The Median Sib

Today I attended the memorial service for my best friend’s boyfriend. It was a meaningful service honoring the memory of a kind and good man. During the service, two young nieces spoke lovingly of their Uncle Roger. A nephew gave a eulogy that made me feel that I knew the man I had only met twice. At the end of the service, a color guard folded an American flag and presented it to his son, a soldier himself. Roger’s father sat on the second row, quiet and stoic - appearing unsure of what was going on. Roger’s ex-wife, a previous girlfriend, and his girlfriend of the past year (my best friend) all comforted each other - joined in the grief of losing a man they all had loved. It was strange and touching at the same time.

Right after I left the service, I called PawPaw to tell him that I would get home later than I had anticipated. We had planned to get together tonight for dinner and to watch TV. He said he had very sad news to tell me. His cousin, Kathy - a bright, precocious eleven-year old when PawPaw and I got married in 1969 - died this morning. She was forty-five. Her teenage son had gone to tell her that she had a phone call, and he found her dead in her bed. Probable heart-attack. She leaves behind a husband and two teenage sons.

It seems almost like a season of mourning. Three times recently, tragedies have struck someone close to me. Hopefully, the saying that bad luck comes in threes is true. I’ll fly to Georgia with PawPaw tomorrow morning in order to attend Kathy’s memorial service on Sunday. There won’t be any camping this weekend. The Median Sib will have no new posts until Sunday evening or Monday.

There is nothing like death to make one appreciate life - to see the value in each minute spent with loved ones.

(Note added on 10/31/05: The conference described below was a two-day conference. I was only able to stay for the first day. This morning I emailed some friends who stayed for both days and asked if the conference got any better the second day. They ALL said that it did - that the second day was very good. I wish I could have been there for that day. It’s too bad that there were so many problems on the first day.)

I attended a conference on Thursday of the Alabama Reading Association in Huntsville, AL. It was a disappointing experience. Almost always I can gain something of value from attending a conference. Not this time. The conference planners could have written a book entitled WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN PLANNING A CONFERENCE. Here are the main points of their yet-to-be-published book.

(1) Obtain a nationally recognized speaker - one that is so well known and popular that teachers from surrounding states will attend the conference. That will get lots of people to attend the conference. Get so many people to register for the conference that the conference hotel will fill up quickly, requiring many participants to seek hotel accommodations elsewhere. Then, during the keynote speech, when you have the civic center auditorium filled with eager attendees, have an audio system so poor that the speaker’s voice is distorted, and people can’t hear the speech. Compound the problem by not having the speaker stand on the speakers’ platform where she can be seen by all, but rather off to the side on the floor among the audience. That way only a few of the people present can see her. Have a large projection screen, but don’t be a copycat and show the speaker on the screen like other conferences. Instead, show grainy images of the speaker’s transparencies that can’t be read by most of the people in the large civic center auditorium.

(2) Next, when planning the “concurrent sessions”, have some of them lined up along the sides of that aforementioned large civic center auditorium, but separate the different “rooms” using only 8-foot high partitions. This will allow sound to travel so that participants can hear bits and pieces from several sessions at the same time. Then don’t provide microphones for the speakers OR enough chairs for all the participants. That will ensure that, once again, most people are uncomfortable and won’t hear the speaker. All those people having to stand up or sit on the floor are an indication of how successful the conference is.

(3) In planning where to have the more popular speakers conduct their sessions, don’t put them in large rooms. Rather, put them in small rooms with only a few chairs. That way, people will have to stand up along the walls and sit on the floor in the back. It’s a good way to test the determination of the conference participants and prove quickly who has the mettle to stand for an hour.

(4) To top off the day, put a 40-minute lunch break in the daily schedule. However, don’t provide lunch for the conference participants and provide no information about possible places nearby where lunch can be obtained quickly. Instead, ensure that there is only one concession stand in the civic center to serve the thousands of participants. That way, the participants will enjoy the social opportunity of talking to other participants as they stand in line for over an hour to get greasy chicken strips and fries. As a bonus, the long lunch line also ensures that many participants will not be able to attend the session following the lunch period. That should help solve the over-crowding problem in the first concurrent sessions after the lunch break.

(5) To sooth any ruffled feathers, end the day with a popular author and have the sound system work well. He can be heard clearly, and his message is great. However, in order not to interfere with the general theme of ineptitude for the day, tack an interminably boring local honors and awards time at the end of the speech. That, along with all the other absurdities for the day, will keep the audience down to only the loyal few.

I hate to think that I missed a full day of being with my students to attend such a poorly planned conference. There were fantastic speakers - and the potential for a powerful and meaningful conference was there - but it was unrealized. If I were one of the speakers or presenters, I would be furious that my hard work and preparation were rendered useless and ineffective by poor event planners.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my classroom doing some paperwork when I overheard a conversation in the hallway between a teacher and a third grade student. The teacher was chastising the child for asking to go to the bathroom soon after the class had had a bathroom break. She told him that THIS time she would let him go, but that from now on he was to make sure he went when the class took their scheduled bathroom break because the next time he asked to go to the bathroom at a time other than the designated bathroom time, the answer would be “no.” Her voice was impatient and demeaning. I was appalled. Do teachers still have such insensitive and ignorant rules?

Rewind the clock to over 45 years ago when I was in the third grade. Mrs. Giles was my teacher. We were taking turns going up to her desk and reciting our multiplication tables. I raised my hand and asked to go to the bathroom. Mrs. Giles told me no. Soon it was my turn to come up to her desk to recite my multiplication tables. Standing there nervously, squeezing my legs together, trying to recite my math but with my mind on my bladder that felt like it was about to burst, I could hold it no longer. I peed all over the floor. Mrs. Giles didn’t notice. I finished my multiplication tables and went back to my seat - humiliated and terrified of being found out. Another child came up to do the multiplication, and pointed out the puddle on the floor. Giggles filled the air. Mrs. Giles asked for the “guilty party” to raise his/her hand and admit to wetting the floor. I continued doing my schoolwork. Then she gave the class a sanctimonious lecture about going to the bathroom at appointed times so that accidents wouldn’t happen. I remained quiet. There was no doubt that Mrs. Giles knew who had peed on the floor. It isn’t something you can hide easily — although it those days, girls wore dresses every day. So it wasn’t as obvious as it would have been if I’d been wearing slacks. I guess I could at least commend her on not publicly pointing out who the culprit was. She let it go. Recess came soon afterwards. I ran outside and huddled behind some shrubbery — embarrassed, but also furious. I had TOLD her I had to go. I was a good student - well behaved and respectful. Unless I was in an urgent situation, I would have waited till the next scheduled bathroom break. The situation should never have happened.

All these years later, I still recall the details of that day - what the classroom and Mrs. Giles desk looked like, what the lesson was at the time, the bushes where I hid out during recess, and the awful embarrassment I felt. When I became a teacher. I swore that I would never allow such a thing to happen to any of my students. Each year on the first day of school, I discussed our class bathroom guidelines with them, and they knew the procedures to follow, and they also knew that if they ever had an “urgent” situation, they just had to let me know where they were going and head out to the bathroom. I was a classroom teacher for 25 years — and while I’m sure there are children who occasionally took an unnecessary trip to the bathroom, no child ever abused that plan.

As I listened to the teacher in the hall a few weeks ago, I felt bad for the child. I wondered if that humiliating experience would be something he’d still remember 45 years from now. Everyone has experienced times when, despite taking care of such things at the appropriate times, they have to go to the bathroom during meetings, during a class, or at other inconvenient times. I admit that I don’t know any other details other than the overheard conversation. However, it is a conversation that should never have taken place.