This I Believe
A parent said to me about this time of self-quarantine and social isolation: “We need a project. Like one that everyone does.”
“Yes,” I replied, “On it.” I love this idea, so here goes.
Three years ago I saw Slanke Msimang speak on the power of storytelling. She noted, “We share a common ancestry as human beings. We all tell stories.” It’s time for Westland to get their common ancestry on through storytelling, I think.
I was reading a beautiful piece in the New Yorker last week, from the December issue. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl reflected, “I’ve never kept a diary or a journal, because I get spooked by addressing no one. When I write, it’s to connect.” My hope is that by writing together we can create connection and sustain–even grow–community.
When I was a high school English teacher, my favorite class to teach was creative writing. In 2006, NPR was running their “This I Believe” series. The eleventh and twelfth-grade students and I all wrote one. It was the best material of the year. One student wrote on the power of being the child picked last for kickball. Another wrote about their mom. We listened to and read many-a-“This I Believe” essays that NPR produced. (I’ve included some more recents below.) My favorite at the time was a woman who believed in tipping the pizza delivery employee. Nothing is too small.
Please consider writing one, and eventually we will create a collection to publish internally: Adults and children, sharing what they believe, sharing our common ancestry through story.
For my “In Context” Blog I am starting us off. Below is my draft, as I would like to virtually workshop my piece in small groups too. I am inviting all community members into this process, Group One through Group Six children, as well as adults. Next week I am meeting and facilitating a lesson with Group Six to kick off the project. There is also a timeslot for parents to meet and talk about their piece they’d like to begin, which will appear on next week’s schedule that you will receive.
My piece is inspired by this time we find ourselves in. I was inspired to explore what learning is and now it happens. (Go figure.) I’ve been thinking a lot about education and the contexts we learn in, especially as we are home and not on campus. This is my own personal exploration and search on the topic as it relates to my own childhood.
There are also serious communications to be sent–on financial concerns, the calendar, reentry planning, and more. But I am committed not to forget the importance of investing in community building. Community is what Westland does best.
This I Believe (Draft)
My dad owned bars. Before I was born, there was “Carl’s,” “The Beachcomber,” and “The Jack of Clubs.” My earliest bar memory was “The Underground.” It was on Ohio State’s campus and a small group from OSU’s marching band came on Fridays bringing their brassy blairs and deep thumps, and even doing a tiny rendition of “Script Ohio.”
“The Cave Lounge” is where I have the most vivid memories. Each morning before afternoon kindergarten, I’d go to the bar with my mom and baba after dropping my sisters Stavra and Demi off at Tremont Elementary. The Cave Lounge’s motif was brown. It was dark and heavily carpeted. The walls were paneled in faux wood. No matter how clean, it reeked of cigarettes, stale beer, and sawdust that was used to clean up vomit. The smells of childhood.
My daily job was to wash the ashtrays with hot soapy water and a mysterious blue tablet I’d drop into the sink on the left. While I scrubbed the sooty grime off the interiors of the glass ashtrays, I pretended to be Betty Rubble. Once I was leaning against the counter and my mom asked, “You holding that counter down?” I didn’t understand the joke but I understood that I was supposed to start scrubbing.
I had free reign of the dance floor and the keys to the jukebox once my job was done. Olivia Newston John’s “Let’s Get Physical” ran on repeat as did “I’m Every Woman.” Chaka Khan once performed at my dad’s bar in the 70’s and so even her hits from the previous decade remained. I will admit I always wondered if Chaka Khan actually performed at my dad’s bar or if he just saw her perform at a bar. I grew up on his stories of interesting encounters. Like the time he went to see John Steinbeck do a reading in Cambridge. My dad sat in the back row, wearing an off-white three piece polyester suit with a black button-up shirt. As the story goes, Steinbeck approached my dad afterwards and said, “You look like the most interesting guy here, what’s the best Italian restaurant nearby?” Off they went…
During my morning sessions at the Cave Lounge I also played a lot of one particular video game. My dad was the only person who could beat me and thought it necessary to do so occasionally. “Let’s go, Scrappy,” he’d say. Scrappy was his nickname for me following an incident at a bowling alley nursery a few years prior. Once the beer delivery guys dropped off their cases of beer, they’d challenge me to see if this might be their lucky day to beat me in the video game. It never was. Neither my mom nor my two sisters can remember the name of the video game. Neither can I. But I can feel my left hand furiously tapping the plastic white buttons to shoot and my right hand jamming the joystick at any and all angles.
During their 2 a.m. cleanup time, the cocktail waitresses would hide coins around the Cave Lounge: under bar stools, under a leftover napkin, beneath a dirty table cloth. As I searched, my mom would say in her slight southern lilt, “Pennies make dollars.” One glorious morning I found 87 cents. To this day I get oddly excited about finding a coin.
To this day I also think about the Cave Lounge, one of my life’s educational institutions.
When I think about the Cave Lounge, John Dewey immediately comes to mind. My adult life has been devoted to progressive education, and progressive educators believe that life is education. John Dewey’s well-known quote, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living,” gets at what I’m trying to get at. So does Caroline Pratt’s insight: “Education is not an end in itself but is the first step in a progress which should continue during a lifetime.”
I had some amazing teachers. Amazing. Mrs. Stewart, Mrs. King, Ms. McMurry, Eds, Professor Cole to name a handful. But I know some of my amazing teachers are of the more unexpected variety too.
The Cave Lounge cocktail waitress taught me generosity and to be persistent in my search for coins and meaning.
The ashtrays taught me to make hard work fun and do a good, thorough job no matter the task or context. (The ashtrays also taught me not to smoke cigarettes.)
The Cave Lounge dance floor taught me the power of movement, being present, and that loud music is a form of mindfulness. Chaka Khan? She taught me that “I’m every woman.”
My baba’s stories taught me to crack open Steinbeck, to wear my version of the all-white polyester suit, and to go to dinner with strangers occasionally.
My mom’s sayings taught me to save, to work as hard as possible when asked, and to keep sayings of my own for children of my own someday.
That video game, whose name I never imagined I’d forget, taught me that you do win some and you do lose some...and that children should be taken seriously because they are capable.
I believe in my Cave Lounge education. I believe in the power of education–in all its forms. That education is progress and experience. Education is about process. I believe in my teachers, all of them. This I believe.
Additional Samples
https://thisibelieve.org/essay/108632/
https://thisibelieve.org/essay/4205/
https://thisibelieve.org/essay/8262/