Ringing Like a Bell

On sunny afternoons like this one my mom would take us to the old Hamilton drive-in to get half-price slushies. She'd say, "Okay, what flavor do you want?" We'd say, "What are they?" "Cherry, orange, grape, lime, punch, and strawberry. What kind do you want?" "Um. Uh...orange. No, grape. No. What are the kinds again, mama?" She'd tell us again, "Cherry, orange, grape, lime, punch, and strawberry." We continued to have that same conversation over and over again for several minutes. There were four of us, so my poor mom would have to repeat the flavor choices many times, yet she never lost her patience. Sometimes we'd be fighting in the car, and she would say, "Y'all, I'm losing my patience." For some reason this statement always made me think of a dwindling supply of watercolors. I suppose because the word 'patience' sounded like 'paint' to me. Looking back now I realize tha

My dad worked the third shift at an automotive plant for years, so one of the few times we got to see him was when we waited for the bus in the morning. He usually pulled into the driveway a few minutes before the bus arrived. Most days we just stood around and talked to him about what was going on at school, news about our friends, or the fishing trips he'd planned for Saturday. One morning in early fall, when the weather was perfect, dad made it home a few minutes earlier than normal. The air was crisp, and the sun shined through the amber leaves on the trees outside the den door. A breeze started to blow and tons of leaves were released from the trees overhead. I'm not sure who started it first, probably dad, but we all started chasing the leaves as they fell to the ground.  Each time we caught one we'd yell out, "I got one!" All of us were laughing and running around in a lighthearted competition to see who could catch the most. It only lasted a few minu

If you were born in the Southeastern United States like me, you inherited a lot of things: syrupy sweet tea, saying "y'all", calling a shopping cart "a buggy," and an obsession with college football -- just to name a few.  We've also got kudzu, lots of it. It covers everything and is every where. It's like Santa Claus; it sees you when you're sleeping, especially if you're sleeping in an old barn or down by the railroad tracks, and it knows when you're awake, especially if you're driving down some old country road. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's a vine imported from Japan to help stop erosion around about the time of the Great Depression. This stuff is tenacious. It can grow up to a foot a day in the right climate, and the South has that perfect mixture of humid, rainy summer days and mild winters. The stuff has gone crazy. For my entire life kudzu was this ecological villain we'd all in

My aunt says that walking every day is the fountain of youth, but I'm not sure I agree with her. Don't get me wrong. I tend to be an "excellent walker" as Jane Austen would say, but I think there is something else much more powerful than a daily constitutional-- the company of children . When I was in high school, I often took care of a little girl. We spent a lot of time together, and I must admit I tended to spoil her. She captained our shopping cart at the grocery store. I usually bought her whatever she threw in the basket on our "expeditions." I was obsessive about my grades and studied more than I really needed to, especially in my anatomy class. I'd be sitting there trying to re-read a chapter about the nervous system when my little charge would march in, shut the book, and declare, "We're going outside!" So that's what we did. We played with puppies and kittens, we fished in puddles for tadpoles, and created works of art w

One day as newlyweds, my husband and I discovered a small kitten hiding under our shed. It took us hours to get it out of there, and the entire time my husband talked pure unadulterated smack about this tiny cat. "Oh great! I hate cats...You know we are not keeping this thing, right?.. We should just let it die...Hey Bailey, do you want a puppy snack?" We finally got him out, and it became clear why it took so long. He was really little, too little to be away from his mom and too little to eat solid food. He'd apparently been under there for a while because he was dehydrated, and his eyes were all gunked up. We held a family meeting while our dog watched. Bailey was still a puppy then; everything new was exciting. She was trying to jump up and lick the kitten in my arms. "Well, what are we going to do now?" my husband asked. "It needs kitten milk from Wal-Mart -- right away," I said, "Why don't you go get it?" "I don't

Do you remember this music video? If you went to high school in  the late nineties, you probably do. Every afternoon we rushed home from class to see what songs made it onto the day's episode of TRL ( Total Request Live in case you didn't know) hosted by Carson Daly on MTV. I'd love to tell you how many times I've seen the music video for "Tearin' Up My Heart," but I can't. I didn't count. Let's just say a lot, a whole lot. My friend discovered them first. NSYNC aired a special concert on the Disney channel, and she met me at the door when I came over to spend the night. She said,"You've got to see this." At first I wasn't quite as enthusiastic as she was, but then it was like I'd been stricken with a virus. We were NSYNC crazy! Looking back now it was a case of teenage girl mania; I'd never had so much fun in my life. We video taped every TV appearance (yes, with an old-school VCR) , listened to the songs rep

I eat lunch with some of the best people in the world. When you teach, contrary to popular belief, you only get to sit down and relax  for about fifteen minutes a day -- during lunch. It's really important to have a good "lunch bunch." We do talk about work a little bit, but we talk about a lot of other things too. That's how I found out about Storycorps. A new teacher  joined our group, an English as a Second Language specialist. He brought a fresh pool of discussion topics to the table, chiefly because he was the only guy present. Some days I felt sorry for him, especially when people would come in the lounge and say, "Hey ladies," despite the fact that he is undeniably masculine. He has a beard. One day we were talking about relationships, as girls will  do. He was offering up the male perspective and mentioned a cartoon. "You've got to watch it," he said. "It's great." He smiled and started to explain the story, but he

I've never met a sausage I didn't like. I've always loved the stuff, especially plain old southern pork sausage. As a little girl I requested it for breakfast every chance I got. Then one day someone told me how sausage was made and what was in it. I was totally grossed out for about twenty-four hours when I started thinking about all the sausage I'd eaten and how much I loved the way it tasted. In the end I decided the ingredients didn't matter. Did I want to sit down and eat a roasted kidney? Um, no, but I thought it through. The sausage was still, well, sausage . My knowledge of it had changed, but it still tasted the same. Since then I've managed to focus more on the crispy, meaty, yummy final product rather than the repulsive individual ingredients. Today I went back to school to start a new year. I got to see all my friends and colleagues. After the summer, when I've been away for a while, I always feel refreshed to see the people that work

Have you ever listened to the radio show, This American Life ? I 'd heard it a time or two in the past on public radio, but it's now available in podcast format. I've been downloading each new episode and enjoying them. If you've never listened to it, the producers pick a theme and offer different variations on that theme throughout the show. This morning I listened to the re-broadcast of an old episode from 2007 called Special Ed . In many ways the show was just like you'd expect, but simultaneously not what you'd expect either. You should follow the link and check it out. I can't stop thinking about it. As a younger woman, I walked around with the unconscious assumption that the way I experienced the world was the way that all "normal" people experienced it. I've since realized it isn't true -- at all. Different people have different temperaments and experiences that shape them. I found that out when one of my best friends and I disco

If something doesn't make sense to me, it's hard for me to feel like it's worthwhile. I was one of those kids never satisfied when my mother's explanation was, "Because I said so!"   If you're thinking about what a snot I am for always needing a reason to do things, don't worry. I've paid for it dearly as an educator. I always feel the need to tell my students why I am asking them to do something. The problem is that they rarely ever need the reason, don't understand it, or even care that there is one, so I've had to learn how to deal with them as an authority figure.                 Don't feel sorry for me yet. I've also learned a lot of great spiritual lessons dealing with those frustrating young 'uns. That's how I know that good things are always worth doing -- maybe just because God says so. Let me share a personal illustration.                 I was an inexperienced first-year teacher with a pride problem in the

Last night I watched the latest episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo , a spin off from the show Toddlers and Tiaras . My husband and I watched Alana, a.k.a. Honey Boo Boo, and her sisters roll toilet paper all over their house, inside and out , while their parents were out on a 'date.' I use the term date loosely. My husband was horrified, and all I could think was, "Ah, takes me back." I'm the oldest of four siblings. I know there are people out there that don't buy into the whole birth order thing, but let me tell you it is absolutely true. I am a big sister to the core. I am forever worrying about the welfare of everybody and everything. I'm surprised I made it out of childhood without having a stroke or massive heart attack at the age of twelve, especially when you consider the non-stop shenanigans the four of us were always involved in. I've already told you we rode our bikes down a hill toward certain death and that a bird pooped on my tongue

I have this sign on the wall in my classroom at the front just above my desk. As you might imagine I deal with excuses non-stop in my public high school classroom Come on! I teach writing for crying out loud. In every class there are always students that flatly refuse to write. I'd say, subjectively, about 10 out of 100 of my students has this mysterious problem putting pen to paper. I keep having conversations that look like this: Me: I see you haven't written anything yet. Is something wrong? Student: I don't know what to write. Me: Well, I've asked you to write about ___________, so try to start by just writing out the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of __________. The student shifts in her seat and nods. I continue to walk around the room and come back in about five to seven minutes to check on any progress made. The page is still blank. Me: I see you still haven't written anything. (The student sighs beginning to become more d

It was July, and we were packed into our family's peach colored 1988 Caprice Classic. We were on the interstate that cuts clear across the state of Arkansas returning from a trip to see my dad's family in Kansas. It was a trip we couldn't really afford to make, but my grandmother was sick, very sick. Looking back I'm glad my parents made those visits happen. As a result I have many strong memories of my grandmother and a strong connection to my dad's family. We must have been almost exactly at the mid-point of our trip home when the car died. It didn't sputter. There were no warnings. It just turned off like an unseen switch had been flipped. We were in the middle of nowhere. All I could see was miles of open highway before and ahead of us. Mom and we four kids stood by the car while dad ran down the hill. He said that he remembered seeing a house on the other side of the fence along the highway. "I just hope I don't get shot," he said as he jogg

Picture it. There I am standing by the mailbox flipping through the stack of junk mail when it surfaces -- my jury duty summons. I can hear you groaning now. Jury duty is one of those things that I know we should be glad to do, yet I wasn't jumping for joy  at the end of my driveway.  I know our justice system is far from perfect, but compared to the other options around the world, we have the best thing going. All things considered, jury duty is a small personal price to pay for relative justice. So I went. I ended up serving for a week during the summer. I was never actually on a jury; I just had to be available. That's not what I want to tell you about. I want to tell you about the morning I went to court to get my jury duty postponed to the summer. As a teacher, being on a jury for an indefinite period of time is pretty much impossible, so my principal wrote a letter, which I took down to the courthouse at the appointed time for "jury duty excuses." It was r