MadMup.com

Years: 1987-88
Teachers: Mr. Braughler, Mr. Flaming, Mrs. Jackson, Miss Swank

The word “sophomore” is apparently a combination from a couple of Greek words that translate into “wise” and “stupid.” There could be no better word than this to describe the experience of tenth grade. Sophomores are wiser for having lived through their freshman year but are still really, really… dumb. You’ve heard the word “sophomoric” applied to something stupid? It’s the perfect description of one’s behavior in this year of school.

Let me give you a perfect example. My friend Phil P., middle son of two faculty members at the college my high school was associated with, lived a few blocks from school. Many times after school while waiting for my brother to finish up with some after-school activity, Larry K., Phil, and I would walk to Phil’s house so he could drop off his schoolbooks and then we’d walk a few more blocks to Shopko, usually to play Shinobi, one of the best videogames of all time. One day that we did this, Larry had a Roman candle with him – you know, one of those fireworks that, when lighted, shoots out balls of different-colored sparks and a whole lot of smoke? – and was fooling around with it. We were in Phil’s upstairs room and Larry was taunting Phil by holding a lit lighter a few inches below the fuse. Phil was … wound a little tightly as a general rule, and Larry’s actions were garnering the exact sort of responses he was looking to get (Larry’s already-established reputation as a firebug certainly didn’t help). The teasing was going well … until the fuse lit. Apparently a couple of inches isn’t enough leeway to allow. So now there’s a lit Roman candle giving off sparks and smoke in Phil’s room, there’s me sorta laughing in disbelief, there’s Phil yelling, “Put it out! Put it out!” and there’s Larry blowing on the thing and smacking his other hand over the top of it in an attempt to put it out. I’ve never seen a person’s eyes go as large as Phil’s did right then. Somehow Larry was able to extinguish the candle, but the whole upper floor of the house was full of smoke. We opened windows and set up a fan to blow the smoke outside and somehow convinced Phil to continue on with us to Shopko. When he returned home afterwards (without us), there were apparently many questions asked and at least one edict handed down: “No more Larry in this house.” Frankly, that wasn’t a bad rule of thumb, and it was a rule that Larry’s own father had considered many a time, I’m sure. Larry and his family ended up moving away during the second semester of our sophomore year, and I’ve only seen him once since then.

Our school got a new math teacher this year and it was because of my experiences in math class my Sophomore and Junior years that I was planning to go to college to become a math teacher. (Taking pre-calculus my Senior year disabused me of those notions rather quickly.) Not only did she present math in an interesting and easy to understand (for me, anyway) way, she was also willing to listen to the common travails and thoughts of the common sophomore. There were more than a few classes devoted to discussion of some pressing topic other than math, as I recall. Geometry was the math for sophomores, and I took to it like ducks to white bread. Proofs, 3D graphing, trigonometry, the whole deal. I loved it. I remember helping my friend Malia (more on her in a bit) out one evening with 3D graphing. To help her visualize it, I grabbed a cassette case she had lying around and showed her the X, Y, and Z axes on it. It helped, but it also amused us to no end because the cover was for a Def Leppard album (Hysteria, I believe), exactly the sort of music that was verboten at our particular parochial school. It actually may have been that fact that helped her recall the facts when she needed them on the final test.

Malia lived in the same town I did, about 20 miles from the school. I don’t remember exactly when we started riding to school together, but I remember that my brother started driving him and me to school when I was in eighth grade. I’m sure proximity played some part in it, but Malia and I became fast friends. She was fun to be around, always quick to laugh or to listen. Over the next couple of years I would spend a lot of time at her house, as her family was as interesting and as willing to open their home.

In the second semester of our sophomore year, Malia was one of the first in our class to get her driver’s license (I still remember that her birthday was March 31, mostly because Phil’s was April 1 and we always joked that their birthdays had been switched). My brother was a Senior, as was my friend Josh’s brother. Josh’s family lived about a half hour from school, too, albeit in a different direction, and he and I were both going to have difficulty getting to school for the week our older brothers were going to be gone on their Senior Trip. It worked out that Malia got her license and a plan was made for Josh to spend the week at my house and for Malia to take us to school, a perfect solution – except for the fact that we were sophomores. One day (I think it was Tuesday, but I don’t know why I think that) we talked new driver Malia into driving from our town (20 miles south of school) to Josh’s town (20 miles east of school) and then finally to school, very late, of course. To this day I’m not sure why we did it, other than to celebrate the freedom that having a similarly-aged driver brought. By the way: this little story is only now being confessed to. We made up some story about car trouble back then. Any parents, former teachers, or administrators reading this should consider this a plea for forgiveness.

This year was also the first year for Eric N. at our school. He’d been homeschooled up to this point, if I remember correctly, and his parents wanted him to be able to have the high school experience. He and I hit it off pretty quickly, and became good friends for years, and, in fact, we still correspond every so often. Eric was – how shall I say? – wilder than I, and hanging out with him brought out crazy tendencies, but mostly of a non-destructive nature. We never blew up cars or anything, but we did go out “bird hunting” at least once. It was the one and only time I’ve ever shot at another living being (on purpose).

I went out for football again this year, and still didn’t really have a “place.” I played a little more, mostly on defensive positions where Coach Akins felt I couldn’t cause too much trouble.

I also went out for wrestling this year, and I was in the 145 lb. weight class. (I, in fact, weighed 145 lbs. my whole high school career, and at least one year into college. Alas, those days are behind me. Sigh.) The problem with wrestling in the 145 lb. weight class that year was that there were two other wrestlers in that class: one of our top wrestlers (Paul Z.) and my brother. I didn’t wrestle much that year. There was one tournament, though, where my brother and I were able to enter a tournament as “alternates.” I pinned my first guy (my one and only pin and my one and only victory in my wrestling career), and ended up wrestling Paul for my second match. He made short work of me, of course, and I actually ended up wrestling my brother. The ref must have thought we were crazy, since we talked during the whole match – Michael giving me suggestions on how to “work that arm” and whatnot, me mostly kind of laughing at the silliness of having to wrestle my brother. He ended up beating me on points (I was difficult to pin) and I think that was probably for the best.

It was a busy year for me, sports-wise, as I also went out for baseball. Again, I didn’t play much, but the week that the seniors were gone on their trip we younger members got to play. I don’t think we did very well, and I very specifically remember an actual occurrence of a hit ball going through my legs. I guess that’s a cliché for a reason, eh? I made up for it my Junior year, but I won’t ruin that for you right now.

The remaining big memory I have from my sophomore year is our English teacher, Miss Swank. For some reason, we ran roughshod over her. To this day I’m not sure how or why, but we constantly were talking and playing jokes on her throughout almost every class. On one particular day, someone brought a water gun into class. It was Jeremy V. that had it in his possession when she demanded it, and for some reason, he pulled the trigger when she was standing in front of him. His story after the fact was that he knew the gun didn’t shoot straight and he was sure it would miss her. Unfortunately for him it didn’t miss her enough and the few drops in her hair spelled his doom. I think that was Jeremy’s one and only dismissal from any class ever.

What really amuses me is that a few years later, my friend Eric – who had been as much a prankster in Miss Swank’s class as anyone – met and eventually married Miss Swank’s younger sister. I’d like to have been around at those first few family gatherings…

Here, for the curious, is how I looked as a Sophomore in high school:

Me in 1987

This was my first year of wearing contacts, and my first year of having a crewcut. It's actually grown out in this picture - at its worst my brother said I looked like a war criminal. So there’s that.

Next up: Junior year. The only preview I’ll give you is there’s a car accident in it.

Labels: school memories

7 comments

Ed Horn passed away earlier today after battling a rare form of cancer for the past nine months. While I didn't know Ed very well, I did know him, and I've known his wife's family for 20+ years. Ed was one of those "good guys" you hear about - loved his family, loved God, always had a smile, concerned about you no matter his situation: a good guy. Sure, he wasn't perfect. No one is. But guys like Ed make you understand God a little bit better. Knowing Ed even the little I did was a privilege.

His wife Kelley made daily updates on their website so people would know how he was doing, and in every picture, she and Ed were smiling. Through every report of every setback or more bad news, they realized that they were in bigger hands than their own, and the God who carried them this far would carry them however much farther they were meant to go. Watching them through these last months has been a challenge to me and I want to thank them both for showing God's grace and strength.

Shortly before Ed passed away this afternoon, his wife and her brother read II Corinthians 4:16-18 together:

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Ed is in a better place now, with his God, his Maker. Thank you, Lord, for letting me know Ed, even just a little.

Please pray for Kelley and their two kids at this time. While there is joy that Ed's suffering is over, there is grief over his loss. 5 comments

Slowly but surely I’m cutting back on recommending things to people. Sure, I have the same natural urge as you: if I find a good thing, I want others to find it, too. But I’ve decided to stop doing it.

It’s a learned response, really. Lately it seems that anything I suggest is not only not liked, but hated. I can only hear “How can you like that?” so many times before I realize I’m better off not saying anything at all.

Now, of course, I’ll still talk about things I like, it’s what we do, after all - we talk about things we like and debate about things we don’t – but I’m slowly trying to get “Hey, you oughtta…” and “You should…” out of my speech patterns.

I think the best way to take suggestions from someone is to get to know them. If they’ve given opinions on and the opinions are close to your own, then you can feel a bit safer taking suggestions from them in the future. I’ve witnessed conversations online about the Spider-Man movies where people have said, “These are bad movies.” I instantly know from that one sentence that I’m not going to give much heed to their opinions on further movies, particularly superhero ones. There’s a huge difference between saying “I didn’t care for the movie” and “It’s a bad movie.”

I recently watched Superman Returns and loved it. The next day I read Roger Ebert’s two-and-a-half star review of it and disagreed vehemently with him. Then I read the local reviewer’s take on it and found he was saying the exact things I thought about the movie. (This is the same fellow I used to go to sneak previews of movies with down in Indy, and I’ve found I agree with 90% of his reviews.) When it comes down to it, if I’m deciding whether or not I want to see a particular movie, I’ll give the local guy’s opinion way more weight than Roger Ebert’s.

It’s not just movies, of course – books, desserts, travel destinations, anything. The more you know about that person’s opinion history compared to yours, the more credence you can give his current opinion.

So, find out what I like and don’t and decide for yourself if my opinion means anything to you. I’m tired of suggesting things and being mocked for my opinions, and I also don’t like suggesting things people end up not liking. Caveat emptor, and all that. 3 comments

In preparation for my trip to Canada, I purchased full-blown iPod. I figured I would like to listen to music on the flights and I also envisioned spending most of my time in Canada alone, so I thought it'd be a good purchase. In the Mac-PC debate I fall pretty squarely on the PC side of things, but I understand that people like Macs and I have no problem with people using them (though I do have a problem with Mac users implying I'm stupid for using PCs). While iPods aren't technically Macs, they are made by Apple, so I felt a little dirty buying one.

In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that this is actually the second iPod I've purchased. The first was a 1Gb Shuffle which I am trying to trade to any interested party (make me an offer!).

I bought a 30Gb iPod because the Shuffle wasn't getting it done for me. There was no screen and it doesn't hold much. I knew these things going into the purchase, but I thought it'd be okay. It wasn't. I found that I wanted something that could hold all my music so I could listen to a particular album if the mood struck. I looked at how big the collection on my hard drive was and it was 6Gb already, so an iPod Nano wasn't going to be enough, either. Enter the 30Gb iPod.

So, the first thing I did after purchasing it was rip my entire CD collection all over again. I used Windows Media Player 10 on a Windows XP machine to rip them to MP3 format at 192kbps bit rate, and each CD took a little over 2 minutes to rip. (I tested Windows Media Player 11 Beta, but it took closer to three minutes per CD, and I didn't use iTunes because a) it's quite a bit slower (though I don't have the actual time here for comparison, sorry) and b) I don't care for iTunes' layout, design, and way-of-use.) When I was done, my entire CD collection weighed in at almost 19Gb.

Well, okay, not my entire collection. As I went through the process I realized there were CDs I wasn't ever going to listen to (orchestral versions of Beatles songs, for instance), so I didn't rip them.

Once I was done ripping what I was going to rip I transferred them all over to my G4 Mac that otherwise does nothing. I figured if I have to use iTunes to transfer my music to my iPod (and I do – though other programs have been written to do this task, they haven’t worked well for me), I might as well use its native environment (and this way I wouldn’t have to use iTunes on my PC – I had to re-install Windows a few weeks ago because iTunes had messed my computer up something fierce).

I didn’t end up using my iPod on my trip very much, as it turns out I like to read on flights and the people in Canada were extremely good at keeping me “in the loop” and having me hang out with them. The purchase wasn’t a total loss, though, as I’ve started taking it to work with me. Summers at my job are quite busy, as I have to upgrade (and therefore be physically at) every computer in my school – that’s somewhere north of 400 computers. It’s not difficult, but it is time-consuming, and having music helps the day pass faster. I’ve used a CD-player boombox in the past, but it was bulky and a pain to carry around. The iPod sits on my belt quite nicely and holds more music.

I started out listening to a “Favorites” playlist of 125 songs, but soon started listening to whole albums. Earlier this week I decided to start playing the whole collection in random order. Here’s a sampler segment from that playlist:

1. “Toy Soldier” – Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons
2. “Across the Universe” – Rufus Wainwright
3. “That’s Amore” – Dean Martin
4. “Somedays” – Paul McCartney
5. “Market Day in Guernica” – Katie Melua
6. “My Bologna” – Weird Al Yankovic
7. “Who’ll Stop the Rain” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
8. “True Companion” – Marc Cohn
9. “Do You Know You Are My Sunshine” – The Statler Brothers
10. “It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It) – The Rolling Stones
11. “Young at Heart” – Joss Stone
12. “Thank You Girl” – The Beatles
13. “The Times They Are A-Changin’” – Simon & Garfunkel
14. “Kamp Krusty Theme Song” – The Simpsons
15. “New Slang” – The Shins

It can be a little jarring, and I will admit to skipping songs if I’m not in a mood for them.

I’ve decided, though, that are just some things that I don’t really want on the playlist. Though I like Danny Elfman, I’d rather have words to sing along to. So, earlier this evening I took some albums off. Soundtracks: gone. I like Christmas music, and even listen to it off-season sometimes, but not right now: bye, bye Debbie Boone and George Winston.

I kept some other stuff even though it’s not well-suited to random play. Mandy Patinkin’s first few albums were medley-riffic, and hearing just one piece of the medley out of place sounds quite odd, but it’s still good stuff. Concept albums are also an ill fit with random play. Albums like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band weave song into song throughout the whole album, and later Beatles stuff like Abbey Road has little song fragments and even talking in-between songs. It gets a little surreal on my iPod.

I’ve whittled my songlist down to 3792 songs currently. iTunes tells me that’s a little over 9 days’ worth, and it’s a better mix of the variety and sameness I’m after. I’m sure there will be more cuts later, and I doubt spoken-word comedians will make the next one.

My playlist, like my life, is a work in progress.

Note: Please do not turn the comments section into a Mac-PC debate.
Note: Thanks to the CT for getting me thinking about music.

Labels: music

6 comments

The World of Warcraft is a big place. There are two large continent-type islands that are broken up into smaller state-like areas, and it can take a long time to get from one area to another. While there are “flight paths” from some areas to other areas, you have to actually walk to that endpoint before you can then fly to it from previously-known flight paths. Even so, some hippogriff flights can take 10+ minutes. Of course, walking the same path might take hours, so it’s definitely an improvement.

Everyone in gameworld also starts the game with a hearthstone that allows for a quick transportation “home.” Some of the state-like areas are large enough that running back to the main town in that area can take 10-15 minutes, and that’s not even including the possibility of getting killed on the trip. As a player progresses through the game and gets to higher-level areas, the hearthstone can be set to these new areas – specifically, players can ask the innkeepers in a town to set their hearthstone to return them to that inn. Then, wherever the player is in the entire world, when they activate their hearthstone (this process is called “hearthing”), they will be transported to whatever inn is currently set as their “home.”

Out here “in real life,” the concept of “home” means different things to different people. The first thought people tend to have is the actual physical house or apartment they live in: “I’m headed home” from a party or from work or from anywhere else. This physical location changes as we grow up and move out of our parents’ house, out of our dorm rooms, out of our first cheap apartment, and so on. We refer to each new place as “home.”

“Home” is also a feeling, though. Feeling “at home” is different than being at home. “At home” is more about being comfortable, about fitting in. Think about the times you’ve felt “at home” when you were nowhere near where you lived – you felt like you “belonged,” didn’t you? Whether there was someone who was going out of their way to make you feel that way or it was just that you didn’t feel excluded or extra, there was something about the situation rather than the location.

Billy Joel said it this way in his song “You’re My Home”:

Whenever we're together, that's my home
…
Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
High up in the hills of California
Home is just another word for you

Granted, he’s more specifically talking to someone he’s in love with, but the concepts are the same: we’re most at home with people we’re comfortable with. In World of Warcraft, if you’re in an inn, you become “rested,” and when you leave it, you’re a more effective warrior/hunter/whatever until your rested state has worn off. “Home” is like that out here, too: we get recharged enough at home to go out and do our jobs and whatever else it is that we need to do. If we don’t have that “home,” we wear out and everything gets harder to do.

You’ve heard the phrase “You can’t go home again”? Obviously you can return to the place where you grew up. I think the phrase is actually talking about the expectations and feelings associated with growing up. The main point of growing up is to get you where you can function on your own out in “the world.” The nurturing and correction are unique to the growing up experience, and they engender a specific set of feelings and memories. Once you’ve left that environment, you’ve also left those feelings. When you return home and visit your school or your church or friends from “back then,” you have memories that guide your expectations of how things will be, and they’re having the same sorts of thoughts – you’re still that kid who threw a banana peel out the bus window and had eraser fights in the church basement. You know that you’re not, but the memory baggage is too much. You can’t go home again, indeed, but I think we spend the rest of our lives looking for the adult equivalent.

When someone tells me to “make myself at home,” I’m rarely able to do so. I’m sure they mean “act as though you were in your own living space,” but I’ve got too much else attached to the concept of “home” to be able to relax enough to do it.

I leave you with a few quotes about home:

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers. -Aristophanes

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. -John Howard Payne

My home is not a place, it is people. -Lois McMaster Bujold

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It was a few months ago that I wrote a song for Snakes On A Plane. It was just today that I finally recorded it with a friend.

Here's a suitably musician-y picture of Scott and I during the recording session at his studio/house today:

He teaches at the school where I work and plays publicly in places around town. He does mostly Dylan and Guthrie and blues stuff, and was more than willing to aid me in this endeavor.

I am not entirely pleased with the way my singing turned out, but it is what it is.

So! If you're interested, here you go.

Labels: music

6 comments