Libby Broadbent's Blog, page 10

It’s not pretty, it’s weird.

It’s March Break, and I am cleaning. It’s been waiting for a while, the cleaning.

My love: Um… honey? Do you think… maybe… you could take down the Christmas tree today, baby?

Me: But… it’s pretty.

My love: No, sweetie pie… It’s weird.

True love means tempering the weird with terms of endearment.

For the last few months my youngest daughter has been living in my house in town. It’s a tiny-wee-cutesy-little-abode that I bought for a song before the Man of my Dreams swept me off my feet in a whirlwind of camo and romance and venison wrapped in bacon. It started out clean, but, it’s been my Beeb’s home for a while now. That’s what I call her; Beeb. Also Mollusk, Mollevolent, Morry, and Poopy Head. All names that are much more fun than the name I gave her at birth. I was so boring when I was young. Anyway, the Beeb is messy.

Cleaning a house your spawn has lived in is like walking into a fart in the grocery aisle. It’s nasty, it smells, and whoever did it is long gone. If you listen carefully you can hear the perpetrator giggling in the distance.

There are roughly five hundred cheese slices in the fridge. Two bottles of pop. And something that used to be a Subway sandwich. Either that or she scooped up some marsh sludge and stuffed it into a Subway bag and stored it in the fridge.

Apparently, there have also been festive gatherings in my wee cottage. There’s a message scrawled on paper stuck to the fridge which reads: “We’se gonna Fuck Shit Up tonight, bitches!” I am most relieved to see that all the words are spelled correctly, and I can only hope that the Fucking Up of Shit was not responsible for the strange smell emanating from the recycle bag which is overflowing with… recyclables. Bottles, cans and pizza boxes. My child is an environmentally friendly Fucker Up of Shit. I will sleep well tonight, knowing I raised her right.

So clean, so pure, so pre-Beeb…

As I am cleaning, my elderly neighbor appears in the doorway. She’s wearing her husband’s gigantic flannel, slippers and curlers. The curlers are held in place with toothpicks, one of which is making an alarming dent in her forehead every time she raises her eyebrows. She glances at the recycle bag and nearly pierces her brow.

She wants to know what I’m doing, where the Beeb is, and if I have seen anyone trying to break into her house. She offers to help me, but her feet are bad, and she knows she should go to the hospital, but “you have to wait so goddamn long, might as well just put up with it.” She tells me she will miss my darling child, because the young people are so good. So pleasant.

I glance at the message on the fridge.

I say, “I hope she wasn’t too noisy.”

“Oh no, she never did anything bad.”

I look out the window to the scattering of cigarette butts composting in the garden. There’s a beer bottle poking out of a melted snow pile. The dogs seem to have found a clump of what looks distressing like frozen vomit.

“Well, that’s good. I’m glad you weren’t annoyed with her antics.”

“Oh no, dear. She’s just lovely. You know, I always felt better when she was over here, because I knew she was looking out for me.”

She gets teary-eyed, and I discretely push a mould-furred bottle under the garbage bag between us. I am sorely tempted to remove her toothpick, which is surely going to leave a scar, but I thank her for her kindness instead, and she leaves, cursing the weather as she goes.

I love Nova Scotia. I love that this adorable grandma tottered over in her slippers to say nice things about my child, who apparently tests the doneness of spaghetti noodles by throwing them on the wall to see if they stick. I know this because there are several… spaghettis… petrified on the cupboard doors. The paint comes off when I remove them. That’s not pretty… that’s weird, Poopy Head.

As I haul clinking bags of recyclables to the shed, I see the dogs eating the pile of vomit. Time to go. I have a Christmas tree to take down, after all.

Buy my book on amazon: That Thing That Happened, by Libby Broadbent

Available now on Amazon

Follow me on twitter:  @LibbyBroadbent

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Thanks!

I like, therefore I am.

I am tweeting. I am hooting.

I am following. I am being followed.

I am a river… or am I a stream? I am a tribe… or, no… I’m in a bonfire. Or am I LinkedIn a chain?

I am doing all this in 140 characters or less.

I am a hashtag. Which sounds like it should be illegal. I haven’t done that since I was sixteen. That, and other indiscretions involving various types of vegetation that weren’t broccoli. Like that time we dressed like ninjas and totally raided the lawn of the municipal building for fungi… back then, I had to dress like a ninja. Now, I hashtag with impunity. (#ThatThing … try it. Amusing things will be revealed!)

I like. I am liked.

I follow. I am followed. (It kinda creeps me out. I close the curtains at night. Just in case.)

I like, therefore I am.

Oh my.

I am expanding my author platform. It’s rather like climbing the high diving board and curling my toes over the edge, looking down with trepidation at the murky waters below. I know I have to jump, but until I’m actually in the air, I’m just gonna clench various sphincters and freak.

I am not a social beast. I am so not.

As an anti-social creature, I have chosen a strange career. I am a teacher because I really like kids, and I really like reading, and the two fell together nicely. I can talk to a classroom of kids… often with a ridiculous accent and wicked dance moves… but I do not like social things. I get sweaty and nervous when I have to talk to people. Real people. Like, at gatherings. And the grocery store.

But I am a self-published author. There is no room for “introverted”, when one is flogging one’s wares on the internet like a tattoo artist at a nudist colony. “If you can pinch it, we can ink it.”

I wrote it… now… please love it.

It is an incredibly vulnerable place for an introvert to be. And my weiner is not big enough to hide behind.

So here I am, saying hello to hundreds of random strangers online.

“Like” me. “Follow” me.

Things I would NEVER say in real life.

In real life, they would say NO.

They would say, “Is that a … weiner dog? Under your shirt? And are you wearing… pajamas?”

The “unlike” would immediately follow.

But here, online, with my reflection staring eerily back at me from the computer screen, I blithely request friendship, support, encouragement, and… “Gee, I wonder how many people are going to follow me today?”

No one follows people who say “Gee”.

No one follows me in real life. I’m a middle aged teacher in a small town, with a weiner dog stuffed under my shirt. (Don’t worry. He likes it. It’s his #1 favorite place, closely followed by the hearth in front of the fire. No animal rights are being violated, I assure you.)

I’m not what one would call “popular”.

I have a wonderful editor who has advised me that in the world of self-publishing it is imperative to have an on-line, social networking presence. All of my research leads me to this conclusion. If I want to sell books, I have to reach the enormous masses of readers who are distracted by 3,000,000 new books a year. I have to build a platform, curl my toes, and jump off.

Into the stream. Or the bonfire.

Hoot, hoot.

Tweet, tweet.

Can you hear me?

Can’t we just meet at Tim Horton’s and have a coffee? I’ll probably end up giving you my book for free, because I don’t like taking money from friends.

But please… like me?

If you are in the same boat as me, the same stream, hooting to the same tweeters, try this site: http://www.worldliterarycafe.com/

And this blog: http://theintrovertedauthor.blogspot.ca/

And this site: http://storyfinds.com/

And who knows, maybe we will meet and wave and have that coffee. Or at least hold hands while we jump.

Thanks to all the twitters and facebookers and bloggers who are following me. When we work together, the word gets out!  J

Buy my book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/That-Thing-Happened-ebook/dp/B008NXABY6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1362531713&sr=8-2&keywords=libby+broadbent

Follow my twitter:  @LibbyBroadbent    Hashtag:  #ThatThing

Like my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thatthingthathappened?ref=hl

Follow my blog:  www.libbybroadbent.com

Thank you! :)

What’s not to like?

I like Amanda Palmer

I like Amanda Palmer.

This is weird, because I am also quite fond of The Band Perry, and Alan Jackson. And, if my Darling Lover ever shacks-me-off I am going to marry Tim McGraw. He will say yes. We will wear cowboy hats at the wedding.

But… I also like Amanda Palmer. I think I’m channeling my seventeen year old self, buried for thirty years under the cellulite shell of marriage and parenting and divorce and bills and responsibility which I have allowed to alienate me from something that spoke to me so many years ago. Music that is poetry and angst and yelling and sweaty.

Shave-off-your-eyebrows-and-pierce-something music.

Stand-in-a-field-and-scream music.

Music that pours directly into your veins.

Visceral. This is a word I have never associated with the music of Tim McGraw. Amanda Palmer’s music crawls into your guts wearing steel toes hiking boots, notching divots into your spine as it drives it’s way, sweating and bleeding, into the place where your seventeen year old heart still yearns for anarchy, and love, and understanding, and freedom. Tim McGraw? His music makes you want to drive a truck. Which is nice. But visceral, it ain’t.

And, she has balls.

Her middle name? Fucking.

Amanda Fucking Palmer.

Not, I’m sure, what her mamma named her, but it is eloquence itself. It is a sadness that my breeding days are over, and my spawn have all grown quite attached to the names I gave them years before I became inspired by AFP. My youngest child’s middle name is Elizabeth. What a shame. Had I but known of the possibilities.

I found AFP because she is married to Neil Gaiman. (If you haven’t viewed his commencement address, Make Good Art… do it.)

Sigh. Neil Fucking Gaiman. Author of American Gods, Sandman, The Graveyard Book. Only one of my favorite authors of all time. Stories that stick to your ribs like good poutine. We share a birthday, me and Neil. November 10th . Soulmates. In reading Neil Gaiman’s blog, I read Amanda’s, and my youth resurrected itself and sang the Hallelujah chorus.

At least, until I saw the video she made with all the blood. Not a fan of the blood… but the lyrics? Love the lyrics: “I wouldn’t kill to win a war… I wouldn’t kill to get you back… but I would kill to make you feel…”

And I love the one with the words written all over her.

And I love, love, LOVE the Bed Song. It’s beautiful. And so, so sad.

And I love her balls.

Amanda Palmer held a kickstarter for her album which raised over a million dollars from fans willing to fund her music. It was very controversial, very edgy, and very… visceral. She writes a wide-open-honest blog where she bares her mind and is brave and funny and endearing.

A woman who doesn’t shave her armpits.

Endearing.

No lie.

Having been a die-hard shaver since I was twelve, this is a leap for me.

I also like TED. As in: TED-is-Awesome kind of like. (Technology, Entertainment, Design. If you don’t know TED, you’se livin’ under a rock, yo. Google it, then be prepared to spend hours being awed. If you’ve been killing brain cells watching reality television… google TED. Save yourself!)

Amanda Fucking Palmer did a speech at TED. Absolutely cool. I haven’t seen it yet, it just happened this week, but I am waiting impatiently to hear what she has to say about music and the on-line presence of artists in this new world of downloadable music.

“ She thinks people have been asking the wrong question, “How do we make people pay for music?” What if instead we ask, “How do we let people pay for music?”
 (Lillie, Ben. Trust people to pay for music: Amanda Palmer at TED2013,  Feb 27th, 2013)

I think she has it right. I think she is grasping both the humanity and the marketability of an on-line presence. The internet may threaten to isolate us, to make us automatons; thieving, pirating downloaders with no conscience about who or what we steal… or it might make us a community of like-minded individuals eager to share and support and witness the creation of art. As a self-pub author, this speaks to me. AFP took a leap of faith and walked away from a record label, became an independent recording artist and connected directly… viscerally… with her fans. This is the new paradigm. I never would have listened to Amanda Palmer’s music if I hadn’t read her blog, been intrigued by how she was delivering her material, and felt that she was real person.

I can’t wait to see her TED speech.

The refrain from “I’m not the killing type” runs through my head at odd moments in my day.

I shave my armpits every few days.

I like Amanda Fucking Palmer. Eyebrows and all.

  Check out my novel: That Thing That Happened: Available on kindle now for $1.

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Is there an app for that?

“Can you get this, Ms. Broadbent?”

He’s seventeen. He’s very tall, with impossibly big feet and hands he has to grow into, like they’re gifts from a birthday he hasn’t had yet.  He has a tattoo on his arm, of what? A lizard? He also swears a lot, skips class regularly, and is rumored to have been in trouble with the law a time or two. He’s squinting intently at the cell phone in his hand.

“Take off your hat, please. And put your phone away.”

“Yeah, yeah… but can you, like, get this? I’m stuck and it’s drivin’ me crazy.”

I sigh. It’s going to be yet another cell phone battle.

As I approach his desk I wonder what it is he’s doing… playing some violent killing game? Some monotonous animated bird thing? His text won’t go through and he wants the wifi password?

I do the cell phone boogie every day in class. Some days I end up with five or six of them confiscated, buzzing and flashing on my desk, a collective distraction that impedes my instruction and makes me into the Mighty Oppressor.

No wonder they can’t pay attention to me.  That pile of cell phones on my desk generates enough static to power a small village, and they are usually in the kid’s pockets or hidden, hot, furtively texting behind the novel they are pretending to read. It’s hard to concentrate on Shakespeare when your phone is buzzing in your pocket and you know it’s so-and-so wanting to talk about such-and-such.

“It’s got five letters, but I don’t get the connection between the lemons and the pie.”

He’s playing a word game.

Mr. I-don’t-gotta-folla-yer-rules-no-how-no-way… is playing a word game?

I am totally impressed.

Four pictures, one word. His fingers are so big they dwarf the tiny keyboard.

Wow.

“Slice. I think it’s slice.”

“Whoa, thanks. What about this one?”

We spend a few minutes bonding over a tiny screen. It’s fun. He smiles. I smile. We both get seriously bogged down by “overkill”, but another kid comes to the rescue. Other phones appear, playing the same game. Shakespeare rolls over in cyberspace. I really, truly, enjoy my teenage charges. I have a warm glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, there is some use to the technology I usually see as a hindrance. Was this… an educational moment? My god. I think it was… for me!

Over the next few days I am approached by several students playing this game.

“Whaddaya think this one is? An elephant, a suitcase, a tree and a car?”

“Trunk?”

I am surprisingly good at this game, and it gives me a strange kind of usefulness in the classroom that I enjoy. I’m good at Shakespeare too… but ya know… whatever…

There’s a suggestion that in the very near future all of the students in my classes will have some form of tablet in their hands. Not just the lucky few, but all of them.

I will have one too. And I will have to know how to use it.

Teaching with technology.

Meeting them on their level.

Engaging the 21st century learner.

Great. Angry Birds all around.

I am a cynic. I am…what… old? What will these young darlings do with free access to the internet… in class?

Facebook.

Temple Run.

Or… 4 pictures 1 word?

I know there is educational value to be found online. I get the whole “app” revolution. But please, how I am going to monitor and motivate and instruct when my class of thirty-two are all fixated on a screen is still a mystery to me. Then again, I remember a time when I was suspicious of bank machines and word processors, yet we seem to still be surviving as a species, so I suppose we will weather the “app” storm as well.

I tell my kids: “When I rode my triceratops to school, we were expected to read, dammit!”

“Is there an app for that?”

I have a theory.

I’m sure it’s not new.

I worry that as our children become more and more technologically independent, (or is it dependent?) they are potentially losing the building blocks to respect, perseverance, responsibility and empathy that younger generations had to develop in order to get what we wanted.

Perhaps I am an extremist. Or too conservative. Or a high school teacher.

When I was a kid, if I wanted to watch a movie, an entire series of events would have to happen first. I was responsible for all of them.

First, I would have to get permission from my parents. The only way I could see a movie was to go to the theatre; the VCR didn’t exist then and we only watched “The Walton’s” and “Lorne Green’s New Wilderness” on television. In order to get permission, I would have to behave myself at home. I would have to do my chores, be polite, do well at school… all of the things that had to happen to avoid a grounding.  Groundings were easy to come by. Manners were paramount.

If I was allowed to go to the movie, I then had to pay for it myself. I had to anticipate the expense and save the money, or there would be no movie.  Then, I had to arrange with my friends to meet, face to face, coordinate and discuss so we could all go together.

Then, I had to walk there. I don’t remember my parents ever driving me anywhere, and I never had the family car. My dad didn’t teach me to drive. (I still had a tricycle when I was ten, but that’s another story.)

So, the simple entertainment of watching a movie involved good behavior, fiscal responsibility, social interaction, and physical exercise.

Nowadays? These kids?

I wanna watch a movie… click. Done.

On the device they often don’t pay for themselves, with no restrictions, no effort.

Click.

And not just any old movie. We’re not talkin’ “Casablanca” here.

When I was about fourteen years old, I wanted to see “The Blue Lagoon”.  My parents freaked. It was a battle. I had to be angelic for weeks, and then they only would let me go to the matinee.  I really just wanted the popcorn. They were concerned about the sexual content.

Young people today can access porn online with distressing ease.

Click.

What do our kids need to do today to be able to watch a movie?

Nothing.

So where are those lessons being learned now? Manners, responsibility, relationships, health?

Ok… hopefully they have to behave well at home to be allowed to have that hand-held-device that gives them access to everything under the sun. Maybe they have to pay for it themselves. Maybe they have to go outside sometimes. I hope so.

I really hope so.

When I am told that as a teacher, I will be responsible for engaging my students using technological tools… I take a deep breath. I sigh. I go online and try to figure it out.

Since I can’t get apps on my phone, because it cost $69 from the grocery store, and I haven’t actually mastered texting yet, I googled “4 pictures 1 word” and what did I find?

Cheat sites. Answers.

Seriously?

I was excited about this moment I had with my kids, this eagerness they showed over a game that involved vocabulary. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was with my googling. I wanted to check out the vocabulary development, the educational potential, the mental benefits… cheat sites?

So… if I try to use this app in my high school English class, to build word development skills, critical thinking, problem solving… they can google cheats?

Now, to be fair, my little lovelies… “I got it! It’s “overkill”! Deal with that!”… were not looking up cheats. They were working together, happy, challenged, endearingly engaged.

So… how do I channel that? How do I tap that? Not to mention… connect that to curriculum outcomes?

I look at the four pictures my tattoo’ed young student shows me and I try to meet him on his wave length.

“Is it… minute?”

“Yeah! Yeah…‘cause it could be time, or like really, really small! That was a tough one!”

Yes. Yes, young man, it is a tough one.

Please… please… put your phone away.

Check out my novel: That Thing That Happened: Available on kindle now for $1.

“That Thing That Happened” promoted on StoryFinds!

http://storyfinds.com/book/1988/that-thing-that-happened

This is a great website, based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, offering marketing promotion for authors for really reasonable rates. “That Thing That Happened” is being highlighted for two days, February 17th and 18th!

It is soooo exciting to see my novel getting out into the world… its like sending a little feral child off to school for the first time, skinned knees and all!

Captain Kirk, we know not what we do…

They’re cloning horses!

This is freaking me out a little.

In my tiny corner of the east coast of Canada, where I can grow non-genetically-modified tomatoes in my backyard, and I eat 100% natural deer meat from our forests, the only cloning I have ever seen was the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk was doubled. I remember it vividly, because when I was young I was going to marry Captain James T. Kirk and have his babies. Two Kirks was better than one. Beam me up, big fella.My daughter has spent some time in Texas, moving in horsey circles, and she informed me recently that it is possible for cloned horses to be owned by private individuals. Not just in labs. Not just in the testing phase where the animals are secure and monitored and top secret, but actually alive, running around, being real horses that are… freakin’ clones!

Unbelievable.

Oh, Captain Kirk, what does it mean?

I told my students this shocking news and they blinked at me.

“Duh. Like, no kidding. Can we watch a movie?”

I waved my hands in the air, my eyes bugged out, my voice got squeaky. To no avail.

“This really doesn’t freak me out, Ms. Broadbent. Sorry.”

I showed them pictures of pigs that glow in the dark, and bugs hardwired for surveillance, and a video clip of some guy saying “cloning is no different than natural breeding programs. It’s the next natural step.”

It is soooo NOT natural!

They clone creatures to harvest their milk and blood for medical purposes, they clone high-achieving competitive animals so the originals can keep competing and the clone can breed, they create hybrid creatures to help animals on the verge of extinction…

I can’t argue with these purposes… they seem sound… but it’s getting us just one more ill-advised step closer to cloning a human. You know it’s gonna happen. Science doesn’t move backward, even when the moral and ethical dilemmas remain unresolved.

And that freaks me out, because the Captain James T. Kirks of the world are few and far between.

I doubt they’ll wait until we reach a unanimous consensus that cloning is ok. Which also begs the question… who is “they”?

“They” is not me. I can comprehend neither the moral principles of “they”, nor the financial reality that allows private individuals to own cloned animals. My cell phone cost $69 from the local grocery store. When my weiner dog, although admittedly a freak of nature, finally meets his destiny, I will not want a cloned replacement, because his weiner-ish-ness will live on in my heart forever.

When Captain Kirk was cloned, the clone was evil. And yes, technically he wasn’t actually cloned, but there were two of him. Transporter malfunction. Scotty was bemused.

I’m not suggesting that there are herds of evil cloned horses galloping through the fields of Texas; I’m sure the evil cloned horses are lovely. And I’m sure if I saw one, I wouldn’t know it was a clone. So how will I know when I meet my first cloned human? And you know who those clones are gonna be, right? The rich people. The ones with huge brains and even huger wallets.

What if opening the cloning door releases unexpected results, just like evil Kirk stepping off the transporter pad? What if their experiments morph into a surprising (albeit good-looking) transmutation rampaging through the Enterprise in pursuit of wenches and booze? Good Kirk was always so nice to the wenches. Evil Kirk was just a jerk.

I’m not saying it’s all bad…

I’m just saying it freaks me out.

                         Check out my novel: “That Thing That Happened” available for a dolla dolla bill y’all, on Amazon!

Available now on kindle

 

Photo credits:

Freaking News: http://www.freakingnews.com/funny-pictures/kirk-pictures.asp

DReager1′s Blog: http://dreager1.com/category/battles/captain-kirk-battles/

 

 

Do they have a filter?

It’s the start of a new semester, which means new little darlings streaming into my room, eager and full of joy. One walked in for the first day saying “Yo, Ms. Broadbent, we doin’ something fun today?”

“No. Don’t be ridiculous. Sit down.”

I smile at him and we have a moment of that wonderful teenage thing where a kid is funny, and the teacher appreciates that humor, and we’ll be fine.

Another walks in saying “This is gonna be stupid.”

“Go back into the hall and walk in again. This time with a better attitude.”

She did. But we be hate’n.

We ask so much of these kids, every day. Be happy about math, be happy about english, be happy that I ask you to put away your cell phone, and don’t eat that sandwich in here, and take off your hat, and watch your language, and what do you mean you don’t have a pencil, and I know what that word means, young man, and yes, you have to read that now, and what is that smell, and stop talking about that, I can hear you and I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW what you did on the weekend…

No wonder they get tired of us. Teachers. It’s February, after all. Name something you aren’t tired of.

Kids are way more comfortable with their teachers than they ever were when I was a kid. Perhaps it’s because of the immediacy of their on-line lives. They don’t hesitate to post every hiccup and snot-drip of their lives, in full color, on facebook, or twitter, or bbm, so they also don’t hesitate to share the intricacies of their convoluted love lives in class, usually at a volume that demands attention. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t telling me about the weekend’s activities, they are telling each other, within my hearing range. A range which isn’t great thanks to my advancing age and proclivity for listening to Pink Floyd cranked all the way up when I was a teenager. But I can hear them.

And not only do they yell about their lives… they have pictures.

And video.

And they seem to post it all.

Is it the fault of technology that our young ones are losing that inner filter that ensures privacy and protects their elders from TMI? Do they even know what privacy means?

There have been stories in the news recently of people losing their jobs because of ill-advised postings on line. It’s well known that employers are researching potentials hires via facebook and other social networking sites. In my own investigations into the publishing world I have learnt that submitting a manuscript to a publisher isn’t the only thing they look at when considering an author as a potential contract. They want to see evidence of the writer’s existence on-line. Blogs, tweets, facebook… it isn’t enough to write a good book, an author must also have a digital persona they are marketing to the world.

This is one of the photos on my facebook page:

I fear I shall continue to write my drivel in obscurity for eternity.

I warn my students about their overactive on-line enthusiasm, but they scoff at me.

“I have privacy settings.”

Oh, really. Then how do you explain this:

I can read your mind!

What really concerns me is the ability of young people to recognize the value of privacy. To be able to differentiate between something that seems funny on-line that they share with their close friends, and the potential of that very image or story to harm them in the future, taken out of context and viewed by people they haven’t even imagined meeting yet.

Like a future employer.

“So, you’ve applied to work with six year olds at our top-of-the-line education center?”

“Yes. I love kids. And kittens. And I crochet.”

“I see. Then you can perhaps explain this picture we pulled from facebook showing you running wildly down a street waving stolen real estate signs with a roll of toilet paper wrapped around your body? And what about this tweet which reads: ‘stickin’ it to the man, like a boss!’ and links to a video of you peeing on the front steps of what appears to be your local McDonalds?”

“Oh, that. Yeah. Heh heh. Not me. That’s my… um… evil twin…”

I have clever students. I have very employable, witty, entertaining students. I just hope they learn to filter their digital lives.

I’m really glad I grew up before social media became the mode of expression for youth. I may never have gotten a job if someone had been able to see the video of the adventure with the  real estate signs…

Available now on  kindle and amazon.com

A weiner in winter.

It’s cold. And snowing.

Yes, if you spend any amount of time at all on facebook, you will learn very quickly that it is cold out. Freaking cold, if you will. Or, you could go outside.

Either way… cold.

It’s winter in Nova Scotia, which means that one day its -18, the next its +5. Then back to -29. There’s some snow. Then it rains. The only creatures that don’t seem to mind are the seagulls and the crows. The crows are the Honey Badgers of Liverpool, NS.

My weiner hates the cold. Jeepy Jeep, the Weiner Dog of Wonder, despises winter. His legs are two inches long, after all, which means my weiner’s weiner makes direct contact with snow at anything deeper than 5cm.

My lover assures me that this is an uncomfortable situation in which to find oneself.



But, since my lover becomes quite distressed when the weiner pees on the floor (which, yes, the weiner has been known to do. Don’t hold it against him. He can’t reach the toilet, and, did I mention, it’s freaking cold outside?) Jeepy has to go outside several times a day. When it’s +5 he disappears in the blink of an eye to harass the neighborhood cats, but when it’s -29 he cries like a baby and pretends he doesn’t even know what a bladder is.

Can you blame him?

It’s winter. But, ya know what? This ain’t nuthin’.

Do you remember, back in the day, when we had snow from October ‘til April? I do. And I loved it. When I first started teaching, a decade years ago, we had ten storm days. Ten. Some of them two days in a row. I remember distinctly, in my new-teacher-enthusiasm, thinking: “we can’t have another snow day! We must Teach–The-Children!”

Now? I pray for snow days like Maria prayed for curtains to clothe her bevy of young charges. Like Dorothy prayed for home. Like Oliver prayed for some more, please, sir.

People hate that teachers get snow days. And summer off. And March Break. I feel guilty about these perks while I am marking essays for four hours on a Saturday morning, or when I am giving up my weekends to decorate for prom or chaperone a school activity, or when I am making a dozen phone calls to parents of kids who are missing time, or failing, or swearing at me in class. But then I get over it, because we all make choices and I chose to be a teacher.

I usually spend snow days marking. Or planning. Yes, I do these things in my jammies, with the weiner tucked under my sweater, and while I may pause to do a happy dance of joy in between filling my coffee cup and eating more chocolate, it’s as much because the snow day has given me the gift of time to get some work done, as it is because I get a “day off”.

Teaching sometimes comes with snow days, and occasionally with the opportunity to educate the young minds of tomorrow. Young minds that write things like “I was ate alive by misquotes.”

Ahh. Symbolism? A deep and meaningful reflection on the impact of slander in the modern world? A heartfelt plea to be quoted correctly?

Or a kid who likes camping, but can grasp neither the concept of tenses, nor the spelling of mosquitoes?

And what of “the genital knock on the door.”? Be gentle, dear reader. Be genital.

And my recent favorite, which I mentioned in my last post: “Roses are red, violates are blue.”

But it’s winter, folks. Which means that while my wiener is bitterly dragging his wiener through the frosty deeps, and while teachers are musing on the joys of a snow day, and while the darling children are studying the dictionary at night, to improve their faulty spelling, we can all rest easy, assured that spring is coming. The violates will bloom, and we will curse the misquotes, while the genital breezes erase the memory of winter from our minds.

Until then, however… it’s snowing. And a new semester is starting. And I have work to do.

Check out my novel: That Thing That Happened: Available on kindle now for $1.

They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.

It’s the end of first semester, which means saying goodbye to the little darlings I have cradled in my teacherly hands since September. It also heralds the deep of winter, a weight gain of at least five pounds, and a heart-felt desire for a snow day. Or two.

The weight gain in inevitable. I have six chocolate bars in my desk at all times, for emergencies. I have an emergency every day at recess and noon, like clockwork.

The snow days? Damn global warming.

The little darlings? I always feel a little nostalgic about my students at this time of year. Don’t get me wrong, they have driven me crazy. They have been delinquent with assignments, they have been rude, they have committed multiple acts of cell phone anarchy… but some of them are just so damn cute, I hate to say goodbye to them. I teach grade 10 and 11. I don’t teach any grade 12 courses, which means that when I say goodbye to them at the end of their exam next week, I won’t teach them… ever… again.

For some, this is cause for rejoicing.

The kid who told me “this is f***ing stupid”? Not gonna miss him.

The girl who rolled her eyes ‘til I heard the ligaments crack when I took her cell phone? Buh bye.

But the kid who named the character in his story “Mike Hunt”, thinking I wouldn’t notice, and who blushed fifty shades of red when I said: “Great detail, intricate plot, but you should change the protagonist’s name to Zeke.”? Gonna miss that kid.

And the one who wrote “Roses are red, violates are blue.”

And the one who bought me a new stress ball after I broke mine, all over my desk, in the middle of a class.

And the one who said “They don’t think it be like it is, but it do”, which made an odd kind of twisted and basically illiterate sense, but we wrote it on a paper and stuck it on the board and it became the motto of the class. (Along with the Beaver of Mercy. Which, really, needs no explanation. Kind of like the Honey Badger. An icon of our times.)

I love these kids.

A classroom is a weird society of mismatched beings. We all float around each other for five months, trying to find something to anchor to, bumping into desks and sharp objects, annoying each other, entertaining each other, bargaining, pleading, cajoling.

Laughing. A lot.

Please learn something.

“Please let us watch us a movie.”

Please do your assignments.

“Please let us eat hamburgers in class… and wear our hats… and text… and throw things at the cute girl across the room because then she will know I love her.”

Please go forth into your lives armed with knowledge and enthusiasm and creativity and the ability to distinguish between then and than.

“Please let me hand my assignment in late because I had to work last night, and my car ran out of gas, and I had a fight with my mom, and my dog puked, and my printer ran out of ink, and it’s on my thumb drive in my friends trunk, and I just couldn’t think of anything to write about, and “do I look like I did my homework?”, and I just forgot, and please give me a fifty, and I promise I’ll have it to you tomorrow… favorite teacher… c’mon… just this once…

Sigh.

Some of them call me LBro.

It’s my rap name.

“They used to call me Libby, because they didn’t know,

How super-cool I am, now they call me LBro.”

Rhymes with elbow. I do gangsta hands, and that skippy shuffley baggy jeans walk that is like, a Totally Rad Gangsta Thing. Or is it “Thang”?

I do that. Because I can.

Hence the eye rolling.

They write to me about sports, and gaming, and their faith, and the loss of their grandfather, and their frustration with labels and their parents and their stupid friends who “care more about their hair than they do about real shit.”

Please don’t write profanity in your essay.

They come to school dressed for the catwalk, or dressed for bed, looking like they haven’t slept for months or looking like they just this minute blew in from the beach and summer and youth itself. I tell them to drink less coffee, don’t smoke, be nice to your mother.

They come to class with chicken and taters and when I look at them askance they offer me some.

“Wanna tater?” Like my problem is just that I’m hungry, and they’re willing to share, so what’s the big deal? As the room fills with the scent of deep fried goodness and their papers are smeared with greasy fingerprints.

I bought them cake. For the last day. Which they inhaled like the wolves of starvation were hard on their heels. And then I asked them to evaluate the class and my teaching, and I told them how sad it makes me that lots of my students complain that the course isn’t relevant to their lives. That my efforts to find interesting content is failing.

“Ms Broadbent, you need to lighten up. We’re teenagers. We don’t know anything, and we say stupid stuff. You’re fine.”

I love them.

They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.

Check out my novel: That Thing That Happened: Available on kindle

Gullible, and a turkey

I’m having some issues with my gullibility, and I blame my parents. Yes, at forty-six I still am inclined to blame my parents for any lapses in my person, a culpability that covers everything from my loathing of polyester, to my crooked front teeth, to my tendency to believe everything anyone tells me.

I believe this stems from The Edge of Night.

My parents were diligent in the supervision of appropriate television viewing for me and my sister. The Walton’s, Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness, Disney, and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Oh, and Star Trek. (For which I blame them for my life-long crush on William Shatner. Yes, even after the TekWar embarrassment. He should stick to commanding spaceships.) These were the shows we were allowed to watch, for the required sixty minutes of their duration. It is a happy coincidence that these shows did not air concurrent with “The Edge of Night”, because my wicked step-mother ruled the tube for those sixty emotional minutes.

“I’m your brother’s ex-wife’s long lost twin, presumed dead but actually living in sin in Monticello.”

“I can’t believe it, not that Cavanaugh hussy?”

“Yes. It is I. And… I’m pregnant with your illegitimate child who I conceived while you were unconscious in that car wreck that left you paralysed and suffering from amnesia.”

As a child I was forever trying to catch illicit glimpses of the Drakes and the Cavanaughs as they spun their wicked webs of deceit, dressed in sparkly gowns and forever turning furrowed brows toward the camera. My step-mother would hiss and spit if she caught me lurking in the doorway to the living room during her stories.

“Good night, John-boy,” was allowed.

“I’m having an affair with your brother who is in jail, framed for the murder of your sister’s twin who was raised by your wealthy aunt who recently lost her legs in a horrible train wreck,” was not.

Which one d’ya think most grabbed my interest?

My furtive glimpses of The Edge of Night created a gullibility in my very soul. I believed in the horrible train wreck and the limbless wealthy aunt, as did my evil step-mother, but I was ten. I can be forgiven.

Now, as an adult, I am faced with the internet. And I believe it all.

Ok, not all. I don’t believe that I can lose fifty pounds “with this one weird tip”. I don’t believe those are real breasts on the women that appear on the sidebar offering to chat with me. I don’t believe Lady Gaga is a real person.

But I did believe the Morgan Freeman commentary on the Connecticut shooting. To the point that I shared it with my class and we had great discussions about weapons regulations and mental health, but it was a lie. Not from Mr. Freeman. I felt like a fraud, and then had great discussions with my class about the validity of the internet, and how can we protect ourselves from lies.

But I didn’t learn.

I thought the eagle picking up the baby was real too. I showed this to my class, in the two minutes before the bell rings where it’s either, “look at this cool video” or a mad stampede to be first to stand by the door, panting for freedom.

It was a lie.

Generated by students at an animation school. Clever pups.

And then, just to prove to myself that my naivety knows no bounds, I believed that the new twenty-dollar Canadian polymer bills were being recalled because there were naked women on them.

Climbing the Twin Towers.

Boobies all over the place.

I believed it, in the half-paying-attention manner that one believes the weatherman when he says it’s going to be sunny even though the cloud cover is brushing your head when you walk outside. (It does that in Nova Scotia. Then it gets sunny. Right before the freezing rain.)

“Oh really? Wow, that’s weird.”

This time, however, I checked before sharing it with my class. I didn’t have a twenty to actually, physically inspect. I’ve given all my twenties to my spawn. It’s post-Christmas after all, and twenties are a thing of the past, like candy canes and paying the bills this month. So I googled.

It’s the Vimy Ridge Memorial. The naked chicks are “Justice” and “Peace”.

This time, the internet did not lead me astray.

Someone thought the Vimy Ridge Memorial was the Twin Towers? On the Canadian twenty-dollar bill?

“Oh really? Wow, that’s weird.”

My point is that the internet confounds me. I grew up in an age when a photograph was real. And had to be sent away in the mail to be developed, and revealed ghosts and paranormal activity in blurry smudges in the background.

I grew up in a time when communicating with another person meant face to face contact, or a phone call, or a letter which took weeks to travel to and from the object of your conversation. When only politicians lied and Elvis didn’t really die. He’s just hiding.

I grew up watching lions devour tiny antelope on the plains and Papa Walton solve every difficulty faced by his loving, burlap-clad family. And Raven and Logan lit up Monticello like the shiny baubles they truly were.

I ask my students: how can we trust what we read? How do we know what’s real?

I don’t have the answer, because I’ve believed in the Loch Ness monster since birth.

There’s a picture.

It’s gotta be true.

This one, now? I’m not so sure. My newfound cynicism with all things internet leads me to wonder if this is a real turkey… or am I one?

Image: Berg, Christian. Turkey vs Windshield: Turkey wins, sort of. February 3, 2012. http://www.bowhuntingmag.com/2012/02/03/turkey-vs-windshield-turkey-wins-sort-of/