo Department IV B4 for Jewish Affairs, serving as a self proclaimed 'Jewish specialist' and was the man responsible for keeping the trains rolling from all over Europe carrying Jews and others to death camps during the Final Solution. (www.historyplace.com)

     We obviously can’t judge a book by its cover as illustrated above. There are human monsters that walk among us, and they look like you and me.

A New Start (again).

     Start here, and please disregard everything that has come before. 
     I want to start fresh, and since this site has already been set up, here I go. This will also serve as a way to see if anything has changed her regarding procedures, etc..
      I will start with a short post and see what happens.

     ***

     I suspect once a teacher, always a teacher. I have dabbled with writing a book called Mr. B's Class, but in spite of the pages and pages of 'stuff I have accumulated, it is clear I am unable to take the next step to organize and present it. I have a new respect for writers who have it together enough to make the creation and presentation a reality.
     On Facebook, I have a good number of 'friends,' over 1,300. Many were students I had when I taught. As I follow their day-to-day posts, I am thinking I still have a lot to offer to help others make sense of life and make it a bit easier.
     So, I decided to lift bits and pieces from what I have already started and present it here. If all works as I hope, maybe these offerings will eventually be joined together to present that longer work. Maybe.
     For now, I will post this to see if it gets out there and still works. If so, I will be back.
     (And if you see this, please let me know - thanks!)