Blithe Spirit

Arriving at school on a bright Friday morning, I was still wearing my bifocal shades when I entered the building. On the way to my classroom, I was excitedly approached by Owen, an effervescent student and altogether winning fifth-grader serving as one of that day’s hallway safety monitors. He didn’t know whether to give me a fist bump or a high five, so he gave me one of each.

“Are those 3-D glasses?” he asked breathlessly.

No, they’re X-ray lenses, I teased him. They allow me see through walls.

“Can I try them, please?”

I handed over the frames.

“Oh, yeah. Cool! Everything is a lot closer,” said Owen. He handed them back. “Thank you.”  

Innocence II

TOP 10 THINGS HEARD IN THE FIRST AND SECOND GRADES THIS WEEK:

“This is a good book!”

“You look like my grandpa with your glasses off.”

“We’re stuck with you all day, right?”

“Boys have muscles; that’s what we can’t hit girls.”

“Some women are stronger than men.”

“So, how do you like being my teacher?”

“By accident, Anthony got sand in my eyes. The nurse said that the more I blinked, the better my eyes could get.”

“I’m finding some good facts in this [shark] book.”

“My dad said that if I didn’t get all 10 spelling words right, I couldn’t have ice cream tonight—and I really wanted ice cream tonight.”

“Women, especially British, wear hats.” [on one difference between the sexes]

Vocations

     “Mr. K, does this sentence make sense to you?” asked one of the sixth-graders during literacy class.

     She had written “I had a rendezvous with one of my patients.”

     The speaker is a doctor?

     “Yes.”

     She was using “rendezvous” as a synonym for “appointment.”

     Are you going to be a doctor someday?

     “Either a doctor or a racecar driver—my dad likes racecars—or a veterinarian,” she said.

      I told her that she had the jump on her classmates in narrowing down her fields of study at such an early age.

     After retreating to her desk she made a quick U-turn.

     “I don’t have any idea what this word means,” she said.

     The word was “deprived.”

     The first thing that popped into my head was the line from “West Side Story” about the gang members being depraved because they are deprived. She was reading “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and the vocabulary exercise called for the students to pause over an unfamiliar word and first try to understand the meaning from context before consulting a dictionary and then writing an original sentence to demonstrate comprehension of the word.

     The passage in the book described the author’s parents, peremptorily seized by the Nazis, being permitted to carry away a rucksack and some money only to be “deprived” of those items shortly thereafter.

     Can you figure out the meaning from the context? I asked. Suppose, I told her, I were a mean substitute. (I immodestly used the subjunctive to denote a statement contrary to fact.) I would first deny you your books, laptop, calculator, and any instruments that might help you as a student, and then deprive you of even pencil and paper in class.

     “Oh, I get it,” she said. “Thank you.”

     But I was the one who was grateful.

Slow Men Working

The Yankees, on April 21, expressed consternation over the number of appearances put in by their bullpen. And the New York beat reporters assigned to cover the Yankees dutifully echoed the team’s message. The Journal News and the Daily News on April 22 reported on manager Joe Girardi’s concern that his relievers, three weeks into the season, were already carrying far too large a share of the workload.  Never mind that the Yankees had two days off that week.

Joba Chamberlain, it was reported, had appeared in 10 of the team’s first 16 games, throwing 162 pitches. We are to infer that that constitutes a heavy burden for the 25 year old. Let’s see, the season started on March 31, so that worked out to a little more than seven pitches a day, 10 pitches per game, and 54 pitches per week for Chamberlain. This week, Chamberlain was given the night off on Wednesday because he had appeared in three of the team's four previous games. Never mind that he had thrown just nine pitches in Tuesday night's game and that Monday was an off day.

But not only Chamberlain, we read. The starting pitchers’ “inability to work deep into games has shifted an unsustainable burden to the team’s high-powered bullpen.” Really?  Are the players’ agents now covering the beat and writing the copy, too? An “unsustainable burden?”

Here are a few suggestions:

For the beat reporters, try thinking critically. It won’t hurt. Just because the Yankees put out a press release is no reason to swallow it without chewing.

For the Yankees’ pitchers, during the offseason, hire a trainer and/or nutritionist, join a gym, buy a pair of running shoes, and show up at the start of spring training in shape. Work the obliques.

For anyone who has not witnessed baseball players running, think of a jaywalker blithely crossing the street who upon seeing an approaching vehicle suddenly takes a few accelerated steps. That approximates the pace of their running.   

For Girardi, take a page out of the Nolan Ryan playbook. That is, (1) leave your starters in longer and let them figure out how to pitch out of tight spots, (2) don’t use every reliever in your bullpen in every game, and (3) try using a reliever for more than one inning. It used to be done all the time.

Innocence

TOP 10 THINGS HEARD IN THE FIRST GRADE THIS WEEK:

“How much longer until lunch?” (asked at 9:20 A.M.)

“This book has a bad word” (The offending word was “shut up.”)

“Is this gold?” (referring to a shiny fleck in a rock found on the playground)

“Mr. K., Anthony said that Justin Bieber is stupid.”

“You look more like a teacher with your glasses on.”

“I’m going to invite Derek Jeter to my birthday party.”

“Guess what I had for breakfast?”                                           

 “How much do you weigh?” (asked of a heavyset substitute music teacher)

“The weatherman gets paid even when he’s wrong.”

“I forgot what I was going to say.” (said by several students after animatedly raising their hands)

Class Distinctions

Subbing for the elementary-school music teacher last week, I got some good advice from an unlikely source. A sixth-grader came through the classroom door first.

“I’m upset,” he announced.

What was wrong?

“Nobody likes me.”

I was sure that was not true and told him so.

Changing the subject, he asked, “What are we doing today?”

“Your regular teacher left two movies for all of today’s classes: ‘Annie’ and ‘The Sound of Music.’ Take your pick,” I told him.

“You want my advice,” he said (it wasn’t a question), “Don’t give this class a choice. They’ll argue for half the period over which movie to watch.”

“You’re probably right,” I told him. “Thanks for the tip.”

So, “Annie” it was, and there were no problems.

Forty-five minutes later, the sixth grade left and the second grade arrived.

For them, I chose “The Sound of Music.”

“Have you seen this before?” I asked.

They all admitted they had, but shortly I would learn that was not true.

Early in the film, after Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) has left the children in the care of their new governess, Maria (Julie Andrews), a member of the household staff conspiratorially tells Maria that she believes the Captain intends to bring home a new wife.

 “That’s not who he marries, though,” said one of the second-graders in voice-over.

“What do you mean?” asked a classmate.

“He’s going to marry Maria,” he is told.

“No, don’t tell me the ending!” he cried.

For me, the high point of the day came moments later, during the “Do-Re-Me” number, when three little girls in the back of the room sang along extemporaneously but softly with the film’s cast of children.