once more, what's wrong with me?

Despite my many attempts at normalcy, my spouse continues to ask me daily for various and disparate reasons: "What's wrong with you?"

I think I got it: What's wrong with me?

Well, this, for instance: during class today, I decided I'd had too much coffee and that I should have some water instead. The solution: get some water. Unfortunately, I still had half a cup of coffee. So I had to drink that first in order to fill the cup with water. And now I'm not thirsty, so what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. What's wrong with me? This: I feel like maybe I shouldn't be blogging while I'm supposed to be teaching. That's probably part of it anyway.

Chips, Soup, Heart

On the card rive home from preschool, Blaisey, crunch crunch crunch, said, "You wanna know," crunch crunch crunch, "what my favorite part of," crunch crunch crunch, "veggie chips is?"

I said, "What's your favorite part of veggie chips, bubba?"

Crunch crunch crunch. "I like," crunch crunch crunch, "how veggie they are."

That's a good thing, I think, to like about something -- how very it it is.

So she was having a snack in the car, and then we were home and playing build-a-house-with-two-armchairs-an-umbrella-and-sixteen-stuffed-animals, while I cooked dinner. We had plans to play Super Mario Bros. 3 after we ate -- that always gives us something to look forward to: the hope that we might pass beat level 8 and get to the final boss. Just before dinner was ready, Blaisey asked what we were having. I said, "Taco soup."

She said, "I don't like taco soup."

"This," I told her, "isn't a restaurant."

"I know. But can I just have a chocolate heart instead?"

"No, you cannot."

"Hmmm. Okay." She shrugged. No harm in asking, I suppose. "Well, then, can I just have two chocolate hearts?"

I said, "No, you get taco soup. You get what you get."

She said, "And you don't throw a fit." Ha! You can train kids just like chimpanzees and giraffes. "Okay. Since I don't like taco soup, can I have a chocolate heart after I eat some."

I told her she could have a chocolate heart after dinner, but that I bet she would like the soup.

"I'll bet you're wrong," she told me.

After her second bowl of soup, I said, "See, you like the soup don't you?"

She put a finger on her chin and said, "Well, I like it good enough to get a chocolate heart."

After biting into the heart, she said, "Uh-oh, I think this heart has peanut butter in it."

Here we go again. "Bubba," I said, "you're not allergic to peanut butter."

"Daddy! Don't tell me what I'm not allergic to."

"But you're not." I tried to explain that just because someone in her school is allergic to peanut butter, doesn't mean she's going to be.

She said, "Daddy, I know that I'm not allergic to all peanut butters. Just the kinds that aren't like this one."

"What's the difference between this peanut butter and the kinds you're allergic to?" I had to ask.

"This one," she scientifically explained, "is wrapped in chocolate."

So, fellow allergy sufferers world round, if it makes you sneeze, swell up, or puff shut, just wrap it in chocolate. This spring's gonna be a totally different world: look out pollen baring trees.

Witness: The Beginning of a Career

Last night Blaisey and I got to watch Naomi's first ever basketball game -- she was awesome. She completed a fast break and hit a jump shot, which officially means, she's already outscored me up through my ninth grade year. I was always more of an assists guy, you know.

Meanwhile, Blaisey and I had just got out of school, so we sat underneath the hoop and shared animal crackers.

"What's this one look like?" She'd ask.

"Oh, an elephant, I guess."

Bite, chew chew chew. "Nope. It's an elephant without a trunk."

"What's this one look like?"

"That's a rhinoceros." I thought more confidence would be equally more convincing.

"Nope." Bite, chew chew chew. "It's a rhinoceros without a horn."

"What's this one look like?"

"A space alien."

"Dad, you're not playing right."

"Okay," I said, "a monkey?"

"That's not a monkey."

"Oh. A cat?"

"It's not a cat either."

"Is it a monkeycat?"

She shook her head slowly and reexamined the little animal. She said, "You know what, dad? That dog'll hunt." Bite, chew chew chew. "Too bad it's a monkeycat without any legs. You almost had it."

Bite, chew chew chew. "Now it's a monkeycat without any legs or a face." Bite, chew chew chew. "Or a tail." Bite, chew chew chew. "Now what do you think it is?"

"I guess it's just a monkeycat's belly."

"Dad," she said, shaking her head with disappointment, "it's just a belly. How could anyone know what kind of animal it belongs to?"

Naomi's team won 32-29 in a game that could have just as easily gone the other way. And I've pondered it enough -- this eternal question -- I'll turn it over to you all: how many things must one chew off an animal before it becomes simply a belly?

Bovine Spongiform Humonculustrophy

Blaisey drew a roundish animal with fifteen legs, a stick figure inside it, and a triangle on its back.

I said, "What kind of animal is it?"

She said, "It's an animal with fifteen legs and an animal human inside its head."

"What kind of animal has fifteen legs and a human inside its head?"

"Uhm. Cow."

"How did the human get inside the cow's head?"

She scrunched her eyebrows together and shook her head. "Dad, how am I supposed to know that?"

Damnit, Dad, I'm an artist, not a bovinologist, it was as if she said. And, therefore, no, I did not bother asking what was up with the triangle on the cow's back. But, in similar fashion to the best works of Salvidor Dali, Blaisey's newest masterpiece does beg us all to consider: What kind of animal do you have inside your head?

Mine is a narwhal.

A Timeless Classic . . .

Meanwhile, it's true, what you've heard, there are only seven kinds of stories to tell under the sun, and, no, you shouldn't expect to read anything new here. This is nothing more than the simple retelling of a boy and his thirty-five best friends.

Over this past summer, a particularly tumultuous summer for our family if you recall, I had the opportunity to teach developmental writing at a community college in North Carolina. I had never taught this level before, and found it, undoubtedly among my most treasured teaching experiences. Imagine beginning a term with adult students -- many of whom don't know the difference between a verb and a noun -- and working with them through clauses and sentences until they begin submitting to you descriptive, narrative, argumentative, and instructional paragraphs. It really is fantastic!

For their final project, I asked the students to all write an instructional paragraph: the form for an instructional paragraph is simple. I presented them with the simplest instructions to the easiest question I have ever heard: How do you get an elephant into a refrigerator? The question, of course, creates more interesting answers than there are people in the world, ranging from chase it with a mouse to build a refrigerator around the elephant . . . and it goes on like that. These answers, I believe, result from over-thinking the question. The best answer, though, that always wins the trivia contest is the simplest answer. In a sense, it's Ockham's Answer -- from Ockham's Razor, which suggests that the simplest answer available is usually the best. It's an elegant answer, and we all always love it. How do you get an elephant into a refrigerator? You open the door, and you put the elevator into the refrigerator, and you close the door.


The example seems simple enough, right?

So. My students had to describe to me in written form how to do something. My only caveat, I told them, is that you have to describe something I don't already know how to do. I thought this would be a useful criterion, because it would force them to come up with something more complicated than "How to Tie Shoes," I thought it would allow them to discuss an area they feel competent such that they could be the expert rather than me, and I thought it would open up the class to ask me questions about myself, which would mean that for a brief moment I would be the center of attention. Victory would be mine!


All of these things proved to be true. The students started asking me questions. Malik, the first student to raise his hand asked, "Do you know how to swim?"

Malik, I knew from earlier conversations, had come to the United States for the first time to compete as a swimmer in the World Games. Still, I know how to doggie paddle, so I said, "Yes."

He said, "Do you know how to be a world class swimmer?"

I said, "Can you teach me how to be a world class swimmer?"

He took a moment to look me up and down, his brow furrowing, a wince growing on his face, a constant shaking head of disbelief. "No, Mr. Connor. I cannot." Ha! Hadn't thought that far ahead, had you Malik?

Other students chimed in.

"Do you know how to play baseball?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how to drive a stick shift?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how to play poker?"

"Yes."

"Damn," one of my students said, "he knows how to do everything."


One student, Malik, raised his hand intermittently during this conversation with his own questions. "Do you know," he asked me, "how to raise four children?"

"Yes, Malik, I do."
I was feeling pretty good about myself. I even tried to encourage the students with another thought experiment. "How," I asked them, "do you get a giraffe into a refrigerator?" I expected, once again, the traditional cluster of questions and responses, ranging from the use of welder's tools to small homemade explosives, but the first student to raise her hand said, "You open the refrigerator, take out the elephant, put the giraffe in the refrigerator, and close the door." Hmm. I'm a better teacher than I thought.

Soon, the students started pushing a little harder to come up with ideas that weren't so facile. One student said, "Do you know how to cook?"

I said, "Yes."

"Cook chicken?"

"Yes."

"Cook southern-fried chicken with chitlins and grits?"

"Nope."

Malik said, "Do you know how to mix mortar for the masonry?"

"Yes, Malik, I do."

Other students started falling in line, pushing passed the facile and digging into the more specific, more individual lessons they could teach me, things about life that I might not already know. One student asked if I knew how to pack for vacation . . . on a tight budget . . . to Antigua. No, I don't. I asked her, "How do you know how to pack for vacation on a tight budget to Antigua?"

She said, "I don't, but I'm gonna find out before you do."

Malik said, "Do you still know how to drive a manual stick shift vehicle?"

"Yes, Malik, I do."

"Damn, man," he said, "you have done just about everything." He tilted his head, contemplatively, for a moment and through out a Hail Mary. "Do you know," he asked, "how to catch a, how you say it, hip-po-po-to-mas?"

I said, "Did you say, 'catch a hippopotamus?"

"Yes."

"No, Malik, I do not know how to do that. Do you know how to catch a hippopotamus?"

"Yes, Mr. Connor, I do."

"Malik?"

"Yes, Mr. Connor."

"Would you please write a paragraph describing how to catch a hippopotamus?"

"Yes, Mr. Connor."

After every student in the class came up with something about which to inform me, we set out on our quest to write the paragraphs. Because we had a week to write them, I offered that anybody, who was drafting a paragraph and having particular difficulty, could certainly feel free to change their topic, but they absolutely had to run their idea past me first, because, as we had already determined, I know how to do just about everything. Well, fourteen or fifteen things, anyway.

Over the following week, we talked a little about steps in a process, how to use, "First . . . and then . . . and then . . . finally . . ." and other templates for stepping a reader through a necessary order. Meanwhile, I was looking forward to Southern-fried chicken, a trip to Antigua, learning how to play Whist, and, of course, perhaps, catching a hippopotamus.

I met one student at the door on the way into class, and he said, "Mr. Connor, I had to change my topic for the paragraph."

I said, "Bob, we've talked about this. You've got to run your ideas passed me first."

"I know, but you don't know how to do this."

"I don't know, Bob, I know how to do several things."

"Do you know how to make crack out of cocaine using the baking soda method?"

"I do not know how to do that, Bob."

"Well, you won't be able to say that after you read my paper."

I found the instructive paragraphs to be a success in almost every way for almost every student. Several students chose describing a recipe, and those went over very well, as I was almost always hungry that summer: I appreciated most the fact that each of them started their instructional paragraph with something akin to "First you have to turn on the stove." That chicken ain't, after all, gonna southern fry itself. The card game instructions all started with "First shuffle the deck," which I appreciated and approved of.


Thanks to randomly arranging the paragraphs in the order I wanted to read them, the second to the last paragraph taught me how to make crack out of cocaine using the baking soda method. Neither had I ever wanted to know that, nor had I ever thought I would learn it from a student. Now, I have learned it, and I can't unlearn it. Take that brain.

And, finally, of course, "How to Catch a Hippopotamus: by Malik . . ."

"First," Malik writes, "you have to find a hippopotamus." Well. At this point, he had pretty much wrapped up an A for the class. And, diligent learner that I am, I made immediate plans to get to the Asheboro Zoo down near Charlotte as soon as possible; surely, they would have a hippopotamus or something like it. "Next," writes Malik, "get thirty-five of your closest friends." Shit, at that point, got real. He went on to describe twelve of your friends flanking one side of the river, twelve the other side. The final twelve, and I call them final specifically, end up in homemade rafts paddling around in the soup over top of a herd of water horses, who can run 20 miles an hour, swim even faster, and weigh up to three tons. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken the swimming lessons.

What happens next in the essay involves nets and grappling hooks and short sharp spears. Concise, elegant: the paragraph, truly earned an A. Afterwards, when he met with me for a personal conference, I said, "This is a great paragraph. I just have one question."

He said, "Yes?"

"How do you get a Hippopotamus into a refrigerator?"

"Ah, that is very easy, but it's gonna take more than thirty-five friends."

I left that answer at good enough, and entered the final grades into the grade book. Like I say, it's your classic tale of boy meets hippopotamus. Nothing new. Still, it will give you all something to think about as you're out in the world chasing rhinoceri, packing for Toledo on the cheap, and making whatever you know how to make out of baking soda.

Post Script: as always, Desi says, "Hi."

Unfortunately, she saw the picture of the hippo above, so she's saying hi from a different room.

Famous Tweets in History

Traci once (earlier today) famously (well?) tweeted, "What was once our living room is now called the ping pong table."

And that is what our life has been like for the past two days: my turn, your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn . . . if only the rules to all of life's sports were so easy.

Or, in an even more perfect world, perhaps love and ownership and intersections could be this way.

But that's all neither here nor there -- what truly matters at this moment is this: looks like playing ping pong for six hours a day two summers in a row when I was fourteen and fifteen with a young Dr. Stick is finally paying off. Daddy is undefeated at the ping pong table.

Ha! In your face, everybody my age who had dates and other kinds of social lives!

I also should note that we have successfully completed two jigsaw puzzles -- one of a gorilla, one of somebody's porch at the beach, and we're well on our way to finishing the one with the horsey, which is Blaisey's favorite animal. "Well," she tells me, "all the animals are my favorite, but I like horsey's the best."

I got nothing else to add to that . . .

Hunting Tips

Traci said, "Let me have a look at your leg?"

Naomi said, "What's wrong with daddy's leg?"

I said, "I just checked it. It looks fine."

Naomi said, "What's wrong with your leg?"

Traci said, "It looks about the same as it did yesterday."

Naomi said, "Looks the same as what?"

I said, "It doesn't hurt or anything."

Naomi turned to Blaisey and said, "What did daddy do to his leg?"

Blaisey said, "I think he got a bug stuck in it."

This was the day after I came back to Athens -- I'd stayed in PA after Thanksgiving while the rest of the family returned to Ohio. I spent an extra four days out in the woods, during which time I often recalled a quote I'd read from, I think, a professional athlete of some sort, "I have been hunting on several occasions, but no deer were ever aware of it." That registers with me on every level.

Well, I think there's only actually one level.

I spent four days in the woods with my dad, and I only saw one deer, and that is largely the story of my hunting life. It was raining so hard the night before the first day of the season that we had a brief conference about when to wake up. Like many hunters, of course, we would like to have been in the woods unreasonably early but Dad suggested that we might want to sleep in for a bit, because if it's going to rain this hard, it's going to be hard to see even after sunrise. Mom said, "Yeah, with all this rain, it's not going to get light until long after it stops being dark," which is exactly what I had been thinking.

It rained all the first day and all the second day. I've never seen so many mosquitoes during the last week of November. I marked sunrise at about 4:14 both afternoons. Still, it was lovely in the woods and I got in some very long walks.

In the evening, after each hunt, we'd stop back in the clubhouse and make plans for the coming day and the rest of our lives. Though I'd only seen one tick in Pennsylvania in my entire life, some of the hunters claimed that this year they were particularly bad. So each evening, like it or not, we all shared some tick repellent. The stuff came in the little steel cannister that my great uncle used to carry his snakebite medicine in. It tasted remarkably like some of the darker whiskey one might find on the middle shelf of a local spirits shop. If the family legend is true, Great Uncle always had his snakebite medicine on him, and, if times got real tough, he'd even carry a snake.

Wednesday, the temperature dropped, and I found myself sitting in a tree stand, sitting in an enormous snowglobe about thirty feet up in the air, the wind bringing confetti-style flakes at me from all angles. I had brought Leaves of Grass with me, but couldn't take my eyes off the world. It was my first time in the woods in earnest since fall 2002, and I'd forgotten the woods, forgotten how cold an ass can get, forgotten how quiet a place can be, how calm.

Okay, I should mention this: there's these two guys out in the woods, father and son, hunting deer. They walk for a while and cross paths. The father says, "See anything?" Son says, "Found some scat, but it tasted pretty old." They split up again and meet up in a few hours. Father says, "See anything?" Son says, "More scat. It tasted pretty fresh, but I think it was from a doe." Few hours later, the father says, "See anything?" Son says, "Some scat. It tasted real close." The father says, "You know you could just smell the scat." Son says, "Are you kidding me? That stuff smells awful."
It's the first deer-hunting joke I ever made up. Loosely based on a true story. How'd I do?

Here's the true story: Dad said, "You see anything?" I said, "I don't know, does a bear shit where it eats?" He said, "I believe so." I said, "Well, then I saw a bear den."

Late into the third day, the weather broke. The sun came out. I got out of my stand. Dad and I went across the valley to climb a different hillside. Late in the day, the sunlight came horizontal over the hillside we were just on. The hillside lit up like a candlabrum. I started thinking there are no deer in these woods, which is what I believed through most of the hunting seasons of my childhood. Nor did I need to see any deer just then. The gray clatter of tree tops in a bright light breeze would have kept me in the woods for a millenium.

Still, the week before Thanksgiving, we had taken Jaswinder for his first trip through Pennsylvania. He spent two nights at the ancestral Connor household, staying up way too late, chatting with me and Dad. Dad asked him, at one point, "So what do you think of Pennsylvania?" He said, "It's exactly like Chicago, except hilly." (Years before when Dad had asked me what I thought of my first trip to Chicago, I'd said, "It's exactly like February, only it's September.") I'm still not sure what I meant.

We'd been passing through PA on our way to New Jersey to take part in a Barrow Street reading hosted by Derek Pollard in a pub next door to Derek's house -- now that's planning. The reading featured Derek Henderson, Lesley Wheeler, Jaswinder, and this guy. What a beautiful event, space, gathering. I was fantastic. Every body read from one or more of their books, except for one guy whose press had folded months before and had nothing to read but the list of 101 things about himself from his blog.

Jaswinder, or, as the kids call him, Uncle Winder, had never been across PA, and was fascinated by our landscape. Driving along I-80 heading east, he said, "What's on the other side of that hill?"

I said, "I dunno. Another hill."

"Well, I wanna see it."

I told him we'd take a different route home and see what's on the other side of the hill.

On the way back, travelling along I-76 West, he said, "Well, now I wanna see what's on the other side of that hill?"

I said, "We already saw the other side of that hill."

He said, "Yeah, but not today."

I thought about Winder as I stood there in the woods, about how it's never enough, never warm enough, never snowy enough, never rainy or dry enough, because I often do wonder what's on the other side of any given hill, wonder what's on a different radio station, what I would have eaten at a different restaurant or what I would be doing if I had finished that engineering degree. But that day in the woods, I didn't feel the need to know those things. I was happy to be tired from walking up and down steep hills, pushing aside brush and climbing over logs, pursuing little other than exactly what I was doing.

Suddenly, a bear jumped out of a brush pile right in front of me! Awesome. It clambered around up the hillside, making an awful racket. I've been away from the woods for too long . . . should I have said something to it? asked it to keep quiet? maybe cleared my throat, ahem, and showed the bear how to be reverent, silent in the woods? But I just stayed quiet and watched it climb the hillside, some times running, some times swatting tree branches just, I think, for the hell of it.

The fourth day was mostly a half day. Bright again, all day, and we walked the hillsides and didn't see much wildlife. In the evening I drove back to Athens. When I got home, we discovered, to my dismay, I had not taken enough of the tick repellent. A lesson to us all, I suppose. Be sure to drink your tick repellent, or you might end up with a bug stuck in your leg.