Mixed Up Lines

A few years ago, when my daughter came home from school, she stormed over to me and said, “I am so angry with you!” This didn’t happen often, so I was concerned. “You have ruined me!” she told me.

She explained that in class someone had said, “You can lead a horse to water…” and my daughter had added, “but you can’t make it swim.” The room broke out in laughter and she didn’t understand why.

I did. You probably do. I understood why she was upset with me.  Oops.

Similarly, if I accidentally rhyme in class, I say that “I’m a poet and I’m not consciously aware of that fact.” This wouldn’t get my daughter in trouble – I think.

I love to play with words, phrases, letters, and language. I don’t say the proverb the regular way; I mess around with it. I can’t remember the last time I talked about that horse drinking. My daughter had only heard my riff on the original. Now she knows.

I am constantly mixing up language in class. My speech is peppered with spoonerisms. Spoonerisms are the mixing up of the initial constant sounds of a phrase or sentence. My students know exactly what I want them to do if I tell them to go sack to your beats. Taking a cue from the wonderful lirty dies of Capitol Steps, I often address them as Jadies and Lentleman. My Freshman English students play the Punday Suzzle, and homeroom says the ledge of pallegiance every day. 

One year, my Senior English class surprised me with a special gift at the end of the year. It was a long, large, and flat wrapped package. When I opened it, I couldn’t contain my laughter. It was a pair of pruning cutters. Yes, it was a gift of shears. "Gifting shears" is my frequent transition statement – another spoonerism.

Of course, I love puns! I tell kids that I am very impatient: I have a wait problem. I encourage them to imitate Shakespeare and punish each other by being bad to the bard. As we open our computers (or notebooks) to journal or start an essay, I tell students to “do the write thing!” If they don’t start fast enough, I tell them to “write away” or to do it “write now!” Yes, sometimes my puns get a groan. That is second place to a laugh, but I’ll take it.

Of course, there are always students who finish the writing too quickly. They set aside their pens or machines and look at me and say that they are done. I shake my head and tell them that they are still rare, maybe medium rare or medium, but they are certainly not done, and I want their work to be well done!

Then one will ask if it is okay that they finish anyway. I have perfected the art of saying “no” but shaking my head up and down. As you would expect, this is confusing. My non-verbal communication is saying one thing and my voice is saying the opposite. “Which is it?” They ask. Yes, that is the question.

When discussing certain literary elements, I always pretend that I am the percussionist at the back of the band and have crashed my two big pieces of metal together.  When we start to decode those eyes in Gatsby or the sea in A Tale of Two Cities, students also get the pun cymbal and symbol.

My former student Aaron (and several others) reminded me that, when I would check for understanding, I would ask in my very very bad Italian: “Catfish?” Similarly, Lucas reminded me that my French is as poor as my Italian. While we may say, “please” in English, I frequently thank students with “mercy buckets.”

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Language is not static. I encourage kids to play with language. As we write and speak, we must think about not just what we are saying, but the words we use. Language forms the foundation of our thought. Changing our words can change our perception. Language matters. Words matters. I hope my mixed up word playfulness gives kids permission to play along!  

Van...Gone

I was relieved and embarrassed when I confessed to some friends that I felt very sad when I sold my minivan. It is a thing, not a person. Why would I get choked up when I turned over the keys, took off the license plates, and created an open spot in the driveway? I have never been bothered by getting rid of a vehicle before.

The van’s presence on the driveway was a sign of the development of our family. As my kids went to college and left the house, the van represented a time when we were together more often. We were busy, and we were all in that van.

I was also relieved because several friends said that they, too, grieved when they ended their relationships with their vans. Their vans represented the same things to them. They had shuttled their kids, took road trips, and journeyed to summer camps. For many of us, our vans were as old or older than our children. We had all grown up in the van!

But my van was different. My van was a Star Trek shuttlecraft. It was one of a kind, down to the double entendre license plate. It became an extension of my identity in a way. In retrospect, I wonder if that was healthy.

I was always shocked that my students knew about the van because I didn’t drive it to school! It didn’t matter. People in the community knew the van and recognized it. Weekly, I would run into someone in a store who would say some variation on, “I was looking for you. I saw the van in the lot, so I knew you were here.”

It was fun, funny, and sometimes odd when we came outside and found someone photographing the van. Everyone in the family could return a Vulcan salute from a passing vehicle on the highway. The van made people smile. It was a fun way to travel.

When I turned fifty years old, I bought a car; the van lost its spot in the garage and moved to the driveway. It became the “extra” car the kids drove or was used for special occasions. But it was still there. More than that, it was even more public since it was now in front of the house.

My children called it the “nerdmobile.” My brother thought kids at school would make fun of my children because of it. If that happened, I never heard about it. In fact, the kids had a sweet fondness for the van. It was a kind of member of the family. It was like a symbol of both my fatherhood and fandom. It was our presence on the road.

And now it is gone.

I procrastinated in both preparing to sell it and then actually making the sale. Logically, it was time. It needed repairs that we could not justify given how infrequently it was used.

But vans don’t live on logic alone.

I created an ad and, when no fans stepped forward to purchase it, I decided to make the break quick and clean and sold it to Carmax. On the way home, I was wondering if I had made the right choice. My wife had an evening meeting and I moped and grieved the rest of the night, alone in the house.

Just to be clear: my current car has no decorations. I have no plans for another Star Trek vehicle. I moved some pieces of the van into my car. I will eventually put its plates on the wall of the garage.

I wasn’t certain that I could – or should – write about selling the van. It felt silly and trivial. I was relieved and grateful when others shared their stories. It was heartening and reassuring when I posted about the van’s sale on Facebook and people understood what I was feeling.

It is odd to come home to an empty driveway. It is odd to come home to a house with no children. I am very slowly getting used to both. I will miss the van and all it represents. More than that, I miss the people it shuttled and schlepped.