The Road Less Traveled

I must be a real weenie when it comes to minor forms of pain. Allow me to explain…

My ears have been bothering me since we got back from the beach. Since I spent most of the vacation in water, I assumed it was just water stuck in my ears. Today, though, I was having trouble hearing and a little bit of pain in my left ear.

So, I did the smart thing and went to Health Plus. The doctor looked in both ears. “They’re a little pink, and you have some wax building up in there. We need to flush out your ears.”

Hmm, sounded harmless enough. A few minutes later, a nurse walked in with a spray bottle that had a long tube on it with a plastic disc and a much tinier tube at the tip of it.  Again, it didn’t look so bad. The nurse politely asked me to hold this oddly-shaped white plastic tray under my ear as she gently slid the tiny tube into my ear. As she squeezed the nozzle on the spray bottle, my ear filled with water and a felt just a slight stinging. She sprayed again and again. “There’s nothing coming out,” she said. After a few minutes of me grabbing the side of the seat, she finally cheered, “Oh, there we go. That’s a big chunk of wax.” (I clean my ears, I swear. Doctor said the buildup could be due to the infection.) Simple enough, right?

However, when she slid the tiny hose into my right ear and squeezed the nozzle, I immediately felt pain on the inside of my ear that grew worse with every squeeze of the nozzle. “Ow,” I whispered, figuring the pain was normal.

“Does that hurt?” the nurse asked. I could only mumble my answer as my eyes began to get glassy and I could hear (or maybe feel) a ringing in my ears. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” I sat back in the seat and closed my eyes for just a second, hoping to ease the pain. I didn’t open them again until I heard the nurse shouting for one of the girls in the hallway.

“I need someone to help me get this chair back, he just passed out.” After a few minutes of embarrassing stares from nurses walking in and out to check on me, the doctor wandered in and checked both of my ears again.

“This right one is still a little clogged, but the left one looks good. Want to try to finish the right one?” Was he serious? Sure, why not, what’s the worst that could happen? I’ve already embarrassed myself by passing out during an ear cleaning.

After giving me some time to relax, the nurse sat me up carefully, handed me the plastic tub, eased the tube into my ear, and squeezed again. After about the fifth squeeze, I felt that familiar wave of nausea again. As if on instinct, in a series of swift motions, the nurse pulled the tube away, scooted the trash can over next to me, and then back away.

I puked. Couldn’t help it. And the embarrassment got worse with every heave. Once the doctor got word that I had vomited, that was it. I lay with my knees up, breathing and relaxing for about thirty minutes until they finally gave me permission to check out and go home.

Here is my confession. This is the third time this has happened to me. I passed out when I had to have lead removed from under my thumb nail and the doctor injected me with a local anesthesia to numb my thumb and then walked off for a few minutes to give it time to work. I was out in just about a minute and a half. Something similar happened when I had to get debris removed from under my toenail. I didn’t actually pass out this time because I felt it coming and managed to bring my knees up and breathe through it.

Why? Why me? I don’t have a low threshold for pain. I walked away from being hit by a car while riding my bike. I once tumbled down a rocky hillside and walked home looking like I had just fought Edward Scissorhands. I was able to stay conscious when I twisted my ankle, which was definitely the worst pain I have ever felt. So why did something so simple make me dizzy and nauseated?

Can any medical experts out there answer that question for me, or do I remain a mystery.

Finally… I own an I-Pod. Sure, it’s an I-Pop Mini and it’s a girly blend of pink and purple, but it’s mine. Thanks to an unbelievably generous student (who was already in my book as one of the nicest kids I’ve ever known) I now have an I-Pod filled with 300+ of my favorite songs.

I decided to share it, so if you were to check my artists, you would come across Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Kellie Pickler, and a dozen or so more that are far from what I enjoy listening to. You would also find a Playlist titled “Disney.” Not hard to guess who that’s for.

I’m just so excited. I’ve spent hours already, syncing it up to my I-Tunes and getting as many of my songs as I can on there. I was really pleased o know that Nine Inch Nails is offering their new album The Slip for free online. Of course I downloaded it. It’s not as good as other albums of theirs, but hey, free music. You can get it by entering your e-mail here:

    The Slip

I was also happy to find that Smashing Pumpkins (who were one of the first rock bands to offer an entire album online) still had Machina II available online. You can get it here:

     Machina II

I think maybe I’m obsessed. I already have 433 songs on there and I still have more to go. I’m ripping some MP3s from CDs I have and putting them on, also. The CDs are just taking up space in my car.

If anyone knows of some other artists who offer MP3s of their music online, just let me know. I know Josh Ritter, an amazing songwriter comparable to Bob Dylan, has a few free MP3s on his homepage, as well:

    Josh Ritter Music

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes about “Connectors,” people who are responsible for spreading “social epidemics” to others.  He has a test in the book that lists 250 surnames taken at random from the Manhattan phone book.  The task is to go down the list and give yourself a point every time you see a surname that is shared by someone you know.  Here is the list:

Algazi, Alvarez, Alpern, Ametrano, Andrews, Aran, Arnstein, Ashford, Bailey Ballout, Bamberger, Baptista, Barr, Barrows, Baskerville, Bassiri, Bell, Bokgese, Brandao, Bravo, Brooke, Brightman, Billy, Blau, Bohen, Bohn, Borsuk, Brendle, Butler, Calle, Cantwell, Carrell, Chinlund, Cirker, Cohen, Collas, Couch, Callegher, Calcaterra, Cook, Carey, Cassell, Chen, Chung, Clarke, Cohn, Carton, Crowley, Curbelo, Dellamanna, Diaz, Dirar, Duncan, Dagostino, Delakas, Dillon, Donaghey, Daly, Dawson, Edery, Ellis, Elliott, Eastman, Easton, Famous, Fermin, Fialco, Finklestein, Farber, Falkin, Feinman, Friedman, Gardner, Gelpi, Glascock, Grandfield, Greenbaum Greenwood, Gruber, Garil, Goff, Gladwell, Greenup, Gannon, Ganshaw, Garcia, Gennis, Gerard, Gericke, Gilbert, Glassman, Glazer, Gomendio, Gonzalez, Greenstein, Guglielmo, Gurman, Haberkorn, Hoskins, Hussein, Hamm, Hardwick, Harrell, Hauptman, Hawkins, Henderson, Hayman, Hibara, Hehmann, Herbst, Hedges, Hogan, Hoffman, Horowitz, Hsu, Huber, Ikiz, Jaroschy, Johann, Jacobs, Jara, Johnson, Kassel, Keegan, Kuroda, Kavanau, Keller, Kevill, Kiew, Kimbrough, Kline, Kossoff, Kotzitzky, Kahn, Kiesler, Kosser, Korte, Leibowitz, Lin, Liu, Lowrance, Lundh, Laux, Leifer, Leung, Levine, Leiw, Lockwood, Logrono, Lohnes, Lowet, Laber, Leonardi, Marten, McLean, Michaels, Miranda, Moy, Marin, Muir, Murphy, Marodon, Matos, Mendoza, Muraki, Neck, Needham, Noboa, Null, O’Flynn, O’Neill, Orlowski, Perkins, Pieper, Pierre, Pons, Pruska, Paulino, Popper, Potter, Purpura, Palma, Perez, Portocarrero, Punwasi, Rader, Rankin, Ray, Reyes, Richardson, Ritter, Roos, Rose, Rosenfeld, Roth, Rutherford, Rustin, Ramos, Regan, Reisman, Renkert, Roberts, Rowan, Rene, Rosario, Rothbart, Saperstein, Schoenbrod, Schwed, Sears, Statosky, Sutphen, Sheehy, Silverton, Silverman, Silverstein, Sklar, Slotkin, Speros, Stollman, Sadowski, Schles, Shapiro, Sigdel, Snow, Spencer, Steinkol, Stewart, Stires, Stopnik, Stonehill, Tayss, Tilney, Temple, Torfield, Townsend, Trimpin, Turchin, Villa, Vasillov, Voda, Waring, Weber, Weinstein, Wang, Wegimont, Weed, Weishaus.  

When I took this test, I scored a 72.  Gladwell says that “the first–and most obvious–criterion is that Connectors know lots of people.”  One of my close high school friends used to joke that I know everyone because whenever we were out, I would see four or five people or more that I knew.  There was a running joke that if I went to a different state, I would still see someone I know.

I never took this joke seriously until a few years ago my wife and I were at King’s Island and I bumped into a lady I used to teach with.  The next summer, I was in line for a ride at Cedar Point and realized I was just a few people behind one of the school counselors at GW. 

Wait… it gets better.  The following year, I traveled to Disney World with my wife and kids.  Keep in mind that Disney has four parks, each of which has hundreds if not thousands of people in attendance.  We were walking through Magic Kingdom when I spotted a student of mine and her father, sitting on a bench.

Gladwell says, “Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.”  I don’t know if I’m a connector or not, but I do know a lot of people.  Gladwell also points out that most people score around 20 or less.

It isn’t hard to believe that I know a lot of people.  I have worked in fast food, retail, and at the local movie theater.  And as a teacher, I have approximately 125 students and I get to know many of their parents, as well.  So I get the opportunity to get to know 200+ people a year.  And I’m grateful for every one of them.

Try this test out and see how you score.  I was thinking of trying it with a local phone book, but I don’t know if it would be as effective.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

I just found out that one of my favorite television shows, New Amsterdam, is probably going to be canceled. And I think it has very little to do with viewers and ratings and more to do with “creativity problems.”

What exactly does that mean? I imagine this angry television writer throwing a tantrum because he’s out of ideas for the show and is parading around shouting, “No more! No! I won’t do anymore!”

This isn’t the first time a show I’ve fallen in love with has been canceled. Does anyone remember the show Wonderfalls? It was also a FOX show and had one of the most amazing main characters I have ever seen. Her name is Jaye and she is cynical, antisocial, “overeducated and underemployed”, bitter, and best of all a master at avoiding expectations. The premise of the show was a little weird, but the mark of good writing is when the characters within a story change. It’s even funnier when they change against their will. In this case, the cure for Jaye’s cynicism comes in the form of inanimate objects speaking to her and giving her clues that lead to helping her change people’s lives.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the first episode:

Eric: Life can be sort of peaceful when you stop struggling.

Jaye: It’s a lot like drowning that way.

But, unfortunately, the show went the way of other artistic shows that just aren’t meant for mainstream crowd, I guess. I fell in love with it and was heartbroken when the fourth episode aired and then that was it.

There is a similar show out now that I also love: Eli Stone. I won’t ramble on and on about that one just yet. Let’s hope FOX keeps Amsterdam alive and I finally get to see if John finds true love and becomes mortal (although I like that he’s immortal. It does make him a better cop.) If I just confused you, watch the show. It’ll make more sense then.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

I think it’s really funny that my last post about being an ADHD reader was spotlighted by two ADHD blogs.  I guess it was a pretty impressive work of writing.  I wrote it last night after a very tiring two days.

Wednesday I did yoga for thirty minutes with an instructor who comes in and teaches it to my students.  Then, at 12:20, we left for a nature hike with Mr. Smith, my Science teacher colleague.  That was an awesome hike, down behind the school and up a steep hill until we came up next to the road.  I’m sure our group of thirty or so students looked pretty comical emerging from the woods near the road.

Then, yesterday, I took the students outside at 11:50 to play whiffle ball and played all afternoon until 2:55.  After that, I drove to my writing workshop and did a presentation on using digital video with students.  Finally, I drove to dance class and practiced the dance for my routine four times, after which I flopped onto a tumbling mat and felt every muscle in my legs pulsating.

This next statement might shock you:  When I was sitting in my bed last night, watching CSI, a ticker scrolled across the screen announcing that an 8 year old boy was lost somewhere in Kanawha State Forest.  The ticker was calling for anyone who wanted to volunteer to join the search.  My heart skipped and I jumped up off of the bed.  All of my exhaustion slipped away and I started to pull on my jeans.

“I want to go,” I told my wife.

“My God, he’s only eight,” she said.

“I know.”  Both of us were thinking the same thing.  Eight.  Only one year older than our daughter.  “I want to go.”

“Honey, by the time you got there, they would probably have a hundred people searching.  And how well do you know the woods at Kanawha State Forest?”

I thought about it.  “Not very well.”  So, worried that I might get lost myself, I did not go.  I wanted to, really bad, but honestly they would probably have to call another search party to help me out of the woods, also.

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

People who know me well know that I am an ADHD reader.  I am usually reading three to four books at a time, and sometimes I will completely forget about a book and start another one.  The funny thing is I could map a list of books that I have started and not finished in order to move on to a different book.  I’ll put (inc.) next to the ones I didn’t finish and you’ll see my point.  This will also tell you a lot about my eclectic taste in books.  I’ll start with last summer:

The Gunslinger—-> Bag of Bones (inc.)—-> On the Road (inc.)—-> To Kill a Mockingbird—-> Crum (inc.)—-> All the Pretty Horses (inc.)—> The Book on Leadership—-> It’s Not About Me (inc.)—-> Empire Falls (inc.)—-> Lonesome Dove (inc.)—-> Breakfast of Champions-—> Cat’s Cradle—-> Sirens of Titan (inc.)—-> The Maltese Falcon (inc.)—-> Trainspotting (inc.)—-> The Kite Runner (inc.)—-> One Hundred Years of Solitude (inc.)—-> The Tipping Point (currently reading).

See what I mean.  Now, in my defense, some of those books are pretty hefty.  Lonesome Dove is somewhere near 1000 pages and Trainspotting is tough to read because it is written using Scottish phonetics.  “Now most people would put this doon tae experience, ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.”  And I have read Bag of Bones before,but I wanted to read it again.  Once I stumbled on to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, however, I just abandoned Stephen King’s beautifully written horror romance to go traveling across the country with the Beats.  And when I suddenly remembered I had never read To Kill a Mockingbird, I was appalled and just had to read it right away.  And so on, and so on.

You can also tell from this list what kind of impact Kurt Vonnegut’s work has on me since I did finish all but one of his novels on the list.

In her book The Bell Jar (the first book I read more than once, by the way ) Sylvia Plath’s narrator says,

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell.  I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

I’m usually flying back and forth between six or seven mutually exclusive things at the same time, and it is usually a stack of books.

I can understand what people who have a shopping addiction are going through. I just bought three new books today, The Dharma Bums, The World is Flat, and Blink. I felt that exciting rush when I cracked open the first one and read the first line. It was The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. The line was this: “Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.” People just don’t write like that anymore. In fact, no one has ever written like Kerouac.

All three of the books I picked up have something in common. They have been said to have changed people’s lives. According to most of the reviews, all three of these books have had an impact on our country in some way.

Jack Kerouac pioneered a movement that changed the face of literature and art forever and opened readers’ eyes to a generation of men who were beaten but not defeated.  The Dharma Bums tells about his venture into Buddhism and self-discovery.  Reviewers of this books have said it changed they way they look at life, at material possessions, at money, and inspired them to pay more attention to what really was important.  I’ve read On the Road and most reviewers say that Dharma Bums is much better.  I can’t wait.

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is one of those books I already know is important without even reading a word of it.  WV State Department of Education is pushing for 21st century learning skills and this book is one of the essential texts for understanding how much our world has changed in just the past few years and what we can do to prepare to become 21st century learners.  This book has been out for several years and I already feel like I’ve missed something by not reading it.

Blink is another one that I know is important.  Who can resist the title: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.  It’s tough for me to explain what this book is about, so I will recruit my amazon.com announcer friend to do it for me.

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of “thin slices” of behavior. The key is to rely on our “adaptive unconscious”–a 24/7 mental valet–that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us “mind blind,” focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to “the Warren Harding Effect” (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the “dark side of blink,” he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell’s ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. –Barbara Mackoff –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Sounds great doesn’t it?  Amazon users only gave it 3 ^1/2 stars, but that;s been true about a lot of books I have read and loved.  His other book, The Tipping Point only received 4 stars and I absolutely love that book.  That’s a lot coming from someone who shunned nonfiction works for years (except for autobiographies and memoirs).

So go out and but one of these great books.  Let me know what you think if you have already read them.

Things have been going strong for the past few days.  I know I haven’t posted since last week (April Fool’s Day, I think) but it has been a crazy week.

April 26th, I will be participating in my first dance recital, and I am terrified.  That’s a hard thing for me to say since I am usually pretty comfortable on a stage.  But dancing is not my area.  At first, I was told by the instructor that she doesn’t need me to dance so much as just be a good showman and “play my part” during the closing number. 

That closing number is “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from Hairspray.  And my “part…?”  Link.  That’s right… the hunky lady-killer, played by Zac Efron.  I get to dance a little dance (any dance from me is a little dance) with the dancer who is supposed to be Tracy, mouth the words to the song, and that’s it.  Oh, then, I stay on stage and bring on another dancer who is supposed to be Penny while I again mouth the words for Seaweed’s part and dance another little dance.  Then, I’m off stage and that’s it.  But wait… I come on stage again, flip a girl over my back (hopefully without killing her or breaking my back), and then off stage again.

No pressure.  The instructor just told us Saturday that this has to be the best finale anyone has ever seen.  But no pressure.

So that’s pretty much it right now.  I love this experience because it reminds me how stressful it can be to learn something new, to go out of your comfort zone long enough to try something new or help someone else.  This creates quite a bit of empathy with my students in understanding how they feel when I present them with a new idea or teach them a new skill and they have to learn it through practice.

Wish me luck with the recital.  I’ll post on it the night after it is over.

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

This morning, as I was driving to work, I saw the most perfect sunrise, the kind where the clouds are painted with brushstrokes of gold before the sun officially comes up.  It was amazing.  And as I drove the Interstate, it took every bit of willpower I had to keep my eyes on the road as the sun began to crawl up from behind the horizon.  It reminded me of the day at Virginia Beach when I woke up early, walked out to the ocean, and watched a group of dolphins cresting the water as the sun rose slowly and patiently.

I love days like this, when so far everything just seems to cooperate, when your eyes and ears are opened to so many different sights and sounds.  My eyes are usually opened (or at least I try to keep them opened) but sometimes the noise and clutter of stress drowns it all out.

But not today.  Something tells me this is going to be a special day.

Boredom has repercussions. I just answered a 33 question personality quiz and these were the results. Hope this code works:

Take Free Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Man, what harsh results. Especially the part about being “overly talkative… at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests…” Am I really that awful? I agree with the whole “overly flexible” and “improvised… at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.”

Come to think of it, I remember a conversation I had with a college friend that went something like this:

Friend: “You know, the thing I admire most about you is also the thing I hate most.”

Me: “What’s that?”

Friend: “You’ll talk to anybody. It’s like no one is a stranger to you and you know so many people. You’re like a politician or a celebrity or something.”

Me: “Okay? And you hate that… why?”

Friend: “You are under the mistaken assumption that everyone wants to or even needs to talk to you. You force your conversations onto people who may or may not even care what you have to say.”

Me: (pause) “Yeah, but… isn’t that how we became friends?”

Friend: (longer pause) “I said I admired it and hated it.”

So that’s me. “Overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.” But that is how I have made (and in some cases kept) 90% of my friends.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”