The View from Here

Small Changes

            I told you that my goal for this year is to make small daily changes that will improve my life or health. Well, I can’t say that I’ve consciously thought about it each and every day, but as January comes to an end I’m happy to see some little improvements here and there.

            First of all, I’m walking again. I’ve been getting up at 4:30 to walk on the treadmill. It hasn’t been easy. I spent over a week just training myself to get up at 4:30! (In case you want to know my secret I set the alarm 5 minutes earlier each day until I reached my goal.) I’m only walking for 20 minutes, but it’s a start. Right now I just want to make it part of my routine. There’s a whole new set of tasks- drink water, get dressed (sweats, shoes), put in a CD, walk, drink water- to add to my already busy morning. But I’ve noticed a difference in my stride and pace as I walk the halls at school. I think it’s definitely going to be worth the effort.  I feel more energetic and confident. I hope that eventually translates to “thinner”, but I’ll take energetic and confident. I’ll keep you posted.

            Second, I’m drinking less soda. I didn’t say I’ve given it up! I’ve tried that several times and even succeeded for months at a time. I always start again. I guess it’s a good thing that alcohol has never been my weakness. I think about the  alcoholics in my family and I understand in some small measure the difficulty of  giving up bad habits. I’m not sure why Coca Cola appeals to me so much. It could be the sugar or the caffeine. Whatever it is, I do know that when I’m thirsty I need water, plain old water. And I’ve been drinking plenty of it!

            I’ve been watching less television and spending more time writing. I’ve entered a few contests and worked on some things that have been “on the back burner” far too long. I’m trying to train myself to write even when I’m tired and conditions are less than optimal. Blogging has been great for that! Writing here keeps my mind working and ideas flowing.

            I’ve always felt guilty about not spending more time in Bible study. I devoted my time and energy to getting a Master’s degree in education. Why can’t I find more time to study the Bible? Well, I’ve come up with a partial solution- the New Testament on CD! Yeah for technology! I have an hour+ of travel time each morning. I spend some of that thinking and praying. I spend part of it rehearsing songs for church when I’m getting ready to do a solo. I spend a few minutes listening to the national news. The rest is usually spent listening to jazz. Well, the jazz has been bumped to my evening commute and I’m devoting some morning time to Bible study. I’ll let you know how it goes! I’m not really an “auditory learner”, but some of it is bound to sink in.

            That’s it. I haven’t made any real changes in my diet. I haven’t joined a gym or vowed to give up ice cream. Oh, I’ve cut back here and there, but I’m giving myself time to adjust to walking. Small changes.

Tomorrow will be an exciting day! It’s the 100^th day of school and cause for celebration. It’s also the first day of one of my favorite months. February is my birth month. It’s also birthday time for three of my best friends and one of my brothers. Which reminds me-my brother was born the day after my birthday and was supposed to be my “present”- a sister.  Oh, well, mom tried. And he’s been a good brother. I think I’ll keep him. Happy Birthday to Marilyn, David, Carole, and Mary Jim! Let’s celebrate ALL month! We deserve it!

*P.S. That’s me on my first birthday. I wondered at first why the photo is in such bad shape. It has several scratches and blemishes that had to be fixed. Then I realized the poor thing is 55 years old! How could it be in good shape? LOL

First Daffodil

The first daffodil bloomed this week. No, I’m not making this up. I’d show you a picture, but not only do I not have a digital picture (hence nothing “instant” around here), but I also have a tradition of giving away the first daffodil. I gave it to a dear friend as a “promise of good things to come”. We are working on several community projects together and we need all the encouragement we can get!

There are three more daffodils this morning. Daffodils are my annual sign that I can survive winter. I’m NOT a winter person. My winter in Iowa was torture. The few truly cold winters we have had here have been endurance tests for me. I like the normally mild winters and occasional freezes of our area. I know our freezes are harsh when we are in the middle of them, but if we look around at other regions, they are brief annoyances by comparison. So…daffodils surviving the winter and peeking their little yellow heads up give me hope that I’ll make it. Spring is just around the corner.

I’m already looking at garden catalogs. I don’t know why. I absolutely don’t need anything. I have more plants than I can care for now. I’ll have hundreds of daffodils and irises and poppies blooming in the spring. Perennials will start poking up everywhere.  I have three flower beds in town that I’m managing. All of them are full of bulbs. They just need a few bedding plants and an accent plant here and there. Stuff I can get at WalMart, the local nurseries, or Lowe’s. So why do I spend hours looking at plants in catalogs? Just in case. Just in case there is something new I could add. Just in case there is something I don’t think I could live without. Just in case I get a new garden someday.

Gardening is an addiction. It’s admired and encouraged because people like to look at pretty flowers. But it’s an addiction nevertheless. I want to see flowers everywhere! I want to convince everyone in my town to grow irises so they would all bloom at the same time and make a wonderful display. I want to plant crape myrtles along the highway. I want to landscape the local park. I want to put a garden next to the school. I want to throw poppy seeds out along the road so they would grow in the median. Sometimes I drive by a house that’s devoid of landscaping and I think “What is WRONG with those people!” Then my next thought is, “maybe I could offer to help them”. When I retire I’ll probably go around annoying people with my gardening ideas!

I’ve also begun cleaning up some of the debris of fall. Lots of dead leaves and limbs and dried flowers are scattered around the yard. Everything is brown and dry at first glance. But I have to rake and hoe gently. There are little bits of green showing here and there. I have to remember where bulbs are still hiding. I have to be careful not to disturb areas where poppies will be sprouting. People used to "clean" with fire. We drove by one of the fire areas yesterday and there is already a “green aura” over it.  The new grass is appearing. It will probably flourish and be more beautiful than before. Fire is one of the natural elements of nature. It’s only because we have built homes and inhabited the plains that it has become an evil element instead of a cleansing one.

The sun is shining this afternoon so I think I’ll go fill the bird feeders and check on the daffodils. I’ll post a picture from last year just so you can see the promise of spring. I can’t wait!

Don't Do It!

      

              I have a pet peeve that I’d like to share with you. Before I do I just want to protect myself from friends and neighbors and strangers on the street by saying that I LOVE Oklahoma and I LOVE living here and I hope to stay here for a while. So please, no tar and feathers or transportation offers.

            My pet peeve is a little phrase that I hear almost daily, and it’s a small part of what makes people in other areas think that Oklahomans are hicks. I hear professionals say it, I hear it on the news, I hear it at the grocery store, I hear it at church, and I hear it on the playground. The phrase is “I done it”. Of course there are other variations- “he done it”, “we done it”, “she done it”. All wrong. And the sound of those words has the same effect on my ears as fingernails on a chalkboard.

            Okay, I’m not the grammar police and I don’t always use the right word at the right time. Editors often complain that I misuse the word “which” and I’m guilty of saying “he’s got” instead of “he has”. Confessions aside, the phrase “I done it” still sounds like something from an episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies”.

            Some linguists will say that “I done it” isn’t necessarily wrong, but simply a variety of English that differs from the standard. It may even be regionally acceptable. However, it also stigmatizes a person in certain situations. If I hear a professional person such as a doctor or a teacher use the phrase, I immediately have a lower opinion of them. I can’t help it.  Emily Post once mentioned “I done it” in her explanation of “phrases avoided in good society”. She said, “People who say ‘I come,’ and ‘I seen it,’ and ‘I done it’ prove by their lack of grammar that they had little education in their youth. Unfortunate, very; but they may at the same time be brilliant, exceptional characters,…”. I agree completely. It’s simply a matter of giving the wrong impression by using the wrong words.

            Most people probably aren’t aware they even use the phrase. They have heard it for so long that it doesn’t even register in their brains.  So here’s a quick English lesson. Do not quit reading, this will be painless. If you look up the word “done” in the dictionary you’ll find a brief notation just before the common definitions that says “done-past part of DO”. What this means is that “done” is a form of “do”,  the past participle form of do. You don’t have to understand what a past participle is or memorize a bunch of rules. Just repeat after me: Done has to have a helper word. Look at the following phrases,

            I do, I did, I have done

            He does, he did, he has done

            They do, they did, they have done

Or try this:

            I do this each day. I did this yesterday. I have done this before.

            He does this well. He did this well. He has done this well in the past.

            They do this often. They did this yesterday. They have done this before.

See a pattern? If this is still too confusing, just try using another word instead of done. Try “I finished, completed, made, repaired, or accomplished it”. Try anything, please,  except “I done it”..

I realize this topic is probably low on your list of priorities. You may even be thinking “this woman has way too much free time on her hands”, but I have to ask you a question. Why would we want to give the rest of the world the impression that Oklahomans are uneducated hicks when we know for a fact that many of us are brilliant, exceptional characters?

(Next time we’ll talk about “fixin’ to”, “ain’t”, and “I seen it”. No tar, you promised.)

      

      

Other People's Lives

I love to watch the Dr. Phil show. Sometimes I even watch Oprah. An hour of observing and listening to the problems of other people leaves me happy and relieved. I’m OK! I’m not so bad! I’m certainly not as bad as those people! I can deal with my petty problems any day.  Perhaps that’s the whole point. Perhaps we don’t really care if Dr. Phil solves their problems. We just want to know about them so we can compare them to our own and feel smug.

However, smugness flies out the window when those people are friends, neighbors, or co-workers. I have a relative who once who told me that what he did had no bearing on anyone else. He felt he was totally independent of other people. I’m not sure that’s physically possible unless you are totally without empathy. (I think there is a psychological term for that, and it’s not good.) The rest of us belong to circles of friends and relatives and acquaintances who are joined to other circles, who are part of other circles. One of my co-workers, who lives in another town, went to school with the sister of my son’s best friend. Think about that for a moment. I work an hour away from my school. She lives in yet another town. My son’s friend lives in another state. The interconnectedness of our lives is astounding if we really think about it. And I don’t think it is exclusive to my rural area. When the recent hurricanes devastated other areas of the country I was amazed by the number of people here who have friends and family in the disaster areas. 

I was thinking about this today because of several things that happened this week. First, I received an email from someone who asked, “Are you Bob’s daughter? I went to school with him!” What a strange but wonderful thing it is to hear from someone in another state who knew your parents in high school. And she also mentioned how my grandfather had worked on their house.

Then someone I’ve been corresponding with for a community organization asked if I was the same person who was in a university publication from several years ago. I am, and she was in the same issue!

Then we had our fundraiser for the firemen on Monday night and the auctioneer was a former student of mine from 1981! They do grow up!

I’ve had a different perspective about my work and my life this week. I’ve paid more attention to the people around me. I’ve listened more closely. I’ve watched more intently. We’re all part of an ever-widening circle. And my life is a part of theirs.

I think one of the most important verses of the Bible is Genesis 2:18, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone;’” God knew we would grow because of  our relationships with other people.

My relative was wrong. What we do matters to other people. Who we are and what we say matters to other people. When other people are even remotely connected to us we have greater sympathy for their problems. We’re more likely to help them. We’re more likely to understand them. Our lives have an impact on them today and tomorrow and ten years from now.      

I hope you take some time today to notice the people around you and think about the impact you have on each other’s lives. It’s not good to be alone.

Plan B

          

             Most of us had BIG DREAMS as children. We were going to be ballerinas, astronauts, doctors, firemen. I was going to be an artist. I loved to draw and paint. My grandmother gave me a little paint-by-number set when I was a young girl and I thought I was Picasso! I was going to paint and design dresses and be famous. Then my father took me aside for a reality talk. “Art is fun, honey, but you can’t make a living at it.” I wasn’t quite sure if he was telling me that artists in general were all starving or that it was obvious that I would! I never asked him to clarify. And I’m not saying that I quit drawing then and there. But I have to be honest and tell you that it did indeed plant the “seed of doubt”. I didn’t personally know any artists. The ones we studied in school were dead. My aunt sketched and made ceramics, but she did something much more mundane for a salary- she drew highways. So, I decided that art had better be my “plan B”, something I did for fun, for a hobby, and I looked around for something else to support me. My mother was a writer and we got by on beans and potatoes, so I knew my words weren’t likely to make me wealthy. I didn’t want to farm or be a farmer’s wife. I wasn’t pretty enough to be a dozen other things I thought about. Then I looked around at all the well-dressed, educated people I knew. Teachers! I’d be a teacher. But “plan B” always hovered in the background.

I managed to take a lot of art classes over the years. There were community education classes, junior college classes, and finally university classes. I sketched and painted when I had time. I created a few “decorations” for my walls and gave some paintings away to family and friends. I never thought about changing my plans and trying to make a living with my art. Just as well. I’m not that good. But I enjoy it!

I think we forget sometimes about doing things for the sheer joy of doing them. I like to sew and knit and crochet and paint and draw. I’ve finally begun to realize that I don’t have to be equally gifted at each task. I don’t have to impress anyone. I don’t have to “earn my keep” to justify the expense of a hobby. I can just do what I like! I think that’s a lesson I’ve learned from my kindergarten students. They do so many things just for the joy of doing them!

Along with this new freedom to enjoy myself, I’ve stopped “editing” so much. Many of the things I paint and sketch aren’t like the things other people do. I used to worry about that and compare my work to what classmates did. No more. I’m either wise enough to know that isn’t important or “too old to care” anymore. Whatever. Here are a couple of my favorite paintings. There are more in my photo album. Enjoy…or not. I’ll keep painting anyway!

Genetics

     I’ve always been accident prone. My first misfortune was a car wreck when I was still an infant. My preschool years were filled with a variety of falls, scratches, bruises, tumbles, and bumps. A window broke and fell on me during a storm when I was five. I got my first set of crutches when I was just seven. We were fishing at the river and I stepped on a broken bottle. I remember Mom wrapped my bleeding foot in one of my brother’s diapers. I was about nine when I burned my leg on a wood stove. I fell off a bunk bed sometime when I was sick and feverish. When I was eleven I rescued my baby brother from the top of the barn and in the process stepped on a piece of barbed wire that went through my little toe. I broke my arm in the seventh grade, during a volleyball game. A couple of summers later I got hit in the face with a wooden crate while we were loading grapes on a trailer. I got thrown by a horse. I burned my bangs and eyebrows trying to light a gas oven. I was bitten by a dog.  I was “pushed off a horse” when it decided to enter a chicken house without me. I was hit in the head with a baseball, twice.

            You’re probably thinking the accidents stopped as I got older and more careful. Wrong. I stabbed a hole in my hand with a knife shortly after I got married. I was injured in a hunting accident- a stray bullet hit a rock, and the rock bounced and slammed into my knee! I nearly lost a finger on a piece of shattered glass. I fell on a broken ladder at the public pool and injured my leg. I started a fire in my kitchen. I was rear-ended by a woman arguing with her friend (my first ambulance ride). I tripped on the leg of  a chair and broke my toe. I was rear-ended by a woman arguing with her husband. I stubbed my toe on the coffee table and broke it. I was rear-ended by a man who was watching picketers. I fell down a flight of stairs and cracked my elbow. I stepped off a ladder and twisted my ankle. I fell out of a van and tore the ligaments in my ankle. I cut half-way through my thumb with a machete. I was nearly electrocuted by a faulty wire in our motor home. I fell off my porch and broke my leg in three places. I was tackled by a four-year-old at a track meet and separated a rib. I tripped over a milk crate and broke two toes. I fell backwards over a box and hurt my side. I tripped on the sidewalk, fell, and injured my knee. Whew, I’m one lucky woman to be sitting here typing this! If I’ve forgotten anything, and I’m sure I have, my children will remind me.

            I’ve decided that our family carries the “C” gene. C stands for “clumsy” and it must come from my father’s side of the family because I know he fell out of a tree when he was young and he broke his collar bone. Oh, wait, my mother fell off her porch and broke her ankle. They must have both been carriers! And at least one of my brothers carries the gene. While I was stumbling around he was following directly in my footsteps! I recall that he fell into a trash fire, nearly drowned at least twice, broke his arm two weeks after I did, and currently has more scars than I do!

            Now I find that I’ve passed on the gene. My oldest daughter called last night to tell me she fell and injured her ankle- the one that’s already been torn and sprained and strained many times before. Then the other daughter called to tell me my granddaughter fell during a basketball game and injured her ankle. I’m telling both of you right now- buy your own crutches. You’ll thank me later.

Hair

I love my curly hair. Oh, wait. I forgot you can’t actually see my face. Well imagine that I’m rolling my eyes and smirking. Because I am. It’s taken years of anxiety and frustration to get used to my hair. That photo you always see on the left shows my hair after I’ve straightened it. My hair is curly- frizzy, curly, CURLY. As a young girl I hated it. I wanted my friend’s straight hair. No matter where we moved, I always managed to have at least one friend with board-straight hair! I even married a guy with long, straight hair. I was a glutton for punishment. I don’t know why I ever got the idea that curly hair was a bad thing. I just remember knowing I’d be prettier if my hair was straight!

And I managed to have straight hair for a while. I did it by spending an inordinate amount of time straightening, heating, pulling, and  even ironing it. I’ve straightened and coaxed my frizzy hair into softer, gentler waves for so long that the first time I was in a hurry and decided to go to work with my “natural hair” everyone said “hey did you get a perm?”.  I just laughed.

I don’t know if it’s maturity or necessity, but I’ve learned to appreciate my curly hair for the time it saves me. After that day last year I’ve gradually increased my “curly days” until I seldom straighten my hair anymore. Once people complimented me on my hair, once I started seeing it in the mirror, I got used to it. I can’t say that I look any better, but I feel so much better.

I was thinking about this at school today as I was enjoying a windy recess time with my students. I actually was enjoying the wind. And I started thinking about all the time I’ve wasted over the years trying to change my hair. I’ve cut, treated, straightened, and sprayed my hair. I’ve tried every color, style, and length imaginable. And I’ve come full circle to what God gave me in the first place- brown, curly hair. Isn’t it ironic that He’s smarter than I am even about such a little thing? Now I don’t get nervous about “my hair” every time the wind blows. I don’t worry about “doing my hair” before I go out. And I have an extra half-hour a day to blog!  Maybe I do love my curly hair!

Report Cards

This is report card week at my school. I’m on the “other side” now. I’m the one who sends home the report that either instills pride or disbelief. The kindergarten curriculum is a shock to most parents. Try to remember what you did in first grade, or even second grade. That’s what we do in kindergarten today. We have work stations and centers and reading groups and study buddies. We teach science, social studies, art, languages, phonics, reading, handwriting, math, health, motor skills, and music. And we have tests! Lots of tests. Each nine weeks all this is distilled into a report for parents. Of course the report isn’t subjective. It’s based on passing a set of skills required by the state.  It’s calculated and generated by computer software. We don’t even have A’s, B’s, and C’s anymore. We have percentages and the determination of  “skill mastered”, “working on mastery”, or “not mastered”. A lot for parents to comprehend, especially if they grew up with handwritten letters on a small folded card.

I still have several of my report cards. Remarkable when you think about how many schools I attended. Of course sometimes I wasn’t at a school long enough to get a report card. Perhaps that’s why the ones I kept seem special now. They are proof that I did indeed stay in one spot long enough to be tested, long enough to have a record of my presence.

I was always a good student and loved school. I usually had a good report card with lots of A’s and B’s, but I remember a C or two. I had a difficult time keeping up with math concepts between moves. What usually upset me weren’t the grades, but the teacher comments. “Mary is a good student but…” That was usually followed by something to do with talking! Some things never change.

I even got an F in college, though technically it was for my failure to withdraw from the class when I moved. I didn’t think it was that important at the time, but years later when I was much more interested in my GPA again, I had to make up the class with an A.

I have two of my dad’s report cards. He made a C in American History and a D in Spanish. My, my if only I had known that when I made that C in geometry! Because when your parents expect you to do well in everything, and you don’t, it can be difficult to drag home that heavy report card and ask your parents to sign it. Then you get “the speech” about doing your best and paying attention. I also had the privilege of staying after school each afternoon for weeks until I caught up and improved my grade. Now I realize how lucky I was to have had a teacher who was willing to do that for me!

Most report cards do become the catalyst for a set of consequences, some good, some bad. A lot of parents like to go beyond praise and give their children something tangible for each grade earned or each improvement made. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Each child is different. I can honestly remember thinking my parents were a little gullible to gush over my reading grades when I would have gladly given up food to read a book! On the other hand, math was so difficult that a reward for every ½ grade point would have been appreciated and deserved! Instead my parents were of the opinion that reading, writing, and arithmetic were somehow equal parts of the whole and I’d better get the same grade for each.

I hope we don’t make the same mistake. I hope we have learned that children are different and have diverse learning styles and speeds. They have unique abilities. A report card is only one tool, one way of measuring a child’s abilities and behaviors. We have to keep improving our assessment techniques. We have to keep finding better ways to help children learn.

If your child brings home a report card that delights or disappoints you, try to keep your perspective about the child who earned those grades. Make sure you understand the “why” and the “how” behind those little letters or percentages. Make sure you know which subject was second nature and which one was a struggle. And before you judge too harshly, drag out your old report cards. They may surprise you!

Sick

          I’m sick this weekend. I hate to be sick! I’ve never found anyone else who enjoys it either. Sickness means a groggy head and aching body and the will to do nothing more than survive. I went to Sunday School this morning because I had promised to substitute. However, I left promptly after the bell, returned to my bed, and didn’t wake up until 1:30 in the afternoon. Now I have a headache, aching body, fever, and chills. You didn’t really need to know that now did you? But I need an excuse for a less than wonderful blog and that’s mine.

I’m filling in my blog tonight with some random thoughts and happenings from this week.

First the mundane…food. Tried two products you may want to put on your grocery list. Gary and I both love Lipton’s Green Tea with citrus. I saw it on a colleague’s desk and tried it as an alternative to my vice of choice, Coca Cola. Also bought Triscuits with “rosemary and olive oil”. Yummy. A little bit too salty for my taste, but I don’t normally salt my food. Don’t buy it. Don’t use it. All of our foods have enough salt already!

My daughter and my brother and a friend all had surgery recently and all are doing well. Any medical procedure these days seems quicker, simpler, and more effective than it was the last time I heard about it. This year’s procedures will be replaced next year by something even better. When you look back at some of the things our grandparents endured as “cures” it’s a wonder any of us are here!

I’m reading a new book this week. It’s Digitizing Your Family History, by Rhonda R. McClure. Has some great tips for those of us trying to use scanners to enhance our family histories. My problem now is organizing all this stuff! I know one of my daughters will tell me to take a scrapbooking class, but I just can’t bring myself to start something I fear will become an obsession. For those of you unfamiliar with current trends in “scrapbooking”, it’s a blend of photo album, scrapbook, and art project. It’s the art aspect of it that frightens me! I just want to keep my family mementos safe and organized. If I get into making them look pretty there will be no end to it! LOL

I have a wonderful husband. No, that wasn’t just a random thought flying through my brain. He was at the library the other day and picked up the book I just told you about. And there is nothing like illness to bring out the best or worst in your spouse. Gary didn’t ask a bunch of questions when I woke him up at 2am and told him I thought I was going to faint. He just sat with me until I felt better. He didn’t complain about fixing his own lunch today, or finishing the laundry. He didn’t ask why I’m sitting here wrapped in a blanket writing this blog. He knows me. He understands me. He’s my friend. We’ll be celebrating our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary soon. I hope we have at least thirty more!

No comments…I know from the stats page on my blogs that many of you are reading my ramblings. Some of you send me emails, which I appreciate more than you know. However, I really would like to see more comments. They can be about the current blog, about my site in general, about questions you want to ask, topics you’d like to see. They can even be “negative” if you’re polite! It would just be nice to know more often that my work isn’t going out into a vast void. So go ahead and click that little button and leave me a message. You know you want to…

I’m going to watch an episode of House tonight and then go to bed. House is a medical show on a network we don’t get. Our television coverage here consists of NBC and CBS, period. Anyway, my daughter bought me a DVD set for Christmas because she knows I’m a sucker for medical shows. I’m really enjoying it.

Tomorrow if I feel better, I’m going to have lunch with an old friend. We haven’t seen each other much in the past few years so we have a lot of catching up to do.

           Whatever you do tomorrow, enjoy it. And don’t get sick. You won’t like it

Progress and Problems

My grandmother began her writing career with a pencil and a piece of paper.( I like to imagine her with a “Big Chief” tablet, but considering Oprah’s current literary controversy, I don’t want to embellish anything.) Later she banged out her weekly columns on a heavy manual typewriter with reluctant keys that required “extreme finger fitness” to depress. I used to try to type and I’d always end up with a bunch of garbled words with missing letters.

My mother’s first manual typewriter was smaller and more efficient, but there was still lots of banging. And Mom hated to make mistakes.  I can remember her stopping, rolling up the paper, erasing, rolling the paper back down, re-typing, and then sighing deeply if it didn’t look as neat as she had hoped. Then came the “self-correcting” ribbon and the wonder of backspacing and re-typing. Then she purchased an electric typewriter! Oh, my, what a difference. She could turn out her columns in half the time and with half the wrist and finger fatigue.  Later came real magic, real progress…the Word Processor. I remember how pleased she was with the manuscripts it produced. And I was proud of her for adapting to “new technology”.

          Mother didn’t live long enough to own a computer, but she would have loved it. I know it has made a tremendous change in my writing simply because I was always such a poor typist. I struggled and struggled to produce anything readable on a typewriter, even an electric one. I made mistakes and hated the look of the corrections. I left out words and had to re-type whole pages to get them back in place. I’d  finish typing a page and then think of a much better way to end the third paragraph. I think I tore up at least as many pages as I kept. The computer changed all that. The computer has a “user friendly” keyboard, spell check, delete key, different typefaces, sizes, “cut and paste”.  I can type almost as quickly as I can think, and if I make a mistake I can correct it before it reaches the paper…what more could a writer want?

Ah yes, what more?…there’s the problem and the solution all rolled into one. We always want more. We usually figure out how to get more. And then we get used to the more and we want more. And more.We’re never content for very long.

And in the meantime, in order to get more, we must endure change, whether we want to or not. I went to WalMart to buy floppy disks and discovered that they now sell two small packages, right next to the fifteen different CDs and DVDs they carry. I don’t have to be hit on the head. I’ve lived through records, 8-Tracks, and cassettes. I see the day coming when I won’t be able to buy a new VCR for my old VHS tapes. I’ve noticed that the film for my “old fashioned” camera has been moved to the lower shelves and that the space has been reduced by a third. I know my cell phone is obsolete, my land phone is antiquated, my television is archaic, and my limited two-channel reception inconceivable.  I can’t even TIVO! And I can’t keep up.

My neighbor called and asked me to help her install some gardening software on her new computer. She’s over eighty-five! She’s seen more changes and inventions than I have, and she’s still adapting and changing, still trying to keep up. She’s learning about this new technology and using it to meet her needs. She doesn’t understand as much about the computer as I do. I don’t understand as much as my children do. My children don’t understand as much as the next generation will. Progress.

The children in my kindergarten class expect instant communication, instant photos, instant reruns, and instant gratification. We have computers in the classroom, a plasma TV in the hall, digital cameras to record events, Power Point presentations for assemblies. My students know about email and X-box, and DVRs. I wasn’t even sure if that’s how to spell X-box! But as modern and progressive as we think we are and they are and our world is, tomorrow’s generation will think of all this as obsolete and antiquated and archaic, because it will be. Something better and more efficient will be invented. Something faster. Something brighter. Something more appealing. Something wonderful and magic. That’s the way of the world. Progress brings problems and those problems bring more progress.

In a few years I’ll be sitting here talking to a machine that will listen to me, type my words, post them to my blog, and ask me what photos I want to insert and where. I’ve already taken a class in voice-activated word processing and the only deterrent to my success was this darn Okie accent. The software was unable to recognize what I was saying! Imagine that. I’m waiting for someone to invent a computer with better ears! Until then I’ll make do with this ancient thing.