The Standout Teacher

When I was in high school a long, long time ago, I had the honor of having a couple of teachers who stood out from the rest.  Yes, these teachers were getting paid to teach, but they had also made it their mission to make a difference in children’s lives. While I can pinpoint the contributions each of these teachers worked so tirelessly to make, there was one who was a force to be reckoned with. She was a hard taskmaster and she did not accept halfhearted attempts at homework.

Mrs. Betty Stapleton

She was known for prodding, pushing, and shoving you, kicking and screaming if need be, into digging deeper inside of yourself. She was the teacher that when you picked up your class schedule and you saw her name, you would groan at what was to come. When your friends saw whose class you had been placed in, they would pat you on the back while telling you everything would be okay.

She was Mrs. Betty Stapleton, an English teacher on a mission to educate above and beyond the norm. On the first day of class, your fears were realized. She threw down the gauntlet and challenged you before the class roll was ever called.

Her goal was to challenge you to think beyond the printed words on a page. If, in a piece of literature, there was a scent described, she wanted you to be able to smell it. If there was an emotion, she wanted you to feel it. And if there was a noise, you were to hear it.

To this day I can hear her reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” to our class. The way she read the poem made it come to life. It was no longer a required assignment with weird, old world language we were being forced fed. It became a fascinating piece of literature which drew us into its rhyming stanzas and dramatic prose.

Mrs. Stapleton not only drew us into the world of classical literature, she also taught us to reach deep within our souls when we wrote our own essays. It definitely was no easy task for her to try and get me, a guarded redhead, to dig deep and open up my soul for others to see.

Her words of encouragement were very uplifting, but she utterly flabbergasted me when she told me she enjoyed reading my written work. It was the first time a teacher had ever told me they enjoyed my work. I, an overly verbose redhead with a relatively poor grasp of grammar, was left speechless. Her class was one of the hardest I have ever taken, and yet the most rewarding.

The level of encouragement she provided saw me through my college years and sticks with me to this day. While looking for a way to contact her to thank her, I discovered she passed away in 2002. I did not even consider this possibility when I began my search and was surprised at how sad I felt when I made the discovery. I wish I could thank her personally for her tireless dedication and for making an imprint on my soul, but I waited too long.

Do you have a teacher who lit a spark within you? Someone who went above and beyond the norm? I would love to hear your stories! If you have ever felt the desire to let that special teacher know how big of a difference they made in your life, don't wait.  Let them know now.

Christie Bielss

If You Ask A Grandmother Her Age......

Clipart Courtesy of Clipartlord.com

Back in the 1990's, my husband and I were visiting with his grandmother discussing technology. As we were discussing the latest advancements like in-home Dolby surround sound, home computers, and cell phones, she began to tell us about her latest doctor's appointment.

"The nurse asked me how old I am and I told her 'I am old enough to be your grandmother.' The nurse laughed, wrote down something, and then put me in a room to wait on the doctor to arrive.

After a few minutes of waiting, the doctor came in and sat down and looked at my chart. He asked me how old I am. I don't understand why everyone at the doctor's office is always so interested in my age. I quit keeping up with how old I am when I hit 85.

I looked at the doctor and told him 'I was born in double-aught'. You figure it out.' He replied with a 'Wow! You must have experienced a lot over the course of your life.'

I told him I was born in a time when candles and kerosene lamps were used to light our homes. I grew up with an outhouse as a bathroom and watched as indoor plumbing and electricity were brought into our homes.

When I was young, we got around by either walking, riding on horseback, or via horse and carriage. As I got older, we marveled as cars took over the roads. If we needed to go far away, we took the train....... and we put on our best Sunday clothes for the trip. Now we have airplanes that will get us there in a fraction of the time and people look like they have on their pajamas.

When we cooked, we made everything from scratch. And by scratch I mean we either went to the butcher, or we slaughtered our own livestock or chickens, or we hunted for our wild game. Our milk was fresh, since we had to milk the cow every morning. We churned what we weren't going to drink to get our butter and cream, we couldn't buy it off a store shelf.

In my years, I have watched as hemlines inched up from touching the floor to barely covering the derriere'. I have listened to music grow from a one-man fiddler, to big bands, to songs being played on the radio.

I've experienced world wars and watched as men walked on the moon. Buildings went from being a few stories tall to skyscrapers."

As my husband and I reflect on this memory, it brings to mind all of the change and growth we have seen in our own lifetimes.  40+ years ago, we could have never imagined this world we live in, or the technological growth which happens almost daily.  This growth and change we have experienced makes us wonder what our children will have to look forward to and endure in their lifetimes.  I don’t believe I can imagine that world……… and I’m not sure I really want to either.

Christie Bielss

Who is the Better Driver?

Why is it every time we get in the car to drive anywhere, my husband and son start talking smack about how men are better drivers than women.  "You know, most NASCAR drivers are men.  In the movies, they use male stunt drivers..... even for scenes when females are driving.  Evel Knievel was a man and there has not been a She-vel Knievel", and on they go to ad nauseam.

I listen to this nonsense even though national statistics prove women are the safer drivers.  As proof of that data, I have only had one car wrecked since I have been driving.  Who totaled it?  My husband. And yet he is still convinced he is the better driver.

A number of years ago, I made the executive decision that I would do all of the driving in our household. Why?
A) Because my husband does not like to drive;
B) When he looks around while he is driving, his hands turn the steering wheel in whichever direction his eyes move.  Being in the car while he is driving is like being in a lifeboat in the middle of an apocalyptic, your-life-is-flashing-before-your-eyes hurricane.

The last time he drove on a long car trip was in 1999.  He had taken over driving after we stopped for a leg-stretching break at a rest stop.  We were about 20 minutes down the road, when he started looking around at the scenery. 

The car began to sway back and forth. First we went left, then we went right. Within a few minutes of this rollercoaster ride, I got motion sick.  After I made him pull off the highway (so I could get sick on the side of the road), I took over the driving......... and have not given him the opportunity to drive me anywhere since.  He contends it was not his driving but that I got ahold of some bad chocolate.  There is no such thing as "bad" chocolate.

Recently while we were in the grocery store, I discovered my husband drives the shopping cart the same way he drives a car.  This discovery was a rather rude eye-opener when he took out an endcap of potted meat while he was perusing the macaroni and cheese on the other side of the aisle.

After we put all of the cans back on the shelf and I was muttering under my breath about what "fantastic" drivers men are, we turned the corner onto the cereal aisle.  We hadn't taken 5 steps down the aisle when we encountered a husband pushing a shopping cart behind his wife.  As the man pointed to a box of Pop-Tarts to his right, he pushed the shopping cart left.  He took out an entire shelf of Fruit Loops.

In a show of solidarity, my husband called out to the man and told him it was a combination of the uneven floor and the shopping cart's propensity to make a hard left turn which caused the destruction.  I looked at my husband and asked if he had used his Spidey-vision to get the level of the floor.

This Spring, my dad began been teaching our son to play golf.  Because we have hit the dog days of summer, my parents decided to take our son to a golf superstore and let him practice putting in an air-conditioned environment.

After he and my dad were finished putting, my son took over pushing the shopping cart from my mom.  As my dad was showing him another teenager putting, my son ran the shopping cart into a bank of 50+ putters.  Much to their horror, the putters fell down one after another like a bunch of lined up dominoes.  He apparently got the driving gene from his father.

But men are better drivers than women..........

Christie Bielss

Three of the Scariest Words

There are three words which strike fear in the hearts and souls of men and women alike. Three words which know no boundaries and affect people from every walk of life.  It does not matter what language you speak or your socio-economic status, those three words stop mankind in his tracks.

What are the three words that cause such genuine fear?

 

"Some Assembly Required"

I am betting those words just caused an uncontrollable shiver of revulsion to run down your spine. Seeing those three words may have even triggered a flashback to pulling an all-nighter trying to assemble a special gift so it was ready when your child or loved one woke up the next morning.  Or maybe you have one of those nightmarish memories of trying to assemble a baby crib or other baby paraphernalia.

My flashback is from when I was a teenager. My parents decided I did not have enough storage and bought me a new wall bookcase unit.  It was one of those fancy all-in-one units that looked really neat in the store. 

The store's merchandiser had neatly organized the books on the bookshelves, the desk section had been equipped with the perfect desk set organizer, and precisely folded clothing was beautifully arrayed inside the drawers.  When my parents saw this behemoth, they swore they could hear the angels in heaven sing as they imagined all of my belongings neatly stored and displayed......... instead of being stacked or strewn across the floor of my bedroom.

This white six foot high and ten foot long laminated particle board wall unit was not sold fully assembly, but for an extra fee, the store delivery personnel could assemble the unit for us.  My dad puffed up and said he was not paying extra for something he was perfectly capable of handling.  He had all of the necessary tools at home, and after all, if he could fly jumbo jets around the world, he could certainly follow some simple directions on where to put a few nuts and bolts.

We brought the thirteen boxes of various parts home and carefully piled them up in my bedroom according to the number labelled on the outside of each box, which was printed right next to the label which stated "Some Assembly Required".  We opened box #1 and quickly dug around for the book of instructions.

My dad leafed through the booklet and discovered all of the instructions were written in a foreign language.  He and my brothers looked through the box together to see if there was another set of instructions.  There had to be another booklet! 

My mom quickly called the store. Nope.  There was only one booklet of instructions. They informed her to "just follow the pictures".

The realization of what my dad had gotten himself into hit full force.  He politely excused himself and went to the garage.  For several minutes we heard things being banged and slammed around in the garage.

My mom stood at the doorway to my room with one hand on her hip and an exasperated look on her face as she listened to the chaos in the garage.  After a few minutes she announced "Well, I think your dad may need a minute or two to himself.".

A little while later my dad came back inside. He was ready to get to work and had a hammer in one hand and a set of screwdrivers in the other.

As one of my brothers and I looked at the directions together, we discovered the main language was German.  He was in his second year of German and I was in my first, so we started reading the instructions together while my dad used the pictures to figure out the parts we could not translate.  This was the blind leading the helpless.

It took us 2 days to assemble that enormous wall unit with all of its drawers, doors, and the drop-down desk.  When the assembly was complete and we were all standing back admiring our work, my dad calmly announced "This unit will never be moved.  If we sell this house and move, it gets sold with the house.  Oh, and just so everyone knows:  no more "Some Assembly Required" furniture will ever cross the threshold into a house I own.  Ever.".

It was a nice announcement and it certainly held up for a number of years, until his first grandchild arrived.  Then he got tasked with assembling cribs, pack n' plays, baby bouncers and toys of all kinds.  But, as he has said each time since then, at least all of these directions have been in English.

Christie Bielss

 

Ditch the Duck

Just like saddle shoes and poodle skirts, mood rings, and Cabbage Patch kids, fads come and fads go. Some fads were goofy and entertaining, like pet rocks and jelly shoes.  Some are just plain dumb, like the Magic 8 ball and The Macarena.  Other fads, like having pants so saggy you have to wear 2 pairs of underwear, have caused so much embarrassment for parents, they have forced department stores and city councils to enact rules and city ordinances barring people from wearing droopy drawers.

Mona Lisa Public Domain image

The latest fad is one I am not really looking forward to revisiting a few years down the road.  This craze is not only goofy, but it's leaving a highly visible trail of photographic proof (aka extortion material) of our friends succumbing to this craze. 

Which fad am I talking about?  This crazy trend of posing with a duck face - which also resembles a fish face.  This truly unattractive pose is sure to be one for the "What in the name of all things holy were they thinking?!" record books.

Every single day my Facebook newsfeed displays evidence of another victim who has fallen prey to thinking this is a sexy and glamorous look. I would love to know who told women that looking like a cross between Daisy Duck and a big-mouthed bass hooked on the end of a fishing pole is attractive.  

Ben Stiller - Public Domain image

Ben Stiller started this goofy look in the movie "Zoolander".  A comedy film whose character is a fashion model and a complete dim-wit.  Someone, somewhere, saw this movie and thought 'this is the look I want to show to the world'.... and another fad was born.

A fad whose look is more reminiscent of the mounted Big Mouth Billy Bass singing "Take Me To The River" than  Marilyn Monroe in some sexy pose.  When I see a casualty of this fad, I don't see a beautiful woman.  Nope.  At best, I see Dori from the movie 'Finding Nemo'.  While Dori is cute, women posed like this look as though they are experiencing a serious medical event.

Dori from Disney/Pixar Pictures movie "Finding Nemo"

When I see moms duck-face posing in pictures with their kids, all I can think of is how sad it will be when their children look back on these photos in 20, 30, or 40 years and wonder what in the world was wrong with their mother's face, or what did they do that was so bad their mother chose not to smile in a single photo with them.

Duck face posing is a fad whose 15 minutes of fame needs to be up.  Do yourself, your family, and history a favor.  The next time you take a picture, smile.  The look of joy is so much more appealing and powerful than any forced fish or duck face pose.

Christie Bielss

In Memory....

I was in my second year of college and my history professor gave the class a project.  We were to fill out an ancestry pedigree chart.  By speaking with all of our living relatives about their lives, we were to not only gather statistical data on our ancestor's birth and birth places, but also ascertain whether they served in the military and what their experiences were while they served, as well as any information they could pass along about relatives who had already passed away.  The more information we could glean, the better our grade.

My Grandfather

My parents loved to expound on their family history, so I latched onto this assignment figuring it to be a very easy 'A'.  With the 'pedigree' chart in-hand, I sat down and questioned my parents.  Three generations of my ancestry chart were nearly complete within thirty minutes.  A quick phone call to my mother's parents, as well as some digging through old newspaper obituary notices by my father, allowed me to complete the four generations required for the chart in an hour.

But, the 'pedigree' chart was not the only part to this assignment.  I thought finding the names and birth places of my ancestors was going to be the most difficult part of this assignment, since it required me going back 150 years.  Names and places turned out to be the easy part.  Reading about and listening to my grandfather talk about his experiences in combat during World War II was life changing.

My grandfather was sent to the South Pacific and while he spoke of many funny experiences he had upon arriving in the region, he had refused to speak about his encounters in war....... until I told him about my history project over the phone.  Since I would be coming to visit him over my Spring Break from college, he agreed to let me "interview" him for my class assignment.

A week later, I arrived at my grandparents' home.  One evening while my grandmother and mother were preparing dinner, my grandfather was ready to talk.  We sat down in their living room.  He pulled out a journal he had hidden between the arm rest of his recliner and his leg.  As he reluctantly handed it to me, I could see him struggle with sharing his thoughts and experiences.

He finally handed it to me with one stipulation:  I could read it until dinner was ready but not a minute longer.  I quickly sat down and started flipping through the small journal.

I laughed as I read his account of meeting the women of the South Pacific region for the first time.  Apparently all of the island women on his base were topless.  The Commanding Officer ordered all of the men to put their eyes back in their heads and for the women on the base to be given shirts.

The next day, the women showed up on the base with the shirts on........... and perfectly round holes cut out for their breasts.  My grandfather started laughing so hard at the memory, he had tears running down his face.

As my time with his journal was severely limited, I quickly flipped forward a good number of pages.  What I read made my heart stop.

The entry began with him having described how he had just finished eating dinner and was going to lay down in his tent and catch some much needed rest.  He had no sooner laid down when he heard shouts of "incoming!".

Before he could move, bombs started exploding and machine guns started firing.  As he jumped up, the tent next to his exploded and the soldiers resting inside, his friends, were killed in an instant.

A lump grew in my throat and tears filled my eyes as I read his next thoughts.  I looked up into my grandfather's eyes. With eyes brimming with tears, he knew exactly what I was reading.  I can still hear his pain as he spoke so softly "I could never understand why the bomb hit their tent and not mine.  Why they died and I survived.".

My grandmother announced dinner was served.  My time was up.  I got up from the sofa, handed him the journal, and gave him a hug.  We never discussed those painful memories again, but today I remember.

Public Domain Flag Image

For me, today is more than just a day for barbeque, swim parties, and wearing patriotic colors.  Today I remember my grandfather, his friends, and all those who have served and have given their all.  Today I remember their call to duty, I respect their service, and I honor their sacrifice.  To all of the servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice, as well as to their families, I say Thank You.

Christie Bielss

The Trade Off

My apologies for the long pause in writing.  Our son was recently diagnosed with a substantial injury which necessitated a lot of doctor visits and physical therapy.  My "free" time turned into a job as a physical therapist, drill sergeant, and chauffeur, shuttling him from one appointment to another.  He is now on the upswing and I am getting used to my new "normal".  Thanks for sticking with me and for your kind words of encouragement during this time!

After having our first child, we stumbled around, utterly sleep-deprived, not knowing which way was up for months.  It was during this time when we were assured by friends and family the infant stage was the hardest part of raising a child.  Everyone told us as our children grew older, things would become easier.  We clung to that hope through the sleepless nights, countless ear infections, teething, fighting croupy coughs, and the more-than-I-can-count fights over food.

We held on tight to that ray of hope like a castaway bopping along in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean.  For the first couple of years we waited anxiously for the day when our boat would hit dry land and we would be "rescued".  During the long wait, we were so sure we were approaching our smooth sailing days, we even had another baby.

As we clung to our sanity, we made a most unexpected discovery.  Our family and friends, who loved us dearly, were all a pack of liars!  Raising children does not get easier as they get older, you just trade off what you are currently doing for something different, but equally as difficult.

Yes, gone are the days of struggling to strap an infant carseat into a vehicle at just the right angle so it locks into the vehicle's restraint system.  These days I'm trying to get a pack of giggling tween girls into the different rows of my car, without anyone losing part of their toes to a falling backpack which is weighted down with more school supplies than Grizzly Adams would dare pack onto the back of a mule. 

I no longer hear the annoyed cry of a baby who is frustrated over a dropped pacifier or treasured toy just out of their reach.  These days I am bombarded with a teenager screeching "Mom! He/she is touching me!" or "STOP!  You're on my side!  Don't cross that line!".  

I thought having to hear Barney singing "I Love You" five hundred times a day was more tortuous than what some third world countries use as interrogation techniques........ until my children discovered and downloaded the Clash of Clans and Talking Tom apps on all of our electronic devices.  The gutteral grunts of cavemen and of enemies attacking bases has surpassed that dinosaur.  Being awakened in the middle of the night to a weird sounding voice coming from my cell phone telling me he is lonely and misses me, is more disturbing than a purple dinosaur singing and dancing.

I also almost miss the days of changing a baby's dirty diaper in the backseat of a car on a 100° day.  The odor back then was definitely a lot less pungent than what wafts from my son's gym bag these days.

But, even with all of the trade-offs, we would still do it all over again.  Yes, our friends and family definitely lied to us.  Whether it was in order to ensure the procreation of our species or so that we could sing the Dora the Explorer song along with them has yet to be determined.  We have gotten even though.  We told them that there is nothing quite like seeing your children take care of their very own puppy...... and fish ......... and guinea pigs.

Christie Bielss