Down the Tube, Rube!

This week, the entire Reading Department of the building I work in, the third and fourth grade building, went across the street to the kindergarten, first, and second grade building to assess the second graders' reading capabilities for instructional placement in third grade.  It's been a tough week for me.  Before there was a plan to visit the latter building, I had arranged to take Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off to spend with my wife Jackie in Cape May, New Jersey celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary, and those plans were carried out very nicely.  Thursday I accompanied the third graders on a field trip to the Herr's Potato Chip Factory.  Friday was finally my day to join my already exhausted coworkers in the time consuming task at hand.  It wasn't a good day.  Joining an operation such as this on the final day was frustrating.  Now, I'm not one to stir up trouble, but I had to learn the system created by the Reading Specialist in a matter of minutes, and although I had not been in the company of my colleagues for most of the week, it was 'Let's Pick on Joe Day' in the 90% female Department.  It was like they had planned their barbs and banter while I basked on the beach.  When the task was finished, I volunteered to take the cart full of materials from one building to another, which involved walking across the street and uphill in the wind and rain.  As I proceeded to the elevator of the testing building, a class of second graders was lined up against the wall waiting for their next instruction from their teacher, and the elevator door opened.  I entered the elevator with my cart.  I could hear a short second grade conversation as the door was shutting that sounded like this:

STUDENT 1:  Who's that?

STUDENT 2:  I don't know.  I think he's the janitor.

STUDENT 3:  That's not the janitor, that's Rube Goldberg!

I had heard the name Rube Goldberg, but couldn't remember who he was, so I 'Googled' him and discovered that he is a renowned cartoonist, author, engineer, and inventor.  I also learned that a Rube Goldberg Machine is one that is complicated in design, and is used to perform the simplest tasks.  

A Rube Goldberg Machine

Now that I had been enlightened, I had no problem accepting the correlation between Mr. Goldberg and myself. Then I saw his picture.  

Rube Goldberg

Yes, those three darling second graders accessed their prior knowledge of a gray haired, intelligent looking, mild mannered curmudgeon named Rube Goldberg, and made a connection between him and me.  

The barbs and banter, the trip uphill, the gray hair, looking old.....um.....distinguished:  DOWN THE TUBE, INEVITABLE........
Celebrations of happy milestones, basking on the beach and kids accessing prior knowledge and making connections:   PRICELESS!

All in all, a great week after all!  

The Month of May: NonSense, Car Sense, and Perfect Sense

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.  It has actually been suggested to me that I analyze the force that is behind the words.   Sometimes I get inspired and the words flow from my brain to the keyboard to the computer screen in a matter of minutes.  Sometimes one piece takes weeks to write.  In either case, blogging has become as essential to me as a workout to a health conscious man, the icing on a baker’s cake, or even the message from the clergyman’s sermon - it makes PERFECT SENSE.
Blogging is a way to write about my fascination with words.  When I write, I get the chance to explore synonyms, multi-meaning words, adjectives, homonyms, and a whole slew of word possibilities.  For example, this month I learned a new word – ramps.  Oh, I knew the word before.  They were inclined alternatives to a set of stairs or an escalator.  Now, thanks to the expertise of my sister Lisa, I can eat cooked ramps.  They are bitter leek-like onions.  This accesses my prior knowledge of the word leek, and how I knew that in both my distant and recent past, it was spelled leak and was associated with a troublesome trickle.  In the present, however, the ea has become ee, and it is a ramp-like onion.  In short, I can be thankful that there are no leaks or leeks on the ramp, for that would be dangerously slippery, or I can be thankful that there are leeks and ramps, but not leaks and ramps, in my salad or on my pizza!  And don't even ask me about capers!  Someone's been hiding capers from me for the last 56 years.  Sounds like a caper caper!  What a disturbing yet fascinating language full of NONSENSE English is……….
Blogging is a way to poke fun at and survive life’s little aggravations.  For example, last Saturday I went to our car dealer to get some routine maintenance done on the car, and I figured I’d be in the waiting room for less than an hour. Alas, a multi-point inspection revealed some necessary brake work and the replacement of all four tires.  With the added work, my stay in the comfort room would be extended!   I began my sentence by perusing the small selection of magazines available.  I was not in the market for, and certainly could not afford a new car, so the fact that car magazines were there was a moot point; I knew I’d never be a male version of a fashionista, so why bother with the manly stuff; and my children have been raised, and it’s too late to see if I did it right, so I declined reading the Parenting periodicals.  With the paper resources having been exhausted, it was time to turn to electronics.  Praise the Lord for WIFI and cable television!  I had my netbook computer with me, so for the first couple of hours, I was occupied.  I must say, though, that the Internet gets boring after a while.  Words With Friends, though fun and educational, wears out its welcome quickly.  And how many new emails does one as popular as me get on a Saturday morning, and how many times can I do a send/receive without feeling like I’m wasting my time?  And let’s face it…God and Facebook friends forgive me…an overdose of Facebook is excruciating!  It was time to put the computer away and gaze at the television in the waiting room, which was perpetually set to on the Food Network.  Hours of my time were spent watching Garth Brooks’s wife teach me to cook, a new Grandmother making an outdoor Italian feast on a terrace decorated with lights, and Paula Deen telling me how to prepare a dish that she couldn’t eat anymore due to her diabetes.  It was torture. To add to the 'fun' of the day, the dealer only had three of the four tires in stock and would put them on for me, but I would need to return the following Tuesday to have the fourth tire put on.   The shop was understaffed and overworked on that Saturday, and four hours after I entered confinement, I was set free, but not without the knowledge that I would have to return.  So on Tuesday, yet another hour was spent in the cell, and the Food Network was still on and the same episodes of the same shows were airing.  It doesn't make sense to me, but I guess in the world of automobile dealers and mechanics, it's CAR SENSE.....
And of course, blogging is a way to acknowledge a milestone.  The milestone I am remembering right now is Jackie’s and my 30^th wedding anniversary.  We have been at the Jersey shore enjoying the Cape May beach, a trolley tour of the Victorian architecture of the city, and some of the best lunches and dinners we’ve had at restaurants in years, all while being treated like royalty at a bed and breakfast complete with afternoon tea and treats, and my personal favorite part of the trip, a whale and dolphin watching cruise.  We came to the shore at the perfect time:  before the Memorial Day rush and before the stifling hot weather.  We’re no strangers to excursions to the Jersey shore.  For as long as I can remember, I have been there nearly every year.  I have been a little tiny sand castle builder and wave jumper, a teenage boardwalk walker, a young married romance seeker, and a parent hand holder to little wave jumpers and boardwalk walkers.  This year, at all the attractions, at the Inn, and particularly on the boat, I noticed the number of older looking folks enjoying the ambiance of Cape May.  Many had trouble walking or getting up, many had gray hair and had some extra pounds, and many talked about their children, who were not with them.  Some were grandparents.  Some announced that they were also celebrating their anniversaries.  Some had been married 26 years, some 30 like us, and some a little longer.

May 21st, 2013 - 30th Anniversary

Fitting in sporting my classic car tee shirt
and my Greatest Grandpa hat

In further examining the whole scenario, I glanced at my shirt, a tee with a collection of 1950’s classic cars, including my favorite ’59 Chevy, and then remembered the hat I was wearing boasting the phrase ‘Greatest Grandpa’, and I realized I was with my peers, my fellow empty nesters, grandparents - folks on the far side of middle age who had earned a getaway and who had seized the opportunity, and are enjoying it. To me, it makes PERFECT SENSE!