Fun and Games Dept

I have no desire to dress up like a dead person for Halloween. I don’t want to be a ghost, I don’t want to be a ghoul, I don’t want to be a zombie. I rather like being me and so on the Halloween Eve, I share a photo of who I used to be, when I had an unreasonable amount of hair on my face.

When having difficulty falling asleep, instead of counting sheep I mentally walk the halls of my elementary school, figuratively touching each door, remembering the room number and associating a teacher’s name to the number. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember and honestly, I’ve never shared this information until this blog entry. It’s been nearly two decades since I’ve set foot in the building and it’s been nearly 40 years since I attend a class there, but here I am, at age 48, able to walk the halls of that school and remember the layout, room numbers and names of the teachers that occupied those rooms. I might not remember what someone tells me in response to a question but there’s a lot of things that remain rock solid in my head.

In fourth grade I was selected for the Enrichment Program. The year was 1977 and this Enrichment Program, designed for gifted students, was new to the district. I was the only student selected in Miss Roser’s class (in Room 202) for the Enrichment Program. Three times a week I left my classmates behind and met up with a handful of other students in Room 210 with a very cordial Mr. Hazard, who was quickly replaced by Mr. Rayburn. The fact that I was the only student in my class participating in this program did not escape me. I was interested in electricity at the time and I was encouraged to play with light bulbs, science kits and those little computing Heath kits. On the days I didn’t leave the classroom for Enrichment I could mess around with my little electric experiments in the back of Room 202 while others worked on their seat work at their desks. Miss Roser wasn’t particularly engaged, in fact, I don’t think she really liked me that much and this extra bit of effort for this lone student in her 4th grade class probably rocked her world a little bit.

The singling out of me as a different student established very deep roots in my personality. In fifth grade, in Room 209 with Miss O’Rourke (who had never taught fifth grade prior to that year, she had always taught second grade up until then), I did my best to assimilate by being lazy with my homework, striving for Bs and Cs and the like. I still attended Enrichment across the hall in Room 210, again with the incredibly handsome (to me) Mr. Rayburn, but in fifth grade I was paired with two other students that were also considered gifted and they would go to Room 210 with me. Since Miss O’Rourke rarely had control of the fifth grade classroom, it was a welcomed reprieve from the chaos.

The last grade in our elementary school was sixth grade and I was still in the gifted program. I had long acclimated to the fact that I would be leaving three times a week to go back to Room 210 to work on various projects. That year we went to the nearby Nuclear Plant and we made a video based on Battlestar Galactica. It was the first time I was exposed to a computer, it was an IBM terminal tied to some timesharing network. I was given five or six minutes to type on the screen and the teacher (Mr. Rayburn had been replaced) was amazed at how quickly I could type. Apparently we used up all our time on the timeshare so I was given a typewriter to play with. It was the first time I used an electric typewriter, but at age 12 I was tested for typing speed and I typed just over 60 words per minute. People were amazed by this. For some reason I can’t remember the name of that instructor but I do remember him asking if I knew how to get to the Nuclear Power Plant as the school bus was en route for a field trip. I gave him complete directions from memory. He asked if I had been there before, I told him that I had not, I just knew maps really well. My directions were 100% correct. Looking back, I wonder if my Enrichment teacher that year was stoned.

My sixth grade teacher was supposedly the most popular teacher in the school but I could never figure out what all the hype was about. The girls thought he was cute (I disagreed, still crushed that Mr. Rayburn was nowhere to be found). He liked throwing the football across Room 220, usually bashing a hanging light fixture in the process, and I was always nervous that he would throw the ball at me and I’d miss it and everyone would laugh. That’s what happened on numerous occasions. He said that it would take a little more effort for me to be the man I should be and he’d throw the football at me more. I never improved at catching the football and I was happy when it was time to go to either band to play tuba or to Room 210 for Enrichment.

Earl and I were watching the latest episode of “This Is Us” on the Tivo tonight, and during the previews for next week’s episode, there’s a brief scene of one of the children crying because he just wants to fit in and not be different from the rest of the kids. Admittedly this evoked tears from me, sitting right here on the couch, because it brought up many memories, some of which I’ve shared just now.

In today’s world it seems like every parent thinks their child is a special little snowflake that is gifted and should be treated in a special manner. I never knew what criteria was used to determine if I was gifted; I could never find a correlation between me and some of the other kids in my Enrichment class. There were one or two that felt like they were as far off the beam as I was and I always felt a kinship to them. There’s a line in a song somewhere, “I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine.” We would have never won a popularity contest.

It was well into my adult years that I decided that it was just too time consuming and exhausting trying to fit into the crowd all the time. Even at age 48 I have to remind myself of this, though not as much as I used to.

I sometimes wonder if there’s Gifted/Enrichment Programs in schools today. I suspect there isn’t because it’s probably considered to be politically incorrect. But still, I wonder if there some young lad or lass pounding away on a computer, purposely underachieving to fit in with the rest of the class, with his or her dreams tucked away to be attained later in life.

Gosh, my blog is getting old. Here’s my first entry about National Coming Out Day, written in 2004. I think I was a day off back then.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are. (link)

William Meara speaks at a TEDx in Delhi about UnPlug: Having A Healthy Relationship With Your Phone.

I hadn’t planned on writing two blog entries on this 15th anniversary of 9/11, but this evening I spent some time listening to the ATC tapes from that day. As a relatively new pilot, this was the first time that I had listened to the Air Traffic Control recordings and had an appreciation for what was really going on with ATC that day.

I made it through a lot of the recordings (they’re available on YouTube) until I got to the recordings of United Flight 93, which ultimately crashed near Somerset, Pa. as a result of the actions and reactions of the crew and passengers of that flight. It was then that the tears flowed when it was apparent, even on the recordings, that the crew and passengers had made a purposeful decision to not allow United 93 to get to the diverted destination. The crew on the flight deck, knowing their fate, had apparently made the conscious decision to put that airliner on auto pilot and switch the radio so that it would default to external transmissions (instead of the intercom for the passengers). This is why ATC and other aircraft in the area was hearing about the bomb and the fake announcements the hijackers thought they were making to the passengers.

All of this is common knowledge today. But still hearing those transmissions, coupled with knowing what the courageous crew and passengers did to prevent the airliner from making its intended target, brought me to tears this evening.

In 2002 Earl and I visited what was at that time a very makeshift memorial to United Flight 93 near Somerset, Pa. I remember seeing the chain link fence covered in mementos and seeing these two memorials at the site.

I hope that if I am ever in a similar situation that I will have the courage that the crew and passengers of United Flight 93 exhibited that day.

Earl and I have pretty much decided that when Earl retires in a year or two, we’ll be moving to a smaller house elsewhere. I think I have him talked into looking for a Mid-Century Modern home when we go house hunting. I would really like something like this:

There’s little doubt that my love for this style of home was inspired by my grandparents house, built in 1959. When my grandfather died in 2005, the house was sold by the estate. A man purchased the farm to convert it to a hunting camp of sorts. The house has seen better days.

A late 1950s ranch would fit the bill perfectly. I’d love to have 1950s touches like a central vacuum system, an intercom system, a kitchen with the oven built into a a brick chimney, lots of light, windows high and windows low, etc.

I will be very a happy man when this dream comes true.

As a freshman in high school I failed the New York State Regents Exam in Earth Science with a 59. I passed the course and earned credit toward my science requirements for my graduation, but it was a “local” credit, not a Regents credit. I opted to not take the exam again the following August, once was enough. I ultimately graduated high school with a New York State Regents Diploma. I don’t know if that carries any weight in the world.

One of the reasons that I didn’t do that well in Earth Science was because I remembered it to be quite boring. We would be sitting in class talking about rocks and the position of the sun and seawater while a thunderstorm was coming in off of Lake Ontario, battering the windows with driving rain and impressive wind. We’d have four feet of snow on the ground, all new since the previous day, but the teacher would just ramble on according to his preplanned lessons for the day.

I wanted to be out in the science, not sitting around talking about it.

I have always been interested in weather. If I wasn’t spending my money on foolish things I’d set another webcam up in the back yard and start recording weather events in this area. Over the past couple of days I’ve done some storm chasing. We had a cluster of storms pass through on Saturday that Earl and I chased around a bit. On Sunday I spent much of the day reading and looking for better data sources of weather. Last night I chased again, driving into a thunderstorm that lacked some punch but brought us some much needed rain.

Three photos taken within two seconds:

Part of the reason I enjoy chasing storms is the adrenaline rush. I suppose it’s an earthbound extension of one of the reasons I’m a private pilot, because it’s something I can do and I think it’s an awesome thing to do. But a better reason for watching, chasing and experiencing storms is because Mother Earth never ceases to impress me. Last night while standing in a field I could see the full moon to the East and an impressive lightning show to the West simultaneously. It would be nearly an hour before the full moon would be obscured by cloud cover, only to reappear in the sky a mere 30 minutes later.

Science is awesome!

Since renewing my interest in weather, storms and the like, I’ve been taking online classes on observing weather patterns, how storms form, how to make an accurate assessment and subsequent report of a storm and how to safely witness impressive weather events. A lot of this compliments what I learned to become a private pilot. I’m looking forward to doing further study this winter so I feel prepared to do some serious storm chasing next spring.

Earl and I went to my 30 year high school reunion last night. The festivities were held in a remodeled, yet empty, bar/restaurant space along the main street of my hometown. There were 98 of us in the graduating class, 37 graduates attended the festivities. Earl and I had planned to go for an hour or two, we ended up staying nearly six hours and didn’t get home until midnight.

We had a hell of a lot of fun.

It was kind of cool being able to casually chat with members of the other school cliques without fear of being chastised in the cafeteria for stepping out of the assumed school hierarchy. There was only one classmates that I didn’t recognize. Several teachers and administrators joined us, as well as some folks from adjacent classes. As I said, we had a hell of a lot of fun. I made quite a few Facebook connections today.

As the class of 1986 grows older it’s good to know that we’re doing alright in the world. We’ve lost a few of our classmates along the way (may they rest in peace) but on the whole we’re not doing half bad.

I look forward to seeing them again; rumor has it that I’m helping organizing the 35th year reunion.

The class photo from 1986, on the steps of the courthouse.

All of us on the same steps in the same relative spot in the photo last night. I couldn’t kneel down like I did in ’86 because of shrubbery improvements.

My blog turned 15 years old this weekend. My first post was written on August 4, 2001. I talked about flying, the field days in my hometown and how I was going to maintain an “online journal”. I hadn’t discovered the term “blog” yet.

I can vividly remember writing that entry in Microsoft FrontPage, in a web page specifically formatted for that entry. Such a manual existence on the web at that time. It would be several months before I had blog software and the like.

Heck, it would be several weeks before I discovered the word “blog”.

Occasionally I need to crank up this video early in the morning to find my inspiration. The lyrics, music and beautiful voice of Mama Cass Elliot in “Make Your Own Kind of Music (Yum Club Remix)” inspire me in so many wonderful ways.