Just Seventeen Years Ago

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, and I just had to steal it and share it. I can't help but laugh at it as I watch. If news reporters talked like this today, they'd be off the air the next day!

More than just being funny, though, this video clip is an AMAZING testimony to how far we've come. This was just 17 years ago! I was an adult in 1994, but the clip seems like it was from ages ago.

Enjoy...



(I can't see the video.)

Wal-Mart

It's been two months since my father died. After making several posts in a row about his death, I announced that I was finished talking about him for a while. I decided that for several reasons. First, I was emotionally spent, and I needed a chance to think about something else. So with the exception of a post saying I wasn't in the Christmas spirit, and a year end review in which I mentioned my father, I intentionally avoided the subject. In fact, if you go back and look at my posts for December and January, you'll notice that the vast majority were about pretty trite subjects. This was intentional. I'd sit at the computer to write, and I'd think to myself, "What's the most bland, unemotional thing I can write about?" I needed the break from crying, and frankly, I didn't trust my own emotions. They were too raw, and too easily stirred. I'd find myself getting overly emotional about things that didn't warrant it (see the story below), and I'd find myself sharing too much with people I didn't know well enough. So I determined to turn it off until I had perspective.

That's wasn't the only reason, though. I also understood that--in telling my story--I would also be telling the stories of the people around me. It's an unavoidable side effect of writing personal essays and then sticking them on the web for anyone to read, and it's important to strike a balance between my desire to share and the privacy of family and friends. As my wife will tell you, I don't always get that balance right. Thus, though I had a desire to write down everything about my father's dying--seeing him the night before his death, finding out about his death in the waiting room of the hospital, the scene in the intensive care unit after that, phoning relatives and telling them about it, the mass of people who came and visited our house, the planning of the funeral, the visitation, the funeral and burial, and any number of other topics that I felt pushed to write about--I didn't do so because I wasn't sure how much I could trust myself to share the right amount. So I wrote about grammar hang-ups and how I figured out the phone system at my work. Safe subjects.

Now, two months later, I feel like I DO have some perspective, and I'm ready to write again about the subject I've been avoiding. I still don't trust myself to not share too much, though. So I've decided that the first story I'll tell will be something that happened when I was alone. That way, if I share too much, no one else will get hurt. Here goes...

My father had died in the early morning on the Monday following Thanksgiving. I had seen him the night before, having rushed to Frankfort Sunday night when I'd heard he'd gotten worse and that his heart surgery might get moved from the scheduled Tuesday to Monday. When I came down, I had packed enough clothes for Monday, and an additional set of clothes in case his surgery didn't get moved from Tuesday. I had no idea when I was packing that it would be much longer than that before I ever made it back home.

Thus, by Tuesday evening, I was out of clean clothes. The only clothes I had were the ones I was wearing. They were still fairly presentable, though, and I figured I could wear them again the next day until my wife came back to Frankfort with reinforcements (She'd gone home to Cincinnati a short time before to be with our kids).

I went into the kitchen, and there was a kettle of vegetable soup that my aunt had brought by hours before sitting on the stove. She'd brought the soup for the family to eat, but it hadn't been touched. There was just WAY too much other food in the house, and much of the rest of it easier to pick up and eat. The stove wasn't on, and I had no idea how long the soup had been sitting there, so I got two or three Tupperware dishes and put the soup in the refrigerator. I felt pretty smart after doing so. After all, I was protecting everyone from food poisoning and sickness. But then I looked down. Somehow, in the process of moving the soup around, I had gotten it all over my jeans and sweatshirt. All over them. This wasn't something that could be sponged off with a wet paper towel. They were probably ruined.

I didn't get upset, though. I guess I had too much that was really upsetting going on. Instead, I hopped into the car and took off for Wal-Mart. I needed to go there anyway because we'd ordered a bunch of prints of photos of my father that we were going to frame and take to the funeral home for the visitation. We'd uploaded them to Walmart.com and they were supposed to be ready at the One Hour Photo pickup in the back of the store. I'd pick up the photos, and while I was there I'd just grab some cheap clothes that would hold me over until the next day.

I got to the store, and I decided I'd go get the photos first. The pickup location is in the back of the store, by the electronics department. As I walked by the electronics department, I saw all of the HDTV's on sale. After my father's heart surgery had been scheduled, I decided that for Christmas I was going to buy him a big screen TV. He already HAD a big television, but it was an old, non-HD model. More importantly, it was downstairs, and his bedroom and the kitchen were upstairs. I figured there'd be a lot of recuperation after the heart surgery, and he wouldn't want to go up and down a bunch of stairs. So I wanted to buy a TV that could be placed on top of the piano while he was recuperating, and that I could then put into the TV cabinet he had downstairs once he had gotten better (I don't know what I thought he was going to do with his old TV. I figured that--after seeing an HD picture, he'd want to junk it.).

Since I'd decided to make that my Christmas present, I'd looked at TV's anytime I'd gone into any store that sold them. I found myself doing the same thing at Wal-Mart, checking prices, reading dimensions to make sure the TV would fit into the TV cabinet. Examining picture quality. Then it struck me. He was dead. There wasn't going to be a period of recuperation where a big TV would be needed upstairs. My father wasn't alive to see how much clearer the HD picture would have been. He was gone. I turned and walked to the photo pickup location, and I got in line.

A wave of grief came over me. This wasn't the first wave of grief I'd ever had. In fact, these waves had been a regular occurrence for the last day and a half. But this time it was different. This time I was alone. Every other time I'd been overcome, there was a shoulder to cry on, someone to tell me it was okay, someone to hug. But here I was, in a store full of people, and I was alone. It struck me that this was the first time I'd been alone since my father had died. I felt like a child lost in public.

I stood there for a long time, lost in my grief, and then it occurred to me somehow that I had been standing in the line A LOT longer than I should have been. I focused my attention on the outer world rather than on my grief, and I realized that there was one customer in front of me, and both he and the worker behind the counter were upset. In my fragile state, I couldn't handle this anger. I walked towards them. "What's going on?" I asked. "I've been in line a long time!"

The man shouted, "They've lost my package! Tonight's my granddaughter's birthday, and I bought AND PAID FOR a doll house, and they can't find it!" (Apparently, the photo pickup place was also where people picked up stuff they had shipped "Site to Store".)

My father is dead. My father is dead, I thought to myself, and I don't have time for this! I turned to the cashier. "He's already paid for it? And he has his paperwork?"

She gave me a look that said, "Who IS this man with soup all over his jeans and sweatshirt?" But she answered. "Yes, we just can't find it."

Both of them stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I must have had a wild look in my eyes for them to treat me the way that they did. Or maybe it was the soup stains. I don't know. But after a moment I said, "That is so...That is so..." Tears came to my eyes. "That is so SAD!"

Both of them looked very concerned, and the man began shaking his head. "No. No! It's not sad at all. It's just--"

I interrupted him, tears pouring down my face. "No, it IS sad! You wanted a dollhouse for your granddaughter. You PAID for a doll house for your granddaughter. And these guys LOST it! That's terrible!" I was openly sobbing now.

"No, no it's not terrible. It's just a doll house!" the man said, the anger drained from his voice. He turned to the cashier. "I'll just take my money back. It'll be all right."

"Are you sure?" the cashier asked.

"I'm sure," the man said hurriedly. "In fact, why don't you let him go first!"

So I did. I got my photos and I went to the clothing section, and immediately I had another crisis. I have no fashion sense whatsoever. I swear, without my wife accompanying me to clothing stores, I'd probably come home with a tank top and bicycle shorts. If fashion were music, I'd be tone deaf.

I stood in the men's section looking at clothes, but EVERYTHING looked wrong to me. I just couldn't make a decision. I think I was overwhelmed. In the last two days I had decided to come to Frankfort on a moment's notice, had decided at 11:30 PM that my brother and I needed to take my mother to see my father at the hospital (for what--it would turn out--would be the last time), had decided how to tell relatives about my father's death, what readings should be read at the funeral, how to fix a broken shutter, and a host of other decisions that needed to be made in an instant. But I stood in Wal-Mart, alone, unable to decide which crummy sweatshirt I should get. And my father was dead.

I could feel myself about to break down. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called my wife. She answered hello, and I said, "Hey." My voice trailed off (she later told me that I'd sounded like a six year old).

"What's up?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm at Wal-Mart because I spilled soup on me, and I can't find any clothes that look right, and I was shopping for TV's and I just realized that my father is dead and he's never coming back."

"Okay," she said. "Who's with you?"

"Nobody," I said. "I came out to get my dad's pictures and to get some clothes."

"You went out ALONE?" my wife asked, concern in her voice.

"Yes," I said, "and now I don't know what to buy and I'm all alone and I don't know what to do and--."

She could hear me ramping up into a frenzy, so she sternly said to me, "Stop!" I did. She went on. "What's in your hand?"

"I don't know," I said.

"LOOK at your hands!" she said to me.

"There's a pair of jeans and a sweater and a thing that might be a sweater or might be a sweatshirt--I don't know. Sort of both."

"Good!" she said. "Go to the front of the store and buy those things."

"Yeah, but I'm not sure if I need both of--"

"GO to the front of the store," she said, "and buy those things! And then go home where everyone else is. Don't stop on the way. And don't go out alone again!" So I did.

Right at the start of January the mother of a co-worker of mine died. Though there are 300 employees in my school district, there are only nine of us that work in the Board of Education building, and we're a fairly close knit bunch, so I went to both the visitation and funeral. It was a Catholic family, like mine, so a lot of the visitation and funeral were just like my father's, and I started to get emotional about the whole thing, so I responded the way I usually do when I feel myself getting too emotional--I disconnect and become overly analytical. And what I analyzed at that visitation and funeral was the way the family was handled, especially by the funeral director. He came and spoke directly to them, in a kind, low voice, but also firmly. "It's time to place the cloak on the casket," he'd say to them. "It's time to go to the back of the church." He'd put his arm on the widower and guide him. And if one of the family members wandered off alone and started to look distraught, he'd come over to them and give them something to do. "I think your grandfather is thirsty," he'd say. "Can you go get him some water?"

Mourning people need direction. And they need to be with other people.

Quote of the Day

"We believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information—not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it."


J.C.R. Licklider
"The Computer as a Communication Device" (April, 1968)

IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Pass on to Those Around You Who Need It

Thank God for news organizations like this one looking out for us...especially THIS winter!

NOTE: Sorry, but you'll need to watch the brief commercial before seeing this VERY important announcement.


Snowy Conditions Proving Hazardous For Nation's Idiots

Air Quotes

A couple of posts ago I wrote about some grammar hang-ups that I have. As a result I heard from a number of people either here on this blog, on Facebook, via email, or in person, and more than one person told me that--as a result of that post--they now feel like they have to pay extra attention to their grammar before talking to me. I hate that. I got that a lot as an English teacher, and after seven years in a different job I'd just started to feel like people were saying and writing what they wanted to me without feeling a need to check themselves first. So I'm not going to write about grammar errors that bother me any more.

Instead, I'm going to write in this post about public speaking errors that drive me crazy!...

Like everyone else, I'm bothered by verbal tics, those little sounds that people throw into their public speech when they're composing the next words that they're going to say. "Uh" is the most typical of these tics, though for  the younger set the word "like" is just about as popular. But--if I'm honest--verbal tics don't really bother me all that much. I understand that--when speaking--sometimes our thoughts get ahead of our mouths, and as a result those tics happen.

There's really only one public speaking habit that drives me crazy, and it's the use of "air quotes." You know--a person is saying something, and that person wants to wants to show that the words are someone else's, or that he/she is using slang, and to do so the speaker uses two fingers of each hand to make these air quotes. This drives me absolutely bonkers, and once a speaker does this, I am through listening. I no longer have any respect for the person.

I guess that's not entirely true. I will notice when a speaker uses air quotes (You'd better BELIEVE I'll notice), and it will irritate me, but I'll let it slide when it happens ONCE. It's when it happens multiple times that I get truly annoyed, and I've had the pleasure on a couple of occasions of being around a speaker who overuses the air quotes WAY too much.

"Some so called 'EXPERTS,'" the speaker will say (flashing the two pairs of fingers while saying "experts"), "will state that their 'SCIENTIFIC THEORIES'" (again with the air quotes) "are really 'FACTS,'" (again) "but we know so much better than these 'EXPERTS.'"

Here's how much I hate air quotes. Just typing that example sentence in the paragraph above has gotten me ticked off.

When a speaker starts overusing air quotes (and let remind you that I think a single use is overuse), I honestly have a tough time staying in the room. If it's possible to politely get up and leave, I will do so. And it doesn't matter who the speaker is. If Jesus himself came back to earth and gave a sermon in my presence, I'd have a tough time listening and not interrupting.

"Don't forget," Jesus would say, "to 'LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'" We should try extra hard every day to be a 'GOOD SAMARITAN.'  And stick with Me and I'll make you 'FISHERS OF MEN!'"

And what's even worse than someone who OVERuses air quotes is someone who MISuses air quotes. That is, someone who throws up an air quote at a point in a sentence when--if the sentence had been written--no quotation marks would have been used. Something like this: "I get really 'ANGRY' when people let their 'DOGS' go to the 'BATHROOM' in my 'YARD'!"

The next time you're around me, if you're in a mischievous mood, throw up two or three air quotes to see how I react. You'll see that I have no poker face.

______________________

P.S. Found this online and thought I'd share...

Just Dance (and Pant! And Sweat!)

Back in May of 2008, when this blog was very young, I made a post about a video game called Wii Fit, and how much I was looking forward to the game because I was hoping that it would get my children up and exercising a little bit. I gave the game a glowing review, and indeed, we played the game for hours. The following year we even purchased the follow up called Wii Fit Plus.

But here's the thing about the Wii Fit: as much fun as it is to play, it doesn't really provide a very strenuous workout. The best thing about it is that the Wii Balance Board IS a really accurate scale that keeps track of your previous weigh ins, so I weigh myself each Saturday morning. But it never really provided anything any more than a very, VERY light workout. We also purchased and played a video game called Dance, Dance Revolution (or DDR, as fans sometimes call it), and it provided a bit more of an aerobic workout, but still, if you were in any kind of shape at all, the game wasn't much of a strain. You were more likely to wear out your knees before you'd break into a sweat. I'd just about given up on the idea of using a video game to exercise.

Until this week. I bought a birthday present for myself (This is my second year in a row of doing this) this weekend. It's a video game called Just Dance 2. It's the number one selling video game on any platform right now, and since my younger daughter and I liked the DDR games, I thought I'd try it out (I also figured--correctly--that it wouldn't matter whether or not I'd played the original Just Dance game).

And I have to tell you this: This game provides a TREMENDOUS workout!

Whereas I could play Wii Fit probably literally all day and not get tired, and I could play DDR for an hour and hardly feel it, I'm definitely winded after just ONE SONG. After two or three songs I'm actually starting to sweat a little.

Unlike DDR, which basically just has you tapping a mat with your feet to the rhythm of a song, JUST DANCE has you actually DANCE to a song! Full bodied movement of your arms and your legs. It's exhausting!

The only complaint I have is that I'm not sure how accurate the controls actually are. With DDR, they're dead on: tap the right spot on the mat at the right time, and you'll get a "Perfect." Miss it, and the program knows that, too. With JUST DANCE, I'd say the accuracy is only about 80% or so. Lots of times I would not be doing the dance move at all and the program would register my standing still as "Perfect." And sometimes I'd KNOW I'd just nailed the dance move and it would register a big red "X," which meant that I hadn't done anything. Still,  though, the game is so much fun (and work!) that I doubt that you'll even notice the occasional inaccuracy.

One other complaint, though it's just a personal thing, is that--as I just said--the program wants you to actually dance. And I can't. I mean, I'm really really really really really really bad at it. This game just makes a point of it. Of the four of us in my house, I'm easily the worst dancer, and it shows in the game. In head to head competition I get CREAMED by everyone else. The others all can't wait to play against me because they all know that they're basically playing against no one--they're guaranteed a sure win. After four days of playing the ONLY time I've ever won the game was when the dance we were doing basically called for the dancers to gyrate wildly throughout. Apparently I'm pretty good at that. Even so, once the song was over, all three of the other members of my beloved family said the same thing at almost the same time: "Dad WON?!?"

I guess I shouldn't complain. I should look at it this way: I'm raising the self-esteem of everyone else in the family with my crummy play.

Again, though, that's a personal complaint. Overall, the game is fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to either laugh or get some REAL exercise while playing a video game.

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Today marks the tenth anniversary of this website. Well, not really THIS website. I've been keeping this blog for about 2 1/2 years. But it was ten years ago today when I registered the http://www.sweasy.net/ domain.

It was years before Facebook and MySpace, and I was just looking for a way to share photos of my family with far away family members. So for the first eight years sweasy.net was bascially nothing more than an online photo album with just a smidgen of text. I no longer have online pages going back to January of 2000, but the earliest pages I do have (which you can access by clicking this link) give you a general idea of what the website looked like (and if you're really curious, I guess you CAN click the link to see previous pages to go back and see the text of the previous pages; it's just the pictures that are no longer there). And that's pretty much how it stayed until 2008 (though I did occasionally publish a couple of odd things, such as an online version of a book that my older daughter made and a little Flash movie about my younger daughter's sense of fashion).

In May of 2008 I started this blog. Not because I had any interest in keeping a blog, mind you. In fact, for years I'd resisted starting a blog. "Why would I want to share my life with the world?" I'd think. "Why do I think anyone would care?" But then a few years ago blogs-blogs-blogs were all I heard about in education technology (Do YOU have a blog? Are your STUDENTS keeping blogs? What blogs are you FOLLOWING?), so I thought I'd try it out for a while just to see what it's like. Also, I'd just discovered a little site called jottit.com, and I wanted to experiment with how teachers and students could perhaps use it. So I started keeping a blog. After a few weeks, I'd determined that jottit.com COULD work, but I found blogger.com, realized it was easier and I was finished with my blog search.

But blogging wasn't finished with me. By then I was hooked, and I decided to continue with my personal blog. Plus, by then all but a few of my faraway family members had Facebook accounts, and I could share personal photos via Facebook, so I migrated my personal site to Blogger and redirected Sweasy.net to that site (uh, THIS site.) And that's how we got to today.

There's no telling what tomorrow or the next ten years will bring...

Grammar Hang-ups

As a former English teacher, I guess it's only natural that I get bothered by grammar errors (especially, by the way, my own). It goes with the job, I guess. But there are some grammar errors that--I think--bother me MORE than they ought to bother me. Here are a couple that I heard just this week, and in both cases I REALLY had to bite my tongue to avoid saying something.

1. Adding an Intensifier in front of an Absolute Adjective

An absolute adjective is a type of adjective that--by the nature of the word--cannot be added to or subtracted from in any way. Yesterday, at our weekly administrator's meeting, a co-worker said to the group, "Our school district is a little unique in that..."

I'm really not sure what he said for about the next minute and a half. I spent that time biting my lower lip because what I WANTED to say was, "Stop! Something is either unique or it isn't unique!" By definition, the word "unique" means "singular" or "radically different." There is no way to be "a little unique." It's like being "a little pregnant." You either are or you aren't. Other words that also should NOT ever be modified (at least, not if you want me to listen to you for the following 90 seconds) include "perfect," "original," and as the example above mentions, "dead."

2. Adding "-al" to a word that ALREADY is an Adjective

The suffix "-al" turns a word that is another part speech into an adjective. That's great. However, people can get carried away with this suffix. For instance, the other day I heard a talk radio announcer state that he was "sympathetical" to Sarah Palin's posting of cross hairs over the districts of liberal politicians. This announcer's politics aside, I wanted to shout, "The word 'sympathetic' ALREADY is an adjective! You don't have to add the '-al' to the end!" The same goes for "symphonical" and "ironical." The latter of those two is so often misused, in fact, that it is no longer even considered wrong to use it! But it's two unnecessary letters!

Anyway, as I said, these aren't REALLY such big issues. I don't know why they bother me. They just do.

And don't get me started on the confusion that's caused by "flammable" versus "inflammable." 

Under My Skin

Yesterday I watched seven hours of NFL football. I'm not boasting; it's nothing to be proud about (though it's nothing to be ashamed about, either!). But watching "men's" TV for seven hours in a row granted me the opportunity to watch the latest Cialis commercial over and over and over (I actually think I saw it five times). And I have to say: it bugs the devil out of me.

I tried to find a version of it online that I could post, but I was out of luck. So I'll just have to describe it. This nice looking, African-American couple is getting dressed up for a night out when the voice over says something like, "When was the last time YOU needed help from Cialis?" The voice over uses that same creepy, knowing tone that all of those types of commercials use. After that's said, the couple leaves their house, goes to the theater, and then--as required by regulations--they begin to talk about uses and side effects of Cialis.

Two things really get under my skin:
1) Why is the man apparently taking Cialis and then going OUT for the night? Wouldn't you take Cialis when you were planning to stay home? Is the couple planning to do something in that theater balcony?!?
2) Why are they telling me about Cialis during the performance? Don't they know that's tremendously rude? What about the other patrons trying to actually WATCH the show? I hate people like that! There's no way I'm buying their drug now (Uh...not that I needed it anyway...)!

Anyway, if you're watching the playoffs today, watch for that commercial. It will be there. See if it bothers you, too.

I DID it!

One of the greatest ironies of my job is that--as head of technology for the school district--I am officially in charge of the phone systems. I say that's an irony because I find myself for some unknown reason completely incapable of running one of the complex office phones that we have. I actually wrote a post about this a couple of years ago, so I won't bother going through it again. What I DO want to do, though, is share with you an excerpt from an actual phone conversation I had this morning. This is word for word (at least, as close I can remember) how the conversation went:

You don't need to hear the beginning of the conversation. Let me just start towards the end...

CALLER: ...That fixes my problem. Thanks.

ME: No problem.

CALLER: Can you transfer me to Jeanine now? I need to ask her a question.

(Long pause)

CALLER: You there, Bryan?

ME: Uh...

CALLER: Should I just call back?

ME: (Feeling a little indignant at the question) No. I just...I think I know how to transfer a call, but...I have to know Jeanine's extension...Let me think...What's Jeanine's extension?...

(Another Long Pause)

CALLER: Don't worry about it. I'll just call back.

ME: (Excitedly) Wait! Wait! Right below one of the buttons on my phone it says "JEANINE." I think that MIGHT be her extension. Uh, but now I don't know how to transfer you to that extension.

CALLER: Well, one button has her name on it. Is there another button that says "Transfer."

ME: Let me look...no...

CALLER: I'm calling back!...

ME: ...but there IS one that says "Transfr" without the "e." I bet if I hit THAT and then hit the button that says "JEANINE" I'll send you there!

CALLER: Makes sense.
____________________________________

So I'm here today with great pride to let you know that I actually DID transfer (or "transfr") a call.

Made my week!

Funny Error Message

Several months ago I made a post about a completely useless error message that a computer program had given me. Today I want to share with you another error message that I found funny.

This one WASN'T useless. Quite the contrary, it was a very useful message, telling me exactly why a particular service, which LOOKED like it ought to be running on a server, wasn't. However, it was the odd wording that I found funny. I know that computer programmers are not English majors, but somebody needed to teach this person about the economy of words:

(Note: You'll need to click on the picture of the error to see the error in its original size before you'll be able to actually read it.)

Real Life Nightmares

For almost my entire adult life, when there has been a lot of stress at work, and when I'm worried that I might not be getting something done that I need to get done, my subconscious responds with variations of the same nightmare. While the details of the nightmare sometimes change, the plot basically breaks down this way: I'm a teacher, and it's the first day of school, and no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to find my way to my classroom. The school I'm in is vaguely familiar, but it's not Lloyd High School, the school I taught in for fourteen years. No matter how hard I try, I always end up back in the same spot in the school building, and each time I arrive back at the spot I'm more panicked than I was the time before.


When I was a teacher, I'd usually start having this nightmare about two weeks before school would start, and I'd have it every night. It was usually a sign that I needed to get into the school building and start getting ready for the new year. Time to prepare bulletin boards and modify class syllabi and start planning out in detail the first few weeks of the year. I'd spend one or two eight-hour days at school, and the nightmares would stop.

Sometimes, as I mentioned before, the dreams would vary a little (my subconscious trying to keep me on my toes, I guess). Sometimes I'd have no problem finding the classroom itself, but once I got there I had no idea what it was I was teaching, and no idea who the students were. The students were coming in five minutes and I was completely unprepared! Or sometimes I'd know what I was teaching, but I couldn't get the students to do ANYTHING. I'd tell a student who was out of his seat to sit down, and while I was addressing him four or five other students would get up and walk around, and others would start talking, and things were just completely out of control.

These nightmares were so regular that I didn't even have to explain them to my wife. I could just say, "I had another of those beginning of the year nightmares. I must be stressed," and she'd know exactly what I meant.

Seven years ago I left the classroom and took my current job as Chief Information Officer. The nightmares, however, didn't stop. In fact, they were more frequent. I STILL have stresses in my current job, maybe even more of them, and they come throughout the year rather than just in August. So the nightmares kept coming. Interestingly, though, they never changed into CIO nightmares. They remained nightmares about teaching LONG after I quit actually teaching.

Until just recently. These last two weeks, over my school district's Winter Break, I did something that I don't think I've done ever in the seven years that I've had the job: I completely disconnected. I went whole days without even checking my work email. Sometimes I didn't even carry my smart phone for an entire day (I know--shocking). I DID go into work one morning, just to turn on computers that had been off over the break so that they could pull down updates, but mostly I left work behind for more than a week. Apparently it was too much of an abrupt change to my system--I started having panic nightmares again.

But they weren't teaching nightmares this time. Instead, one night I dreamed that my daughter's high school marching band was getting ready for a band competition, and I was the drum major.

"I'm not in the band!" I remember telling the band director, who was helping me get my uniform on.

He didn't make eye contact with me, just smiled as he stared at the jacket he was helping me get on. "Doesn't matter," he said. "The band members voted, and you're the leader of this band."

"For Pete's sake!" I shouted. "I'm 42 years old! I'm not even in high school. The band will be disqualified!"

"I don't care," he said. "You're the man!"

"But...but...I've never done this before! I don't know HOW to keep time. I don't have any rhythm! Have you ever seen me dance? Or said better, TRY to dance?  I don't know ANYTHING about the program! I don't even know what songs we'll be playing!"

"None of that matters!" he shouted at me, finally making eye contact. "We're on!" He started pushing me towards the football field.

And then I woke up.

Last night I dreamed that my family was on vacation, and no matter what I did, I couldn't find our hotel room. I had a room keycard in my hand, with the room number written on the envelope the card was in, but I just couldn't get there. The elevators would be broken, and I couldn't find the stairs, and when I finally made it to the room I'd look down and the room number on the keycard envelope would be different. The room was on an entirely different floor!

It was frustrating.

So I guess my days of having nightmares about teaching are over. Or at least, they've been joined by these other dreams. But I've STILL never had a nightmare about being a CIO.

I spent time as I was getting ready for work this morning trying to figure out why that is the case, and an idea occurred to me: I don't NEED to have those types of nightmares about my job because I have REAL LIFE NIGHTMARES often. I don't need to dream about them because they ACTUALLY happen in this job. There are days when I really do come to work and walk in the door only to be told by the secretary that it's ten minutes until school starts and the Internet is down all over the district. That's REALLY happened to me, and on more than one occasion. And it's not the only nightmare:

•  Less than a week after I started this job I got a call at home on my cell phone that the construction company building the kitchens at Miles Elementary had cut through the main electrical cable for the building, and that it had set something on fire in the network closet. I rushed to the building and found that the "something" was the battery backup/surge suppressor for the network closet. It had been hit by such a large surge of electricity that it had been completely fried and had allowed electricity to pass through it. EVERY piece of equipment in the network closet was fried, including the main switch and the building router. I got a crash course in network configuration that week. At least it happened in the middle of July when there were few people in the school.
• I was at lunch once with my wife when I got a phone call that the hot water heater in the Board of Education building had ruptured, water was spewing everywhere, and the main district network closet had an inch of water in it and that water was rising fast (I let my wife get the check).
• Earlier this year I had a file with a list of information that I had to send off to an assessment company so that they could set up an online test for us. Each time I sent it off with corrections they would send it back, sometimes with NEW corrections that hadn't been there before. I'd sent this list of information off a dozen times before, and I'd NEVER had this many problems.  As the date for when testing was supposed to begin kept getting closer and closer, I finally said to the company, "Look, if you find any errors this time, just delete the entire lines of information and just use the good stuff." Their answer: "We can't do that. That's not how we do things." I finally asked the woman on the line, "Look! Am I being punked? 'Cause if I am, this isn't funny!"

So maybe all of those stress nightmare have been preparing me for the real nightmares I sometimes face in this job.

In any event, I came back to work this morning and the district's network was functioning fine, and the world hadn't ended, and I got a lot of work done, so maybe I'll have a night of sleep tonight that doesn't include me leading bands or wandering hotel hallways.