random thoughts

I hold out absolutely no hope for my first hour class on the RU Ready essay tomorrow. I have seven who are either in special ed or should be. If they work, their work is very poor. There are four or five other students who just don't care. Then there are four or five who will rock the test. What can you do?


My second block is a different story. While I still have four or five who are special ed or should be and who will struggle, I have about 10 who will rock the test.

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Last night Kristie and I went to a girls basketball game in our hometown. The JV game was a wild one. Double overtime. The first time my hometown trailed was in OT. They had a good 15 point lead but blew it. The opponent tied the game with a three pointer as the buzzer rang. Then a girl from my hometown tied it up to force a second OT with her own three pointer with just a few second remaining. They finally ran out of steam in the second OT, but it was a wild ride.


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I finished reading the Time article “How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century.” While I’ll let this digest and add a blog worthy of the article and its ideas, I did find one thing really interesting. The article concludes with a statement from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. They have concluded from various studies that kids lack respect and punctuality as well as the abilities to work well as part of a team and how to shake hands properly.

While I agree that those things are important in the 21st Century, I also must say that those things are NOT taught in school. I don’t have time to teach kids how to shake someone’s hand or to be punctual. In the past those skills were learned at home. Not school.

So if we want to update our schools and get them into the 21st Century, we need the home environments of the late 19th Century and early to mid 20th Century(a mom, a dad, and several children all working together (usually in a rural environment for mutual success)!

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On Sunday Barb, Kevin, and I went out to Dad's to get an inventory of his belongings and to take items that we wanted. I am taking a handcrafted desk built by my great grandfather. I also took a large number of my toys - namely my Ewok Village and Death Star playsets from my beloved Star Wars collection. Koko is having a fit that I won't let her play with it. But I've kept this stuff in top condition since 1977, and I'm not about to let it get ruined now.

This morning as I was looking at the Death Star, I was reminded of how my grandmother and I would play with it. I never saw the original film in theaters, but I did see it on HBO about a thousand times. My brother rigged out TV with aluminum tinfoil around the TV cable that fit into the back of our TV - we were able to get free HBO - though it was in black and white.

It was the first film I ever memorized - from Princess Leah’s capture to the Death Star’s demise, I knew it verbatim.

I begged and pleaded and finally for the Christmas of 1978 my grandmother bought me the Death Star. It remains as my most beloved childhood possession.

Looking at it this morning I thought of one of my favorite childhood memories --


I rarely remember the TV even being on at Granny’s. It should have been. It was large, compared to ours.

Finally, I begged Granny to let me watch Star Wars, which was airing on HBO. Not that she’d ever pay for such a thing, but rather it was part of a special where they offered a week of free HBO to entice viewers. I was ready to use this to my full advantage. Granny relented and watched me mimic the entire film with my action figures.

“So that’s it,” she said nonplussed.

“It was great,” I said as I made away in my X-Wing fighter from the destroyed death star, which really doubled as her old foot rest for the chair.

“So what happens next?” Granny asked. Her patented sneer beginning to hook in the right corner of her mouth

“Nothing. That’s it. The movie is over.”

“I know the movie is over, but the story isn’t.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” I demanded.

“Why? Because some one tells you it? Because the movie has ended? Why don’t you make up the rest of the story on your own?”

“What?” I was shocked. I never knew this was permitted! Already I felt my brain devising new scenarios and alternative endings.

Granny recognized the determined look chiseled on my face and said, “Well, the Dark knight with the voice of James Earl Jones . . .”

“His name is Darth Vadar, Granny. I’ve told you that a million times!”

“Okay. Okay. Darth Vadar survived. Now I’m sure he is going to want revenge on the Rebels for destroying his space station.”

Whoa. That was good. And it was making sense. Why should it be over? I thought back to my all-time favorite bedtime story: Beowulf. First he had to battle Grendel. Then his mother sought revenge. Then he had to fight the dragon. There had to be more! It was true!

“Now, Darth Vadar was left twirling around in his space ship.”

“His Tie Fighter” I said, hoisting my toy replica up.

“Okay, so what is he going to do?” She said seizing the toy from me and turning it end over end.

“He’ll be mad,” I said and instantly thought of how he strangled the rebel commanders neck and left him a crumpled ball in the very start of the film when he wouldn’t divulge where the stolen design plans for the Death Star were.

“Yes. So he will seek revenge. It’s a classic story line.”

It was true. Grendel’s mother attacked Beowulf for revenge. In another of my all-time favorite stories that Granny recited, Mordrid attacked King Arthur for revenge.

“What about Luke and Hand Solo?” She asked.

“Han, Granny. It’s Han Solo.”

She was on to something here. I didn’t have to just reenact the same scenes over and over as I had about a thousand times over the past four months.

From that moment on, I rarely finished a movie. By then my mind was so keyed up to take liberties with the story, that I would be bored by the second act and off acting out my version of the movie and how it should end.

And it was all because of Granny and that little question, “So what happens next?”