The Room 18 Theorem

Most of this e-mail's backstory will be evident in the e-mail itself, but here it is anyway: About five years ago, I learned that my ninth grade geometry teacher teaches at Gilman, which is right down the street from Boys' Latin, where I teach. The Gilman website he has been there since 1997, but we crossed paths at Newark Academy, a private school in new Jersey that I ended up attending for only one year before returning to public school. So it's quite a coincidence that now, twenty years later and almost two hundred miles away from where we originally met, we are virtually neighbors.

Truthfully, I was a little shy about contacting him, but I know that's kind of irrational. It would make my year if, after twenty years of teaching, I were to receive a note from out of the blue from a student who remembers my class as vividly as I remember Mr. Jacobs', even if I don't remember that student. And I'm assuming he doesn't remember me - although actually, I remember a very high percentage of my former students, even the quiet ones, which goes to show that teachers often have better memories than their ex-students give them credit for.

Anyway, I'm about to click "send" on this e-mail. I'll let you know if he responds.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Hi Mr. Jacobs,

I've been meaning to e-mail you for quite a while. I'm not sure you remember me: my name is Alex Barron and I was a student in your 9th grade geometry class at Newark Academy during the 1996-1997 school year. I was a shy ninth grader who lacked confidence in many areas, including math. So I don't think I spoke much in class and I'll understand if, after more than twenty years, you have trouble placing me.

I do remember a great deal about your class, though. I remember writing down proofs and theorems in a little black book. I remember reading Flatland by Edwin Abbott (the first and only fiction I was ever assigned in a math class). I remember the Saccheri quadrilateral (which you called the "Scary" quadrilateral). I remember that you dubbed one of the theorems (I forget which one) the Room 18 Theorem, because our class met in Room 18 and because its real name was kind of a mouthful. And I remember that it was your dream to start a rock band called Skew, in which all of the members would stand at different angles while they played.

That school year turned out to be my only one at Newark Academy. I had a hard time making friends, and I transferred back to public school. I sometimes regret that I didn't give N.A. more of a chance: in my one year there, I had some really fantastic teachers. Mr. Ball for history, Ms. Aquadro for English, Ms. Heaney for Bio, Ms. E for music, and you, of course.

The Gilman website says you've been on board since 1997, so I guess we both left N.A. at the same time. It would take me another fifteen years to move to Baltimore but now, lo and behold, it looks like we're basically neighbors. For the past five and a half years, I've been right down the street at Boys' Latin, teaching upper school English.

I put all of this together a while ago, while browsing the Gilman website to look for a classmate who I thought was teaching there. Turned out he wasn't - but you were. I was recently reminded of this coincidence again by during a conversation with my colleague, __________, whose son (or sons) I think you teach? And she suggested that I get over my shyness and send you a note. So that's what I'm doing.

I'm sure you're in the middle of exams right now, but I'd love to hear from you when things die down. Maybe I can even drop by Gilman for a visit some time soon.

Happy Holidays,

Alex

Honestly, I don't remember what this is or why it's important.
But I do remember that the Saccheri Quarilateral is a thing, so thanks, Mr. Jacobs. 

Bon Voyage, Bon Appetit

Seven years ago, the thought occurred to me that I might have been getting burned out on teaching. I had only been at it for four full years, but I wondered if I had it in me to continue, or if I wouldn't have been better off in another line of work. On the advice of my department chair at Wootton (Kim Boldon, a wonderful mentor, now the school's principal), I decided to take the summer off the ruminate on my future in teaching.

The time off turned out to be a good idea. In the fall, I returned to school re-energized and while I've had the occasional moment of doubt, I'm still going strong seven years later. Actually, the summer of 2010 turned out to be a pivotal summer for me, both professionally and personally. In August, I met my now-wife, which was, I'd say, a significant development, but that's a story for another time. In late June, already starting to wonder how I'd spend the next two months of my summer, I responded to a post on Craigslist: a new online newspaper was looking for a restaurant critic. I had no way of knowing that by responding to the post, I was signing myself up for a seven-year journey through the D.C. culinary world, that would continue until October 24, 2017, a date on the distant horizon.

The post on Craigslist was already a week old when I read it, and since the position sounded too good to be true, I assumed it had already been snatched up. But I decided to throw my hat in the ring anyway: I wrote a quick article on Firehook Bakery, a beloved local coffee place in my neighborhood of Cleveland Park in Northwest D.C., which I patronized three times a week on average. I was surprised when, a day later, I received a call from an unfamiliar number. It was Wendy Thompson, the editor of D.C. Spotlight. She had liked my writing and was calling to ask if I would be her new restaurant critic. I remember feeling that I was being punked. Surely, it couldn't have been this easy to secure a job as a restaurant critic. I could write proficiently, sure, but I had no food background to speak of - and, aside from my teaching, no real writing experience to speak of either. At this point, in the thick of my bachelorhood, I was often happy to call a Hot Pocket dinner.

But for Wendy, my shortcomings were apparently trumped by my adequacy as a writer and my willingness to accept a rate of $30 per 800-word article. She asked me which restaurant I wished to review first. What I heard was: "Please choose a restaurant from well outside your price range where you would like to dine for free." I wondered what any restaurant would stand to gain from giving a free meal to a twenty-something kid, so that he could write an article for some obscure paper that might reach an audience in the single digits. (Actually, now that I think of it, I've never received a reasonable answer to this question.) But it wasn't for me to say. I chose The Source, Wolfgang Puck's Asian fusion bistro in the same building at the Newseum - still one of the best restaurants in D.C. - and next thing I knew, I had a dinner reservation for one at 7:00 on Tuesday night.

It turned out to be simultaneously one of the best and one of the most awkward dinners I've ever had. I half expected to be turned away when I gave my name to the hostess. "Alex who? D.C. what?" But instead, I was told that the chef was expecting me, and I was seated at a table for one in the middle of a crowded dining room. I'm normally not one to mind dining alone, but when I do it, I usually pick a casual place for a quick dinner. My meal at The Source lasted every bit of two and a half hours. The restaurant was treating me to a special tasting menu and the food came out fast and furious, each mini course with a half glass of wine to go with it. I think there were about ten courses in all but I'm not sure: I lost count after eight. Having no companion, no reading material and very little to distract me from food and drink, I ended up overindulging in both. At around 10, I waddled back to the Metro uncomfortably full and more than a little tipsy. The food was outstanding though, and my notes on each dish were meticulous. (The least I could do was report accurately on this lavish free meal.) I wrote my article the next day, a bit tentatively. I felt laughably under-qualified to write about this or any restaurant, and I wondered just who exactly would care what I had to say about food.

I faked my way through the review though, and the more reviews I wrote, the better I got at faking. My doubts would continue to dog me, though. I'm probably my own toughest writing critic, but I always felt limited by my lack of real knowledge of food preparation and my weaknesses as a descriptive writer. But I knew a bit about D.C., and so I tried to compensate with descriptions of each restaurant's neighborhood and a list of its chef's accomplishments. I learned quickly that it depressed me to read Tom Sietsema's reviews: matching his lively voice, culinary knowledge and audacious opinions would have been impossible. I contented myself with the reminder that no one was reading D.C. Spotlight for the foodie insider scoop (provided anyone was reading it at all).

My reviews were overwhelmingly positive - even saccharine in tone. I admit, this positivity came partly from a misguided sense of obligation to the restaurant for feeding me. (I can only imagine this attitude is poison to professional critics.) But also - and I realize this is probably evidence of my unsophisticated palate - I enjoyed not only every restaurant in the seven years, but almost every dish too. I concluded early on that I'm just not discerning enough to be a real restaurant critic. Even after all the great meals, I never lost my taste for Hot Pockets. And besides, criticizing a slightly overcooked lamb shank or an over-seasoned bisque would have made me feel spoiled.

So instead of complaining, I spent seven years raving about every dish I ever had. "Integrity is for the professionals," I joked with friends (or maybe only half-joked), "I'll say anything to keep the free meals coming."

Some highlights from the seven year run:

- Dinner with celebrity chef Susur Lee at his D.C. restaurant Zentan. I assumed he would just make a little cameo - he's a really big deal, after all - but for two hours, Susur Lee sat and talked with us (a group of maybe six or seven reporters) while his staff served us an endless parade of Asian fusion dishes. He was an interesting and humble guy, too.

- At Food, Wine and Company in Bethesda, I tried my first oysters. And at the end of the meal, I came home with about a week's worth of doggy bags.

- I attended the 2012 RAMMY nominations in D.C. These are the annual awards given to restaurants in the beltway area. Once again, I felt I had no business being there, but it made for some fascinating people watching. And I filled up on little prosciutto and melon appetizers.

- My review of Brabo in Alexandria, Virginia just so happened to coincide with Maya and my first Valentine's Day. We were treated to a seven-course meal with wine pairings for each course. Still our best Valentine's Day to date, I think.

- The chef at Farmers and Fishers in Georgetown was a super nice guy who served us just about everything on the menu - including an epic burger with crusts made out of grilled cheese sandwiches. (Maya brought it home and pawned it off on her brother.) Again, doggy bags for a week.

- Press dinners were often lavish, but could also be dull, awkward affairs - especially when I was seated boring, pretentious people from publications I had never heard of. At one such dinner, at Blue Duck Tavern, our server told us that dessert was "hay ice cream." When I expressed surprise, my neighbor told me with an entirely straight face, "Hay is very in right now." (Also, this particular dinner took place during a Red Sox play-off game, so every two minutes or so, I had to excuse myself to run to the bathroom so I could check the score in peace.)

So why did I decide to quit? There are a few reasons: 1 - As you can guess, the twins take up a significant chunk of my time, which makes it hard to justify frequent trips to D.C. - especially in the middle of the week. 2 - While I certainly enjoy eating food, I have to admit I'm a little tired of writing about it. I don't consider myself a skilled descriptive writer. My wheelhouse, I think, is first person narrative (like this post) and D.C. Spotlight encouraged me not to use first person, so I really couldn't play to my strengths. 3 - For the last two or three years, I've had the sneaking suspicion that the only people who really read my food reviews are my mom and dad, my wife and my friend Andy (God bless him). Not that I blame the majority of my friends for skipping them. 4 - I don't blame my friends for skipping them because let's face it: these "reviews" were basically puff pieces. I place reviews in quotes because it's hard to define them as honest assessments of a restaurant's strengths and weaknesses. More accurately, they were restaurant profiles, written in a wide-eyed "Hooray for Everything" tone (as mandated by my editor at D.C. Spotlight).

I'll miss this gig a lot - but not as much as I'll miss telling people that I have a part-time job reviewing restaurants. What I won't miss is trying to feign interest when some solicitous manager tells me where the heirloom tomatoes have been sourced from. As though this information could be potentially helpful or interesting to anyone.

Cap-oat-ccino

Blog Assignment #5

This entry is modeled on "Big Boy," by David Sedaris. For this one, I want you to tell a story about something odd and funny that has happened to you. Like the incident David Sedaris retells, it should be fairly mundane. Avoid a big moral of the story here. Your only job is to tell the story in an amusing way.

Your must contain at least one example of each of the following techniques: parallel structure, assonance and dialogue.

Shoot for between 650 and 750 words. (Sedaris' essay is 713.)

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This story also appears on the website 404words.com, which features "palm-sized stories" of 404 words or fewer. In order to be able to submit the story to this site, I had to trim it down so that it no longer fits my suggested word count range.

Note: The website accompanies the story with what looks to be a pleasant and appetizing latte. It's basically the polar opposite of the coffee I describe in the story. Mine looked more like this:

Capp-oat-ccino

Nick and I were driving back from a rather disappointing day in Pittsburgh. It was supposed to have been a weekend, and we were supposed to have seen a baseball game, but Mother Nature had other plans. Instead, it had been a day of wandering around in the rain, and eating everything in sight, which had its merits – but ultimately felt a little lacking without the baseball.

About halfway between Pittsburgh and D.C. we stopped in Breezewood, Pennsylvania, a trucker’s mecca with some of the best rest stops anywhere. Of particular note is the largest Sheetz gas station I’ve ever seen. Needless to say, after a two hour drive, on a dark, wet evening, a stop was in order. This Sheetz seemed likely to stock just the sort of artificial, sugary cappuccino that I seem to crave only on road trips. Sure enough: the machine inside had ten flavors of Cappuccino, each crazier than the next. It seemed unadventurous to select a flavor as mundane as French Vanilla or Hazelnut. So I pressed the button for the “Brown Sugar Raisin Oatmeal” Cappuccino. I paid at the counter and eagerly awaited my first sip.

I took that sip in the parking lot, which was a good thing – because I wasn’t expecting to find solid chunks floating in my coffee. Big solid chunks, which I spat out onto the pavement. Clearly, the milk must have been curdled. On one level, this was oddly comforting – I hadn’t previously been certain that machine cappuccino was made with genuine milk. Apparently it was. However, this didn’t override the fact that I was now trying my best not to chew on pieces of this milk. I walked back inside to demand an explanation.

“There are chunks in my coffee. The milk is all curdled,” I said to the matronly cashier, placing my cup down on the counter.

“What kind did you try sir?”

“What?”

“Did you buy the Oatmeal flavor?” she asked, in what I took to be a somewhat judgmental tone.

“Yes. Why?”

"It’s Brown Sugar Raisin Capp-OAT-ccino. It has oats in it,” she said, tiredly.

“What? Why?”

“Would you like to try another flavor, sir?”

Adventure over. I chickened out and filled a new cup with some boring flavor of cappuccino. Still, no regrets. I’ve already forgotten every cup of French Vanilla I’ve ever had, but I’m unlikely to forget my first and last Capp-oat-ccino.

Once More to "Once More to the Lake"

Here's the latest A.P. blog prompt:

Blog Entry #4

The inspiration for this entry is E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake." Write about returning to a place you used to go after a long time away from it. Why was this place important to you to begin with? How did you feel when you returned? Nostalgic? Maybe a little sad? Some combination of the two?

Details will be important for this entry. Paint a picture of the scene for your audience. Min. 500 words.

__________________________________________________________________

Note: I took kind of an unconventional approach here, and it occurs to me I may have failed to address my own prompt. Whoops.

If you haven't read E.B. White's essay, you should. Go ahead - I'll wait. It's one of those pieces that will mean different things to you depending on your age when you read it. I first read it in Mr. Glatt's A.P. Literature class, during fall of my senior year of high school. I remember enjoying it then, but I can't really say it stuck with me. In fact, I had forgotten most of its content until I saw it listed in the table of contents of the anthology I'm using for class - Philip Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay - and decided, basically on a whim, to assign it.

I enjoyed reading it again. It's sweet and simple, and it deals with some pretty complex and deep issues with deceptive simplicity. The basic situation: After many years away, E.B. White returns with his son to a lake in Maine where he spent some of his formative childhood summers. The piece is about the lake itself, but more importantly, it's a rumination about the passage of time. The speaker wants the lake to be sort of a Garden of Eden, a place immune to the effects of time. But he can't help but notice subtle signs that time has paced and things have changed. He finds himself unexpectedly confused when he watches his son do the things he used to do. "I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father," he says.

Midway through reading about White's weird out-of-body deja vu, I started to experience my own. I think it was the bit about transposition that did it: I had a flashback to Mr. Glatt reading the line aloud and talking about the importance of that word, "transposition," although I admit I can't remember exactly what he said about it. And I started to sustain my own illusion that I was Mr. Glatt and my students, by simple transposition, were me.

Mr. Glatt was about my parents' age. In both intellectual prowess and physical appearance, he was the closest thing I had had to a college professor at that point in my life. He was bald ("follically challenged," as he put it during a lesson on euphemism) with a patchy black beard and glasses. He wore a crocheted tie every day, as well as a constant expression of bemusement. He spoke and gesticulated in a vaguely rabbinical manner. Given that I took his class seventeen years ago, I remember a surprising amount of specific things he said. As I reread White's essay I remembered an aside he made during our discussion, which bothered me a little bit at the time. The essay, he told us, reminded him of recently graduated high school students who return to their

high schools some time after graduation. They often hope to be greeted by their old teachers and former classmates as heroes returning from battle, and they usually end up disappointed. He told us, quite candidly, that he wished his students well, but often found it awkward to converse with them when they came to visit after some time away.

He wasn't kidding. About six month after graduation, I came home from college and paid a visit to my old high school (on the pretense of picking up my sister, but really to attempt to enjoy a nostalgic moment for myself). Mr. Glatt was one of the first people I sought out. I was excited to tell him that I had already decided to be an English major, and that I was reading King Lear in my intro class. I appeared in his doorway between classes and there he was, crocheted tie and all, about to teach a new class of seniors. I don't actually remember much about this conversation, but I do remember feeling that whatever I had been looking for, I didn't quite get it. Sure, he was cordial, if not exactly warm, but he was visibly preoccupied with the lesson he was about to teach. We only ended up talking for a minute or two.

He co-wrote the definitive guide to writing style,
as well as a bunch of essays about existential angst.

And still, he's best known for Charlotte and Wilbur.

Ultimately, this somewhat awkward interaction did nothing to damage my memory of Mr. Glatt or his class. I still think of him often when leading discussions with my own students. Now, at the age of thirty-five, I would gladly pay money to audit his A.P. Literature class (provided he is still teaching). Now that (by simple transposition) I have become the teacher, I think I understand why my post-graduation conversations with Mr. Glatt were so uniformly disappointing. (There were a few more in the years to come - all of them equally brief and unsatisfying.) The truth is that I sometimes find it difficult to catch up with former students returning to school on their breaks. The day before our class discussion of "Once More to the Lake," in fact, I ran into a former student on the stairwell while returning to my office to retrieve something in the middle of a class. "Hey!" I greeted him, "I want to catch up but I'm in the middle of class!" His face fell a little, and I felt bad. I did want to talk to him, and maybe the proper thing would have been to drop everything and catch up with the poor guy. But I also wanted to get back to my class of patiently waiting freshmen - the ones I'm currently being paid to teach.

I'd like to get a little better at talking to former students when they come to visit. They have been trickling in for the past couple weeks, and God knows many of my colleagues seem to share none of my hang-ups. So I'm aware that they problem may be with me. And yet, I think returning to old haunts comes with its own peculiar and contradictory emotions that exist independently of me. Part of returning - whether to an old school or E.B. White's lake - is coming to the sad realization that things are going on just fine without you. Your place is elsewhere now.

On Doing Stuff Alone

Last night, I went down to D.C. to see a rock show. Pinback, an obscure indie band I discovered in college and have been following closely ever since, was playing at the Rock and Roll Hotel, a tiny venue on H Street, and I couldn't resist. It was my fifth time seeing them in concert.

I have turned a few of my friends on to Pinback over the years, but I decided to go to the show only a few hours before it started and by that time, it felt too late to ask anyone to accompany me. And really that was fine by me. The fact is, I like going places alone sometimes. I complete much of my grading at a table for one at Starbucks, but I also don't mind going solo to meals, movies, baseball games and the occasional concert. What does bother me is the constant feeling of having to explain myself or apologize when I go off on an adventure by myself.

"I went to a show last night," I'll tell people.
"Oh cool," they'll say, "Who did you go with?"
More than once, I've fabricated a friend to avoid admitting the truth."My buddy Marvin," I'll say, "We met in a study abroad program."

It is a well known rule that if a character in a movie is dining alone, the movie wants you to know that they are Lonely. The truth is, I've eaten many pleasant meals by myself. And I don't consider myself a lonely person.

Something like this actually happened last night. The lights came on after the final encore and when I looked to my right, I realized that for the entire duration of the show, I had been standing next to two college acquaintances (now married to each other, it turns out). We caught up with each other for a while, on the sidewalk outside the club and it wasn't long before they asked me if I had come to the show by myself. Sheepishly, I admitted that I had. "Wow, that's a commitment," they responded, charitably. "Or just pathetic," I retorted.

Do I honestly think that my habit of going solo is pathetic? I don't think I think that. I mean, let's look objectively at the facts. I love people and spend much of my life surrounded with them. I have a wife and two kids and lots of friends - from high school, from college, from work. In fact I'm spending next weekend with a bunch of college buddies: we're renting a house near Annapolis. I don't work some sedentary job in a cubicle; my teaching requires me to speak publicly multiple times each day, to dozens of people. I enjoy going to movies, ballgames and concerts with friends and I do so probably three or four times as often as I venture out alone. It's fair to say that I am an introvert, and that my wife occasionally has to encourage me to reach out to friends rather than hanging out around the house, but I am by no means some hermit who can't stand social interaction.

So why should I feel weird about choosing to venture out alone sometimes? Concerts (and movies, for that matter) are basically anti-social events anyway, if you exclude the drinks or meal that often take place before or after. You stand or sit in a darkened room for an hour and a half to two hours. Admittedly, a concert would be weird if you were the only one in the audience - much weirder than a movie - but still, I've found that I don't need a companion by my side in order to thoroughly enjoy the experience.

Even now, I feel like my tone sounds a little defensive - as though I'm trying to convince the world, and maybe myself, that I'm not some weirdo loner. The stigma against doing things alone is just that strong. I admit, I have perpetuated it myself. How often have I been out to dinner with friends, glanced over at a man or a woman reading a book at a table for one, and thought (sometimes even out loud), "What a loser"?

Pinback isn't really the point of this article. But I really do love the band.

I sang along with every Pinback song the other night, even the B sides that only the guys in the band know. (Because the lead singer, Rob Crow, is kind of mumbly, I don't know the actual lyrics to many of the songs, but I've made up my own. And I have to say, I think the two of us sound pretty good harmonizing together.) By the end of the night, I was starting to feel a little lonely and was ready to return home to family. By 6:30 Sunday morning I'll admit I wasn't completely ready to wake up, but I after a cup of coffee, I was happy to spend time with my wife and babies. We went to the Baltimore Farmer's Market, where we had lunch together and picked out some beets and acorn squash for dinner. I was reminded once again that I love spending time with my family - and I love it even more after I've spent a little time by myself.

To the Dad in the Bleachers, Watching the Wrestling Tournament at the Overlea High School Gym

This year, I'm teaching A.P. Language and Composition, a class I've never taught before. My plan is to have my thirteen students create their own blogs. Every week or so I'll give them a prompt, and by the end of the year, they will hopefully have a running log of their thoughts on a variety of matters big and small. My selfish motivation is that I'm hoping this assignment will energize my own blog. I've vowed to complete each homework assignment along with my students. So, here we go.

The first assignment:

Read this incredibly scathing review of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant from the New York Times. Your task is to write a similarly negative critique. Your target can be any number of things: a restaurant, another business like a pool or a mall or a bowling alley, an event like a concert or a sporting event or a high school dance, or some general trend you've noticed among your peers or another segment of the population.

Like this review, your entry should be written entirely in a series of rhetorical questions. You should attempt to match Pete Wells' outraged tone, but otherwise, you should strive to find your own voice.

Length should be between 500 and 700 words.

I'm not sure if my response turned out to be a personal essay or a piece of flash fiction, but here it is. Inspired by a composite of coaches and parents, with whom I've come into contact during my years as a wrestler and a coach.
___________________________________________________________________

To the Dad in the Bleachers, Watching the Wrestling Tournament at the Overlea High School Gym

Have you ever found your life as fulfilling and meaningful as it was during your senior year of high school, when you were the co-captain of the Middletown Hawks wrestling team? Did you cut seven and a half pounds that year, to make it down to the 135-pound weight class? Was the best part of cutting weight that you got to crack the varsity lineup, or that you liked hearing yourself say to girls at parties, "I can't drink that; I have to cut weight for wrestling"?

Did you have a hard time coping with the premature end to your season, and to your athletic career? Did you suddenly feel that after being ignominiously bounced from the district tournament (by a sophomore, no less), that you had no sense of purpose and a confused sense of identity? Is that what inevitably happens when, for eight years, you define yourself as a Wrestler? When you have seen your win-loss record as the very measure of your value as a man?

At what point did you begin single-mindedly pursuing your goal to have a son who could carry on your aborted wrestling legacy - to avenge you, like some sort of medieval squire, by making it out of the Districts and into the Regions or even (dare you dream it?) the States? Are you proud of Mason now that he's a senior? Or, because he's better than you ever were, have you found yourself trying to swallow an unexpected resentment? Do you feel weirdly helpless during his matches, and is that feeling of helplessness what causes you to shout so vociferously from the opening whistle to the closing buzzer?

Do you think he hears it when you call out, "Throw the arm bar!" and "Chest to chest!" from your spot in the bleachers? Do you think he finds some extra motivation late in the third period when, in a voice loud enough for his opponent, and his opponent's parents to hear, you scream, "This guy's got nothing! He's gassed!"? Are you pretending not to notice when, after each of your shouts, Mason's coach turns his head about seventy-five degrees to the right, as though he's trying to decide whether or not to reprimand someone else's unruly child, making a scene in a restaurant?

Have you noticed other parents' increasingly labored smiles, when you reliably find a way to shoehorn the subject of Mason's most recent match into every social interaction? Or what about their naked grimaces during the match last week, when you berated the referee whose failure to penalize the other team for stalling resulted in Middletown's third loss of the season? Did you choose to interpret their silence as a show of solidarity when you told that overpaid, overweight piece of crap, "You're not even man enough to admit you're wrong!" Did you say it for Mason's benefit? To show your boy that you cared about him and the fortunes of his team? If you said it for him, do you think he was able to hear it with his earbuds in and his hood pulled up?

Are you going to be ok next year when your son goes to college? When you're no longer spending your weekends in high school gyms, and scouring the online forums for the latest area rankings? If he decides he's done with wrestling after he graduates, will you two recover? And if he somehow wrestles out of his mind for the next month or so, if he - why not say it? - if he wins a state championship, will you feel happy for him? Or happier for yourself, because it will represent the triumph of your gene pool?

What will you do if, after you finish feeling proud of him and pleased with yourself, you start to feel a little empty? Because your son accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish your senior year of high school, and now what?

Outings with Babies

Last week, the babies and I met a friend of mine for coffee. They are at the age where they are often perfectly content to sit in the stroller for an hour or so, looking around, chewing on a rubber giraffe toy and occasionally making little noises of contentment or surprise while I go about my business. I'm enjoying this stage while I can. As my friend and I chatted, we were interrupted intermittently by passersby who would make faces at the babies, or elbow friends to say "Look, twins!"

At one point, my friend, who doesn't have kids, commented that bringing twins out in public must be like bringing a really exotic dog to a dog park. He immediately apologized, fearing that he had somehow trivialized the experience of fatherhood, but I told him there was no need, that his analogy was completely accurate.

When I take the twins out in public, I never mind the attention in the slightest. To tell the truth, I eat it up. As someone who generally keeps a pretty low profile when I go out, I sometimes wonder what life would be like as a recognizable celebrity, constantly being bombarded with autograph and photo requests. I suppose it must get invasive after a while - you always hear celebrities complaining about it - but it must be fun for at least the first week, or the first month, right? Granted, the paparazzi hasn't started stalking my babies and me just yet, but for now, it's fun to be a source of fleeting interest, curiosity and maybe even admiration. And yes, I realize that the babies are the ones who are garnering the attention and that it's not really about me. But still, it makes me feel like Super Dad for moment here and there. I feel like it's good manners to shrink away from the attention, rather than leaning into it, or maybe to complain about the constant comments and questions from strangers. But if there is anything more pathetic than openly craving attention, it's pretending not crave it, even though you obviously do. You end up coming off like Michael Scott, fishing for a "Happy Birthday" from Jan:

It's a pain to take the babies out in the hot weather: they require sunscreen and sometimes little white hats and sunglasses (which they don't always love), and these damp blankets to keep them cool. It's a lot of work for an outing that probably won't exceed an hour in duration. So we've ended up spending a lot of time at indoor spots, most of which aren't terribly interesting, like Giant and the Towson Mall (which I kind of hate). A few observations about the attention we receive there:

• Twins will always attract their share of interested observers, but it's even more of a novelty to see a dad with twins. It's a double-standard, really, the idea that if Mom takes the babies she is just doing her job, but if Dad takes them, well, he's a super-hero. But it's a double-standard that works in my favor, so...

• Frequent questions include: "How old are they?" "What are their names?" "Are they a boy and a girl?" A trickier one is, "Do twins run in your family?" This is a completely reasonable question in and of itself, and actually the answer is yes: both Maya and I have first cousins who are twins. But sometimes, we've gotten the distinct impression that this question is code for "Did you have the babies naturally or artificially?" Maybe we're just paranoid.

• Then there was the lady at Giant who asked me straight up, "Are they natural twins?" I was too stunned to do anything but stammer. I regret not telling her off, though. Who asks that?

• A big one is "Are they identical or fraternal" Or more often, "Are they identical or... the other one?" This is kind of a surprising question to me. I've known for a long time that identical twins must necessarily have the same sex, but apparently this knowledge is not as common as I assumed. I was especially surprised when a student at my school, a twin himself, asked me this question. I thought that was a basic piece of knowledge you needed in order to consider yourself a twin.

• Not every place attracts the same number of people who are interested in babies. In my experience so far, we get the most attention when we go to food-related places: Giant, R House (an upscale indoor food court) and especially the Market at Shrewsbury (a giant indoor market and food court in PA). People seem generally less interested in shopping malls and department stores, like Target. I still haven't worked out the possible reasons for the difference, but it is distinct.

• I can be weirdly and unfairly resentful when strangers don't acknowledge my twins. The other day I was in an elevator with the stroller when a young man came in, pressed his floor number and then obliviously pulled out his phone. I found myself thinking, "Aren't you going to say anything?" I know its irrational, but I can't help it.

I've done this multiple times.

Incredible Catch

"Wow, that was an incredible catch!"

"Unbelievable!"

"Holy Crap! How did he do that?"

These are really the only appropriate responses to the catch that Austin Jackson made in center field at Fenway Park last night. A little context: in the fifth inning of last night's Red Sox-Indians game, with the Indians leading 7-5, the Sox' Hanley Ramirez hit a ball to the "triangle," the deepest part of center field. The Indians' Austin Jackson extended his glove and leaped into the air to make an insane catch against the Red Sox' bullpen. He crashed into the low wall and his momentum brought him down into the bullpen, where he actually made a rather smooth landing. If you haven't already seen this play, please help yourself. It's worth multiple viewings.

"That just might be the play of the year!" says a stunned Indians' announcer, and honestly it's really hard to argue the point. I've seen lots of Red Sox games and I can remember a couple instances where a player tried and failed to make a similar catch: Torii Hunter famously attempted it in the 2013 play-offs. But Jackson succeeded, and he looked good doing it too. Watch him emerge from the bullpen and flip the ball back to the infield: he appears more energized than rattled.

And that really should be the end of the story. But this morning I saw the highlight again on my Facebook feed, where MLB had posted it. I made the mistake of clicking on the comments. And wow. Here are the top five:

Ricky Flores That shud be a homerun!
Ball went over wall!
Fk that!

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Adam Boizelle Should be a homerun. Ball went over the fence with the player. If a player catches a ball in foul territory and his entire body falls into foul territory, it should be a foul ball.

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Tom Galliher Jackie Bradley Jr's catch on Judge in the same bullpen 2 weeks ago was better.

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Tom Daniels Uhh. The whole point is to keep the ball from going out of the park. Not a catch.

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Mike Vi that's a incredible catch, impressive even, still F$ck the Tribe - Red Sox fan 🤔🙄🤚🏽

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Again, I want to reiterate that the only appropriate responses to this video should be expressions of disbelief or admiration. These are almost nowhere to be seen here. Instead, we have 1) a petty and incorrect challenge of the rules, 2) a defense of the rules that maintains a fairly neutral tone, 3) a weirdly defensive reference to an entirely different catch, 4) another petty and incorrect challenge of the rules, and 5) a mild expression of praise undercut by an insult.

Yes, I understand that the internet is basically an endless font of negativity and a showcase for the worst of all human impulses. And I understand that it's probably pointless to express disappointment when my low expectations are validated. And what am I doing clicking on internet comments anyway, when I know full well they are probably going to depress me?

But come on. Does every comment have to be so overwhelmingly negative and cynical? For crying out loud, this isn't some Alt-right blog post - it's a video of a baseball player making an unbelievable catch. Why can't we just shut up and enjoy it? Why do we have to criticize and undermine and insult? What is this proving?

To be fair, when Jackson made his catch last night, the Red Sox faithful cheered him. They are a notoriously hostile bunch, but they know greatness when they see it. It's heartening to know that many fans - the ones who attend games anyway - haven't lost the capacity to be thrilled and amazed. Once you lose that, what's the point in even watching sports?

The Land of China, Part 6

The first few entries in my journal maintained a fairly reverent tone. It took me a while to really observe some of the more absurd details of the culture. I could easily write several pages about poor translations. I guess I had always realized that China was known for poor English translations, but I had no idea just how ubiquitous they were - to the point that it was unusual to see a single properly translated sentence.

7/6/07

Standing outside a fashionable clothing store, comparable to Abercrombie and Fitch, I realize that it must be very trendy to wear clothing with words in English. It apparently makes no difference what the words even mean, as long as they are in English. A woman's umbrella features a picture of Mickey Mouse with the caption "Lovely Rat." Another girl's shirt is designed to look like the Jack Daniels logo, but instead of Jack Daniels Bourbon, it says "Duck Junior Beanstalk." K and I are on a mission to purchase the most ridiculous t-shirt. She bought one today that says "Play Music Feel Violin." Not bad, but I think I can do better.

It makes no sense, yet sounds so obscene.

The Salt Lake Men's Choir is huge in Nanjing.

Nanjing has a Wallmart, which is as chaotic and loud as you'd expect it to be.
They call it "WARR-MUU." (That's my phonetic approximation.)

7/7/07



We walked into a student cafeteria in Nanjing neat the Foreign Language University. We are absolutely the only white people there. There is no English anywhere. We wait in a long line, terrified. How and what are we going to order? We get to the front of the line and pantomime "dumpling." (Small circular shape with hands.) "Dumpling!" the proprietor finally says, with a glimmer of recognition. Success! I hold up six fingers, as in, we would like six dumplings apiece. The guy behind the counter looks confused, but gives us an extremely low price (even by Chinese standards). We pay and take a seat at a long communal table. A moment later, he is talking to a student next to us. The student taps us on the the shoulder and says, in shockingly perfect English, "He wants to know if you really want only six dumplings." He explains to us that dumplings in this restaurant are very tiny appetizers, a fraction of the size of the things we get at Chinese restaurants back home. Six of them would basically amount to bird food, not lunch. So with the help of this student, we revise our order and end up getting a tray of bigger dumplings - the kind we wanted in the first place - and two bowls of noodles. We thank the kid and he says "No problem," in a super casual tone. What a nice guy. My inability to communicate or seemingly to do anything according to proper rules of Chinese etiquette makes me feel a little like Borat. I am completely incapable of keeping a low profile here.

Xuanwu Lake is this really lovely spot in the middle of Nanjing.
A nice respite from the chaos of the rest of the city, and for one of those "I can't believe I'm in China" moments. 

7/8/07

The majestic Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum, one of Nanjing's major attractions.

On the steps of the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum, a kid approaches us and says, "Picture!" He holds his hands in the shape of a camera. Now what does that mean? Do you want us to take your picture? Sure. No, you don't? Ok, well what do you want then? A picture of us? No? Are you trying to sell us something? We finally deduce that he wants us to take a picture with him - a group shot of the three of us. This is completely bizarre to me. In what situation would this kind of behavior be appropriate at home? Maybe if you ran into a celebrity on the street, or Bigfoot. But certainly not if you happened to run into a couple of Asian tourists. Can you imagine showing this picture to your friends later, as proof... of what? That you really saw white people? We humor this kid, of course. We stand in a row while an old guy, perhaps his grandfather, tries to take a picture. (P.S. - This guy has no idea what he is doing, first holding the camera at an awkward diagonal, then upside down, before finally figuring it out. Hope it's a keeper. Maybe we are in a frame, on top of a mantle somewhere in China.)

The mausoleum, by the way, is massive and awe-inspiring, and has a ludicrous number of stairs. Sun Yat Sen is kind of like China's George Washington. The main difference is that his monument doesn't have an elevator.

Quote of the day:

"A book, or a watch?"
- Guy on a street corner, offering me both a book and a watch

7/9/07

The Monsoon of 2007. View from in front of our hotel.

In the market surrounding the Fuzi Temple, people flood the streets and crowd around large boxes of t-shirt. This seems like an ideal place to find a poorly translated t-shirt. I spy a new entry in the contest: a t-shirt that says "I have plenty of milk. Do you want some?" Worn by a prepubescent girl. Gross.

A man offers K a laundry basket full of puppies.

On the walk from the Fuzi Temple area back to our hotel it starts pouring relentlessly. This is a scary storm, with angry thunder and lightning. We catch a cab, but a bus breaks down in the lane right in front of us, making it difficult for the cab to move. We get back to the hotel right before the worst of it starts. The power goes out in the hotel for a little while. This is a straight up monsoon. When we finally emerge, the street in front of us is totally flooded. Bikes wade their way through deep rivers. We cross Hunan Rd., a main thoroughfare, through a tangled gridlock of cars, buses and bicycles. We turn into a popular area called Shiziquiao (pronounced "Cheesy Cow") is a blocked off pedestrian mall full of restaurants and kiosks. After a brief search for a place with a menu in English, we settle on a Korean BBQ type place with Hibachi grills in the middle of each table. The menu is more exotic than I would have expected: Sparrow, Pigeon, Duck Liver, Stomach and Beef Tendon. But we stick to the relatively normal stuff, like chicken, mutton and something called "imported meat" (which is roast beef, we think). When the food arrives, K puts a skewer of meat on the grill. It must be fairly obvious that we don't know what we're doing, because a waitress comes over and starts grilling our meat for us. No complaints here! The meal actually turns out to be one of the best yet. Tasty grilled meat dipped in soy sauce and curry, corn and sweet potatoes. Plus the comfort of knowing exactly what we are eating.

We start to walk back to the hotel only to be caught in another downpour. Oh boy. No cabs, so we have to make a run for it. There's no way to avoid it: we end up getting completely soaked. Not only are we rained on, but in our haste to get back, we step in puddles of who knows what. At one point, K kicks a stray tentacle off her flip-flop. 

On the plus side, The Blob is on tv in our hotel. How comforting to watch a bad American movie before bed.

Two other shirts I saw today: "Jesus is Lord" and "I am a Dry Bone Gangster"

At this point, I stopped keeping up with regular entries. The rest of the journal is mostly just notes, some of them indecipherable. Around a month into my trip, I was apparently starting to lose patience with certain aspects of Chinese culture. My entry for 7/24 is just a list:

7/24/07

Annoying China Things

1.) People try to answer your questions even though they obviously didn't understand them

Me: "Do you know where I can find a post office?"
Guy: "Yes." (blank look)

2.) Some places don't let you pay with credit card.

Guy: "That will be ¥3000 please."
Me: "Ok. Do you take Visa?"
Guy: "No."
Me: (grumbling) "Ok... do you know where I can find an ATM?"
Guy: "Yes."

3.) Constant loogie hocking. Gross wads of phlegm everywhere. Any time or setting is acceptable. Even occasionally on the floor of indoor restaurants. Both men and women partake.

4.) People have the worst, loudest ringtones imaginable. And they go off absolutely everywhere. Restaurants. Trains. Especially trains.

5.) In Marketplaces, or just on the streets, people peddle all kinds of worthless crap. (Or else they just generally bug the hell out of you.)

6.) People often see us on the street and yell, "Hello!" When younger people do this, it's actually kind of endearing. But when a guy in his twenties elbows his buddy, says something in Chinese like, "Check this out," and then gives us a big awkward wave and greeting, it gets old really quick.

7.) Long plastic flaps hanging in doorways. These seem unsanitary. And do I hold the flaps for the next person? Why aren't these just a door?

8.) No one has ever heard of elevator or subway etiquette. Everyone seems fine with just pushing their way into an elevator before the people inside have a chance to exit.

9.) Hotels often won't provide an extra room key. Come on... how much can one extra card key possibly cost? I will be happy to return it too.

10.) No napkins in some restaurants and bathrooms. I know we're trying to save paper and money here. But there are times when napkins are absolutely necessary.