The Cheap Seats

I knew this day was coming. There was no way I could avoid it, not forever. Oh, I could go along pretending it was a long way off, whistle a naive tune, but I knew better. I have sensed D-Day approaching for over a year. But only now that the day is actually here - now that IT is no longer some hypothetical someday, but an honest-to-goodness reality - do I realize how helpless I feel. For you see, the plain truth is . . . . . . my daughter likes a boy. How did this happen? And when? Wasn't she half my height only yesterday? Wasn't I reading her The Lorax just a moment ago? Gone is that little girl who annually came with me to my 7th grade classroom on her days off from school and tried to do the same work as my students. She has been replaced by someone who is now the same age as those I teach. I never thought the day would actually come . . . The day itself had plenty of excitement already. My daughter was cast as the eldest child, Liesl (“I am 16 going on 17 . . .” Ho...

For the past week I have found myself mired in thoughts of childhood. Not my own youth, but those of my own two kids, as well as many of the students who are currently in my classroom each day. I know this distracted musing is the direct result of the tragic death of a former student last week in a house fire – me mentally shaking my head at how swiftly a life that has barely blossomed can be suddenly, brutally stamped out before it had a fair chance to truly flower and grow. And for most of this past week I haven’t had a clear idea of what I wanted to write next. The occasional cruel randomness of life has a way of taking the humor out of day-to-day situations, at least for a while. Finally, I asked myself why I write at all. Like any voluntary endeavor, we do things with the hope/belief that the process or result will bring us slivers of happiness, satisfaction, maybe even pride. Much of what adults do on a regular basis is “important”, “significant”, even – from time to tim...

I am a teacher. In 15 years on the job, I have had over 2,000 7th graders come and go through my classroom. I'd like to be able to say that I can remember all of their faces and names, but I can't. Sure, many kids stand out, but many more have been forgotten in the sheer enormity of their numbers. And while the yearly onslaught has greyed my memory, two enduring qualities have lingered – fragility and resilience. These two opposing qualities – representative in so many young people – described one former student in particular. From the moment she entered the hallways of our building four school years ago, to the day she moved on to the high school three years later, Makayla Corbin was regarded as a sweet, kind and gentle girl.  Her smile was genuine and infectious, lighting up her entire face. And Makayla was a good friend to classmates. The kindness and loyalty she gave to others was returned to her tenfold. One might define Makayla’s qual...

I have been in the working world now for half of my life. The first third of that time was in the legal field, the rest has been as a middle school teacher. Each of these jobs has had a different culture and set of expectations for professionalism and performance. But I was very fortunate to learn that most universal – and transferable – workplace lesson early in my career. I am speaking of course of the art of How to Look Busy . None of us can truly succeed in work or life without mentors. They are the great teachers - Jedi Knights – working and living among us. When it came to the craft of Looking Busy , my sensei was a frumpy little man named George. We met nearly 20 years ago. In hindsight, perfect timing. George was not physically intimidating. Truth be told, he was rather unimpressive. Short, paunchy, balding, a bit of a hypochondriac. Personally, George was deceitful and selfish, reveling in others’ misfortunes and quite frankly, entirely uncomfortable to be around. But t...

I was stopped dead in my tracks last week by an innocent question I posed to my daughter as we were driving to her dance team rehearsal. As soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I was struck dumb by how odd my request would have sounded a generation ago. Back then my query would have been met with a puzzled, "Are you nuts?" expression. But now such a question is commonplace, passing the lips of millions of parents, millions of times a day. "Do you have your phone with you?" Twenty-five years ago such a question would have involved carrying a "mobile" phone the size of a shoebox, the kind that a moviegoer sees a soldier in a war film using to call in an airstrike. Now phones are the size of a deck of cards and can do so much more than send and receive calls. The present truly is more incredible than we ever dreamed the future would be. The commonplace question I asked my daughter got me thinking about other watershed moments in recent hist...

In case you’re keeping track (and I hope you’re not), I have referred to myself as middle-aged at least once in each of the first five posts to The Cheap Seats blog, not to mention the tagline, Musings of a Middle-aged Man . Without realizing this, I have apparently struck a nerve with some readers out there (“Bergy, I’ve got a bone to pick with you!”) whose age and mine are in the same ballpark. So naturally, I had to make it this week’s post topic – what is middle-aged anyway? But first let me back up and explain my reasons for referring to myself as middle-aged. Obviously, by the numbers, I am middle-aged. In fact, 45 is on the downside of the current life expectancy for the average American male at birth (75.6), or female (81) for that matter. Even by mid-century, the life expectancy for all Americans is estimated to rise only another 5-10 years. Regardless, thankfully this isn’t 1900. According to all reliable census data, at birth the average American man and woman could exp...

If you’re like me - middle-aged – you may occasionally define yourself by what you think you can no longer do, rather than by what you haven’t done yet. This process – what I call “The CAN’TS ” – is subtle. It begins casually, perhaps as a wistful backward glance at a lost opportunity or road not taken. Before you know it, the CAN’TS have gained a toehold on your attitude and outlook. I’m not referring to the many things we CAN’T physically do anymore; – that list is plenty long - I mean the wish list items we have scratched out not because we completed them, but instead because we lost sight of them. They became blurry during the years when we might have been raising children, working longer hours or paying mortgages. Simply put, “life” occasionally gets in the way of living. We all deal with life’s challenges and adversity. Some people even endure tragedy. If you have lived to a certain age, you may have already experience both. If that’s you, you had every right to lick your ...