The Life Imagined

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Wearing the Crown Proudly

February 12, 2022

From what I have observed, many first-time parents have a hard time learning to say “no” to their children. They fall victim to the pleading eyes and quivering lips – and next thing you know, that toy is in the shopping cart and headed to the register. Some develop cute kid resistance more quickly than others do. . . some never develop it at all, which quite often directly correlates with the behavior we see out of their children when they’re adults. I didn’t have this problem. My husband would be the first to admit that he struggled with the whole thing, and it took years for him to feel as though a trip to Wal-Mart wouldn’t be inherently more expensive if the kids were with him. For me, however, it was pretty easy from the get-go. . . largely because I had two very important things going for me. First of all, I had a good role model: my own mother. My mama had no trouble whatsoever saying “no” to me, and she also had no trouble whatsoever reminding me that “if I were th

Channeling Charlie Brown

January 22, 2022

The Peanuts comic strip and television specials have been a part of American life since the strip began running in newspapers in 1950, and they’ve generated memorable images and moments that have stuck with basically everyone who grew up with an awareness of them. Odds are good that even if you’ve never watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, you still refer to a tiny, needle-challenged resident at a Christmas tree farm as a “Charlie Brown tree” because of its similarity to the one that Charlie Brown makes a part of the gang’s Christmas play. Another memorable moment – and one that’s repeated numerous times throughout both forms of Charlie Brown media – is Lucy offering to hold the football for Charlie Brown to kick it. Ever hopeful that Lucy will finally hold the ball still so that he can successfully kick it long, high, and far, Charlie Brown always allows her to suck him in when she promises not to yank the ball away. . . and every time, he finds himself kicking air and landing unceremo

Kill the Narrative

January 17, 2022

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the state of Georgia for the past week (and there’s a real possibility that this is true even if you have been), you’re well aware that the University of Georgia Bulldogs defeated the University of Alabama Crimson Tide in the 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday, January 10. Georgia fans had been waiting patiently (?) for 41 years – or whatever portion of 41 years that they could remember – for the Dawgs to repeat the feat that they had accomplished by going undefeated and being voted the number one team back in January, 1981, and their celebration has been loud and proud. And if you happen to be a die-hard Georgia fan AND a die-hard Atlanta Braves fan. . . well, let’s just say that a whole lot of frustration has given way to a whole lot of happiness over the past three months or so as both teams made it over hurdles that some thought they’d never clear. For the record, even for those who aren’t sports fans, there’s

Resolution. . . and Execution

February 10, 2021

Every year, I make New Year’s resolutions. I haven’t written them down in who knows how long, but I do make them in my head. Furthermore, I generally make the same resolutions every year. . . which says something about how successful I am about keeping them. Losing weight and doing a better job of being on time have been there for at least thirty years, and I’ve added writing goals over the past few: finishing my third book has been a thing for about six years now, and writing a blog entry every week has been on the list for the past three or four. We are now forty-one days into 2021. . . and for the most part, when it comes to these resolutions, I’m in epic fail territory. (I wish I had added “Read at least twenty books” to that list because I’ve been on a major reading tear of late. In fact, I may have already read twenty by now.) I’ve probably done a little bit better with not being as late to work, but that’s not saying much. I have actually made decent progress on the bo

As They Pursue Their Dreams. . . to the THS Class of 2017

May 20, 2017

(Credit for the graduation night photo to Jim Wallace, who gave both his permission and his blessing for me to use it. 🙂) As you may know by now (and as the other members of the Thomson High School ELA department and my co-teachers are tired of hearing), my last active day as a public school teacher is Wednesday, May 24, 2017. I’m retiring for any number of reasons: high-stakes testing, excessive bureaucracy, and just an all-around educational philosophy that differs from mine. (My mantra: “You can’t quantify teaching.”) I have to admit, though, that the timing for leaving THS is actually pretty appropriate because I’m going out with the Class of 2017, and being there without them next year would be awfully strange. These students have been a huge part of my life at THS. . . and even though the journey with them hasn’t always been a perfect one, life wouldn’t be the same without them if I were staying. If I counted the names on the program accurately, 216 stu

When the Unimaginable Happens

June 28, 2015

The first time I dealt with the impact of a friend’s death on my students was in the winter of 1989. The teenager who died wasn’t even a student at my school, but he had been years earlier – and he was still a close friend of several of the students whom I taught. Even in the days before social media, the word of Travis Shedd’s death spread quickly. . . and while I’d like to think that my twenty-four year-old self was better than average at dispensing words of wisdom and comfort, I was also mature enough to realize that sometimes, there are no words. I didn’t suffer a personal loss when Travis died, but I grieved for the kids who were grieving. During the more than twenty-five years since, I’ve experienced a number of student deaths. . . former students who had graduated, current students whom (like Travis) I hadn’t taught but whose deaths broke the hearts of students that I was teaching, and one former student whom I wasn’t teaching at the time but who was still a student a

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