An ordinary day. Driving to the Lowes in Seabrook, New Hampshire and this comes on the radio.
I'm three minutes out from the store's parking lot and by the time I got there, I knew I was not leaving the parking lot until this lady, Micaela Blei, has finished her story.
Not just that, but I'm laughing, sitting there in my car, with the motor running, because I'm afraid if I turn the motor off the radio will stop and I'll lose this story.
So I'm polluting the environment, listening to this story.
Laughing.
People are walking by and looking at me, but I'm helpless.
I'm just hoping she gets to the end of the story before the parking lot passers by reach security in the store and they all descend on me.
Never heard of this author, Blei.
What have I been missing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCdDAR6BZI
I've sent it to my friends and family.
They are probably coming for me now.
ADDENDUM:
Okay, I've heard back now.
"Oh, it's sort of cute," and "Tell you sons: They'll remember Legos."
No, actually. That is not what I'm talking about.
What makes this story so good is what Ms. Blei leaves out: Hemingway made a big deal about how the stuff you omit is every bit as important, if not more important, than what you put in.
You do not know what the Lego jewel thief looks like. You do not have a name to place his background. She tells you only he is sour and bright. That's it. The rest of him you get from his actions. You know he is head of the Black Hole Boys, and this is important to him. You know he treasures the spaceship he made and he tries everything he can to avoid its destruction, even when he is caught.
And the teacher tells you so much about herself: her capacity to observe the Black Hole Boys. Her delight in the nerdy passions, their wonderment about black holes and speculation about whether there could be a black hole so big it could swallow other black holes. They have that capacity to take things to the next step, as George Carlin mentioned about the kid who asked if God is all powerful could he make a stone so big even he could not move it. And she sees the ethical dilemma she can foist on her 8 year old student, and she declines to "frame" a student for the "crime" of hoarding jeweled Legos. She resolves the missing jewels without resort to crime and punishment. She knows about the spirit of the law.
Listening to all this, I thought of a parent/student conference I attended with my wife and my son's 5th grade teacher. This teacher looked 100 years old, burnt out. She said our son did not know his multiplication tables and so he was not doing well in math. I asked her if she drilled multiplication tables in class. No, she said, that is up to the students to learn at home. I mentioned all my friends who went to Catholic schools knew their multiplication tables deeply and it was the last thing they ever forgot, even when they got demented or had strokes. They drilled the tables in class relentlessly.
She said, well, that's Catholic schools. The lesson plans for Montgomery County public schools came from the County and did not include drills in multiplication tables. That was for homework in Montgomery County.
I asked her how many boys in her class had troubles with multiplication tables and she guessed about 20 of the 32 students. "So," I said, "Roughly 60% of the boys are behind?"
"Yes."
How many of the girls had trouble? "Oh, maybe one or two. Not many."
"And, by the time they are in 10th grade, of the best math students, how many are boys?"
"Oh, I couldn't say."
"Well, let me ask this another way: Do you think 60% of the boys are behind in math by the 10th grade? Do you think of all the math classes only 40% of the good math students are boys?"
"Oh, no," she said.
She did not get my point. Ms. Blei would have got my point.
At the parent/teacher conference for my younger son, in middle school, we were told he was an average student, actually just below the median on the bell curve. My wife wanted to know what we could do to improve that. "Oh, well, you know, you can accept it. He's just not going to be his older brother (who by that time had become an academic star, despite his trouble with multiplication tables.) You just have to celebrate him for what he is, for what he can do."
It was all I could do to keep my wife from throwing something at this teacher. "My son is a very bright!" she insisted.
The teacher smiled a sympathetic, if condescending smile.
I observed, "You know, we just got a call from the teacher who does the literary magazine. He said they had selected this kid's epic poem, in the style of the Iliad, for the magazine this year."
"Oh," the teacher smiled, clearly not seeing how this was relevant and maybe concluding she ought to get closer to the phone so she could call security. "Well, that's nice."
"Yes," I agreed. "I had no more idea he had written an epic poem than you did. When I read it, I was surprised how he had taken the style of the Iliad we had read as a bedtime story, and transmogrified it into the playground battles and the anger and conflict he found in middle school."
"Well, I'll look forward to seeing the magazine," the teacher said, "It comes out in May."
She had no more idea what was going on in the heads of her students than the traffic cop out in front of the school, and likely less than the school bus driver.
She was no Micaela Blei.
So, that's what caught my attention.
By the way, we transferred our slightly below average younger son to a private school, despite my reservations about abandoning public schools, and, after a rocky start, he eventually thrived, and he went on to become a vascular surgeon and he is now asked to speak at the school as a returning alumnus, who the school holds up as a success.
If they could transform this slightly below average kid into a vascular surgeon, they must be a good school.
I'm pretty sure his arc toward success would have come as no surprise to Ms. Blei.
She would have seen him past the rough spots.
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