So I spontaneously assigned them a biography for homework.  Who was Prufrock?  Why was he so filled with malaise and uncertainty?  What had made him so “deferential, glad to be of use / politic, cautious and meticulous / full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse”?

Students love to make up stories (see “Why don’t you have your homework?”), so their assignments came back amusing, depressing and surprisingly intuitive.  Two students (not friends) reached the exact same conclusion: Poor J.’s sister had died in a tragic accident when he was a boy.  He was never the same, they wrote; he always blamed himself and bitterly mourned the untimely loss.

The names they chose for this fictional, ill-fated younger sibling?  Emily and Abigail.

Halfway through the summer I had lunch with a high-school friend and his mother who were in town.  Carole was unlike any other friend’s mother I’d ever met: “young at heart” sounds cliche, but she really was dreamy in the way of an adolescent girl, constantly perched on the edge of some alternate reality.

We all sipped our juices. (Well, I barely touched mine; I’d watched the barista make it, with three apples and a huge hunk of fresh ginger, and it made my head want to explode.)  She asked me how work was going, and I told her truthfully that I didn’t like the job.

“Humanity is so strange,” she mused. “People come in . . . waves.”

I thought this was probably over my head, philosophically speaking, so I didn’t think much about it until my next shift.  Then I started to notice how right she was.  There were long, nearly unbearable periods of boredom, pacing the marble floors and obsessively spacing hangers and tucking in tags.  And suddenly, my hands were so full I wasn’t even sure I was getting credit for every sale; I didn’t have time to walk each client to the register, as I had to be in the dressing rooms assisting the next one.  This happened even at the oddest times: not just during the lunch rush, or on weekends, but smack in the middle of a weekday morning, when the crowd consisted of separate parties of one and two each.

I’m no sociologist, but you must have had the experience of getting in a short line only to see six people behind you a moment later (or, more unhappily, to be one of the six who simultaneously decide to bring their shopping to a close.)  I suppose, at heart, we are more group-oriented than we realize.

For a teacher, the Sheep Effect can be frustrating.  The first year I taught Creative Writing, the class was capped at 12 with a waiting list.  The second year, it reached 12, but several students dropped it in the first week; I finished the year with 8.  The third year, four signed up, and one dropped it halfway through.  This year, no one signed up at all.

If anything, I promoted the class more eagerly as I saw the numbers start to dwindle, but my efforts seemed to have an adverse effect.  My greatest fear happened this year: there was no class at all, no pool from which to choose work for the school’s literary magazine.  I’m running it as an after-school club instead, and given the overextended schedules of our students, you can guess how successful that’s been.

But the students’ course selection forms are due this week, and suddenly the wave is cresting again: half a dozen have dropped by to ask me excitedly about the course, and as many teachers have remarked that they’ve been signing off left and right (it’s an honors course, so requires the consent of their current English teacher.)  I can only hypothesize that since so few have taken it in recent years, the aura of mysterious enticement is back up.  Perhaps it will break in a year or two, and we’ll be right back where we started.

Why do people work this way?  Jack Handey was right.  Mankind is a mystery.

All of which converged
into a random still life,
so fastened together by the hasp of color,
and so fixed behind the animated
foreground of your
talking and smiling,
gesturing and pouring wine,
and the camber of your shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,
brushed on the wall of my skull,
while the tone of your voice
lifted and fell in its flight,
and the three oranges
remained fixed on the counter
the way that stars are said
to be fixed in the universe.

Thank you, Billy Collins.

In my mailbox at school today was a postcard promoting these vocabulary books.  Excerpt:

Can you resist the allure of Edward’s myriad charms—his ocher eyes and tousled hair, the cadence of his speech, his chiseled alabaster skin, and his gratuitous charm? Will you hunt surreptitiously and tolerate the ceaseless deluge in Forks to evade the sun and uphold the facade? Join Edward and Bella as you learn more than 600 vocabulary words to improve your score on the *SAT, ACT^®, GED^®, and SSAT^® exams!

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so I followed the advice I give to my own students and made a pros and cons list:

Laugh:

• Seriously?  Combining studying with pleasure reading?  We might as well try to slip butternut squash puree into their macaroni and cheese.
• I’ve read all four books, and I don’t remember once running into a word I didn’t know.  If someone needs a vocabulary primer to help them understand Meyer’s language, I shudder to think of what they’d do with Fitzgerald or Whitman.
• What makes charm gratuitous?  I think it’s more gratuitous to specify surreptitious hunting.  What would non-surreptitious hunting look like?  A trip to the grocery store?

Cry:

• How are any of those words considered vocabulary for high-school juniors?
• Most of my high school juniors probably couldn’t define those words without the accompanying crutch sentences.
• Will we ever expect students to read challenging works on their own, picking up vocabulary naturally along the way?

The jury’s still out, but I’m taking votes.  I’m eminently practical, so who knows — maybe it will work, and if so, kudos to the author for capitalizing on the latest pop-lit franchise.  But I’m also kind of a snob, and . . . Twilight?  In the classroom?!  The thought makes me shift uncomfortably in my chair.

• Go Tell it on the Mountain (James Baldwin.)  I have a funny history with this book.  When I took the Praxis test before beginning grad school, I glanced over the reading list and discovered, in distress, that I was missing quite a few modern classics.  (Is that an oxymoron?  Well, anyway.)  I subsequently read Things Fall Apart, which I loved; The House on Mango Street, which I loathed; and about four or five others.  I ordered this book too, but it never came, so I applied for reimbursement by Half.com, my standard go-to for used books.  Then, a few months later, cleaning out my basement . . . I found it, still in the package.  Oops!  (Thankfully, the reimbursement request never went through.)  So I had literally no background about this book, other than that I “needed” to read it.  I was immediately sucked in by the story of a poor preacher’s family in Harlem and the spiritual / mental / emotional burdens they carry.  It’s gripping, raw and haunting storytelling.  What I like best about it (Rob read it too, and echoed this) is that although the author obviously has a lot of familiarity with the Pentecostal faith about which he writes, it’s never clear whether he buys into it or not.  That fine line between doubt and faith makes him human, which makes the story that much more compelling.

• The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway.)  Maybe I’m the only American alive who managed to make it to almost-30 without reading Hemingway, but I’m mentioning it without embarrassment just in case there’s someone else like me out there.  If you’re at all dithering, turn off your computer and go read it.  NOW.  The story of an old fisherman, down on his luck, is beautifully told: suspenseful yet thoughtful, a portrait of latent friendship and borderline existentialism.  And it’s short enough to read in an afternoon — most fittingly on the beach, but in a pinch, in your living room.

• The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner.)  Seriously?  That’s all I could say after about a hundred pages.  Here’s how it begins:

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.

AFTER about a hundred pages, I figured out that the narrator was mentally retarded, “they” were playing golf, and Luster was looking for a quarter he’d dropped earlier because he needed it to go to a show.  Good God, this novel is confusing.  I actually didn’t finish it; I got about halfway through, but at that point I wasn’t interested enough in the story or the characters to continue.

• This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald.)  Yes, I was on an American author kick, partially because my American Literature students are gearing up to start their term papers soon, and I’ve only read about half the books they’re going to write about.  I was so unimpressed with this one that I convinced the student who had selected it to choose a different book; I’ve never been a huge fan of Great Gatsby, and this book focuses even more on the pompous pretensions of the American nouveau riche.  Again, I quit about halfway through, and again, it was because I just didn’t care enough to keep reading.  This is highly unusual for me, although you might not guess it by the list.

• The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis.)  Okay, so I’ve mentioned them many times before, but what I haven’t mentioned is this unbelievably excellent set of audiobooks.  Just about every well-respected British actor reads one: Patrick Stewart, Kenneth Branaugh (swoon!), Michael York, Derek Jacobi, Lynn Redgrave . . . and all use different voices during the characters, a feat that’s impressive in any novel, but absolutely staggering in the Magician’s Nephew scene where Aslan creates talking animals for the first time.  If you have children, buy this.  If you can’t, I’ll buy it for you (it appeared under several trees this year.)  In fact, buy it even if you don’t have children; I’m about halfway through and already looking forward to starting it over.  And there is something utterly satisfying about hearing faintly, behind the story of the Dawn Treader, the crashing of the surf just a few feet away.

I’m sure you can guess the rest.  I woke several hours later, burning up; my head felt like it was about to explode.  Although I was pretty sure I had a fever, when the thermometer beeped at 102, I burst into tears.  I couldn’t bear the thought of missing church on Christmas.  It was already a strange Christmas, as  we were preparing to go away immediately afterwards, so we had curtailed the decorating and entertaining quite a bit.  And, of course, my sister — the official Queen of Christmas — was overseas, so our family was incomplete.

The real problem, though, is that I don’t know how to be sick.  Unlike Flannery O’Connor, who famously wrote that she had “never been anywhere but sick,” I very rarely get sick, and when I do, my instinct is to tough it out.  I only have five days of leave from school, so I’ll only stay home if it’s dire.  But with the flu going around, I knew it would be irresponsible to go out in public with a fever.  So I stayed home, sad but resigned, and contented myself with a snuggly cat (fevers are her favorite) and a chat with a friend who was also sick and lonely, but worse off because he’s overseas.

Later, my sister called from Seoul.  We chatted for about an hour, and when we got ready to hang up, I asked hesitantly if she wanted to sing some Christmas hymns with me.  “YES!”  So Rob and I sang on speakerphone and she joined in softly from all the way across the world.  There were probably tears on both ends (I know there were on mine) but I was reminded that whatever else happened, it was still Christmas.

So I’m still under the weather, and in the past few days have been making a mental list (for next time) of things that bring me a little comfort.  Try one or two the next time you’re down for the count:

Linen Handkerchiefs. I built up a stash of these several years ago when I was planning to make a quilt out of them.  The quilt project never took off, but I found I enjoyed using them instead of tissues.  They’re more environmentally friendly, of course, but they’re also just nicer.  They don’t disintegrate into shreds after being used a few times, and I love admiring the embroidery around the edges, which are often hand-sewn.  And they’re pretty cheap!

Tea. I favor caffeine-free versions most of the time; I have enough trouble sleeping as it is!  Celestial Seasonings’ teas are great, but my favorite is Throat Coat, which my friend Zenaida turned me onto years ago.  It’s pricey, but worth it — the herbs really do keep your throat feeling better even after the heat has worn off.

Soup. Even more than tea, when I’m sick I crave soup.  From what I’ve read, I understand the body’s natural craving for heat and salt, and a little bit of fat and protein, is a good thing to feed.  If we’re fasting, I’ll make vegetable or tomato (this stuff, straight out of the can, is incredible — thanks, Nees!)  If we’re eating meat, I’ll pull out a container of homemade chicken or beef stock from the freezer.  Broth is wonderful alone; with some rice or chopped carrot and celery, it’s even better. Stock is a superfood — everything about it is nourishing, including the stuff we still don’t understand!

My new favorite recipe is one I found in a book by Isabel Allende. It doesn’t come straight out of a container, but the tiny bit of effort required will make you feel a little more in charge.  Start by sauteeing a tablespoon of grated onion and a clove of crushed garlic in a tablespoon of butter.  I guarantee your appetite will start to return at this point!  Stir in a pint of beef stock and heat through.  Turn off the heat and add two tablespoons sherry; salt and pepper to taste (I’m pretty generous with both.)  Ladle it into a bowl, and while it’s still piping hot, crack in a raw egg; it will cook it into wispy ribbons, a little like egg drop soup.

Aromatherapy pillows like this one (mine was made by someone who no longer produces them, but this looks awfully similar.) Filled with rice and lavender for scent, you can warm it in the microwave until it’s just right to drape around your neck or head or tuck around your toes under the covers.  I wore mine almost constantly on Christmas, to and from two sets of parents’ houses.

Books. I can’t watch TV or use the computer for long without getting a headache, which is probably a good thing.  When I’m sick, I don’t even want to look at a screen for five minutes.  Old-fashioned books are much better, and I’m lucky (or foolish) enough to have a constant stash of interesting books I bought, always thinking I’d read them right away.  Right now I’m reading this one, which I think was a gift from last Christmas.

My optimism is starting to return, probably in part because my parents’ annual caroling party is in a few hours.  If I had to miss church, at least I’ll get to hear some of the hymns I love so well, static-free.

I e-mailed him to ask about shipping costs, but when he learned I was a teacher, he offered to send me a free copy.  It’s so humbling when someone decides you deserve respect, or maybe just a break, solely based on your chosen profession.  A great honor and a great responsibility.

Bad move, Mr. Duncan.  One more reason to avoid public schools.

(A dubious thanks to Rod for pointing this out in an utterly discouraging post.)

What a perfect poem for a drizzly, gray day.  A day when school wheezes and grinds itself back into motion, inevitably, after a delicious three-day break.  A break that seemed to stretch out languidly into eternity, right up until the moment I realized I needed to get dressed for class.

Perfectionism and procrastination are a lethal combination.  I should vacuum or take a shower, but to do so correctly — the best, most deliberate and thorough way — would take a long time and more energy than I can summon at present.  So I wait and wait until the opportunity disappears altogether, and I have to smile and open the door to a dirty carpet or tie my hair back in a scarf and make the best of it.

This morning, though, I was showered and dressed and ready to leave a full half-hour before I needed to be.  So I stared at my reflection in the mirror, satisfied but not pleased, and removed a tiny glint of silver from my scalp.

One hair.  Barely more than an inch long.  I pulled it more out of curiosity than vanity (I actually think gray hair is very attractive) and turned it over and over in my hand, studying it.

I am not yet thirty, but I’ve found one of these every few weeks or so for about the last six months.  And I don’t fear aging, but there is a melancholy that accompanies any death, even the death of a youthful coiffure.  In fact, I’m fading at both ends: my feet ache constantly, terribly, a result of plantar fasciitis that set in around the same time.  Until our insurance changes and I can get a referral to a podiatrist (I’m self-diagnosed at present) this means no more running.  It hurts too much.  I love to run, and I know it’s good for me, but Time has won, at least for now.

Enter Prufrock, closer to my personal ethos than I could ever articulate on my own.  I have been thinking about him all day, longing to embrace his words of  despair, self-doubt, worried indecision, fear of obscurity:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

But among these, there is also language so compelling it demands we pay attention, here, now, or we will miss the beauty all around us — even as we march inexorably onward with our flaws intact:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

I’ve been in love with Prufrock since Mrs. Luke read him to us in tenth-grade English.  Sometimes I think I am Prufrock.  And if I am he, I’m okay with that if my malaise sounds half so stunning in print.

“They can crack the alphabetic code,” he said. “But they can’t stay focused and comprehend what they’ve read. And if they run into something that doesn’t seem right to them, they simply don’t believe it. I’m not talking about differences of opinion; I’m talking about facts. They don’t even form an argument against it, they just decide that it doesn’t feel true to them, so it must not be.”

Last weekend’s conference was saturated with quotes like this. My favorite was from a teacher who discussed 1984: it’s fantastically depressing, he said.  It’s about guilt and shame and lies and it’s awful.  I love it.  But I don’t care whether you love it.  It’s not about that.  It’s about the value of the novel.  What is the value in reading about surveillance, government?  If you can see value in it, your personal feelings about the book are really irrelevant.

Another teacher showed us all this cartoon.  There were a few scattered giggles, and then he asked us (about 200 in that session) honestly, if we’d “gotten it.”  About 25% raised their hands (I was not among them; although I did know who was in the cartoon, I didn’t get the football connection.)  The presenter explained that although we were all [presumably] intelligent and literate, we were missing a meaningful connection to the work.  This, he explained was how kids could read “Catcher in the Rye” but not understand Holden’s struggle with identity.  They get the words.  They just don’t get the deeper meaning.

Partly, it inspired me — the methods he and others had pioneered, ways to involve and engage and motivate their students, were incredible.  Partly, it depressed me.  The idea that kids need to be tricked into caring about learning and reading and absorbing information, even if they don’t personally love it or even value it — well, it’s disheartening, to say the least.  Guys, this is what school is about: learning for the sake of learning, learning because it’s a healthy and smart and interesting thing to do.  It won’t all be relevant, and very little of it will be relevant right now.  You have to believe that there’s an end to these means, and if you don’t, why are you even going to school in the first place?

I’ve written about this before, my kids’ aversion to facts — but it still galls me.  It’s also a little frightening, the way they can pump out bland, canned opinion so readily, but be so reluctant to do an interview, look up a statistic or otherwise prove what they’ve just thrown out into the open as Truth.  Frightening, but not surprising.  They see and do it all the time.  No one’s to stop them from unleashing a tirade of expletives and bad grammar upon a blogger or even a newswriter with whom they disagree.  No one will demand proof of “You Suck” written under a Youtube video or iTunes playlist.  Why do I think they will leave all that behind when they enter my classroom?

It’s all most troubling, and I don’t have a lot of answers.  Most days I just try to show them my own enthusiasm and hope that rubs off!

*I know, the CC post is five days old — ancient, in blogspeak — but I am just catching up on everything I missed over the weekend.  Irony of ironies, it turns out that we were both in Philly this weekend, just didn’t realize it until Monday!