PLAYING FAVORITES

Pick any middle-age man or woman and he or she can tell you, within three seconds, who their favorite teachers were in high school. Funny enough, it isn't usually the one that was their favorite when they were actually IN high school either. Oh sure, at 16, we all loved the hip, with-it, cool cat of a teacher that let us call him by his first name, told us stories about his girlfriend or wife, and let it slide when we didn't do a stellar job on our final paper. No. I'm talking about that teacher who we realized, somewhere between our 30th and 50th birthday, had made an impact on our lives so strong that we still carry the lessons with us today. I was blessed with a few of those along the way.

One such teacher was Mr. Lesko. I was lucky. I had Mr. Lesko from junior high all the way up until my high school graduation. He was firm, but kind. Caring, but private. Funny and polite. We knew our boundaries with Mr. Lesko. He let us be ourselves, but encouraged us to become so much more. He valued education and valued our futures as well. I trusted Mr. Lesko. But the biggest life lesson I learned in his class didn't come out of a book. I remember sitting in his Bible class where he would remind us over and over again, "Don't ever take my word for it. Don't ever think because a pastor said it or a teacher said it or the president of the United States said it that it is true. Study it for yourself. Ask questions. Go, discover truth with your own inquisitive mind and spirit. Ask God to go with you and you'll never go wrong." That lesson changed my life. That lesson brought me closer to my Creator. That lesson gave me a relationship with truth that exists to this day. So, thank you, Mister Doctor Lesko! You, my beloved teacher, made a huge impact not only on my earthly future, but my spiritual one as well. In that simple lesson, you gave me an education that has sustained me, and will last me a lifetime. You are blessed... and highly favored!

Ampersand one more thing...

Have you ever found words that just SOUND like what they mean? Take the word "sensuous." The way you pucker up your lips in that Ingrid Bergman to Humphrey Bogart sort of way. Go ahead, say it outloud. See? It sounds exactly the way it is meant. Sexy, slow, languid. SINNNNNN Shoooooe Usssssssss..... Hey. Any word that has "sin," "shoe," and "us" enunciated so perfectly has to be said - and often. I love words. Always have. True story that many of you have heard over the years, but it bears repeating (there is another word...repeating... what is "peating" and why would I want to do it over and over?).... I was in Mr. Kakazu's class. Fifth grade. All of my best friends were in my homeroom (someone wasn't paying attention when they made that class roster). I was a talker. Oh I know, that's hard to believe now, but truly, I was verbose. I loved words. And I would quite often use them, much to the frustrations of Mr. Kakazu. He had a favorite punishment he liked to dole out to those pesky kids that constantly interrupted his train of thought when his back was turned to us. He would keep track of how many "shhhh's" he had to give out and then, without warning, he would round us all up and send us out to the ping-pong table on the patio of our classroom, reminding us to pick up a dictionary as we filed past the rolling book cart on our way out the door. Then, we were ordered to pull up a chair around said ping-pong table and he would "assign" us our punishment.

I would get pages six through twenty, Robyn would get pages fifty-two through sixty-five, Hector would get... well, you get the idea. Fifteen to twenty pages of copying down each word in the dictionary and at least two of the meanings for those words. Oh how the other kids hated it. They would moan and complain and fuss and eventually plop into their chairs with a huff and a growl. I would ever so quietly, for fear of being found out, open my book and gleefully begin on my "punishment." In fact, I enjoyed it so much, the other kids actually would bribe me with their lunch time snacks, money, and their coveted markers used in hop-scotch. Remember those? The best ones were made from rabbits feet and that little chain thingie. Yeah... I collected all the bribes and would do their pages too. I loved this punishment! In fact, I got punished alot that year. I spent a huge chunk of my fall and early winter quarters outside on the patio in the Southern California Indian Summers, having the time of my life with words. It was all working quite delightfully to my advantage. Until Mr. Kakazu decided to ask my mother, in one of those completely unnecessary parent-teacher conferences, why on earth did I talk so much and was there any way she could help out with this because I was constantly getting in trouble, getting punished, and it was driving him crazy! My mother, ever the protective hen, demanded to know exactly what sort of punishment he was meting out to me. He told her, with quite some pride in his voice, of his very clever, educational punishment. When my mother stopped laughing long enough to dry the tears from her eyes, she told him that he had picked quite the reward for her precious daughter. She told him how we spent nights together, working crossword puzzles, and how I would flip through the encyclopedias at home just for the fun of it. (Yes children, knowledge used to come in well-researched, factoid bound things called books, not the internet). She told him that the most dog-eared, page-worn book in our house was the dictionary and that I would spend my Sunday afternoons with it on my lap, going through it like an investigator on the trail of a good clue. And the fact that he put the exclamation point on the punishment by sending me outside into the sunshine and warm breezes just made it all that more rewarding to me! I sat through that conference in horror. My mother, mi madre, my avenger, my protector, my partner in acrostics was selling me down the river. She told my teacher she had the perfect punishment for me... and then sent me out of the room while she shared this parental nugget with this, this MAN teacher! Sure enough, a few days later, I was back at my old antics - talking to my buddies, catching up on the latest cartoons, when Mr. Kakazu wheeled around, pointed his yardstick at me, and said, "You. Now. Take your chair and go sit in the corner of the classroom library." Wait. What? I gathered up my spelling book and a dictionary and he said, "No... just you and your chair. Over there. Back to the wall. Facing the classroom." I grabbed a book to read. "Nope. Leave the book at your desk. Just you. Chair. Sit. And don't talk." Oh dear God in the merciful heavens. Sit? In the library? Surrounded by books? And... you mean, just SIT? And be quiet? But... "No buts Missy. Just yours on a chair." (Yeah, don't you love fifth-grade teacher humor?). For the next forty-five... yes, forty-five minutes... I know it was forty-five because I counted each and every one of them... I sat. And I watched the class engage in delightful discussions with the teacher and each other. Hold up. THEY get to talk and you're punishing me for talking?? SO not fair. My mother had figured out my own personal hell. Sitting. Quietly. Not reading. Not writing. Not answering questions. Not talking. Just watching everyone else have a jolly good time... without me. I wanted to turn my chair around and stare at the wall. I wanted to count the holes in the asbestos-lined ceiling tiles. Anything but this thing of no talking, no writing, no reading. Seriously? Is there a more potent hell than this? Despite all the subsequent years of mother-approved punishments from my teachers, I still love words. Ampersand is another of my favorites. It implies so much..it is a fancy essss... it indicates there is "more" of something... it is a long word for a symbol that means a short word... it is a dichotomy. An enigma, irony, and oxymoron all rolled into one. Someone used it in a sentence the other day. I was impressed. You do know what an Ampersand is... don't you? I have a dictionary. I believe it is on page six.

WHERE'S THE FIRE?

Monterey has a stunning hook & ladder fire truck... a "6471 Truck Company it located at Fire Station #1, 2008 KME, Tiller Truck 3 Axles, Weight 78,000 G.V.W., 56 Feet in Length, Ladder extends to 105 feet, 1500 G.P.M. Pump Single Stage Pump, 300 Gallons Water Tank, 500 Feet 5" Hose" to be exact... grammar mistakes and all. Now, to be fair, they have actually used this truck at least once... to which the pictures on the city's website will attest... there was a raging fire downtown a few years ago that required the "ladder" part of the truck to be extended to nearly it's full length of 105 feet... well, maybe closer to 70 feet... but still... one of the photos shows the extended ladder (the truck barely fits on the street in front of the now-demolished building) in position next to a ladder leaning up against the building next door... hmmmmm. Seems like a bit of overkill, but I am not a fireman... with a new truck... that should probably be used every so often to justify its cost to the city. But far be it from me to complain about its usage. The firemen of Station #1 make sure that their hook and ladder 6471 is used every single day. They are on a mission. Each and every work day (I am not sure about the weekends because I am safely ensconced at home, away from the hubbub of downtown) this delightful exhibition of excess makes sure it winds its way through the downtown area, sirens blazing, going somewhere. Although I have heard nothing in the news or in the paper about needing a hook and ladder truck, still, it heads out of the station faithfully, every day, at the same time... I suppose they are conducting "exercises..." In case one of our multi-story buildings HAPPENS to catch on fire... at the top floors... which led me to count the number of buildings that would possibly actually maybe use this shiny red truck.

To be fair, we do have several hotels with more than two floors... and I am sure it would come in handy to have this wonderful piece of "Fire Apparatus" as the website calls it... should it ever be needed. But what I find amusing is the daily practice runs... you can set your watch by them. There they go again, sirens blazing, engines gunning, the proud firefighter sitting high on his perch, manning his wheel in the back, everyone in full gear, going to........ That's what I can't figure out. Oh to see them parked in front of Starbucks. Or maybe Red's Donuts. Or possibly at Safeway, picking up their groceries. But so far, all I can deduce is they take that big ol' puppy out for a run around the block, show it off, and take it back home and put it to bed. A friend of mine took her kids on a walk the other day. They decided to just walk by the firestation so they could ogle the big shiny red trucks. The entire crew came out to greet them, and proceeded to take them on a tour of the station. Not only did the kids get to climb all over the trucks, but they got to go upstairs to see where the nice firemen slept. And ate. And took showers. And relaxed. And and and... they got a FULL tour. Which leads me to believe that our wonderful firemen are bored out of their skulls. I guess I should be grateful they are not kept as busy as the overworked and underpaid California Conservation Crew firemen battling raging fires throughout our state. We are not living under a mountain of ash or watching altered sunsets made colorful by the existence of smoke in the air. But I am still curious as to where the hook and ladder goes every day at 5:45 pm... sirens blaring, engines roaring, with the little wheel room in the back manned by a very proud firefighter.