GPS Makes Everyone into Idiots

When my cousin Wendy and I were about nine or ten, we invented a game to play on family vacations called "Let's Get Lost." The idea was that we would attempt to find the most obscure, hidden corner of the resort hotel where our families were staying, and then attempt to find our families' rooms again. At massive Catskills resorts, like The Nevele or Kutsher's, this game could sometimes prove challenging. I remember once opening a door on the seventh floor and finding myself on the roof, and trying to go back the way I came only the find the door was locked. The ultimate challenge. Our parents probably disapproved of this game, and I'm sure that hotel staff didn't much like it either, as it often resulted in our entering weird, restricted areas. But it sharpened our sense of direction. And within the contained parameters of a family resort, it was a pretty safe activity that had only an illusion of risk.

I swear my GPS tells me shit like this sometimes, just to see how gullible I am.

To me, driving was always an adult version of this game. Granted, the goal was not to get lost, but
when I did get lost (which happened on a semi-frequent basis, especially early in my driving career), it was fun to figure out where I was and get myself found again. (Provided I wasn't late for something, and wasn't actively inconveniencing someone else. Then it could get annoying.) I've always enjoyed looking at maps - especially my U.S. Atlas, which is still in my car, wedged between the front seat and the center console - and I've always taken pride in knowing where I am. In preparation for a road trip, I'll often looks at the route on Google Maps for days before my departure, scanning it for possible side trips and scenic roads. Sometimes, I feel a little disoriented if I don't know which way is north - even if I'm just hanging out, and not actively trying to go anywhere.

I take pride from knowing my way around my home city too. I made it my mission to learn the confusing network of diagonals and circles that is downtown D.C. It took me forever and honestly, I never completely mastered it. And I'm sure I've forgotten most of my little shortcuts - like when to take Rock Creek Parkway, and how to take back streets from Cleveland Park to Columbia Heights. But still, at the peak of my knowledge of D.C. streets, I wasn't half bad. It took me much, much less time to learn my way around Baltimore. From the time I was a little kid, I was impressed with my dad's knowledge of Manhattan, where he lived for most of the seventies, and I think that whether he knew it or not, he instilled in me the value of knowing where I was.

For that reason, I have little patience for people who are so reliant on their GPS that they don't know the basics of how to get around without it. I have a friend (who shall remain nameless) that lives in Pikesville, right outside of Baltimore. We met at Camden Yards for a game and afterwards, I suggested that we head to the Inner Harbor. It's a straight shot: between a ten and fifteen-minute walk down Pratt Street. This should be common knowledge to anyone who lives in the greater Baltimore area, or has ever even been in the vicinity of downtown. So I was surprised when my friend pulled out his phone and charted our path to the Inner Harbor. Yup, sure enough, it was between a ten and fifteen-minute walk down Pratt Street. He needed his phone to tell him that.

I guess some people are of the opinion that there is no reason to commit directions like this to memory when our phones can now tell us exactly where we are. I'm not so sure, though. I feel oblivious and a little childish if I ever find myself that disoriented.

You'd think, being the purist I am, I'd be opposed to GPS. I'm really not, though. I was thrilled to buy one a few years ago, just in time for a summer in unfamiliar Asheville, North Carolina. And I was heartbroken when it was stolen out of my car on just my second night in Baltimore (and even more heartbroken about my passenger side window, which was smashed in the robbery), even though I have to admit the lack of GPS helped me to learn the city much faster. I was GPS-less for two full years in Baltimore - until I bought a used 2007 Honda, with a built-in GPS unit, which looks primitive compared to a modern GPS, but does the job.

I see no down side to the "Find Location" feature on my GPS. How are you supposed to find, say, a specific barber shop or taco joint when you are driving back from the post office and you feel the sudden urge for a haircut or a taco? Unless you plan it out beforehand, your best bet if you don't use GPS is to just hope you stumble across it.

But I've learned that when I overuse the GPS, I tend not to remember how to get anywhere: all I'm focused on is following the illuminated blue line. I follow it blindly, against my better judgement: just like one of the lemmings in that old video game, who mindlessly march off hills unless you specifically instruct them not too. Not long ago, I discovered a tiny shortcut on my commute: if I take Banbury Avenue to Walker, instead of Sherwood, I can avoid one light. It probably saves me an average of ten seconds per drive, but it's satisfying to know that I figured it out. I recently turned on my GPS for something - I forget what - and followed the blue line down Sherwood, to Walker where I waited for the light to turn green. Why didn't I take my usual shortcut? GPS told me not to.

Still, I think that GPS is a great invention. But it works best as a complement to the human brain, and not a substitute for it.

Life as the Token Jew

I grew up in Northern New Jersey, which most people assume is a very Jewish area. They aren't wrong. There are at least ten synagogues within a fifteen minute drive of the house where I grew up - and at least two of them are giant mega-temples. Livingston and Millburn, both of which border my home town of Chatham, have an extremely high percentage of Jews. The same is true of West Orange and South Orange, both close by. Growing up, I heard a joke a few times that tells the whole story: Why is New Jersey the Garden State? Because there's a Rosenbloom on every street!

The Summit JCC: uniting token Jews from several Northern NJ towns.

But Chatham was always this weird dead zone, located adjacent to major Jewish communities, but largely uninhabited by Jews itself. (At least this was the case when I grew up; I think a few more Jewish families have ventured in during the last fifteen years or so.) There weren't even enough of us for one synagogue: our family belonged to a small temple in Summit, which served as kind of a regional center for the few Jewish families in Chatham, Berkeley Heights, New Providence and other little towns in the area. But I spent most of my time in high school, where I usually played the role of the token Jew.

In fact, I've often found myself in situations where I am the token Jew: Chatham High School, Kenyon College and the small, predominantly White and Christian (though nominally secular) boys' school where I teach. It's usually not such a big deal. Jews are pretty mainstream. (Exhibit A: Almost no one seemed to be talking about Bernie Sanders' Judaism during his run for the Democratic nomination. I actually had to look online to confirm that he is in fact Jewish. For comparison's sake, Mitt Romney's Mormonism was a frequent topic of conversation. As was Joe Lieberman's Judaism, when he ran as Al Gore's running mate in 2000.) I have almost never been the subject of overt anti-Semitism, save for a random e-mail that I received in 2001 from some random, anonymous bigot. (From Florida, I deduced. Shocking.) But my token Jew status has occasionally made for some awkward and, in retrospect, amusing situations.

Here are a couple that I remember well from my time in high school:

Shortly after my family moved to Chatham from the more diverse neighboring town of Maplewood, a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl from my third grade class asked me, out of the blue,

“What religion are you? Protestant or Catholic?”

The question confused me, because she seemed so certain that there were only two options, but I eventually stammered that I was Jewish.

The wheels turned inside her eight-year-old head. “If you’re Jewish, do you believe in Jesus?”

I hadn’t really considered this question before but responded that no, I didn’t think I did.

And this third grade theologian responded, “It’s not nice to not believe in Jesus.”

And then there was this:

During sophomore year, before one of my high school wrestling matches, the team captain gathered us together for a group prayer. The boys, most of them Roman Catholics of Italian descent, knelt down in a circle, bowed their heads and began crossing themselves as the captain lead them in a quick but earnest Hail Mary. Everyone knew the words. Not wanting to ruin the moment with my religious scruples, but also not wanting to mindlessly join the group out of a misplaced desire not to rock the boat, I simply stood on the outskirts of the circle, head half bowed in reverence. The incident passed without comment, but by the time the captain made the same announcement before a match the following week, he had apparently gathered that I wouldn’t be joining the team in prayer.

            “Everyone, we’re gonna bring it in for a quick team prayer,” he announced, then turning an eye to me in the corner, “Barron, you do whatcha gotta do.”

           

I think I responded with a solemn nod, but inside I couldn’t help but chuckle. His dispensation would have given me license to put on a tallis and teffilin and march the torah around the locker room, if that was what I “had to do.” But at least he was trying – and so were most of the Gentiles in town. It wasn’t their fault that for many of them, I represented a first brush with a religion other than their own.

You Don't Have to Love the Classics - but That Doesn't Make them "Bad"

When I was a senior in high school, I went out on a date with a girl I didn't know very well. The subject of English class came up. At the time, I was taking A.P. Literature, and I was into it in a big way. My teacher was brilliant and intellectual, and reading Joyce and Shakespeare and Emily Bronte made me feel adult and sophisticated. The course was, to me, an important early stop on a road that would ultimately lead me to a Master's Degree in literature, and a career of attempting to incite similar passion in my own students. But this girl was apparently not taking A.P. Lit, and didn't share my enthusiasm for great books. When I brought up "The Glass Menagerie," which I had just read (and loved), she scrunched up her face and said - I still remember the exact words, because they hit me like a punch to the gut - "That's the worst book I've ever read!"

That was our last date. Was I judgmental for not wanting to date a girl who called a play a "book"? Possibly- but we all pass judgments on dates. (I mean, that's the point of dating, isn't it?) And we all have our deal-breakers, and that was mine. Of greater concern was her dismissal of one of the great American dramas as the worst of the (I'll estimate fewer than ten) books she had ever read.

I'm of the opinion that if a book achieves a certain amount of esteem, I no longer get to call it "bad." (I'm not just talking about popularity here - I still feel plenty comfortable asserting that The Da Vinci Code is a bad book.) It takes a special kind of arrogance to pass such a harsh judgment on a text that is comfortably in the canon. True, the idea of the canon  is itself somewhat subjective, but if a book is in the canon, it is objectively not "bad." That doesn't mean you have to like every book that's in the canon, but in my opinion, there's a right way and a wrong way to dislike a great book.

Ms. Morrison, I feel genuinely guilty that I don't enjoy your books more than I do. But you are widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of our time, so you clearly don't need my support.

In ten years of teaching, I frequently hear claims that echo my date's enlightened opinion - "Hamlet is sooo bad!" etc. - and they never cease to sound like nails on a chalkboard to me. I don't expect high school students to enjoy all of the classics. God knows I didn't. (More on that in a minute.) But there is a difference between "That book is terrible," and "I hated that book" and a more tactful, nuanced response. Something like: "While I didn't actively enjoy that book, I acknowledge that many other people did. I can understand the value in it, even though it wasn't my cup of tea."

Yeah, that last one sounds good. If a student says that to me - about any book at all - I'll be fine with it.

Why is it that we don't hear people express this third opinion more often? Even when I talk about books with adults, the discussion so often devolves into It was good/It was bad or I love it/I hated it.

I was recently asked to compile of list of my ten favorite books of all time, and I found it pretty difficult. Midway through the exercise, I realized that I had a much longer list of "Books I Grudgingly Appreciate," "Books I Feel Bad About Not Liking," and "Books I Respect Despite Not Actively Enjoying," Off the top of my head, here it is.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich (which I mercifully finished yesterday, and which inspired this topic).
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackaray
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Everything I've ever read by Toni Morrison
Everything I've ever read by Philip Roth
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
A Prayer for Owen Meany by Jon Irving
Everything I've ever read by David Eggers
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Dante's Inferno
Paradise Lost by John Milton
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I feel a strong sense of regret when I encounter books like these, which everyone seems to like except for me. I feel dimwitted and slow - even immoral. It's like standing around with a group of people who are all laughing at a joke I don't get.

I guess I've come to view reading in much the same way I view dating. There are plenty of nice, smart, beautiful, interesting women out there - but it doesn't mean I was necessarily compatible with all of them. Likewise, a book can be brilliant and profound and highly regarded - but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to love it. What I'm trying to say, Toni Morrison, is, I think we should see other people.

First Day of School

Throwback to Day One of the 12-13 school year. Sideburns are out of control.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. It's my eleventh as a teacher, to go with roughly seventeen as a student (counting kindergarten, elementary, middle, high school and college). As a friend pointed out to me recently, with a combination of amazement and derision, I've never experienced a year without a summer break. Such is the life of a career student and teacher. I was thinking this morning that I would try to write about an interesting first day of school from years past, but I quickly determined that this was impossible. Nothing interesting tends to happen on the first day of school. In fact, I find that I remember only a handful of specific events from any of those first days.

For me, the first day of school as a student was mostly about saying hi to old friends, seeing who had a new haircut or had otherwise changed their appearance in a radical way, trying to get a feel for which teachers I would like and which ones I wouldn't, and of course, finding out if I had classes with any girls I had a crush on.

The first day of school as a teacher is even less interesting. It mostly consists of me talking at an awkwardly silent room. (Even generally talkative classes tend to be pretty quiet on the first day. If they aren't, I know I am probably in for a long year.) I am at my most boring on Day One, and having been a student myself, I know that most students have too much on their mind to really focus on what I'm saying anyway. But the way I see it, it's pointless to teach content on the first day because they won't remember that either. So I'm going through my syllabus, dammit. Because I took the time to write it and there is no chance that high school kids will read it on their own.

Here are a few scattered recollections from first days of school past:

• On the first day of seventh grade, at least six kids showed up wearing the same Green Day "Dookie" shirt. (But not me! I was proudly wearing my Weezer "Blue Album" t-shirt.) They weren't even friends either, so I doubt they coordinated it. By November, it was impossible to find a seventh grader who hadn't disavowed the album completely. Seventh graders were fickle like that.

• As a first-year teacher, I wanted to make an immediate impression on my kids and I guess I felt that going through my syllabus, while informative, just wouldn't do the trick. So I started off the first period of my first class by reciting all of "A Boy Named Sue" from memory. I guess it did the trick, but I'm still not exactly positive why I did that. And it's definitely not something I'll ever do again - especially on the first day.

• I used to give this little questionnaire to my students on the first day, which asked them to provide some basic biographical information and a fun fact about themselves. The fun facts were almost never interesting. I have no doubt that many of the kids did in fact have a fun fact or two to share, but they generally went for the safest, blandest statement they could muster. Like, "I like soccer" or "My favorite color is blue." One time though, a student wrote down, "I am one of only two Asian students in this class." And then, another one wrote, "I am the other Asian." So that was helpful.

• I once asked a student what her name was, and she told me that it was "Shadee." I've since learned that Shadee is a Persian name meaning "happiness," but at the time I had never heard it before and I couldn't understand what she was saying. I thought the girl (who incidentally turned out to be totally lovely and sweet) was saying "Shorty" - or more accurately, "Shawty." As in "Dayummmm Shawty!" Basically, I thought she was having a laugh at my expense. So I think I said something sarcastic like, "Ok, whatever, Shawty." And then I looked down at my roster, and felt like a jerk.

• On my first day at B.L. I tried to engage my class in some sort of name game icebreaker. This was pretty standard procedure in public school when I taught classes of thirty or so kids. But this didn't work quite as well for a class of ten boys, most of whom had known each other since kindergarten. "We already know each other's names," one of them told me, "Actually, you're the only one we don't know."