May 19, 2012
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That’s me in the red sweater.
larrywentworthphotography:Four Year Strong- 3 on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
Four Year Strong
Worcester Palladium
12/30/11(Source: , via theseliesareropes)
May 9, 2012
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Sendak.
I know I’m not the only one affected by the passing of Maurice Sendak.
I am just as shocked though that some people didn’t know him by name. That you had to say “Where the Wild Things Are” for them to know.
He’s apart of my family. He and Jim Henson and Charles Schultz. They define my childhood. They helped me grow up.
Mr. Sendak said he liked interesting people and that children are very interesting, especially when you paint them a different color.
This is why he’s good for me. When I was 8 and reading his books I wasn’t amazed by his allusions or representations of the Holocaust. I wasn’t taken aback by his artwork. I wasn’t delving into the metaphor of his stories. I just wanted to be apart of his story. I wanted to be Max. I wanted to have fun with Little Bear. Higgelty-Piggelty! Higgelty Piggelty!
He wrote carefully. He drew even more so. Mr. Sendak understood. It’s the understanding that I respect and love so dearly. It’s actually the respect and love that I respect and love. When writing a story or giving an interview or speaking to a crowd he treated the questions as absurdity. He honestly couldn’t understand why you didn’t understand already. He did what did and drew what he drew because that was the purpose. That’s why, whatever was there, was already there. “And you don’t already know that?”
Mr. Sendak thought adults, while they serve a certain purpose, were ridiculous. They were ridiculous because they weren’t. In the same vein, he never considered himself a children’s writer. Just a writer and illustrator that happened to be read by the people that get it: the children.
I recently have started, with my Creative Writing Club at my high school, a Literary Journal. It features every type of writing from 21 very talented high schoolers. Here is the foreword I wrote for it:
In early October I became the advisor of this club. In December we had our first esteemed guest, Jeremy Shulkin of the Worcester Magazine. In February we decided to write an online writing journal. In May it was published.
In my 25 years preceding me, I never thought I would look forward to a Tuesday so much in my life.
I am so impressed by these young adults. Their vigor, talent and thirst to know more not only surprised me but pushed me as a writer.
Okay, you know when you just discovered “your song?” I’m not talking about a relationship “your song,” I just mean the song that speaks the most to you. The song that you feel was written by your DNA. Not the song that is your guilty pleasure that you scream-sing while you’re in the car. The song that you sit and listen to. The song you let soak. The song that trips you up, stops your stream of thinking and settles you. No matter how many times you listen to that song, it always rings true to you. Even if someone doesn’t like the song, you defend it like it was your own kin. The voice, or guitar or beat just moves with your heart. The song that is yours.
These kids are writing those songs. For you.
When we were trying to come up with a title for this magazine. A lot of different ideas came out. “The Colonel,” “The Kernel,” “South High Creative Writing” and then one of our own, Angel, with a voice matching his name he suggested “No Walls, No Boundaries.”
If you didn’t know South High Community School doesn’t have walls. There are partitions breaking up a giant room called a pod. Picture 100s of kids in one room yelling over each other to better themselves and mold their future. If you’re picturing a lecture on the Mass Pike, you’re about right. The Dance Team have their rehearsals next to us. So it was a lot of the same Beyonce song at this one :30 second part over and over again while we were trying to write or edit or just talk about what we were reading. But we stayed with it.
Honestly this summer, when the first Tuesday hits this vacation and I don’t hear a repeated Beyonce beat I’ll feel a little empty. We, as a club, would like to thank you for reading. And supporting youth arts. They’ll have a song for you soon.
I would like to think that Mr. Sendak would’ve enjoyed that.Check out www.nowallsnoboundaries.com
April 6, 2012
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Scott.
“He was everyone’s best friend.” That’s what Derek Ring said. It’s true.
Yesterday music and Worcester and the world lost an amazing man named Scott Ricciuti.
I was only able to know him these last three years. But he was one of the nicest, kindest, genuine people I have ever met. I actually knew him longer. I grew up listening to him. Looking up to him. Scott was my local music Bob Dylan. I loved his songs. I loved Huck. I looked forward to First Night, because that was the only time I got to see them play because I wasn’t old enough. And it was for lack of a better term, and apologies for the trite statement, but it was magical. Energy and melody and raw. Then I hear stories of him getting to play with Jim Carroll (famed playwright and punk legend, another hero of mine). I just think he is the coolest. I think they all are.
As time grew, I was able to meet him. Then I started to get to hang out with him. Talk to him. Scott Ricciuti, my friend.
There was a moment early last year. It was a lazy Tuesday and he was playing music at Vincent’s per usual. And after his set he gave me a hug. I couldn’t believe it. This man, that I adore, that have watched with literal boyhood wonder, gave me a hug. I was floored.
As I write this, I realize that there are many more people who have so many more memories with him. I know that everyone pretty much was so much more tight with him. But, he was important to me. He shaped my taste in music. He shaped my idea of what Worcester can be. He showed me art is always necessary. And that you should never stop writing and creating and performing.
Scott Ricciuti, I knew you for a short moment. You are gone too soon. I never got to thank you for coming and watching me perform stand-up. To me, that was the greatest compliment. You accepted me as an artist and friend. Like that hug.
I just keep hearing you sing, “It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright with me.” You are missed Scott.
March 1, 2012
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Worcester-Hotel Vernon.
Every day I am amazed. Whether it be while teaching and a student is able to jump ahead in the lesson through analytical thought. Or if it is when I’m reading a great book. Or I meet a fantastic person who not only gives me faith in humanity, but challenges me to live another day, better than he or she. Or even when I am able to wake up a minute before my alarm goes off and not hear that disgusting sound.
Last week I was amazed. I had the pleasure of frequenting one of Worcester’s absolute gems: The Hotel Vernon in Kelley Sq. I went there back-to-back nights and witnessed two very different, but wholly fantastic things.
The Friday of this weekend I was there discussing with the owner, Bob how great a success the Mardi Gras event was earlier in that week. He talked about how for a first year it was nothing but positive. How he got to ride his carriage and horses around the neighborhood (Yeah, that’s real. There are also tours in the summertime as well.) and how there were people out taking advantage of the Fat Tuesday.
I excused myself for a moment. I had to relieve myself, but just before I did I heard music. It was this bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap and it sounded fast and fun and sexy. I peeked in through the double doors of the Ship Room (Yeah, that’s real too. There is a room in the bar that is the hull of a 19th-Century ship.) and there is dancing! And a salsa band tearing it up.
There are horns and drums and guitar and keys and sweat and movement. The place isn’t packed, but its full and everyone there can’t stop moving. Even as I venture in I can’t help but bop up and down. Smiles cloud my vision, you can smell the sweet sweat in the air, hear the clinking of glasses it is sensual and light. Everyone here is here and they don’t want to leave. In between songs, a man sitting, tuning his guitar talks to us. Thankfully I understand, but he still sounds like the host of “Sabado Gigante” on Telemundo. It works.
I must backtrack a little. The Hotel Vernon is the best kind of dive bar. It is musty and and old and can be dirty. The have dollar drafts of cheaply made beer, free peanuts, pool and a great jukebox. There are everything from ties to tattoos to grease stained shirts to studs to nose rings to bears to mustaches to plaid to dresses to roller skates for attire in the place. It is a public collective of anyone and everyone, and they’re all on the same page. Classic rock, punk or anything ironic can be heard on the speakers. So to be pulled away to a tropic latin wonderland is anything but expected. But, you never know what you’ll see at the Hotel Vernon.
The very next night, Saturday, the mood has swung. Tattoos and plack and piercings, oh and rollerskates. It is a fundraiser for the Worcester Roller Derby League. Yes, Roller Derby. I have to say, I love Derby girls. They do not care, and they care so much. You can’t ask for anything more. Some great bands played a la Dopestroke, Pizza Face, and Worcester’s own Cleansing Wave. Needless to say there was moshing, drinking and debauchery all around.
We went from sultry music bouncing off each others curves to everyone’s edge colliding at top speeds. Only at the Vernon and only in Worcester. These people are making Worcester great, you can help by doing your own night, somewhere else. Or just support what’s already happening. This Saturday is the Whiskerite competition. There will be “beardos” of all kinds descending upon the Vernon to compete for the best or worst beard. All of the money goes to the Worcester County Food Bank. If you can’t attend, tell someone else they should.
Support is what makes Worcester great.
December 28, 2011
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Muppets.
This is why the Muppets are still important. It’s not because when I saw they were making a new movie I quite literally shrieked and my brother asked me who stepped on my hand (I guess that’s how I react to phalange harm). Or when I asked a girl out my next question was if she wanted to be apart of my third experience of watching the film. Or when I ask people if they saw it and they laugh at my immaturity I laugh at their maturity. Or even when I hear the “Rainbow Connection”, including their most recent TV trailer, I break down and cry (it’s beside the point that I cry at everything including that Hallmark ad where the soldier in Iraq gets “The Night Before Christmas” audio/picture book where his daughter is reading the story to him, or on a less sentimental level when “Rudy” gets chanted by the entire stadium in South Bend). No, none of these reasons are why the Muppets are still important. Partly because they have always been important, and partly because its not about me, it’s about sanity.
What are the popular comedy shows of today? Stop. I can’t hear your answer. But shows like “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report,” or “Family Guy,” or “It’s Always Sunny…” or even “How I Met Your Mother” are popular and they are cynical shows. They are all funny I watch all of them. But they are dark, they are snide, they are grown-up. “The Hangover” was a huge box office hit, it was one of the funniest movies I’ve sat in the theatre for, it was super dark and edgy and vice-filled, it was glorious. I think all of these things are great and really truly hilarious for two major reasons: Looney Tunes and The Muppets.
Now I know kids who are younger than me find all of these shows funny, and I get they still are funny even if you’ve never drank or smoked or had sex or hit puberty or know what’s Kelly’s last name from “Saved By The Bell” (Kapowski). I still get it and apparently the kids get it too, it’s funny because it’s forbidden. I talk to some of my students and they start quoting moments from “The Hangover” (they’ve never had one) and it isn’t funny to me the same way they find it funny. They found different things funny, like racism and simple drug references. I found the absurdity of Zach Galifinakis’ character to be brilliance. But I’m not writing to expand my exuberance for that movie. I’m talking Muppets here.
When you talk about Kermit you’re talking about a celebrity. You don’t refer to him as that frog that’s a puppet. You never discuss who’s working Kermit and who’s talking for him. Kermit is Kermit. Gonzo is Gonzo. Piggy is Piggy. They are beings as far as we’re concerned. They are funny because they do and say funny things. They are funny because they say things that also make our parents laugh and we look up to our parents and want to laugh with them, to share something with these heroes of ours. The Muppets shaped my comic view. They were punny, they were smart, they were sideways, they were weird, they were playful. They gave us our view, they gave us something to want to be and do. Are you saying you wouldn’t have loved to be backstage during “The Muppet Show?” That’s what I thought, no need to apologize. Kermit and Piggy were a couple. Gonzo and Camilla, a chicken, were a couple, and that was okay. Fozzie faced defeat every time he opened his mouth and it was still better than Atkins (wocka, wocka). Lew threw fish. That’s it. The Swedish Chef still had friends despite is lack of the command for the English language. Rowlf was the best friend a dog could be. The list goes on.
The Muppets are important because you need the silly before you can appreciate the absurd. Kids shouldn’t laugh at penis jokes yet. They should laugh at failed explosions and Pigs in Space and talking bears. I give credit to children’s cartoon creators. People like Dan Povenmire and Jeff Marsh (“Phineas and Ferb”, “Rocko’s Modern Life”) or Stephen Hillenberg (“Spongebob Squarepants”) help my argument. Things are just funnier when they’re silly first.
The Muppets are the definition of that. Thank you Bret McKenzie. Thank you Jason Segel. Thank you Frank Oz. And of course thank you Jim Henson. I am who I am because of you and I hope more kids in the future learn from all of you.
November 28, 2011
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Zuccotti.
It’s funny looking at Thanksgivings past and sensing the tense mood around the appetizers and dinner table. Whether it was after September 11th or when we began to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq or when Al Gore won, but actually lost the Presidential election or when George W. Bush was farting democracy away or when Barack Obama made history. Or even that time when I was 13 and our aunts asked us to say something we were thankful for and I said my Uncle Harvey’s paycheck (He is a bigwig for JP Morgan and the host of our Thanksgivings).
I know everyone’s family has these issues where politics are literally a hot button issue and you don’t want to ruin the good time (that’s what alcohol and homophobia is for right?) But now, at 25 years-old, a teacher and comedian who lives paycheck to paycheck and like many Americans are very angry about where our money and others money is going , was worried about this holiday.
Every Thanksgiving for the last 10-12 years we have gone to my loving aunt and uncles giant house to hold anywhere from 30-50 people. I love them both and they are some of the most giving and caring people, who would do anything for you. Needless to say they are probably apart of what the angry are calling the: “1%.”
But the feelings of most have changed, my once very conservative relatives who thought how ridiculous our ideas were are now in support of this “Occupy” movement. They, like most, including myself feel that something else has to be done or focus needs to appear. But the fact of the matter is that people are angry and like most protests they start broad and end focused. I know this one will keep on.
My cousin, Matthew, who is studying to be a Lutheran Pastor is a Vicar at a Lutheran Church in Chinatown not far from Zuccotti Park where the Occupy Wall St. movement began a little over three months ago. We went to go visit around 11:30 PM Saturday night where we met some very interesting people and heard some very fantastic stories.
We had two long conversations with two men who have been in the park since day one: Al and Frank.
Frank is a man who lost his job at Citibank three years ago now. He is 41. He is living off disability which is $220/month. He is now being sued by Citibank over money owed from sicktime. Frank, with his balding black hair slicked back as though he was still making cold calls in his old cubicle, looks beat-down and and depressed. He looks at me with his Frank Sinatra eyes, “I knew you’d care, I knew you were good people, you’re here which means you’re in it with us.” His handshake was so defeated.
Al “has been here since day one.” He is a peacekeeper, he is well into his 60s and he is definitely not a hippie-dippie type like the media are making everyone out to be. He told me he was a mouthpiece for the police and for the occupiers. He told me he’s too street savvy and too pissed off to not be apart of this movement. Al said that back just a week before. That is, a week before the NYPD unoccupied Zuccotti and destroyed the progress that was building in that park. There was a projection screen for mic-checks, there was a kitchen like area in the middle for those who needed to stay sustained. And there was a library. I looked to the “library” that’s there now. It was about 45 books. An elder man with a sign that read, “I’m from LA, I’m a union worker, I’m a tax-payer, and I’m pissed.” He was reading, and he confirmed that the library had about 2,000 books. They were destroyed when they came through.
“Came through?” I asked.
“I tell you it was like a military mission, they came out of nowhere. They snuck up in lines of ten and started ripping things apart. I went up to the cops on the outskirts and they asked me, ‘do you have people you care about in there?’ And I said ‘I care about all of them.’ And he said tell them to move the hell out of here because it could get very ugly. I tell you it was like SS stuff, books destroyed, belongings…people. It was a terrible thing. I tried to give them a warning. I stood up on a ledge and blew my horn tried to get people up to fix things.”
I couldn’t believe it. Our own government. I read, but then I heard. If only I could have only saw. But I did see, I saw a fresh scar on Al’s face not from his street-tough days at Coney Island. This was probably a week old. I didn’t ask about it and he wouldn’t mention it, but I sure as hell saw it.
Most of my acquaintances and dear friends all support Occupy. They are skeptical. They don’t think there is anything direct, they don’t think they’re dong enough. “Occupy a Bank of America!” They have. They Occupied the Brooklyn Bridge for Christ’s sake. I’m just saying if you agree and have issues with it, don’t just sit by the cooler and complain, tell someone I’m sure there are people who agree and all of you can make the difference to help this movement get a little bit better.
When Matthew and I first showed up there was a drunk who stumbled in right behind them were what seemed to be a upper-middle class couple. The drunk man was using this place for refuge and the couple were using it like a museum. It was helpful either way. Unfortunately it shouldn’t be used for either it should be used for bettering our own country. The drunk started talking and ridiculing the 50 or so people occupying and this girl went off on him. I mean preaching it was angrily beautiful. And the rest of the crowd was saying, “Don’t be that guy.” In a rhythmic sort of way. “Don’t be that guy.” They got the cops, who were standing around the barricades surrounding the park, to say it, “Don’t be that guy.” We are all the 99%. It’s true, but what we should really worry about is being that guy. Don’t be that guy. That guy that turns their head to corruption or greed or insistence or wordplay or ignorance or racism or homophobia or anything else that plays with the soul of America. Don’t be that guy.
November 2, 2011
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Quarter 1.
Come this Friday I have officially taught for my first 5 weeks as the 10th grade Inclusion teacher. I am going to write my assessment of myself as a reflection and a report card, like the ones I will be handing out to my students next week.
Grade: 80
Conduct: B-
Effort: A
Notes:
Shaun while a diligent worker, doesn’t seem to understand the tasks at hand. He at times seems lost within the other students’ interests. There are times when one student will ask for help on a certain topic, but there will be 4 or 5 others looking for aid in a completely different area, Shaun needs to decide which is more important. Not just for that time and situation but for the long run in this class. Sometimes it seems as though Shaun will pick a certain battle out of the blue, but then ignore something that happens repeatedly. It doesn’t help for a stable classroom setting. There are times however where there is nothing he can do, it is out of his hands and he handles them with grace despite how he might actually be feeling. For instance: it is not his fault if a student repeatedly does not write his or her homework in his or her agenda and then blames you for their failing grade on their quiz/test. It is also not his fault when a student decides to ask if you are on your period, if you are acting kind of moody. It is not his fault when the same student repeatedly skips the same class for a week straight then has a test to take and only gets 6 out 100 right. It is not his fault when a teacher approaches him about a student’s missing work and this is the first he has heard of it. It is his fault when he gets too hard on himself. It is also his fault when he checks Facebook during his Study Hall instead of grading journals. Or when he writes fake Report Cards of himself on his tumblr, also during his Study Hall. Other than that, Shaun is making progress and may one day be a decent teacher.
October 24, 2011
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Rory.
In lieu of two great former students losing their lives in a senseless hit and run accident and another being put in the ICU for severe injuries I felt it was necessary for myself and maybe for others to read about experiences.
I’ve noticed that the best way for me to teach or express or cope is through experience. The way I see it is that your emotions are like that chart your teacher has up in third grade with the faces making faces of the different feelings humans have. Happy. Sad. Confused. Constipated. You know the go-to ones. But to talk to someone about how they’re feeling, the best way I’ve found is to show them how normal it is to be feeling that way. While the situation may be greater or the severity of the emotions larger you can still let that person know that it really is okay to be feeling that way.
When I was a Junior in high school I lost one of my best friends: Rory McElwain. He drove his brother’s sports car way too fast on a residential street and wrapped it around a telephone poll. The others in the car survived and he died.
I was told the news the next morning, it was Sunday. It was a Catholic Mass for Confirmation. I didn’t want to be there I was just getting confirmed to please my mother. I was brooding almost sitting there listening to everyone go on and on about how great they are for loving ghosts. Then I was given the news. I felt a centimeter tall. I broke my hand when I punched the wall. How can a friend of mine die? How can anyone close to me die? At this point I had already experienced a loss of a friend: Samantha, 7th grade, to brain cancer. But, you can’t stop brain cancer. You can stop a car. I thought it was so unfair that he decided to feel invincible.
I have never cried so hard in my entire life. It hurt to cry, I would cry seemingly out of nowhere. As I write this now, tears are welling up. I knew that everyone around me had all the similar feelings I had, but I felt alone, like I was the only one who could be effected.
Rory played football and basketball. I played basketball with him. When we had practice that day we just sat in the gym and hugged and talked about it. All these guys, who usually just grunted and made misogynistic comments were expressing deeply about this. I couldn’t. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I couldn’t say one thing.
At the funeral. When they carried his body past me in the church I couldn’t stand I cried so hard. Angel, a 6’2” linebacker much larger than I and much more manly even at 16 caught me and held me. Then just as it was time to leave I had one last heave of a sob to come out and I farted, right on Angel. We both wanted to ignore and we couldn’t and we just started laughing. Couldn’t help it. We must have looked like we went into hysterics. Rory would have enjoyed that moment.
We’ve all experienced loss in someway. We all deal with it differently. We’ve all read something like this post before I know it. I’m not trying to break new ground. I just want people to know that it will always be okay. I can talk about how I’ve felt, clearly. All I’m saying is you’re never alone with something like this. And your own 6’2” linebacker will show up so you can fart on him, to know that its okay to move on.
October 4, 2011
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Coupons.
After discussing with my students who work at Supermarkets and seeing my roommate compulsively watch “Extreme Couponing,” I decided I had to share my life and times working as a bagger, with a college degree.
I was lucky enough to even find a job when I received my degree from Bridgewater State. While I was working towards getting those last 6 credits a semester after I was projected to graduate I worked at a small market in the South End on Boston. I loved it there. I was living in Central Square, Cambridge and biking to and from work everyday. I met all these interesting people from ballerinas to jazz musicians to restaurant owners and even Cameron Diaz once. My rent, however, was very high and my room was very small and I soon had a nervous breakdown and moved home with my parents.
That was in December. I applied to places all over Worcester and stumbled upon a job as a bagger at $haw’s $upermarkets (name altered for legal reasons). I landed the job a corporate market now, but a market all the same. Thanks to my father, who used to be a political columnist in Worcester, it could’ve been my references: Lt. Governor Tim Murray, Congressman James McGovern and District Attorney Joe D. Early, hah!
My first couple weeks were fine. They kept asking if I wanted to be trained as a cashier. I always denied. I wanted to just show up for 6 hours do my remedial job and go home and write and tell jokes at night. That’s what I did. It was paid people watching. I was able to develop jokes off what I saw and heard right there at the store. Sometimes that got me into trouble, because I’d be bagging some soccer mom’s groceries and my manager, who’d be the cashier, would read my hand: “Movie-like crotch punch,” and get angry.
Eventually, no matter how much I tried to cunningly avoid cashier training, I had to. They said I was going to lose my job completely if I didn’t agree to the training. Which in hindsight, makes zero sense. They threatened to fire me because they needed a new cashier and I refused to do it. So now because they fired me, they had to hire not only a new cashier, but the bagger they lost too.
Despite their lack of logic and my missed opportunity to call them out on it, I was trained.
I hated the job. It wasn’t that it was hard, because it’s not hard at all. It was that I had more responsibility for a company I couldn’t stand behind and people I don’t care about.
I started my rebellion small. Every time a shopper owed a change amount just over the dollar amount I would slide them right along, not asking them for it. For instance their bill would come to $14.03 and they just handed me a $20. I would give them $6 and say “have a nice day.”
And then I met the most beautiful woman in the world on a fateful Sunday afternoon, where I was already receiving time and a half for my brain-numbing job. She, in truth, wasn’t actually beautiful. Kind of heinous to be polite. If you took the green tint off of the Looney Tunes witch and gave her grayer hair, that would be this woman. But boy did she make everything worth it there.
She was a couponer. She would come in with all kinds of coupons for all kinds of deals. Buy one get one, 10%, 20%, %50, competitor’s coupons, retail coupons, you name the type she had them, and for any situation and for whatever she needed. She didn’t buy thousands of dollars worth of groceries like you see on those TV shows. She bought her necessities and paid almost nothing for them. And always she would freeze the computer or need a million price checks and even had a system as to how she wanted to have the groceries put on the bill. And this drove my supermarket crazy. They hated it and hated that I would take her. Every time she was buying groceries it was a guaranteed 45 minutes to an hour at the register so she could make sure she was paying the least amount of money without stealing.
She might as well been stealing in the eyes of my managers at $haw’s. They despised her, it looked like that picture of Larry Bird and Dr. J holding each other’s throats during a Sixers/Celtics game when they spoke. It excited me. The fact that I didn’t have to really work for an hour, that I was screwing over this company and that my bosses, who gave me horrible hours and treated me like I was an extra-chromosomed monkey, hated her presence.
This couponer made me realize the value of a dollar, to work hard no matter what exactly your situation is and that you should never be too proud because you don’t know where you’ll end up next. It was the best lesson to learn, from an unlikely source.
During that time it was embarrassing to tell the community that were friends with my parents or my friend’s parents that this was where I was working at 22 with a college degree. And this woman with the coupons helped me.
I tell my students now that you’ll never know where you’ll end up. I never thought I’d be telling any students, period, that. Especially as I was bagging those groceries.
I also tell them the three keys to be successful:
1.) Work as hard as you can, at everything you can.
2.) Get your degree, whatever degree it is.
3.) Walk like you’re a model on a runway, confidence exudes success.
Thank you coupon lady. A part of the reason I am where I am today, is you. And I couldn’t be more thankful for a buy one experience, get one experience free.
September 23, 2011
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Field Hockey.
I am currently the Junior Varsity Field Hockey coach for the school I am working at. And so far, I have really fallen in love with the job.
What does this ass know about field hockey, you ask? Well to let you know I played for a whole 3 weeks my freshman year and got pretty damn good. I joined the squad because A). I could, thank you Title IX. B). I thought it was a funny idea. C). I thought I could meet girls this way. And D). I feel I have pretty nice legs and wanted to show them off in green plaid skirt.
I quit the team because I felt like I was stealing a spot on the roster from a girl who really, actually wanted to play the sport. So I did the right thing. But I stuck around. I watched and learned and cheered and eventually landed my first girlfriend too. Then time went on I sometimes forgot about the game and its may rules.
Then towards the end of last year a godsend came upon me. Turns out my school needed a new JV coach. I said I’d do it and no one believed me. I called a meeting, and still no one believed me. I applied for the job and was ignored for most of the summer. I was finally hired and still everyone laughed at the idea. I helped coach the summer league team and the girls scoffed at my pointers. I went to the coaches meeting for the Athletic Department and still no one seemed to believe. I held practice and it was still, “Why is Mr. Connolly here?” But then something funny happened, girls started showing up. And then I was instructing them how to play. And then they were getting a hang of the game. And then they believed me.
I have 14 8th grade, 9th grade and 10th grade girls and one 12th grader. They are a fun, interested, smart and athletic group. They are all willing to try the sport, and are willing to fail at it too.
Most days we practice with the Varsity as well. As the girls are doing their running one of the captains stops dramatically holding her stomach. “Urghh!,” she yells. “Keep running you pansy,” I snap at her. “I can feel my ovaries working!”
That’s when I believed I was the coach…
I’m assuming, as the year progresses I will have more stories to tell. This is a quick one I have to share:
We were talking to the 8th graders about classes next year and what teachers they have. She asked about one teacher and she was a decent teacher or not. I was impressed and pleased that she was taking such an interest in her classwork and education. I told her that the specific teacher she was talking about was in fact a good teacher but she taught US History and not World like she’d be taking. She pauses for a second, looking a little baffled and then looks up and says, “Oh! There’s different kinds of histories?”
