Having the "mean" teacher can sometimes be the best thing

 

The woman pictured above is Ruth Schwarzenberg, my teacher for both 2nd and 6th grades at Mapledale Elementary School.

Having a teacher twice in the elementary grades is probably not uncommon. But having the same teacher four years apart (especially after those highly transformative years between 2nd and 6th grade) likely is.

The first time I had Mrs. Schwarzenberg in 2nd grade was, quite frankly, a jarring experience. To that point, my school teachers had been easygoing women, both of whom were commonly described as "nice." Mrs. Janes (kindergarten) and Mrs. Lucci (1st grade) were big reasons why I had really grown to love school.

But then I got to 2nd grade with Mrs. Schwarzenberg, and let me tell you, the days of sunshine and roses ended in a hurry. Most kids described her as "mean," though in retrospect, she was really just strict.

And by that point (again, in retrospect), I needed a good dose of strict. I was used to getting top grades and being a high achiever, but somewhere along the way, you have to realize that you're not going to get rewarded and praised for absolutely everything.

And you have to be pushed to be even better.

Mrs. Schwarzenberg did that for me, but I didn't know how to deal with her at the time. I was honestly afraid of her, and it was a relief when I got sick and could stay home from school from time to time.

It was only later that I came to realize how much I learned in 2nd grade, and how much I gained in maturity that year. I would never have credited Mrs. Schwarzenberg with any of that, though now I do.

When I had her again in 6th grade, our relationship had changed. It felt like she wasn't as strict with us that year, but now I realize she probably was (maybe even more so). The difference was that I was older, at least a tad wiser, and much better positioned to engage with and learn from her.

For years I would tell people that Mrs. Schwarzenberg was better suited teaching older kids than younger ones, but now I think she was probably equally effective with both. I just hadn't encountered anything like her as a 7- and 8-year-old second-grader, and it took time to adjust.

You can only be the A+, never-get-in-trouble Golden Child for so long. Like I said, at some point, you need someone to push you to the next level.

And boy, did Mrs. Schwarzenberg push.

She passed away in 2012. The last time I talked with her was probably in 1988, my senior year of high school, when I performed with our jazz band for Wickliffe Elementary School students and she was still there teaching. I can't remember what I said to her, but I hope I thanked her for everything she had done for me.

Even at age 18 I realized the positive influence the "mean" teacher can have.

My family refers to me as the Noo Noo...and I'm not sure it's a compliment

(NOTE: This post originally appeared here on the blog nine years ago on February 12, 2016. I remain the family Noo Noo.)

I know a lot of people are weirded out by the Teletubbies, the British kids TV show starring Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po. And rightly so. They're creepy, no doubt about that. They're meant to be innocent and fun, but whoever created them was clearly under the influence of a substance of questionable legality.

One of the minor characters on the Teletubbies is a little thing called Noo Noo. Or "The" Noo Noo. I'm not sure which. And I do mean "thing," by the way, because that's what Noo Noo is. It's a little living vacuum cleaner that goes around cleaning up messes. The Teletubbies at least speak, even though it's gibberish. Noo Noo just rolls around making sucking and slurping noises.

Noo Noo's sole purpose in life is to clean, but he/she/it sometimes takes things too far, as in this video:

This, I freely admit, is me. I am Noo Noo, and Noo Noo is me. When I am home, I take it on myself to clean up anything and everything: Stuff on the floor, the dishes, various messes, etc.

I will also freely admit that sometimes I clean up stuff that is not at all intended to be cleaned up.

Like, for example, there will be a glass of water on the kitchen table, and my instinct is to remove it before one of the cats knocks it over. But the person who owns the glass of water has just stepped out of the room and their cold beverage has been dumped in the sink and the glass deposited in the dishwasher. All in the space of 17 seconds while they were gone.

My bad.

On Christmas morning, I have one primary job: I walk around with a garbage bag and collect all wrapping paper, discarded bows, tissue, packaging, etc. If you don't proactively give me the paper you tear off a gift, I will come over to you and snatch it. THERE WILL BE NO MESSES ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO MESSES!

I don't mean to annoy anyone, but I really, really prefer having a clean house whenever I can. It makes me happier. And if you're someone whose mess-making detracts from the cleanliness of the house, I will rectify the situation post-haste.

Compare me to a Teletubbies character if you must. I proudly wear the Noo Noo badge.`

For someone who grew up in a family of card players, I don't play a lot of card games

Image downloaded from Wikipedia. By J Wynia from Minneapolis, United States - Afternoon cribbage on the patio., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102255562

When I was a kid, any time we held a Tennant family reunion, my dad would inevitably end up at a table with some combination of his brothers (he had a bunch of them) playing a game called Oh Hell.

Oh Hell was/is one of the large genre of trick-taking card games in which you look at your hand and decide how many "tricks" you can take based on the strength of your cards. In that sense, I think it's a lot like Euchre or Whist.

I never understand the game when I was little, but even I could see how much fun the brothers would have playing, talking, making fun of one another, and generally enjoying each other's company.

When he wasn't playing Oh Hell, my dad would sit in our kitchen for hours on end playing solitaire. As I've mentioned before, the sound of Dad shuffling the cards on a Saturday morning was in some ways the soundtrack of my youth.

It's not that I dislike card games – far from it – but I don't think I got the card playing gene. I'm not a poker guy, and I've never once played any sort of card-based table game in a casino.

We do play cribbage in our family, though, which I like a lot. I don't win all that often, but it's fun. If you don't know cribbage, it's the game pictured in the image at the top of today's post.

When my kids were little, I also played a lot of War and Go Fish with them.

And that's about it. I never learned Gin Rummy, Pinochle, Bridge, Hearts, Spades or any of the countless other games of which Americans (particularly of my generation and before) seem to be so fond. Or if I did learn any of them, I don't remember.

I have a feeling card games may eventually go the way of the horse and buggy, or at least "manual" card games will. Digital versions are likely to live on on our phones and other devices.

But even I (a playing card dabbler at best) know there's no cyber equivalent of a freshly opened pack of cards dealt around a table of friends and family intent on beating one another...and loving one another just the same.

Here's what I will tell you about my wife after 39 years of being together

For the record, those are shadows behind my head. I did not in fact have a mullet for our wedding. Or any time before or since.

Some years ago, I remember being in our kitchen with Terry and an older woman who was at our house for some sort of business reason. Maybe something to do with insurance? Or a mortgage refinance? I can't recall, but I know she was there because we had to sign some papers.

Anyway, at one point, this woman said to me, "Your wife has left the room twice, and both times when she came back, your eyes lit up. When she talks, you look right at her. I thought that was lovely."

I didn't realize I did either of those things, but I suppose she was right. The fact is, I really, really like being around Mrs. Terry Tennant. I always have.

Well, since 1986, anyway. That's when we first started dating.

When you're in a relationship that's pushing four decades (or five, six, seven or more), you don't spend every day telling the other person how wonderful they are. It's just kind of understood.

Truth be told, our days are spent laughing and making fun of each other more than anything else. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And that's all you need to know. I could go on and on here telling you all of the great things about Terry, but that's enough right there. I love that she's there when I wake up in the morning and there when I go to bed at night.

And all of the in between, of course.

It's a bonus that she tolerates me.

Happy Valentine's Day to Terry T., and to everyone out there who is blessed to have a Someone in their lives.

Whether or not we feel we deserve it.

Who else has had a terrifying dream about Abraham Lincoln? Just me?

 

President Lincoln didn't look like this in my dream,
but he might as well have.

Today is the 216th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, which reminds me of the time I thought he was going to kill me.

Well, to be clear, I was dreaming when this happened, which makes sense considering President Lincoln died 104 years before I was even born. Nonetheless, I was pretty sure the 16th president of the United States was out to get me.

I must have been 8 or 9 years old when I had this dream. And I seem to remember it being one of those vivid, right-before-you-wake-up dreams.

The only thing I remember from it is that I was lying in my bed and Abraham Lincoln opened my bedroom door and peeked in.

That was it. Just Honest Abe cracking open up the door, leaning in, and staring at me for a few seconds before closing the door and leaving. Presumably to go back to his full-time job of winning the Civil War or whatever.

It was not an especially terrifying sequence, other than the whole thing of Lincoln being dead, but I was paralyzed with fear.

I immediately woke up and found myself with a fast-beating heart and taking very deep breaths.

Understand, this was not some demon version of Abraham Lincoln like the image at the top of today's post. This was normal, bearded Abraham Lincoln in his black frock coat wearing his trademark stovepipe hat.

Unless you lived in the Confederate States of America in the 1860s and were fed a stream of propaganda about Lincoln being Satan in the flesh, you are not inclined to be afraid of be-hatted President Lincoln.

But I was. And, if I'm being honest, I still am, somewhat.

For what it's worth, around that same time of my life, I also remember laying in my bed in fright one early morning because of a repeated sound coming from the hallway outside my bedroom door. Over and over again I heard this strange metallic sound, like a thin wire being plucked.

Once I had worked up sufficient courage, I sprinted from my bed and into the safety of my parents' room to tell them about the ghostly sound in the hallway.

Mom got out of bed, went out to the hallway, and informed me the sound was just our smoke alarm signaling that its battery was low.

It was not, in fact, President Lincoln or one of his hell minions coming to kill me.

I was admittedly neither the bravest nor the smartest child you'll ever meet.

The shock of nice weather in the middle of a Great Lakes winter

Terry and I have made a habit of traveling to Florida in February and March to visit our son Jared and his girlfriend Lyndsey. We just did it last week (Terry is still down there, as a matter of fact).

This is usually a pretty good time to get out of Northeast Ohio with its wind, snow and ice and spend some time in St. Petersburg with its sunshine, blue skies and...more sunshine. And this trip was no different, as temperatures reached about 80 degrees every day I was there.

When we arrived at the Tampa/St. Pete airport on Thursday and went outside to wait for Jared to pick us up, I immediately felt like I always feel when I fly to a warm place in the middle of winter: Pale, haggard, bloated, and more than a little disconcerted.

It always takes me a day or so to adjust to wearing shorts and a t-shirt outdoors.

On Saturday, Terry and I took a short morning walk with Jared around a nearby lake. (Also on the walk was Jared and Lyndsey's cat Salem, whom Jared carried in a little kitty container hung around his neck.) The conditions were perfect, with low humidity and temperatures right around 70 degrees.

It was so nice that I started wondering – as I have before – what it would be like to live in a place like Florida. A place where it rarely snows. A place where the sun doesn't disappear for weeks at a time. A place where outdoor activities are in play year-round.

From time to time, Terry and I have mused over the idea of someday moving south, or at least spending significant time there. It wouldn't happen for another decade, if at all, but the thought never quite leaves our minds.

Then I begin to consider the drawbacks. And there are several.

For one thing, it may hardly ever snow down there, but hurricanes and tropical storms are a thing. While Tampa/St. Pete doesn't get hit as often as other areas of Florida do, Hurricane Milton did force Jared and Lyndsey to evacuate south to Miami last fall.

Then there's the day-to-day weather. Not the winter weather, the summer weather. It gets hot in June, July, August and September. Really hot. Hot and humid. To the point that you don't really want to be outside.

There's also the simple fact that it isn't home. Having lived in one city and one city only, I have deep roots in my hometown. I know where things are located. I know lots of people. I understand how things work around here.

Would it be worth turning our whole world upside down in exchange for more pleasant winter and spring days? I don't know. I really don't.

Right now, it all depends on when you ask me. At the moment, having just spent time outside with Jack shoveling heavy, icy snow off our driveway, I'm feeling very pro-Florida. In a couple of months when it starts to warm up around here? Maybe not.

To be continued...

Zillow is great for stalking houses in which you used to live

I grew up here.

Including the house Terry and I currently own, I've only lived in three places my entire life.

And all three of those places are in the same city.

I grew up at good old 1807 Harding Drive, living there from birth through age 22. Then I moved into 1913 East 300th Street, our first house after we got married. We lived there for 11 years before moving up here to Miller Avenue in beautiful Wickliffe Heights.

For my local friends, it should be noted that while "Wickliffe Heights" is not a true political entity, it is the real name of the subdivision on and around Rockefeller Road in the southern part of the city. It even says "Wickliffe Heights" on our house deed.

Anyway, the point is, there was a time not long ago when, once you moved out of a house, your chances of ever seeing the inside of it again were pretty slim. You would have had to sell it to someone you know, or at least someone who was willing to let you back in if you would randomly swing by years later.

Nowadays, however, real estate listings are easily accessible online, and they often include copious photos of the inside of the house.

Take the Zillow.com listing for 1807 Harding, for instance. While it doesn't contain a "copious" number of photos, there are still five shots of the interior of the house that bring back a flood of memories.

There's the living room with the big front window looking out onto the porch. The one and only bathroom in a house that at one time contained six of us. The small but peaceful fenced-in backyard.

I love being able to look at these images whenever I want. My parents moved into that house 62 years ago this month, and it still holds considerable sentimental value.

The Zillow listing for 1913 East 300th offers much more in the way of photos, many of which reveal significant upgrades to the house since we moved out in 2003.

The enclosed front porch is familiar enough, but that deck in the backyard? Yeah, we didn't put that in.

Nor did we rip out the island in the kitchen or make the dining room look so fancy.

(In our defense, we spent most of our 300th Street years having and raising babies. We were a bit preoccupied.)

This shot of the kitchen?

You could have shown me that photo and asked if it looked familiar, and I would have said no. I spent more than a decade eating breakfasts and washing dishes in that room, but it's almost unrecognizable to me 20+ years later.

They say you can't go home again, and that's usually true. But you can at least see what home looks like now, which I think is pretty cool.