Category Archives: Playground

Hi. I’m Tim the Teacher, and I make roughly $30,000 a year. On a global scale, that means I’m filthy fucking rich. Compared to other Americans, however, I earn a little more than the median income of women my age and quite a bit less than the median income of men my age. So I think I can claim that I’m middle class.

If at some point in the future, I were to earn $250,000 a year, I, like Joe the Plumber, would be upset with the government’s taxation – provided they’d continue using that money to spend in Iraq, a country with a budget surplus of $79 billion.

On the other hand, if the taxes would go toward supporting college outreach programs or funding continuing research into green energy or ensuring heating assistance for the poor or reducing crime recidivism, I might be willing to part with some of my ample funds.

Sure, I could use my increased earnings (seven times the amount I currently make) to buy seven houses. But I believe in the Christian ethic articulated by great men like C.S. Lewis and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves.

So I’m announcing my candidacy to be the next national mascot for the presidential campaign. Like Joe the Plumber, I’ll be just as snippy with the media, but unlike Joe, I’ll be informed on the real issues.

(brought to you by Tim the Teacher for National Political Mascot 2008)

Last week, I started writing down some “first lines” — initial sentences to stories that don’t yet exist. It was an exercise in attention-getting and tone. Here are a few I came up with:

• Well, I’m finally eating bananas again.
• When Will walked up the gangway to the ship that night, he thought he heard a voice from the misty shores behind him whisper, “Don’t go.”
• I like to take walks through my neighborhood on cool May nights when the air is damp and bug-free and smells of flowers; I peer in through the open windows of well-lit living rooms and take mental photographs of lives I could be leading.
• By the time the dogs came, we were well-hidden under a rusty mower in a stand of overgrown brush.
• That Dairy Queen bitch can bite my ass.

Then I took the exercise to my creative writing class and they came up with the following:

• Not many preschoolers could count to 13 before I could, for I had three extra fingers when I was born.
• I stood out on the front porch with a shotgun in my hands, waiting for that son of a bitch to come back.
• The night me and Bobby found that turtle was the night I became a man.
• Taking a deep drag on my cigarette, I looked the scrawny teen over: “What do you want kid?”
• I couldn’t think of how to begin this story. We’ll, I guess now I did.
• As the key clicked in the lock, the door swung open to reveal a dark shadow blocking the way into his apartment.
• “If he asks, the spangles were not my idea,” Sara informed her sister, holding back giggles as she stared at the sparkling, feathered jumpsuit they had created for their brother Steven’s first ice show.
• I put on my professional face and prepare myself for another boring middle-aged self-pitying hag whine endlessly about how miserable she is when, unexpectedly, I recieve a call.
• “Yowch!” screamed Jack as he hobbled, grabbing his left buttock, towards the only light he could see through the flowing tears. “Not again!” he cried.
• With sweaty hands twisting her sleeves, her eyes dart around the crowded airport, finally catching the sight of a clock. She screams.
• I got punched in the face today, only this time I didn’t deserve it.

Between websudoku and the falling sands game, I can’t get anything done.

Last night, I was helping Eileen study for some audiology thing when she uttered the following bit of wonderous jargonosity: “one mechanism for cross-modal plasticity is the stabilization of normally transient long range subcortical connections.”

Whew!

R: The world is not flat. It’s simply a fact.
I: What’s a fact?
R: Observable phenomena.
I: I haven’t observed it.
R: I could show you. There are pictures from space; airplanes base their trajectories on it; the day itself is based on the rotation of our round world.
I: Well, maybe I’d believe you if I saw it, but I haven’t. Why is it so important to you?
R: It’s a fact!
I: But it’s important that the world is round because it’s a part of your worldview and to call that into question is threatening to your worldview.
R: If we can’t start with facts, we can’t have a discussion.
I: Can you consider why the world’s being flat might possibly be important to me?
R: No.
I: Try.
R: Well, I suppose there may be some comfortable myths based on a flat world.
I: Yeah? Invent one.
R: Invent one? Okay, let’s see. Once, a great leader named Idios walked to the edge of the world.
I: Aha! See? Right away, you get to the most interesting part of the flat world: the edge.
R: The edge? Why is that so interesting?
I: Because it’s true. There is an edge to the world, a precipice beyond which we cannot go, beyond which lies a great, mysterious chasm of eternity.
R: Are you talking about death?
I: Sure.
R: What do you mean “sure”? Don’t you know what you’re saying?
I: Death fits well. So do other things. I’m talking about the edge of the flat world, which is a truth, though not what you’d call a fact since you’ve never observed it.
R: Okay. I see what you’re getting at. The flat world is a story you’d prefer.
I: Yes.
R: Still. I believe in rationality, and I can’t really believe any other approach to the world.
I: You’re going to have to. Your own sciences are discovering quantum physics and other such theories of the way the universe functions, all of which are pretty irrational. Like that famous thought experiment, Schroedinger’s cat? The cat is both alive and dead at the same time? I mean, c’mon, there are limits to rationality.
R: Still, as a teacher, I need to employ rationality as a yardstick. I am trying to prepare my students for citizenship in this country and world, and without abilities to reason and rationalize, they won’t survive.
I: Well, they may survive; they just won’t necessarily gain power.
R: Right. My job is to empower students and if they refuse to learn the norms of Cartesian philosophy upon which this society is based, they will not be empowered.
I: Well, empowered in the sense of having a position of power in society? You’re right. They won’t get it. But there are other things that empower people. Like love, belonging and purpose.
R: Agreed.
I: Good.