Waiting for Superman Not Worth the Wait...

For months I had been on pins and needles (well, not REAL ones!) waiting for this highly-touted movie to come out and save public education by bringing its problems to the table for rational discussion. I was so hopeful! What follows is most of my response to the movie in letter form, which I sent to a very dear old friend, Reiko Sekiguchi Chilcott, in hopes that my concerns would be passed on to co-producer Lesley Chilcott, Reiko's sister-in-law, and perhaps to Davis Guggenheim as well...

After viewing An Inconvenient Truth, and seeing how powerfully it brought the problem of global warming to the American public in a very real way, I had enormous hopes that Waiting for Superman would do the same for American education: Open the eyes of the public to the dire straits in which we now find ourselves. I have to say that, in spite of the excellent intentions I am sure that you and Mr. Guggenheim had, you have missed almost every urgent point.

I was a little nervous when I caught the early promotional programming on television. I watched the Oprah show devoted to introducing the movie, and saw more coverage on Education Nation. I was still very willing to go into the theater with an open mind, although my husband, an incredibly tolerant and intelligent man who has lived with an educator all these years, got up and left the room. His comment was that, unless parents were brought into the discussion as a salient aspect of the problem with American education, he wouldn’t continue to watch. As a California educator for the last 30 years, my main concern with that earliest coverage was that I didn’t see the issue of language being addressed, but I was sure it would come up in the actual movie.

It did not.

But let me get to some things that you got right!

First, let me say that I agree that bad teachers have no place in the classrooms of America. Personally, I have met not one educator in all my years teaching who would champion keeping a bad teacher in a classroom position. No one wants a “bad” teacher in any school. It’s interesting that Mr. Canada admitted that he was not a very “good” teacher those first couple years, but some students must have been subjected to his less-than-stellar performance until he became “a master teacher,” as he now calls himself. Teaching is a job with a ridiculously steep learning curve, and it stays hard despite the valuable experience gained through day-to-day work with students. There is no mention of the fact that the job itself is so challenging that a huge percentage of teachers leave the profession after only five years.

“Bad” teachers---those who simply can not teach, those who have no patience, tolerance, or compassion for children, those who are not willing to master the difficult task of classroom management, and those who have no interest in putting in close to 60-hour weeks on a fairly regular basis should not be in the classroom. But I’d wager to say that if the profession were truly respected and if teachers were paid what society purports we are worth, there might be more potentially “good” teachers banging at the door to be let in to the profession! As it is right now, many positions are left for entire years with a revolving door of substitute teachers because no one wants to take on the enormous load. My own children, whom I have encouraged to consider taking on teaching as a vocation, have said that they wouldn’t work this hard for such a relatively small salary. I say that the rewards are great in ways that can’t be measured with money, but they see me still grading papers at 11 PM, or at school on weekends, up at 5 AM on a daily basis, and they shake their heads. My son rightly says he’d never be able to buy a house in this area on a teacher’s salary. Let’s start, then, by adequately compensating teachers so that the pool of applicants is much deeper. A friend of mine in industry makes close to a half-million dollars each year, and I would have to say, I believe I work harder and my job is far more important, at least in my eyes, given society’s needs and the lives I touch. But she has said my slight salary is my own fault for going into “civil service.”

Yes, of course, I personally know ineffective teachers and some that are burned out, and there should be a much easier way to dismiss them. The “lemon dance” that you included with such mocking disrespect needs to apply to site administrators as well, and those who occupy the district offices. There are individuals in every profession who should not be there, and when a site administrator is absolutely wretched in his or her performance, the district does “the lemon dance,” and teachers, parents, and students suffer alike. What we have here is a problem that is the result of a poor evaluation process. It shouldn’t take a “rubber room” to get an incompetent individual out of any job, and yet, there should be some protection against arbitrary dismissal. I’d love to have been standing behind your Ms. Rhee when she made those life-altering decisions, closing schools, and firing principals and teachers with her balls of steel and her---did you actually say three whole years “experience” in the classroom? In my opinion, no one should be allowed within a stone’s throw of any administrative position without a good ten years in the classroom, yet she was allowed to make changes that would alter the lives and education of thousands of teachers and students? Her educational accomplishments should have been outlined in your film to give her a modicum of credibility.

I am not a huge union supporter, but I will tell you this with all hopes that you will believe me: There are very very bad administrators out there in the position of making the lives of teachers a true and daily living hell with the arbitrary “targeting” of individuals who don’t fall into line, politically. Heaven help the competent teacher who crosses a bad administrator! Suddenly, schedules are changed, extra or unpleasant duty is assigned, and other punitive measures are taken that force the teacher to fall under the thumb or leave. The union provides teachers some protection from this kind of administrator.

In addition, I noted that several times in the film, educators are pictured hugging students or touching their shoulders and backs as they worked. We at SJUSD have been instructed that there is a rigid “no touch” policy because teachers can so easily be accused of inappropriate behavior, and it is up to us to prove that we have been maligned. The union helps protect us from this as well. If you have 150 students each day, and just one chooses to accuse you of misconduct, what recourse is there? “He said, she said” is ridiculous. Most of us will never ever need union intervention, but we usually know someone who has, and we are grateful for the unspoken support, because we all understand that, being in a classroom with sometimes needy or unstable students, we are all at risk. Risk is a necessary part of working with children. The union also helps teachers who are struggling by giving two years of support to help them get their feet. This seems both fair and prudent, given the high cost of teacher turnover.

The teachers’ union therefore plays some important roles. Someone has to watch over districts where administrators tend to guard each other closely to the detriment of the schools. Someone needs to be there to protect teachers who find themselves arbitrarily targeted, for whatever reason.

So, here’s what you got absolutely right: There are bad teachers in the profession, and it should be far easier to get them out.

As for merit pay, or “paying teachers” for exemplary performance, I doubt that you will ever get fair, competent teachers to agree to it for one simple reason: There will never be an even playing field. Most proponents of “merit pay” would love to base the additional salary on how well a teacher is able to bring up test scores. How are you going to compare a high-end school with a lower-end school, socio-economically, where students come to school hungry, upset because parents are incarcerated, or from homes where someone is smoking crack in the evenings instead of helping them with their homework?

I teach alternative education, for students who have made poor choices in the past. My students this academic year are all Hispanic. All except one are from broken homes where they are expected to carry an enormous portion of the childcare responsibilities. All except one are on free lunch. None has a parent who has completed college. Two have come to me as eleventh graders without knowing their times tables. Find an excellent mathematician and have him or her develop a formula that would take all these factors into account, and then teachers might start considering merit pay. The only test scores that mean anything to me are California exit scores, the ones that will allow my students to graduate. I don’t give a damn about whether my students’ national test scores rise or fall; I hope instead to produce honest, confident, cooperative, tolerant, hopeful, and informed students, and send then out into the world, whether on to college or into the work force.

And before I leave the subject of merit pay, may I be allowed to mention the fact that thirty years ago, even before test scores were so high stake, some teachers actually cheated on the tests just so they wouldn’t look bad? I can’t even imagine how much uglier that would get should pay and/or job security be on the line! On top of this concern, how will teachers be eligible for merit pay, if based on test scores, when many educators do not teach subject areas that are mandated for testing. These teachers may enjoy the lack of stress that many of us feel we are under, but they would also be left out if merit pay were awarded for raising standardized test scores.

And a couple other observations…

The concept of home environment, culture, and language were never brought up in your movie. Maybe California is different, but I frequently have students who are many years behind in reading comprehension and general language expression because their primary language is not English. This is especially true of our Hispanic students, because in California, as soon as you leave school, you can easily fall back into your home language. People live their whole lives with relative ease in this state without English; therefore, many parents are not fluent English-speakers. My students have frequently been pulled to translate for their parents in court or to help with shopping. In addition, these frequently uneducated parents can not help their children with homework, and unlike many Asian cultures, which traditionally place enormous value on education and hold their children to extraordinarily high standards in academics, many rural immigrant parents not only have not yet grasped the value of education, but they can not model any kind of college-going behaviors for their children. Give me a classroom full of second-generation Indians or Chinese students in exchange for my Latinos, and watch my test scores go right through the roof! It’s not just the family support (the Chinese and Farsi-speaking families I have worked with often send their children to Saturday school to maintain their language and culture!), but it’s the strong, inherent cultural emphasis on education itself and the demand for success and the resulting family pride that help to push children academically. If you could bottle and sell that kind of attitude, the United States would be kicking Finland’s educational butt!

You can’t fairly and honestly compare today’s world or today’s schools with those of 50 years ago. When I was in elementary school, many of the kids had names like Hernández, Sánchez, Sekiguchi, and Tong, but not one of them spoke anything but English at school.

If I remember correctly, you included a statistic about how we have doubled pupil spending since 1971. Well, that was silly, too…Hasn’t everything doubled---or tripled, or more---since then? I think in 1970, a pack of cigarettes cost about $.40, and today it might run you $6.00 or more. So that little bit of huff-and-puffery was just wrong of you.

And I’m sorry, but that parent who couldn’t get hold of the teacher just wasn’t trying. We are fairly busy, and some are much better communicators than others. But teacher unavailability? We practically live at school, and parents are free to come and see us even during class time if they visit the office first. My students’ parents have magnets for their refrigerators made by me, and they include my school number, my home phone number, and my e mail!

There’s so much more, but…

Well, I had very high hopes that teachers wouldn’t get bashed yet again, and actually, I thought that Waiting for Superman ended up being more of a commercial for privatization (in the guise of charter schools) than anything else. And I have to say this: Had I known what was coming the last ten or fifteen minutes of the film, I would have left earlier or been standing outside with fliers in protest! To have set the audience up by caring so deeply for those children who were pinning their last hope---their very last hope, at the ripe old age of seven!---on a lottery system that “failed” them, and left them, and the audience, in tears, was just incredibly manipulative and embarrassingly mawkish. Good lord! No teacher in her right mind would ever give up on the possibility of every single one of those children getting an excellent public education! This is the United States! We are not quitters! I certainly thought that you led the families and those children astray by so ridiculously placing all of their dreams for a strong education and an incredibly rich future in academics on a colorful bouncing ball that would guarantee their entrance into a charter school! Where’s American gumption? Where’s the belief in America’s children?

I know where it is! It’s in every damn fine public education teacher I’ve ever known!

Respectfully yours,

CEA

WTF?

I hope that at least one person out there is as amazed by how fucking quickly the English language is changing. I mean, really!

It’s been ten days now---that’s sixty straight hours with my students---and they are almost defucked.

UGH! Sounds awful or painful, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s just the process of removing the legendary “f bomb” from their language, and I’m convinced that the procedure is probably even more difficult than painting a fine straight line with a thin brush after three cups of coffee on an empty stomach. It demands constant vigilance on both their part and mine. The word is so ingrained in their culture that they are barely able to communicate without it. Without "fuck," it’s almost as though someone’s been shooting their tongue up with lots of Novocaine.

I deal with this every year as a teacher of high school students whose vocabulary consists of the verb “to fuck” and every variation on it. These inventive students can turn the word into an adjective, an adverb, with abundant ease as an interjection (of course!) as well as a noun, and even exquisitely as an infix, where it becomes abso-fuckin’-lutely perfect! But in spite of its many creative uses, it really has to go.

So I spend the first couple weeks banishing fuck from the classroom, and it’s not even that I personally dislike it. I always let my students know that if, in the garage, a bowling ball were to fall directly upon my bare toe, it would be the first word out of my mouth, the very best word to exclaim, and loudly, in expressing the surprise of sudden and excruciating pain. But in the classroom, it just doesn’t work. We’re practicing daily how to survive in the real world, so I always use the term inappropriate rather than bad when referring to the word. I remind my students every day---sometimes many MANY times a day, depending on how stubbornly entrenched the word might be in anyone’s personal lexicon---that fuck is an excellent word to use with friends, but in public settings, especially where propriety and maturity are highly valued, it’s just never the best choice.

Somehow, in the last twenty years or so, fuck has wiggled its way beneath the tongue of almost every individual under thirty, and it springs out like an insanely exuberant jack-in-the-box at the very least provocation. When my children were young and they would still actually ride the ski lift with me without pulling their hoods down to hide their face, my head would swivel around to give young snowboarders---discussing the “fucking awesome air” they had just gotten---a peek at my very best “teacher” face, the one used to express severe disapproval. These days on Facebook, it’s one of the “tells” when I read status updates and comments. I can pretty much guess that if fuck is thrown around a couple times, the writer has only been alive since the merciful death of disco.

I went to Greece this past July and I rarely heard English, unless it was used in a very elementary fashion, and this made for an experience that was both exotic and full of adventure. There’s nothing like not knowing a damn thing about what is going on around you to make you feel free! For all those wonderful summer days, I heard language everywhere, but it was almost never English. Through pure proximity, I was privy to several heated conversations, but I couldn’t decode them. I was just an innocent, giddy eavesdropper, wondering what all the fuss was about, without any of the “valence” which automatically accompanies a working knowledge of the language at hand---or ear. This ignorance was indeed bliss! If there was a foreign “fuck you!” lurking out there, I never heard it.

The last day in Athens, we struggled through a convoluted boarding process at the airport, and I was hungry and grouchy as we finally reached our gate. The airplane was headed for Atlanta, Georgia, and I was further irritated when I could tell from the socks and shoes of those around me that we were in the presence of many, many Americans. But it really hit home on the jet way. A man behind me entered the steaming tube connecting the terminal to the waiting plane, and he was, well, just so extraordinarily expressive!

“Fuckin’ A, Man! This place is fuckin’ hot! Fuck ME!”

My first thought was, Oh, well said, Sir! and immediately afterward, my shoulders slumped and I sagged sadly and knew that I was, indeed, on my way home. Vacation was really and truly over.

Well...fuck!

Seven Broken Legs and Arms, Coming Up...

For any of you who know me well, since school recently started again, you’ll know exactly where to find me.

Yes, look up! That’s me! I’m up on the rooftop with an AK-47, and it’s loaded with sharpened number 2 pencils.

I’ve gotten this way every September for the last couple decades with a dreary regularity, because for the last fifteen years or so of my career in education, teachers never ever EVER get to start the school year without weight. Oh no! We start every school year the same way, with a big old, ugly-ass monkey on our back, and it’s called standardized testing.

I don’t have the slightest problem with testing. We all know that if you want to gauge how well you’re doing at teaching something, you test. It doesn’t even have to be with a number 2 pencil and a scantron sheet! It can be as easy as asking your students to demonstrate what they have just attempted to learn. The whole idea is to ensure that you don’t go one step further if the concept you’ve been trying to hammer home is still wobbly.

Now that just makes complete and total sense.

Let’s just pretend, for example, that as teachers, we’ve been asked to ensure that all of our students are able to strap on their own skis, board a ski lift, disembark at the top of the slope, and then ski down without smashing into each other, or into large trees or boulders. Even if just for safety purposes, no one in his right mind would even begin to move past the lessons on getting into skis and releasing them, because NOT being able to release them after a crash---where one leg has somehow managed to become firmly wedged behind one’s head---demands instant extrication through release of a ski, preferably in as painless a manner as possible.

So, a competent ski instructor, with humor and patience, would ask each of his students to demonstrate boot entrance into and release from skis before ever considering moving on to a skill more demanding.

It’s a test!

It’s designed to offer the teacher excellent information on how ready the students are to move on. If the entire class is lying in the snow making snow angels, sitting around weeping, or grasping their ankles in pain, it’s probably time to reteach!

The whole cycle of education is based on teach, assess, and then reteach; on the other hand, if everyone has the concept down, move on!

Now, I can only speak with some knowledge about the good state of California. Here’s what I think: Some nutball---and to be honest, I’m imagining someone who was a very poor student in school himself---got the idea that the way to make sure that every student in our public school system was learning what he should be learning, was to give every teacher a specific timeline that dictates exactly when each child must have acquired any given skill. They’re called Benchmark tests. By any given date, every student had better damn well be proficient at the measured skills or (Get this!) the teacher has failed!

So, grab your mittens and let’s head back to that ski slope. Ready? Let’s say there are twenty students (although most teachers would laugh at that ridiculously small number). Four of them have never even seen snow before, so they are spending a whole lot of time just staring at the vast, white, sparkling landscape. Six of the students were never taught the words boot, ski, push, catch, bindings, or release. Two students’ parents have recently been divorced, and another child’s mother was just incarcerated, so skiing is the last thing these three students have on their mind. Five of the students love the outdoors and are thrilled to be here, and they are raring to learn everything the instructor has to throw at them. And that would leave the two students who spent all last December’s vacation in Aspen with their folks, schussing down the black diamond slopes with glee.

(I’m not even going to open the whole can of worms that would show the public that at some schools in our district, almost all students in a classroom would have been skiing with affluent parents, perhaps taking private lessons, since they could walk! They’re giggling and singing “Benchmarks schmenchmarks...We don’t need no stinkin’ Benchmarks!” And they would be so right!)

But...Time for The Benchmarks! These are the tests that are rigidly timed throughout the year to ascertain which teachers are doing an excellent job at making sure all their charges are on target. (Administrators teach educators to actually call some of these students “targets,” as they are the ones at whom we should be aiming our absolute best efforts, because if successful, those pupils will earn the school coveted labels, like “proficient” and “advanced.”)

Oh oh. Those students---the ones who haven’t ever seen snow before, and those who don’t have the vocabulary to reach this first goal? Surprisingly enough, they have proven to be enormous slackers and have washed out completely. Not only can they not get into their skis, but they may have actually lost one somewhere!

And it’s the teacher’s fault! LOOOOOSER!

In spite of the fact that teachers put in extraordinary hours and work their heinies off to give every one of their students the opportunity to succeed, when the Benchmark scores come out, we all feel like abject failures. Okay, I can’t speak for anyone but myself: I feel like hell. I take a fresh black Sharpie and mark my forehead with a huge L.

But since I’m using the mirror as a template, it comes out backwards! UGH! Double loser!

So now what do the Benchmark creators demand that all these hard-working, compassionate, informed teachers do?

Move on.

Yes! Move on! Drag those kids to the ski lifts! Tie them on, if you have to! Get them up the mountain! Move it, move it, move it! There’s no way you’ll have those students skiing if you don’t hurry and get on to the next step in the process! They have to be skiing by the Big Test in May, fer cripessake!

*sigh*

I don’t know about anyone else, but I see educational broken legs and arms everywhere.

In fact, if I count back the years to when these imposed Benchmarks were first mandated, it coincides with my two of my current seniors who still haven’t mastered the concept of regrouping in subtraction. Could it be that, way back in elementary school, they were carried on to the next Benchmark material and test before they were actually ready?

Nah. Too freakish! Pure coincidence!

Hold Your Honk

I wouldn’t say that I’m an overly suspicious or cautious person when it comes to the world at large. I mean, when I step into the street, I expect drivers to see me and to slow up and even stop if necessary. As a rule, when walking, I don’t worry when I pass strangers on the sidewalk. I will usually make eye contact and sometimes even exchange a benign “hey” or head nod. I will admit I’d probably give pause if approached by a bearded man in a duck suit. I always think of one of Gary Larson’s best cartoons when eyeballing any very extraordinary character, especially if dressed in bright feathers or wearing a horse’s mane from his hat, like the gentleman I saw this morning outside Walgreens. Larson labeled these folks, “Nature’s way of saying don’t touch,” and I definitely concur.

I’m actually quite comfortable even in darkened places, like subterranean garages, where every suspense movie I’ve ever seen would lead me to suspect that someone is lurking there in the shadows. I’m an overly sensate person, so smelling a cigarette in an underground garage would definitely put me on my guard. Let’s face it, ignoring the scent of burning tobacco in a parking structure is probably the quickest way to ensure that you’ll be stalked, shanked, and moaning softly in a pool of your own sticky blood as it forms an intriguing Rorschach blot around your body.

So I was very surprised to be suddenly aware of---no, even more, aggressively wary of---the outside world after a recent surgery. I’m not sure if this happens to others, but there’s something about having open wounds on your body that just overrides any innate sense of comfort or trust in the outside world. Our sweet cat Chelsea came into my room to visit as I lay there recuperating with a “cough pillow” covering my bruised belly, and when she eyed the bed, gauging how much power she’d need to expend in her jump, I shrieked and bounced a rolled-up magazine off her head. I was instantly embarrassed and felt immediately sorry that I’d reacted so harshly as I watched her scuttle for the door in a sulking crouch. And yet, well, I felt fully justified.

So I had been lying around in bed for three days when I finally felt a certain panic, thinking that if I didn’t get the hell OUT of the house, I’d be stuck there forever, one of those crazy ladies whose interaction with the outside world is limited to whatever can be seen through two extended fingers inserted between the slats of the closed wooden blinds.

I decided to bend myself into a painful knot and get behind the wheel of my car. As a movement toward personal evolution goes, big mistake.

I hate perpetuating any stereotype, especially one as unkind as the portrayal of older folks as slow, maniacally cautious drivers, but with surgery, I was suddenly thrust into a world where it made absolute and perfect sense to watch out for the other guy, and I mean really really watch him. I came to a four-way stop and, when it was my turn to proceed, the driver on my left started to inch forward into the intersection. My eyebrows dropped into prehistoric cave-dweller unibrow fashion, and I had growled out a “Don’t even think about it, Motherfucker!” before I had a chance to blink. My fingers were tightened like monkey paws around the steering wheel, and in spite of feeling a little light-headed from this first excursion, I knew with a strange certainty that I could have torn that poor man’s head from his shoulders if I had been further piqued. My power came from something primeval, a savage reaction to a perceived threat of bodily harm.

I shocked myself. The language! The ferocity!

And as result of these adventures out and about in the world after surgery, I think I’m a much more compassionate individual behind the wheel. It’s been an entire week now, and although I wouldn’t say that my body is anywhere near being back to its “normal” self, I will say that I’ve gotten over that initial trauma to the system that sent my protective instincts into red alert. And now, as I wait for the driver ahead of me to finally, finally react to that green light that has been green now for what seems like an hour, I’m not angry. I’m not even too impatient. I am sitting there and assuming that it’s just the natural caution of a person who’s most likely trying to protect their vulnerable guts from leaving their body the hard way. It’s certainly not a bad driver---It’s just someone who has an overzealous urge to stay alive in a potentially dangerous world.

What Samaria You?

My friend Penny is an honest-to-God, real-life Southern belle. She says things like “y’all”---and “all y’all,” should the plural be needed--- and she knows a hell of a lot about heat, hats, humidity, and fanning oneself in an effective and attractive effort to stay cool. So when we planned our recent trip to Greece, while I was out here in California walking increasingly long miles in order to prepare for our excursion, she was doing the same, but in 100-degree weather, with even a short, five-minute stint in the sun turning underclothes to puddles. She was a real trouper. One of those steel magnolias.

We had planned---besides visiting the Acropolis, the ancient agoras, and the site where Socrates was supposedly jailed---to travel to Crete and spend the bulk of our vacation in ancient towns where we could easily walk to the Mediterranean, collapse, and submerge ourselves.

But first: The Gorge.

We had done our homework. The Samaria Gorge is an extremely popular 11-mile hike that begins some 4000 feet above sea level and drops until it meets the gorgeous, black-stoned beaches of Agia Roumeli.

It was said to be rigorous, but we had been training for it.

It was said to be hot, especially in July, but we had hats.

It was said to be treacherous, but we had…well, we had stupid ideas that we were invincible.

Before beginning our descent---in fact, even before getting off the early-morning bus---we had the fear of God put into us. Thomas, an experienced hiker, all sun-leathered skin and 165 pounds of wiry, taut muscle, gave us our “pep” talk. He warned us, in his heavy German accent, that if we had problems---bad knees, weak hearts, sloppy ankles, wobbly balance, or any condition that might make the hike a disaster, we should keep our fat asses on the bus and ride on back to Chania. If we had doubts? Stay on the bus. If we had a headache? Stay on the bus. If we had a small blemish in the middle of an otherwise pristine forehead? Stay on the frickin’ bus! What part of “Stay on the bus!” don’t you understand? No one is going to help you. No one is going to rescue you. You’ve all heard stories of the happy fat donkeys who will carry you out, should you tire? There are no donkeys, fat or otherwise! Get all ideas of salvation out of your head. If you start this hike, you will damn well finish this hike or be left to die in The Gorge!

Okay, so maybe those weren’t his exact words, but that’s what I remember him saying. Ask Penny. She was there!

And…well, we got off the bus.

Thomas had told us that for all eleven miles, we should watch our feet. Did we want to take a picture? Stop. Take a picture. Then walk on, but watch your feet. Did you hear a bird up above? Stop! Look for the bird. Say hello to the bird! Walk on, but watch your feet. Did you need to grasp your chest in pain at the difficulty of the trail? Fine, but stop first! Grasp your chest, catch your breath, start your defibrillator, if need be, but then Move on! And Watch. Your. Feet!

Poor Thomas. I’m sure he thought we were all quite thick---gigglers in the back of the class, extremely poor students who just chose never to listen. Penny and I saw several people within the first twenty minutes or so who ignored his advice, and gravity, we saw quickly, is a vengeful bitch. One gal slipped and nearly took five fellow hikers out with her.

We watched our feet.

Very quickly we separated from others as the trail dropped out beneath us. Penny and I chose to go at our own pace and would allow faster hikers to pass. We also chose to move quietly, so we would step aside and let loud, boisterous groups move past as well. We fell into a decent rhythm, and within four hours, we were at Samaria, an ancient town whose stone buildings and walls still stand. We stopped for a fifteen-minute lunch, refilling water bottles at the spring and watching the endangered kri kris come to eat from the hands of hikers who offered leaves from the trees overhead.

I might mention here, in passing, if you will excuse the pun, that we used the WC. I relished the opportunity to try to relieve myself whenever we passed these services, as we had been told that there would be only five sites over the eleven miles to do so. All hikers had been warned not to head off trail for “personal business,” so every WC we passed was a shrine, the devout gathering quietly in line to offer up the proof of their faith that there would, indeed, be another WC down the trail. Okay, maybe a couple hours down the trail, but still…Our gratitude was infinite. I was vaguely amused at the fact that at lunch, I was not pious. I was unable to offer up much at all. Looking back now, I might have taken that as some kind of an omen.

Or not! Because, then---we were off again!

And damn it, just three short minutes after leaving Samaria, I was almost run off the trail by a Greek riding a happy fat donkey while leading another right behind him! Neither the man nor the donkeys looked, however, as though they might even slightly entertain the idea of offering someone with a sore knee or a twisted ankle a lift out.

So on we went. We hadn’t been moving steadily lower for quite some time, so the excruciating and unremitting crash to our knees and the need to use our quads was no longer an issue. We were cruising through an area that ran right down the middle of The Gorge, and we were watching our feet always, as the trail wound up, over, and around what appeared to be dry river rocks. The sun was baking down on us directly now, as the trees cowered close to the cliffs in an effort not to shrivel up completely.

Five and a half hours in, Penny and I had a slight difference of opinion. It appeared to me that the ducks, left as a trail indicator, led right. Penny saw ducks signaling a left. I followed my ducks, Penny hers. I found a group of hikers throwing rocks at the trunk of a small tree, obviously delirious from the heat. I mean, who, if they were of sound mind, would choose to stand in 100 degree heat and throw hot river rocks? Good lord!

I doubled back and found Penny and…Well, here’s where everything gets a little fuzzy. I mean, first my hands got fuzzy and then my feet got fuzzy. I thought my legs felt very strange, so I told Penny I was going to sit down, and I shakily sank onto a rock off to the side of the trail. I shook my head to clear my thoughts, and the next thing I knew, I was viewing an artistic fresco, a scene with many shadowed figures standing over me. The sun streamed up behind them, as if they were all standing in a Grecian tableau vivant, their heads glowing with some strange but significant religious symbolism.

Penny says now I had been “gone” for about a minute. She said my eyes were open, my lip was twitching, and one hand was shaking, yet I just was not of this world. But you know Southerners: They can easily spin a right good yarn.

A gentleman from the UK dug out some electrolyte solution he had stashed in his pack, and he mixed up a liter for me, demanding that I drink. I was lying on my back in a field of hot stones, my legs now elevated. Hats and hats and hats and hats waved at me---yes, worshiping me, the Goddess Wussy! A handsome Greek man tugged off my shoes and socks and massaged my disgusting, dust-covered calves and feet with a cooling gel.

Most of the fresco folks moved on when they saw that these two heroes had brought me back to life. I mean, why stand around in the heat just to stare at a heap on the side of the trail? Yes, I had been resurrected, but no one seemed to believe it would happen twice.

Penny was discussing the BP oil spill with our heroic Greek, and how it had finally been capped. I took this as a sign that any real danger had passed, and I would probably live. In her best Southern style, Penny also mentioned that I would do just about anything for the kindness of a handsome stranger. I could almost hear her eyelashes batting.

We still had a quarter of the hike to complete, and those damn donkeys were nowhere to be seen. I stayed supine for the full twenty minutes the Greek had demanded, and by then the electrolytes were kicking in. I stood up shakily, and Penny asked if I would be able to hike out.

Well…Sure! Hell yeah!

Actually, I felt just fine, given that we had been hiking for frickin’ EVER in 100 degree heat! Penny carried my pack a ways, until she saw that I was able to function, and soon we came to the last WC. I was pleased to see that my offering to the gods of urine was far more substantial. I soaked my head with water from the spring.

And we walked on.

And on! And...well, you get the idea.

We passed the infamous Iron Gates, the name given to the narrowest portion of the Samaria Gorge where the walls are just ten feet or so apart. A tiny stream was running now down the middle, and it was amazingly refreshing. We were still a mile and a half from the beach, but we left the national park and immediately encountered a small café where Penny actually kissed the glass of the refrigerated case holding the ice cold Cokes.

As Penny says, Southerners sure do love their Coke!

And we walked on.

At three o’clock, we were finally sitting at the Kri Kri Café in the tiny town of Agia Roumeli. The waiter came over, took one look at us, and said, “You hiked The Gorge! So, did you pay them, or did they pay you?” I’m sure it was a joke that he told to every hiker who staggered out of the park, but it really made me think. We had actually paid to enter that park and to use that trail! I watched the faces of the other hikers who came after us, and there were many. None was smiling. Not one. They were haggard and bruised, and more than one of them was bloody, but they were not happy hikers.

It would be three full days before Penny or I could take a step up or down without a quick reflexive gasp. And yet…I’d do it all over again without a second thought. I was absolutely certain that this was so seven and a half hours after we had begun our trek, just as we finished the hike and flinched as we tried to bend our legs without wincing to sit on hard, wooden chairs.

I had no red, wrinkled, crying baby to show for my seven and a half hours of labor, but it’s there within me. I’ll treasure it always.

That "S" word

Let me first say, I am not a blogger.

Wait! wait! Don’t stop reading yet! Keep an open mind...

I admit, I love reading the ideas of others, sneaking into someone else’s soul and nosing about, looking for life clues, and I am often inspired by them, so I suppose I figured I’d try my hand at tossing my thoughts and feelings down on paper. Not real paper, as a friend of mine insists is the only honest way to go, just an application that opens and allows me to express myself quickly and easily. I think I’d like to say what’s in my heart and mind because...well, I suppose, at 57, I have a few experiences that might just help some poor schmuck or schmuckita who’s struggling along and wondering what the hell is happening in this life, questioning if their experience is just one awful anomaly. I guess I’d like to reassure that one person out there who may be thrashing around that I’ve been mired in the same shit, and it helps to stop and smell the---well, not the roses, but you get my drift---and take an informed look around (since you’re held fast there in the muck anyway), and then make a solid plan before you try to slog on through.

Okay, so, Reb and I were talking about the S word. Uh huh...Sex. I thought that might get your attention, but this isn’t about SEX sex as much as it’s about personal power. I suppose if I were an excellent writer I would have strung you along a little bit longer...

I recently had a cholecystectomy, which is to say that a surgeon filleted me, snagged my gallbladder when he was rooting around inside my guts with a sharp pair of scissors, and yanked it out through my belly button. Prior to the surgery, I had asked for advice on the procedure from Facebook friends. I found out that an alarming number of people, mostly women, have had their gallbladders stolen from them too, and most do not regret the loss in the least. I’m still pretty sore, and have a nasty bruised belly, so I am not so quick to forgive this body of mine that created a stone large enough to warrant the removal of a part of me that my acupuncturist swears will seriously affect my chi. At my age, and in my state of mind, I need all the chi I can get.

But let’s get back to the sex, shall we? So, one of my friends said that the procedure---the cholecystectomy---was a frickin’ cakewalk, and that she had come home the very same day and had some smokin’ sex with her sweet husband! Let me clarify here: She had four incisions cut into her belly, had been under general anesthesia for two hours, had been filled to popping with carbon dioxide gas, was bruised and swollen, and yet she went home and---instead of whimpering softly and being helped into bed in an earnest attempt to find a comfortable position in which to catch some well-deserved Zs---she hopped her man for a some hot, spicy loving!

Reb and I are trying to make sense of all this. I mean, no matter who you are, after years and years (and years and years) of marriage to the same man, sex just isn’t anything like what the movies would have ever led any of us to believe. For many women, if they are even willing to speak about it at all, it’s either a nightmare or a chore, a boring and predictable five to ten minutes a couple times a week that allows the woman to feel as though she’s done just enough---barely---to keep her husband from becoming a Gloomy Gus, pouting, and storming off to kick the dog.

So, how did ONE woman (and here I must say, she’s quite an extraordinary woman, but Kids, DO try this at home!) come to be exquisitely happy with her sex life, decades after marriage?

She took charge.

She’s always taken charge.

I myself have been, embarrassingly enough, passive all these years. For those of you ancient souls who remember the cartoon strip Peanuts, I have been forever trapped in the body of Lucy Van Pelt. In one telling panel, she asks her very wise younger brother, philosopher Linus, what our purpose is here on Earth. Without hesitation, Linus responds simply, Why, to make other people happy! Lucy immediately balls up her fists and screams, Someone’s not doing their job!

And there you have it: I’ve been forever waiting, expecting some other to come along and fulfill me, make me happy, complete me. Wasn’t that the message I had gotten from every Hollywood film on love and romance I had ever seen? Someone was supposed to come along and sweep me from my upright stance and carry me off to paradise. Yet my sexually-charged friend (while I was busy waiting, hands on hip, eyes rolling upward while tapping an impatient foot) has never stood around, not for a minute. She saw the man she wanted to marry, she pursued him, and she presented herself to the world, and to this man, as a sexy, attractive woman, in spite of the fact that she matches none of the silver screen’s leading ladies in appearance. She evaluated what she wanted---happiness, love, and a great sex life---and she’s been actively seeking and receiving it for years!

Damn!

So as surly as it makes me, I have to look this square in the face and accept it: The fact is, I make my life. I make me happy, or not. I’m in charge.

It’s a pretty powerful message, and one in which I thoroughly believe. It’s just that I’ve been craning my neck for so long, looking down the road and waiting for the regal white horse and the sexy, rugged stranger, that it will take a hell of a lot of work to stop my head from snapping around automatically in that direction when I’m in need of something, anything.

I really really know that no one needs to save me. I just need to learn to break the very bad habit of dropping this embroidered white hankie, expecting someone else to screech to a halt at a moment’s notice just to bend over and valiantly pick it up. It’s just a frickin’ hankie! How hard could it be to pick it up myself?