Chris Raabe's Blog, page 5

Students, be glad

For all of the students out there who hate writing assessments, just be glad you don’t have to score them. What took you three class periods to write must be scored in 5 minutes. Multiply that by 1600, and that is a lot of grading. I have a sub today, but it is not because I am having fun. Just wanted to give you the 411 or the FYI, or whatever you youngsters call it now.

Cutting off a piece of ear

 

  I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I would be joining the ranks of a Roman soldier, a famous painter, and our cat.  The last couple weeks have been interesting to say the least, but today is a day that will live in infamy for me.

  I found out today that I have cancer.  Oh, I’m not worried because the doctor who looked at me didn’t seem to be too concerned.  He said, “Yep, that’s skin cancer all right.  Do you mind if we take a chunk out of that ear?”

  That wasn’t all he said.  First, he grabbed my ear and yanked and twisted it like I was a new sixth grader in the building, and he was an eighth grader looking for lunch money.  Then he asked if that hurt.  Even if I didn’t have that cancerous thing on my ear, the tug and pull would have induced a pain response.

  Now, I need to explain a little bit about the ear.  Not to be too technical, but the ear-do-hickey is not something anyone would notice, except in the summer when the small ear-do-hickey gets a little brown and crusted due to sun exposure.  Oh, it is sometimes referred to as the ear-thingy or thing-a-ma-jig, or just that thingy on my ear ridge.  Anyway, my ear-do-hickey has been hanging around for a year or three.  I really don’t know when I got it, but lately, it’s been hurting, and not just when a man in a white lab coat yanks on it like it’s a slot machine lever and he’s been firing quarters into it for six hours thinking that if he pulls harder he can loosen the coins inside.

  Doctor Schwarzenegger, as I like to call him, carried what looked like a small blow torch in his hand, and I made a joke about him burning off the ole ear-do-hickey because that’s what I do.  I joke when I am worried that my doctor might actually be a terrorist bent on destroying the educational system one teacher at a time.  Okay, I watched “A Good Day To Die Hard” last night, so I had terrorism on the brain.  That’s when the doctor said, “Yep, that’s skin cancer all right. Do you mind if we take a chunk out of that ear?”  Then he tapped my leg with his blow torch and left the room.

  The nurse said, “You are going to feel a little pinch and then a bee sting for about 30 seconds.”

  WHATEVER! That was the biggest freaking bee and the “little pinch” felt like my ear was being injected with ghost pepper juice and gasoline before being set on fire.  She was right, though.  It only lasted 30 seconds.

  I found out what that blow torch was for later.  After he sawed off part of my ear, he had to cauterize the wound.  It’s a strange sensation to have Arnold Schwarzenegger saw off a piece of your ear and you can’t feel a thing but you can hear everything.

  On the way home, I couldn’t help but think of the the famous people I know who have lost ears.  Vincent Van Gogh cut his own ear off to give to his girlfriend.  Yeah, that guy had issues.  Then I thought about Peter, from Biblical times.  He cut off the ear of a Roman soldier who was going to take Jesus into custody.  And those two dudes didn’t have the ghost pepper bee sting to numb that highly sensitive location.  Then I thought about my cat, whom I now resemble in the missing piece of ear department.

  Then I focused my attention on the cancer.  Like I said earlier, I really don’t have much concern about it.  Oh, don’t get me wrong; I don’t like the idea of cancer.  I just know that I can’t control the future, and I can’t rewrite the past.  I only can do something about the present.  In our lives, we have those things that start small and can be traced back to our past.  Then they get bigger and bigger.  Often, we wish we could go back and change them, but we fail to see the opportunity to do something, now.  I am guilty of that.  Will there be pain?  You bet.  We all experience pain in our lives, and some of us get our ear hacked by the ear-do-hickey-enator.  Life goes on.  That’s what is great about it… It goes on!

This will be short

  This will be short.

  Sometimes, we get to a bad place in our lives, and sometimes we are the ones behind the wheel. We arrive and wonder how in the world we got to this point. What did I do to arrive here?

  That is not the only question to ask, and although it is important to understand how we got to our lowest points, the most important questions to ask are, “HOW DO I CLIMB BACK OUT?” and “AM I WILLING TO MAKE THAT CLIMB?”

  You see, deep down we all know what the right decisions are, but because we are human, we don’t always make the right decisions.  It’s in our nature, so in other words, we are naturally predispositioned to do that.  And we are not superhuman because that would be supernatural.  That means that if we are willing to climb out, we probably aren’t going to be able to do it alone.  It’s our nature to sin. That’s how we got into this hole in the first place.

  Well, I am willing to climb out, but I am not supernatural! That’s where God come in.  It’s a lot easier to make the climb with God than it is without Him.

  Although my week has been rough, I know there are people out there who hurt worse and have felt greater loss.  “Hey, God! I am ready to make that climb!”  It starts with the first step.  May today be the day you take your first step and climb.

Bang your head

  It has been a while since my last post.  The educational testing season has begun, and my subject was batting leadoff.  I am not sure about other parts of America, but in my corner of the world, the testing of students in public education is a little out of control.  Even though the subject of testing is a hot-button topic, I am so tired of testing that I don’t want to discuss or even think about it anymore.

  With testing over for me, I can get back to instruction, which was one of the reasons I became a teacher… to actually teach.  Our topic today was “Theme.”  With seventh graders, tangling with theme can be a tall order.  I know a few of you reading this have already tuned out the message because you aren’t sure of theme yourself, and you are getting the shakes because you are wondering if I am going to ask you a question about the theme from some book you read in seventh grade.  By the way, I highly recommend The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

  Actually, I am not going to test you on theme.  I am simply going to share what happened in class.  I used song lyrics to introduce theme to the students.  Yesterday, we did a few songs together in class and discussed what the author of the song was trying to say.  Today was pop quiz time.  We applied what we learned yesterday, and the students had to fill out a chart on the theme of a great tune called Shooting Star by Owl City.  If you haven’t heard it, the message is a positive one.

  Each class listened to it twice, once with video and once with just the lyrics in front of them.  For the first play through, they had to decide on what the theme, or message, was.  In round two, they had to circle phrases that supported the theme they selected.  During the second round of the song, one student began singing along. In moments, the entire class was singing the lyrics, and most of them had not heard the song before.  It was awesome.  My teaching neighbor commented that she could hear the singing in her room.

  To most of you, this may seem like an insignificant event.  But these are middle school boys and girls belting out a song in front of their peers during a pop quiz in English class.  It was fun.  It was light-hearted.  It was off-key and tinged with the voices of puberty cracking.  It was awesome. 

  Think about music for a second.  We all listen for different reasons, and those reasons change hourly.  I may crank the volume because I’m angry about something, and I may crank the volume because I am elated.  We pick songs for all sorts of reasons.  Sometimes we listen to music because we want company in our depression, and sometimes we just want to rock out and bang our heads to be silly with our daughters.  I am guilty of both, and I’m proud of that.  There are songs about love, songs about life, songs about heartbreak, and songs that just make you smile when you hear them.  I like all different kinds of music.  I listen to music because it makes me feel better.  It picks me up.  It keeps me moving.  My music is my theme each day.  It’s my message to myself.

  This post has me thinking about this cute girl I know.  I think I’m going to grab my iPod and listen to Cruise by Florida-Georgia Line.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

   I had an interesting Friday, recently. Perhaps you saw it on the local Omaha news on Thursday evening. Oh, you don’t see me in the video, but I was there. There was a fight between two high school girls, and it was uploaded to youtube and facebook.

   For starters, don’t believe the news. Secondly, quit calling my school. I don’t know for sure if anyone has called, but I know human nature and the blame game, so I am positive they have. The news program reported that the fight occurred on our school campus and no one did anything to stop it. The video showed tons of cars in the parking lot in the background.

   The only thing the news got right was that it happened on our school grounds. It was Friday, but it was 4:45 at night, almost two hours after school had released for the day. The parking lot was empty except for three cars as I walked to my own car. While pulling out of the lot, I noticed a string of cars driven by high school students filing around to the back of my school. I flipped around and parked in the front of the building, walked to the office, and notified an administrator that there was trouble out back.

   As we walked into the parking lot, I could hear the crowd of high school students chanting “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!” It was soon followed by “TEACHER! TEACHER!”

   The students scattered like roaches when a light turns on! Cars screamed from the lot as we tried to ascertain who was involved in the fight. With cell phone camera ready, I snapped a couple shots of one of the fighters and the other one’s get-a-way car, license included. Then I went back into the building to spend some time going through yearbooks to try to identify the one fighter I saw. I sent a text to my wife that I was going to be home late. The district was notified; the high schools were notified.

   Needless to say, the news reporting was all wrong, but I wonder if it usually is reported incorrectly or without all the facts. Do we usually jump to judgment before knowing the truth? Do we declare guilt based on what the news tells us? There is always a story, and the news programs don’t have enough time to tell the whole story. It’s not their fault. It is simply the way it is.

   I was appalled to hear that no one broke the fight up since I was the one who walked through the NASCAR race to get out of our parking lot. I was also bothered by comments that the school doesn’t care. I was already late getting home, and I could have easily kept on driving because I wanted to see my family. BUT, I didn’t!

   I turned around and did what educators do. I thought it smelled fishy and I investigated it.  None of those kids were going to stop the fight. I know; I watched the video. The girl pleaded for help, and not one of those kids stepped in to stop it.  Had I not turned around on a Friday evening and lengthened my work day, one of those kids could have ended up in the hospital or worse. Yeah, the news reports what they know… Sometimes, they don’t know jack!

On The Run is released!!!

ON THE RUN is available! It’s official.  You can get it on Kindle or order a print copy at this link https://www.createspace.com/4059287

Cats and Fraggles and other pests

  I don’t know why the fraggle was up so early this morning, but I know it was up because the cat was meowing like something was pulling its tail. Yes, I have a cat, two actually. Our oldest feline is missing one ear, so we named him Vincent. (Yes, after the artist.) We don’t know how it happened since he came to us that way, and he doesn’t really like talking about it, so we leave it be. Our second cat, Bella, is a feisty little bugger. Vincent trapped her under the couch for two days when she first joined the family, and I don’t think she has ever let that go… WOMEN!

  Anyway, the fraggle was up early tormenting one of them. Oh, you don’t know what fraggles are? I’m sorry. Fraggles are little creatures that we can’t see, but I know they exist because for absolutely no reason, my cats will perk up and dart out of the room after something. My sister was the first to explain this strange phenomenon of the fraggle/cat relationship. She told me you will never see a fraggle but that the cats can see them and hear them. She graduated from Iowa State, so she knows this stuff.

  If you have a cat, well, then you have fraggles. They are not like fleas, which you may also have if you have a cat. No, a fraggle is part of the gnome family; at least, I think it is. We have a gnome living in our house, too. I will get back to him in a second. The fraggle is a creature that humans have never seen in real life, but a cat can sense their presence. It explains why cats will do what they do, which is lie around for 23 hours and spend one hour a day hunting fraggles.

  No, my cats don’t care about the gnome living in our house, but they can’t resist the temptation to chase a fraggle. We have a car-key gnome. I know my wife is the one who inadvertently brought it into the house, because she is the one who can never find the keys to her car. Today, she told me over the phone that she couldn’t find her keys anywhere. I told her to go back and check in the van. That darn gnome put them back in the ignition. I know there are a lot of people who battle car-key gnomes in their homes.  I called a pest solution company about it, and they hung up on me. I guess they know how hard it is to get gnomes and fraggles out of homes so why bother.

  So the next time your cat does something strange, don’t worry, it’s just fraggles. They are the harmless creatures, and you hardly notice they are around, except when your cat gallops out of the room like its tail is on fire.

  Well, that’s all for now. Hey, remember, my second book of the Phenomenon Trilogy, ON THE RUN will be available for purchase as an ebook and in print format on January 15. Hey, where did I put my cell phone? It was sitting here on the table just a minute ago. Oh no, the kids must have let a cell phone gnome into the house. I will have to call that pest solutions place again, but I heard those are the hardest gnomes to get rid of from a home.

Sneak Peek at On The Run

Click on the link below to get a sneak peek at Chapter One of On The Run.

http://chrisraabe.wordpress.com/sneak-peak-at-on-the-run/

I am not in charge

  It is a sad day in the land of Raabe. For those of you who don’t know me, besides moonlighting as a novelist and blogger, I teach seventh grade English. It is a wonderful world of people dealing with emotion turmoil and chemical imbalances, and that is just our staff. Normally, I enjoy my life in middle school, but some days are tougher than others.

  We returned to school on Thursday on a somber note. We lost our second student of the school year. The first was a young man who I had the privilege of teaching in seventh grade last year. He was struck by a car while crossing the street before school in September. This time the tragedy was different… she just stopped breathing. No foul play, no accident to lay blame, just taken from her family.

  The visitation was tonight, and my eldest daughter had classes with both students. She knew both students well enough to want to go to each visitation and to be affected by both. So the question most parents fear is the “WHY” question? Why do bad things happen to good people? That is a great question, and it is one that I don’t have the answer for. I don’t know why these things happen.

  I know that we are all given the freedom of choice. We have the ability to make choices, and the consequences come from our decisions and the choices that other people make. Sometimes, there is a place to put the blame when bad things happen, and sometimes there is no one to blame. In this case, it was medical. She just stopped breathing. That’s it. And the emotions came out tonight as I watched students make the slow walk to say goodbye one last time.

  I really struggle with the death of a student, the death of someone so young. My heart is for the kids that I teach. I even wrote novels for reluctant boy readers because I had boys in my classroom who didn’t want to read. I can’t imagine why this was allowed to happen, but I am not in charge. That is really the tough part, not being in charge of your life. I mean, you can control part of your life, but if you try to take on the whole thing by yourself, get ready for some serious heartache.

  In times like these, I thank the Lord for the blessings that I have. I take time to turn inward and realize how fragile life is and how quickly it can change. I know that some will blame God for these things, and I guess I have fallen into that category before. Here is what I know about God… He is in charge.

  He gives us the freedom to choose, and those choices have ramifications that are positive or negative, and sometimes both. But this was not a choice; it was the tragic ending that parents fear of. But as a parent, there are things that I tell my kids “NO” and they just have to accept it. There are times that they don’t understand why I appear to be so cruel, times that I appear to be unfeeling when I am actually doing what is best. People may disagree with me on this, and that is okay. I am not in charge. I am only going off of what I know as a parent. We are His children, and He loves us, all of us. So like the kid who is angry at the parent for something the kid doesn’t understand, so too are we like that child. No, I don’t understand, and I don’t agree with it, but I am not in charge.

  So what am I to do? Look for the good. It is that simple. I look for the good. What good will come from this event and any event for that matter? I try to be positive and focus on the good things in my life.

  Over a decade ago, that same daughter that wept tonight was involved in a life or death event. She was only eighteen months old when she fell through football bleachers at the high school I taught at in Phoenix. She fell ten feet to concrete, and my wife and I thought she was dead. I fought through fans and pushed my way to the stairs, frantic to get to my only child. I found her in a pool of blood between jagged pipe and track hurdles. Sure she was dead, I lifted her into my arms, and over the din of the band and the fans I heard her cry. She was rushed to the hospital and after a tense evening she was released. No concussion, no broken bones, just a scar from 33 stitches was all she was left with as a reminder of that night. I have often thought about why I was so lucky. Why was she allowed to survive this fall in such a miraculous manner with nothing but a scar as a reminder when other parents lose children? I am not in charge, so I don’t know. What I do know is that those dangerous bleachers were replaced years later, due in part to that accident. I know that the outreach and support of our Christian friends brought Jesus into the lives of many, and that event drew me closer to God.

  My advice is to look for the good in everything and everyone. Mourn the loss, but look for the good. We serve a mighty Father, and we don’t know why these things happen. We may never know the answers to some of our questions, but we are not in charge, and that is a tough pill to swallow sometimes.

Is that “piece” really art?

  What is art? That was the question posed to me by one of my daughter’s during our weekend excursion to the Joselyn Art Museum in Omaha. I thought I knew what art is, but after our trip… I am not so sure.

  Art is defined by Dictionary.com as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. Okay, that definition doesn’t do much for a seven-year-old, and frankly, it doesn’t do much for me either. When I said aesthetic, my little one responded with wide eyes, “Daddy, you said a bad word.”

  There were some incredible paintings and sculptures that amazed me. Unfortunately, there were some pieces that I would definitely refer to as “Pieces.” Like the “piece” that I drove my freshman year of college that had a hole in the back seat floor, so when you drove through water, the rear passenger needed waterproof boots. My collegiate colleagues and I did a lot of artistic things in that car, and most of them I can’t speak of in this forum.

  There was “art” that my wife said, “I could do that.” And you know what? She was right. If the majority of society can copy it, then I am not sure it should be considered art. While looking at one “piece” of work, my 5th grader pointed out that it looked like something her younger sister had made at Grandpa’s house with sparkle paint and glue. And you know what? She was right! There was an eerie similarity between the art “piece” at Joselyn and the artwork my youngest daughter had created a month earlier.

  In my opinion, and I may offend some artsy people with this statement, just because it was created by someone famous doesn’t mean it is good, or that it should be hung in a gallery for the world to see. Mr. T is cool, but if he wipes his nose on a Kleenex, I am not keeping it, nor am I showing the world that I have a Mr. T snot collection. Although, that would be something I could keep in my A-Team lunch box in the garage.

  Ahh, the A-Team, now that was art. I remember those days of my youth when Dad and I would park in front of the television and watch that week’s episode of America’s favorite soldiers of fortune. I was watching the pilot episode, “Mexican Sleigh Ride,” on Netflix when my oldest daughter came into the room. Needless to say, she was hooked. A week later, we have worked through 10 of 85 episodes. Her two younger sisters have even been seen hanging with Dad and Big Sis in the family room, and my wife made an appearance last night.

  John “Hannibal” Smith always makes me laugh. He reminds me of my father, only without the cigar. My oldest likes Murdock, and I think my fifth grader likes Mr. T. There is nothing like a group of fugitive-guns-for-hire crashing cars, wrecking planes and helicopters, shooting guns, and evading the military police. It really brings families together. Now that is art!

  Art is what you want it to be, I guess. The best pieces of art in my life are the little things. My fifth grader putting a corner kick in the right spot in front of the goal is art. The beautiful smile of my oldest (which looks very similar to my wife’s smile) when I tell a joke that makes her laugh is art. The hug I get from my youngest daughter when I get home from work is one of the finest pieces of art I could receive. And sitting with my wife and three daughters in our family room with the A-Team on the television, well, that is definitely a work of art.

  I can’t wait until we finish the A-Team and move into the episodes of AirWolf. Happy New Year to all of you, and I hope you enjoy your own pieces of art.