Monthly Archives: March 2012

I can probably count the times on one hand when, sometime over the last 14 years, my ring finger has been empty. I just almost never remove my wedding ring. I do remember the first week after our wedding when we were wearing our rings for the first time, and it felt like I had a little golden spider on my finger, and I would catch glimpses of it from time to time out of the corner of my eye. Now, it’s just part of me, a  symbol of how far my wonderful wife and I have come over the years on this journey we are on (along with our three sons).

Last night, I was keeping the score book for my middle son’s basketball tournament game (they won!) and then I helped break down the equipment and put it into storage for today’s tournament game. As my boys and I were walking down the hallway to go out to the van, I reached into my pocket for my keys. Something felt odd. The keys were there, but normally, my wedding ring scrapes across the pocket of my pants (something I don’t ever remember noticing before except now it was a clue that something was amiss). My hand went a bit too smoothly into my pocket. I pulled out my left hand, puzzled.

The ring finger was empty. I stopped dead in my tracks. My sons, who were chatting about the game, stared at me.

“What?” one asked.

“My ring. My wedding ring.” I held up my empty hand. “I don’t have it.”

My brain rushed to remember: when did I last see it on my finger? I could have sworn it was there earlier in the day. That means it might still be in the gym. Great. We rushed back to the basketball court and began scouring the floor with our eyes. I was thinking, a gold ring on a wooden floor … like a needle in a haystack. I went into the equipment room, and opened up some of the boxes with wires for the scoring machine.

“There it is!” my son, who has followed me, shouted. And there it was. My ring had come off when I was wrapping up wires, I guess, and fallen into the box. Phew.

At home, as my wife and I were getting ready for bed, I told her about losing the ring. She got this panic look on her face.

“I took mine off, too,” she said, and now began scrambling around her bedside table. She couldn’t find it. I went downstairs to the “shelf” where she takes it off when she does baking or cooking. She doesn’t want to lose it in the pizza dough, you know? Nothing. Then, “I found it!” The ring had fallen off her bedside table and rolled under the bed, I guess.

For a second there, I was wondering about bad omens and such. But the night ended with two ringed fingers, held together by years of marriage. Disaster was averted!

Peace (in the ring),
Kevin

 

Fellow Slice of Lifers from the past know that March and April mean Quidditch at our elementary school. In about three or four weeks, we hold an entire day of Quidditch for the four sixth grade classes, using rules first invented by a student and refined over the years by other students and teachers.

My homeroom class color is blue, and the names that the class comes up with usually is associated with blue and/or cold. Yesterday afternoon, we launched into the collaborative discussion around names. They brainstormed as many cool names for our team as they could, and then we went through an entire election process — sort of like a presidential primary but without the negative ads. And no Super Pacs either. As far I know, no money was pushed under the table.

In about 30 minutes of fun and heated discussions, and after three rounds of voting, the majority arrived at this year’s team name.

Our Name is Permafrost!

A few were wondering just what permafrost is, even though they liked the sound of the name. I guess a little science lesson is in order, eh? The photo here shows the way voting took place, and how we ended up with our consensus. Next step? Coming up with an icon for our class team that represents Permafrost.

And so we’re off into Quidditch season …

Peace (and magic),
Kevin
PS – and this is how we play our version of Quidditch!

Yesterday was Read Aloud Day. How could I pass up an opportunity to take part in that? So, I dusted off Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll and we spent part of our classes reading and discussing poem as part of our explorations of poetry. The kids had fun with the made-up words, and we had some deeper discussions about the story underneath the nonsense.

It was interesting how quite a few know of the Jabberwock (the creature) but not the poem because it was featured so heavily in the Alice in Wonderland movie a few years ago. (It also meant they had an image in their mind before we read the poem, which is too bad). Two of my students said their older siblings were memorizing the poem (I had the siblings, too! Can I take credit?) for fun.

We ended our discussion on a note of craziness — watching The Muppet Show version of the poem.

Peace (beneath the TumTum Tree),
Kevin

 

I heard the gasp and saw the small crowd of kids jump back. Then, they began shouting for me to come over to our old PC cart.

“There were sparks!” one student yelled, in a sort of crazed voice. “There were sparks!”

I got them to calm down enough to realize that one of the power cords had become frayed from the pull and push of laptops coming in and out of the cart. It was nothing the student had done, as far as I could tell. I could see some bare wire near the plug. Sparks had flown. One student gingerly handed me the laptop with the frayed power cord still attached, like passing an undetonated bomb to the Bomb Squad. I turned off the cart and removed the plug from the laptop, and sighed.

I know we are lucky to have this PC cart – if you read this blog, you know I use it a lot with my students for digital composition — but the years are certainly taking the toll. This is the third frayed wire I have had to take off the cart this year. I am out of “extras” at this point in terms of power cords, and so now I am lobbying our tech folks to order a few more “just in case.” They will, I am sure, but it is an uphill battle to keep this cart in good working order as our school moves to become all-Mac, no-PC over time. (We also have a Mac cart and two Mac half-carts in the building).

I felt a bit frazzled myself, frayed around the edges, but determined to keep technology in my room moving forward, not back.

Peace (no sparks),
Kevin