Monthly Archives: August 2020

Positive Principals

As a spanking-new first grader, I heard (on big-kid authority) the principal functioned as Lord High Executioner. Mrs. Taylor, a large, pigeon-shaped lady, laughed loud and deep, displaying a mouthful of white, predatory teeth.

Whenever she appeared, I glued my eyes to my Dick and Jane book. I never wanted to deliver Teacher’s attendance sheet to Mrs. Taylor’s office because I couldn’t bear the hopeless looks of the condemned waiting outside. Would they emerge alive?

I’d survived first grade, when I heard rumors of a new principal. A man. I feared my life expectancy would drop considerably, which my first encounter with Mr. O’Connor confirmed. Adults called him “short,” but he seemed big and powerful, a redheaded Irishman whose cat-green eyes shot sparks when we crossed him.

My children, on the other hand, brought home tales of friendship and fun with their principal. He read storybooks aloud, led students in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and told the lamest knock-knock jokes in western civilization. If you forgot your bus number, he materialized like Jesus to help you.

During our children’s school careers, we encountered several principals who went the extra mile. Lately, though, many go the extra galaxy. Mrs. Taylor and Mr. O’Connor, whom I eventually recognized as caring professionals, wanted students to achieve. Never, however, did they kiss a potbellied pig. Running a school these days poses enough challenges without eating fried worms (even with mustard and ketchup), as a Texas principal did to motivate her students.

Brave? Ye-e-es. Even more heroic (and less yucky): working behind the scenes to make a difference in kids’ lives.

Years ago, I encountered our principal in an alley doing exactly that. Unintentionally, I almost wiped him out. Still dressed in robe and nightgown, I was moving trash cans in pouring rain when subhuman screams rent the air. I grabbed my garden hoe, positive a child had been attacked. Thankfully, I recognized our principal before I dismembered him.

I ducked inside our garage and watched the drenched educator haul a screeching, kicking blur toward school a block away. Later, I asked him about the incident.

“Billy had locked himself in his mom’s car. I went and brought him to school.”

“Coat hanger?” I asked.

“Yeah, learned it in college. Great methods course.”

“Has Billy learned his lesson?”

“He tries stuff to see if I mean it.” A Mr. O’Connor look stole over his features. “I mean it.”

Did Billy thank him? Probably not. The principal had to use more Fear Factor than he liked. Hopefully, three decades later, Billy realizes the value of his Friend Factor, who literally walked the extra mile — in the rain — to help him succeed.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What special educator do you recall?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer: Blessing, Not Bastille Day

O Lord, in the past, when nearby school playground noise resembled Bastille Day, I prayed for teachers — and slammed the window shut. But this morning, after months of ghostly silence on our block, OMG, I feel like throwing it open. And throwing confetti!  

Vive la Différence!

Throughout human history, we have observed one inevitable truth: men and women are different.

Even our newborn who mistook Daddy’s shirt-pocketed beeper for breakfast recognized that fact.

So why does our culture try to convince us otherwise?

Take, for example, the five senses: sight, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.

Everyone possesses a pair of eyes. Yet women can spot cute shoes on sale from the interstate. Men see such shoes only if their spouses add this 207th pair to their closets.

Women mostly see dirt and germs in a negative light. Perhaps because God made Adam from mud pies, guys see dirt in a positive light, whether in a slide into home plate or a monster truck’s foray into mud bogs. They acknowledge germs only if their work requires they eradicate them in patients or grow them in petri dishes.

Gender differences also pervade our hearing. A husband may wonder, “Why bother with baby monitors?”

When Mommy and Daddy are on a second honeymoon, two hundred miles away, she still hears their infant. Monitor or no monitor, he only hears their baby at night when accompanied by his wife’s elbow, kick, and/or water pistol.

This female hyper-hearing also applies to nighttime burglars and moments when children are too quiet. In either case, men experience a strictly limited audible range. How can she have expected him to do something, when he never heard it?

However, males hear “funny noises” in vehicles. My husband can detect an imperfect cup holder — even if it rattles in the third car behind him.

Women and men even smell smoke in contrasting ways. Women call 911 or, if company’s coming, clean ovens. Men smell bonfires, barbecues and fireworks. The smell of smoke equals a party!

The sense of taste also highlights gender differences. For men, taste generally involves sufficient quantity — unless you’re talking broccoli. Women are all about haute cuisine, artistic presentation and half servings — unless you’re talking chocolate. Then, bring it on by the semi load.

Finally, the sexes experience touch in unique ways. Women hug to celebrate engagements, new babies, expanded closet space. We hug to console each other when evil extra pounds refuse to be evicted.

Men, on the other hand, hug at key life events: weddings, funerals, or ball games. If their team wins.

Why did the Creator design us so differently? We may not understand that mystery until Heaven. Still, acknowledging He knew what He was doing seems reasonable.

Actually, it’s the only scenario that makes sense.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you sense your world differently from men/women?

Cleaning Confrontation

Who wants to clean out a refrigerator and chest freezer?

Blown light bulbs conveniently have kept me in the dark about their sad state. I grabbed diet Pepsi or pizza, slamming doors before tentacles could yank me inside.

But now, with the garden producing, I can’t feed my veggies to whatever life forms lurk there.

Confrontation time.

I need hot water and disinfectant. Rubber gloves. Body armor. Samurai sword. Hey, past-expiration-by-a-decade cottage cheese gets testy when evicted.

I cover the body armor with an apron, à la June Cleaver. This secret weapon of all women in 1950s TV sitcoms empowered June to do housework while wearing high heels and pearls. It will grant me added protection.

Hubby’s grandma sewed this apron that gives me courage to clean out our refrigerator and freezer.

Besides, Hubby’s grandma sewed this apron. Though gentle, she fought a fierce, lifelong war against dirt and germs. Her spirit pokes me with a scrub brush and urges me to be strong.

Grabbing my sword, I crack the fridge’s door.

Nothing.

I throw it open.

Ack! Half-filled bottles of lavender salad dressing. Pudding that resembles petri dishes. Mashed potatoes that give a whole new meaning to “green vegetable.”

Did something move?

I slam it shut and venture into the garage, where the freezer resides. I open it. No tentacles.

I summon Golden Oldies to inspire me. A rhythmic tune dances me across the garage—

“Mission Impossible.”

So much for inspiration.

My Cold War almost morphs into peaceful coexistence, especially when the song changes to “One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying, Purple People Eater.” Will Hubby find nothing left but my eyeglasses and piles of defrosted food? Will he weep more for losing me or pot roasts?

Thankfully, the music changes to the Star Wars theme. Retying my mighty apron, I plunge into the freezer’s alternative universe. I see furry-looking, amorphous packages, their age detectable only by carbon dating. Each evokes a question:

  • Why did I shred four dozen bags of zucchini? Hubby hates zucchini bread, and I probably shouldn’t eat 50 pounds.
  • Did this tuna casserole pre-exist with God in the beginning?
  • Do holiday turkeys grow exponential sets of giblets?

I toss out piles of mystery food, moving to “You’re No Good” and “Hit the Road, Jack.” I use endless elbow “Grease,” but eventually graduate to “Splish Splash,” reveling in unfamiliar spotlessness.

I saved the giblets for a game of H-O-R-S-E, shooting them into trash cans in the driveway.

Oops. I hit a garbage guy.

My apology had better be good. Given summer heat, I really, really want him to haul my melting mess away.

Fortunately, he doesn’t take my poor aim personally. He only wants to flee. So, cans are dumped in haste. The truck roars off to “Hey hey hey, goodbye. …”

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you make housework fun?

T.C. Steele, Mother Haines and Not-So-Partly Cloudy

Not long ago, while we were camping in southern Indiana, it rained. And rained.

So much for “partly cloudy.”

We had loitered in every restaurant within 50 miles. Where to now?

Artistic inspiration struck me. “Let’s visit the T.C. Steele historic site!”

Forty years before, Clara Haines, known at our church as “Mother Haines,” had recommended it. We college students had heard she dabbled in painting, but she obviously spent most of her time starching doilies.

One brief visit to her home opened our eyes and minds. Doilies adorned tables, but paintings covered the walls. Glowing colors pulled us into sun-dappled landscapes and stark snow scenes.

Our young jaws dropped. “You painted these?”

She nodded and said she’d learned to paint from T.C. Steele. She encouraged us to see his home and works.

Steve hiking in the Hoosier National Forest.

Four decades later, we did.

We’d never viewed Steele’s Rembrandt-like portraits. Wealthy Indianapolis patrons had been immortalized by his brush, some of whom now regarded us with lifelike interest.

But Steele’s Impressionist late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century Hoosier landscapes nailed us to the floor. I stared until I needed extra eye drops. How Steele had loved his native state!

As do we.

While hardly luxurious, the Steeles’ “House of the Singing Winds,” with its Victorian rugs, player piano and stuffed peacock kept their bewildered neighbors’ tongues wagging.

Living in log cabins, the Brown County natives must have considered their new neighbors aliens. This man didn’t work — just painted pretty pictures. Whoever heard of a woman who couldn’t cook? Instead of raising food, she planted hundreds of flowers.

Though only 50 miles from their native Indianapolis, the Steeles must have felt likewise.

Yet, walking through her gardens between downpours, we saw that Selma loved her adopted home, remaining years after her husband died. Selma also moved an 1875 log cabin to her property. Knowing its history — the cabin’s owner had raised seven children there with one wife and 11 with another — perhaps Selma considered it a reminder that regardless of hard adjustments, they could have been worse!

Selma Steele’s formal gardens are designated a “Historic Iris Preservation Society Display Garden.” Visitors to the T.C. Steele State Historic Site can walk the gardens, tour the home and visit Steele’s studio. https://tcsteele.org/visit/

We bought a print of one of Steele’s winter scenes because it reminded us of Mother Haines’ similar landscapes and her comment: “Painting snow sounds easy. But I used 23 colors in that snowbank.”

As Hubby and I sat in the Steeles’ porch swing, we envisioned the Steeles entertaining other painters and students like Clara Haines, then a young mother who braved muddy, treacherous roads in a Model T to learn from the master artist.

Time and effort so well spent. Thank you, T.C. Steele and Mother Haines, for gracing our lives with beauty 40 years later on this not-so-partly-cloudy day.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What artist resonates with your state or area?