J.P.

I have one of the sweetest work gigs I can imagine. I am a staff manager of five, I get to play with computers all day, and I like the company I’m working for. Plus, I get to work from home. I’ve been working full-time from home for over six years. It takes discipline, both to stay focused during work intervals and to not engage in work stuff too much in the non-traditional work hours.

When I go for my morning walk I am always aware of folks rushing out of their homes into the darkened Chicago morning. They’re making their way to the nearest ‘L’ stop or to their car parked nearby. As my morning walk usually takes an hour or so, there’s a lot more vehicular traffic in the latter half of my walk versus the first half. I think about these folks driving to their work. I then start delving in philosophical territory.

I wonder what it is about American culture that compels us to live in such reliance on our cars. Folks in our neighborhood have plenty of public transportation options: the ‘L’ has plenty of stops nearby, METRA (the commuter train) passes through from southern Wisconsin to downtown Chicago, and CTA buses are everywhere. We live in a very commuter connected part of the city, it’s one of the reasons we chose this neighborhood. Yet, many folks opt to drive their car to The Loop to work in one of the skyscrapers, or they drive to a work location in another part of the city, one that may well be accessible by public transportation.

Driving a vehicle reinforces one’s sense of independence. I get that, I know that feeling, and I drive for fun more often than I probably should in this era of Climate Change and the like. And it’s Climate Change that weighs on my mind when I’m thinking about this. Does working from home really help reduce my carbon footprint? Am I burning more energy in my home than I would using public transportation to get to an office building?

I might have to do some reading up on this so I have a better grasp of the numbers. Knowledge fires up passion when I’m intrigued. And learning is better than flipping through Twitter or something.

I still wondering how these folks can drive their cars to work everyday. I really don’t enjoy driving in the city. I find it incredibly annoying. Everyone is forced to the lowest common denominator of driver ability and my patience wears thin.

I shall now embark on my commute from the living room to my home office.

Love where you live. It’s as simple as that. Even though it’s been 2 1/2 years since our relocation to the third largest city in the United States, I can not believe that we are lucky enough to live in such a wonderful place.

Yes, I grew up in the country. I lived on a farm. My high school graduating class was in the double digits. But living in the city is perfect for us and I still can’t believe I have such an honor.

Bell and Howell 16mm Movie Projector. Not my photo.

My second grade teacher was Mrs. Hayden. Situated in Room 108, Mrs. Hayden and second grade is probably the year I best remember from my elementary school years. Spelling tests included the word “deer”, when used in a sentence. We added and subtracted multiple columns of numbers. I was in the most advanced of the reading groups (there were three) and, if I’m remembering correctly, we went through two books of the Lippincott Early Reader series (maybe C and D?).

We had our desks arranged in rows and I sat in the back corner by the sink. Occasionally Mrs. Hayden would let me turn my desk sideways against the wall as I worked on my “seat work”. I wasn’t in trouble or anything, I think she just knew I needed a change of scenery once in a while. She smiled nicely and chatted with us in a way that made us feel like little adults. I remember one lunch time she told us her first name and that her husband was a barber. She lived in the next town over and drove through the snow to come to school everyday.

Mrs. Hayden knew I was a little geek; I was fascinated with the built-in vacuum system that we’d hold the blackboard erasers against on Friday afternoons to clean out the chalk dust. When the clock stopped (along with all the other clocks in the school), she let me go down to the office to turn in the attendance cards, where I watched the repairman work on the clock hanging behind Mrs. Youngs’ (the principal’s secretary) desk.

But most importantly in my second grade mind, Mrs. Hayden designated me as the person to run the Bell and Howell (or sometimes Singer) movie projector when it was time to watch 16 mm movies. At the beginning of the year she fumbled with the self-loading mechanism of the Bell and Howell projector and then I asked her if I could try loading it. I was successful and from that moment and throughout the year I ran the movie projector. I wore this as a huge badge of honor and only on one or two occasions did another person run the movie projector that year.

Perhaps my disappointment in those one or two occasions is why my desk was turned against the wall next to the sink.

Of all the teachers I had during my elementary years through the end of Grade Six, Mrs. Hayden was the one that really “got” me. I felt comfortable around her, I felt like I learned around her, and I excelled at my studies that year. She never seemed to get angry when someone was misbehaving, in fact, I don’t remember any incidents of anyone misbehaving that year.

Today our home in Chicago is situated near the old Bell and Howell factory complex where they made those movie projectors. During my walks of exercise I often walk by “Bell & Howell Lofts” and I think of Mrs. Hayden. She retired nearly 20 years ago. I found her profile on Facebook a few years ago and she is still as pretty as I remember her to be back in 1975.

I hope when she looks back on her teaching career she smiles about her experiences with all those students as much as I do when remembering how she encouraged me to be a little geek.