Laura Stinchcomb

A Middle-Aged Mom’s Guide to Gym Etiquette.

September 18, 2013May 8, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

man carrying barbel — Photo by Victor Freitas

I’ve only been lifting free weights for the past five years, but as an outsider to gym culture, I hope my list will be helpful to those neophytes who find that they have to share small workout facilities with people they would not normally associate. Sometimes it can be intimidating to be a woman in a male dominated place; there are lots of passive- aggressive ways that men use to make sure that you are aware that you have intruded on their sacred space and make you uncomfortable. I have provided some ways to help you fend them off.

If the younger, off -duty firemen or police men talk about their exploits with “dancing girls” at their latest convention in Atlantic City (but slyly make a big deal about not wanting to talk about it in front of “a lady”), it is best to put on a maternal smile and encourage them “to expose” you to things that you don’t normally hear at “elementary school pick up,” however, be sure to remind them to wear condoms because you have heard about diseases from unprotected sex from watching Dr. Oz on TV.
If the older retired guys start talking about their dandruff and how there are no longer as many dandruff commercials in their youth, suggest that they come to gym in the afternoon to hear the other guys talk about hookers. Also, if the 50 plus crowd start to talk about missing the cut-off for Happy Hour, it’s time to put the earphones in.
Sometimes the teenagers forget to take off their heavy plates, because they are so used to mom picking up after them. If they do not respond when asked to remove them, I generally slam the plate on the floor and cry “These are just so heavy! I can’t possibly take these weights off by myself!”
If a man has legs that have less hair than yours, do not even ask him if he waxes and do not suggest that he might be a cross dresser. I have discovered that men, who have hairless legs, make less testosterone (than me) and- let’s face it- making testosterone is what lifting is all about.
If you see someone who scrupulously wipes his/her machine down prior to putting their sweaty body on it, but neglects to wipe down the machine after using- do not ask them if they are an attorney

In my experience, almost everyone in the gym appears to be more sexy, and interesting if they don’t talk too much. This is a unisex thing; I personally prefer to let my imagination fill in the gaps. I spent three years of watching a very fit man- who never, ever spoke, work out with these strange arm coverings. I imagined that it was some strange cure from the old country and that he spoke no English. When we finally did chat, I discovered that he had a very strong New York accent and the coverings were old sweat socks to soak up arm sweat.

After all, the gym is a place to concentrate on our bodies, improve our body image and feel sexy. There is nothing worse than learning that the cutie that you thought was stoic and tough, gossips as much as the mothers on their way to Zumba class. I know that this ALSO means that I WOULD DO BETTER TO STICK MY EARPHONES IN MY EARS AND SHUT UP.

PS: In the event of very hurt feelings or burned bridges, there are a lot of gyms out there- in fact- it might be wise to join more than one….

Gym Me

Me before cell phone cameras were banned at gym.

This was also published on Open Salon under Snarkychaser

Finding Comfort in Coffee-Home Roasting Green Beans

December 1, 2012December 2, 2012by Laura Stinchcomb

It was a hard month for our family. Hurricane Sandy taught us that no matter how much preparation is done, our lives are interdependent on the grid. We just can not survive without our infrastructure without making significant changes. Last week we were rear ended by a young driver who just did not see that we had stopped. Was she texting? In hind sight there was nothing we could have done to avoid the collision. It was out of our hands and the calculated risk that we all take when we drive is that we depend on the assumption that the drivers who surround us on the road are careful, skilled and aware of their surroundings.

As a control freak that is learning to let go, I can only cry at the randomness of catastrophe and try to stick to things that can get me closer to some sense of control over the end product and my surrounding. Since I am not crafter, cook or house cleaner (this week), I tried to roast my own coffee. Although I know that I will never actually grow my own coffee, it does give me pleasure to think that I can take back control over the roasting process that a few shop keepers and large companies now hold over us. Roasting coffee was historically in the hands of a few until the commercialization of the process in the early 20^th century. Commercially roasted and ground coffee was considered to be a modern time saver and until the Folgerization of America, many families roasted their own brew.

Home coffee roasting is considered to be a kind of “oddball” hobby and if you look at the number of You Tube videos of people roasting coffee in their back yard air popcorn poppers, you will see what I mean. Through the internet I learned that roasting green coffee can be done inexpensively in a Whirley -Pop stove- top popcorn popper. I do not use a thermometer (although it is recommended). The beans can be ordered over the internet easily. I chose Sumatra for my experiment.

Whirley- Pop

Green Sumatra Coffee Beans

Coffee beans need to be roasted at temperatures ranging between 350 and 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Gas burners should be turned lower than electric burners and every source warns that when the beans roast, they release lots of moisture so open all of your windows. The smell of roasting beans is bread-y and grain-y at the start and then becomes more recognizable as coffee as the beans become darker brown in color. I actually waited for my first batch to turn -what I thought was a coffee color- a very dark brown and may have been scorched them. I subsequently read that one ideal color is the “brown of a monk’s robe”.

Scorched steaming beans

I have since learned to run with my pot of hot beans to the back door to let it steam away outside. I can only hope that my neighbors are very jealous. The beans must constantly be agitated. The agitation of the beans helps to even out the heat and remove the chaff that is still sticking on the beans. This is best facilitated by shaking the colander around.

Chaff

Home roasting may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I find that for me it is a very relaxing process that appeals to my sensual nature. I think that it may even be a slight aphrodisiac because I was propositioned by a workman while roasting coffee. It may be that I reminded him of his mother with my efforts in the kitchen. My house certainly has a better smell to obfuscate the fact that my efforts are not spent mopping and dusting.

The one major drawback to all of this, is that every batch tastes different. There are too many variants with roasting by smell and eye. So in my efforts to gain control over my universe, I have actually relinquished it ( unless I get a much more expensive automated home roaster). I am learning to take pleasure in the random nature of life.

Be Quiet, Kids, I’m Working!

October 2, 2012May 8, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

It has been obsessively busy around the house these last few weeks. After taking a nine-year sabbatical to be a stay at home mother, I have started working again from my home. This wasn’t what I had in mind. I was hoping to get dressed up, put make-up on and go to an office. Not only would I not be faced with our family’s daily clutter but I imagined having an adoring male harem admire me around a water cooler. For the these past years I have been surrounded by almost entirely by women-other stay at home mothers whose husbands all work such ridiculous hours that they are never home. Sometimes I imagine that we are almost like the whaling wives who watched their men go off to sea for months at a time.

Fifteen years ago, I did the mommy track telecommuting thing for 8 years while I watched my husband leapfrog me on the career ladder. At the time, we had earning parity. We made the choice for me to stay home for a variety of factors: one of which had to do with my obsessive-ness over my child’s well being from my own less than positive experience with caretakers and my desire to breast feed on demand.

My mother worked and was an excellent role model for me but I wanted my child to have the things that I did not have. No mean babysitters, playdates with school friends and a safe neighborhood to grow up in. However, I realized that my children were not getting a very important thing-to me: A working mother as a role model. I feared that they were in danger of developing a sense of entitlement about our rich material life. Because they did not actually see any of us ‘working’, they had no concept of what it is to work in an office, kiss someone’s ass , compromise your beliefs…a little… clients are right after all.

They would not be prepared for the new world of short-term job stints and the need to change careers on a dime. Dad works all the time. But that is “away” in some abstract office that they visit only occasionally when we all come in to watch him work over the weekend. He has been employed by the same company for years and has survived five mergers. I call him the cockroach. No one really has job security. We now have to create our work.

When children grow up with a family business around them as did farmers, craftsmen and store owners, everyone had to chip in to make the business a success. My father recalls seeing his mother work in the basement making coils for use in submarines during World War II. It was his only memory of her doing work that did not involve cleaning, cooking and diapers. How would my children ever know what it is to sell themselves? Could they ever pull themselves up by their boots straps the way that I have?

Now that I have started to work, I allow my children to be involved in the process. They know that they have to be quiet when I make phone calls. Some of my calls involve difficult cold calling and tons of rejection. My fifteen year old daughter will listen and pat my back after a particularly hard one. I have let her take first stab on logo designs and she has helped me to set up our company’s website. From this experience, she has decided that she does not want to be a graphic artist and I have learned that sometimes it is better not to get family involved. However, through the process, we are all learning to pitch in to make a go of it. My daughter has offered to work babysitting duties into the week so that I can have my business meetings. In the end, I feel my children will be better prepared for the world of work and the issues of balance, self discipline and the knowledge that they can create their own futures.

Previously published on Open Salon March 2, 2011

Do People Treat Straight Haired Women More Deferentially?

October 1, 2012May 13, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

**Medusa** courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

I met my friend, who asked to be called Natalie, or maybe Donna in this post for dinner this weekend. She marveled at my perfectly straight hair. I divulged that I had just gotten a Brazilian Blowout. Natalie/Donna and I both have full thick curly hair. Natalie/Donna gets her hair blown out professionally once a week, and for half of the week it is sleek and straight and for the other half it is wild and curly. Natalie/Donna enjoys having her two different looks.

When I saw Natalie/Donna for first time at the gym, she had her curly hair. She was very sexy and I later told her that I imagined her to be the plaything of a rich mobster. She would go from machine to machine toting her designer bag with her head down and her curly hair covering her face. She was so slender and willowy that I was shocked when I noticed that she lifted seriously heavy weights. I also could not help but notice that all of the men that seemed to check her out while she was so oblivious.

Later, as we became friends, I went out with her when she had her straight hair- just blown out for the night. “Natalie/ Donna! You look like a rich socialite trophy wife now!” Well I suppose that neither of these perceptions is really true since she is extremely smart and an accomplished classical musician….oh and she was far from a trophy wife.

However, hair does make a statement. I have noticed that people have always treated me differently when I had straight neat hair. Perhaps this perception dates back to the time when I was 12 and cut my hippy long wavy hair and my class mate, a boy, said “Oh you look so much better with out all of that orangutan hair!”

My really new straight hair gives me a “no nonsense” image. I seem much more business like and formidable (is it necessary to say that this is not my usual?) Another friend said that my new hair makes me look thinner. How can I ever go back? What do you think? My husband suggested that I might try this experiment with bigger breasts and see if anyone treats me differently.

previously published on Open Salon under Snarkychaser January 17, 2011

Male Crying- Tool for Sex and Politics

October 1, 2012May 8, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

My friend, Wendy, and me looking at prospects on Match.com-our favorite activity.

My friend Wendy recently went on an impromptu date with a man that she had been in communication with from Plenty of Fish, a dating website. As usual, we spent several days obsessing over the date and the possibility that he would be good for his word and call her for a second date this next Saturday.

This female bonding session is one of the best parts of the date. I believe we have so much fun and release so much oxytocin from our strategic chats that it is well worth the date no matter who it is. I have decided to get some pretend boyfriends as well to add some zest to our bonding sessions. My husband, John, is a pretty tolerant guy and has agreed as long as it is pretend. Wendy really seemed to like this guy, Michael, and her anxiety about the date was not just play.

“He said he cried at ‘Marley and Me’.” Wendy said

“He told you that? That is pathetic.” I said

“No it isn’t. It’s great. I didn’t even see ‘Marley and Me’ because I was afraid I would bawl. It was too sad.” She said

“Well I didn’t see ‘Marley and Me’. I wonder if I would have cried.” I said “I don’t think I have ever seen John cry.”

“Not even when his father died? “ Wendy sounded surprised.

“No. I don’t remember him every really crying. I think he might have cried when I widened the driveway. He came home after midnight and started crying that I ruined the look of the house.”

I asked Wendy’s and my mutual male friend, Snarky, what he thought of all of this.

“Well ‘Marley and Me’ was pretty sad but you know I think that maybe this guy was just trying to uh you know.” Snarky sputtered

“What? I didn’t see the movie.” I said

“I think he was just trying to say something that would…you know that would…” Snarky was very embarrassed

“You mean you think he was trying get into her into bed?” I said “Well she only went to dinner. It did not even come up.”

Perhaps Michael was trying to impress Wendy with his sensitivity. Why is it so taboo for men to cry? I was recently with a hypnotist that recounted a story of a session with a tough ex- marine Vietnam Vet. She said his eyes started to tear during hypnosis while reliving a childhood experience. He said he was having congestion in his eyes. The hypnotist surmised that he was crying but had no idea that that is what the water was in his eyes.

Is crying used as a manipulative tactic? Yes. I think it is…often. I personally had the experience of having a politician ex lover tear up over my politics. He was an aid to a popular Democratic Senator at the time. I was a senior in a very liberal College and told him that I might rebel from my historically Democratic parents and upbringing to become a Republican. These were my rebellious college years. This man had tears, real tears, in his eyes about my decision. He shed not a tear when we broke up. I was inconsolable. Upon my graduation, he referred me to his friend in Arlen Specter’s office for a job opportunity. I have now become much more pragmatic in my approach to politics and realize it is show business like anything else.

This is why the stories of Glenn Beck’s tears on air revolt me so. Tears of emotion like these are so easy to fabricate and seem to be disingenuous. I went to the High School of Performing Arts for Drama and am perhaps more adept at spotting the inauthentic. I do find it fascinating to watch. However, since Wendy also went to my High School, and is also a therapist, I think it is safe to say that she would have picked up on any play from her date, Michael. Who knows? We all like a fantasy.

Glenn Beck uses Vic’s Vapor Rub to elicit tears for photo shoot.

Previously Published on Open Salon Under Snarkychaser August 30,2010

A Band of Gold

October 1, 2012May 14, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

A friend noticed that I was not wearing my wedding ring in a photo. He noted that he used to work for a married woman who would take off her ring, and go out with girl friends to see if she still had what it took. The subject of the wearing of wedding rings spurs lots of debate and I really think that my view of the meaning of “ the ring “ has changed as I have aged. When I was younger, I did find that many men hit on me at business functions and I was sure that if I had a ring on my finger, it would be a deterrent. I recently read an article in Marie Clarie about a writer who bought a fake engagement ring to keep men at bay in the male dominated field of biotech. Perhaps this changes as we age.

The men in the weight room have become positively chatty this week. What could have changed? I never wear my wedding ring because it interferes with my handling of free weights (and other reasons better saved for another post). I have been working out with these men for two years. I have learned to keep my mouth shut and just work out. However, over the past two months, I have been more consistent in my time. I noticed that some of the guys would shyly say good morning to me. One in particular, turns bright red and stammers when he greets me or if I ask him a question about his weights. When I asked him in the parking lot if he would like to share some nuts post work out, he practically fell backwards with embarrassment. But this has all changed this week, because I started talking.

For the first time, I have mentioned my handsome husband and the guys seem to have breathed a collective sigh of relief. I now know that two of the men have wives that are as phobic about bed bugs as I am. One man’s wife just lost 30 pounds in three months. Another man’s wife refused to cover up for his friend that was cheating on his wife. Extra chattiness in men in many other situations has always been my experience when I wear my wedding ring. I believe that my ring makes me safe to approach and be flirted with. In our advanced years, very few men would want to actually leave their wives for another woman, with the financial and emotional toll that it would take. The fact that I am a married woman makes me safer to play with.

There is also a similar dynamic with the female half of these suburban couples. As a child of a pretty divorced woman and very good friend to many of my divorced and widowed contemporaries, I have seen the way a single woman can get squeezed out of social situations that involve husbands. I believe that many women see these unattached females as competition for their husbands. I have always thought that a divorce would make me a social pariah in my suburban world. I am already very unconventional but to be a free-floating “sex pot” would be the end of any social life with most couples. This is why I take special care to include my single friends in my life. So in answer to my friend who noticed my lack of ring…I do not wear it to attract men…you will have to wait for my next post on wedding rings to find out why.

Previously Published on Open Salon November 9 2010

My Dead On-Line Self

September 30, 2012May 8, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

grey skulls piled on ground — Photo by Renato Danyi on Pexels.com

I have reconciled myself to the fact that my posts make many people uncomfortable. Perhaps I am giving voice to questions about suburban life and marriage that are better left unsaid . I have a screen name but Snarkychaser is hardly anonymous since it is linked to my profiles on Face Book and LinkedIn. Moreover, it is loaded with pictures of me. My more recent concern is not how my online self appears to society now, but rather what will my online image continue to say about me after I am dead.

When I began my blog, I realized that it was a vehicle to discipline my thinking in short posts. Ultimately, always in the back of my mind, I write it for my two children. One day, they will read what I have written and understand me. There have been times when my teen aged daughter has asked me not to post. She says that I do not understand the internet. She is wrong. I do. She just doesn’t really understand me… yet. She is worried that people in our small community won’t “get me”. I know that and I don’t care. I also realize that very few of us understand how much the internet legacies of our social networks and blogs will ultimately impact us…if at all.
In the past month, The New York Times has published two pieces on death and the internet. The first, Cyberspace When You’re Dead,discusses estate planning for your internet life after death. Unplanned death is a reality and I am constantly confronted with pictures and names of dead friends on Linked In and Face Book. I wonder if anyone knows that they are still hanging around. They are just constant reminders that we all leave unfinished business.
The second article in the New York Times, ran today on the front page. Funeral homes are now starting to post memorial services on the web. Perhaps my service will be downloaded on You Tube one day. I recently read on my AOL News about a man who not only lost his wife but also lost his children as their car crashed while they were driving to attend their step-mother’s funeral. Certainly it seems much more prudent to have a service on the web available for those who don’t want to drive in a snow storm. I can’t plan every thing…but I can start my thinking in terms of my digital legacy as a zombie.

Zombie Me getting ready for Asbury Park, NJ Zombie Parade.

Previously Published on Open Salon June 25 2011 under Snarkychaser

My Grave Investment

September 30, 2012May 7, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb1 Comment

Gravestones1

Last month I bought my grave site in an ancient church yard. It is actually two places for “cremains”. After I read Mary Roach’s Stiff-The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, I walked around for two weeks looking at everyone as if they were meat halfway to the morgue. In my middle age, I started wondering why I was even bothering to go to the gym- I was already half decayed flesh. Why bother with anything? Perhaps it was time to just take it easy and plan my death.

However, it was also at this time, in the gym, that a weight lifting friend brought up his burial plans. He is about 25 years older than I am and was a big coffee trader in his prime. He tells me that in the 70s he was written up in the Wall Street Journal for cornering the coffee market the way the Hunt brothers cornered the silver market. He and I often discussed investments and I had never thought of the cemetery plots as being a financial investment. Yet here he was lamenting that he had not bought his little plot in the revolutionary war graveyard when he could have purchased it for “fifty bucks”. I raced over to the church that afternoon to get my investment sewed up before inflation could make it unaffordable to me.

cemetary

The church secretary was wonderful as she took me over to the available plots. She showed me the new wheelchair access that they had installed and asked me if I would like to be by a bench. She said that many preferred to be in shade. I was so flustered that I decided I would prefer to be in the shade by the bench to cover my bets. I did ask her if they had many drunken teens at night that liked the bench. Over the next few weeks I told everyone about my new investment. It was then that I learned that there is a big ‘after market’ for plots.

One friend told me the she and her husband owned several plots in three different cemeteries. “We have six in King Solomon but that is a Jewish cemetery and they won’t take me. We have three in Brooklyn and one up state.These are all from the days when you got married, bought your house and then bought your plots. There was so much death in the early part of the 20th century.” she noted “My father is in my upstairs coat closet but I don’t know what to do with him.” She told me about several web sites that were like a Grave Plot’s Craig List for people wanting to sell.

When I announced my new investment status on Face Book, I initially wrote that I was not going to be buried in Queens with my husband. I got a panicked call from him to take it down in case his mom thought that I had a problem with Queens. For the record, I don’t have a problem with Queens – except that I have no connection to the place and can’t drive very well. It just feels like such a schlep to get there. My next status -with picture elicited lots of responses from people who were trying to sell grave sites in other places that they no longer felt connected to.

Many people just want their ashes spread in their back yards. I will make a query to see if the Rutgers’s Master Gardener program might be interested in developing guidelines. But I am set for now.

Gravestone2

Previously published on Open Salon under Snarkychaser and as Editor’s Pick

Ricky, Cayce and the Peruvian Healer

September 30, 2012May 13, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

Ceremonial Beaker courtesy Princeton University Art Museum
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund

The first time I learned about Edgar Cayce was through talking to my friend, Wendy’s husband, Ricky. I had heard about Cayce but knew nothing about the man. Even after speaking with Ricky, I thought the whole Cayce thing was just weird. However, Ricky and Edgar Cayce remained in my mind as a pair. Two years ago, Ricky died at the age of 50. His death marked the beginning of Wendy and my exploration into Cayce’s teachings.

Since I have learned of Ricky’s death, Wendy and I have talked on the phone almost every day. As part of the healing process, I have tried to keep an open mind about Edgar Cayce. Ricky was a very spiritual man and his unexpected death at such a young age, has led many of our conversations to question thenature of life after death. When Wendy suggested going to an Edgar Cayce workshop this past Sunday on his teachings of “Life-Death-Reincarnation-Eternity according to Edgar Cayce”, I gladly agreed to join Wendy and her daughter to learn more about this man at the A.R.E. of New York Edgar Cayce Center.

The lecture was taught by a volunteer and former science teacher, Jack Rosen. Rosen touched on many of Cayce’s teachings and many short videos can be found on You Tube which will give you an idea of what some of his theories were. The unexpected addition of the lecture was that Rosen had invited a Peruvian Shaman to come to speak to the class on his experiences of death and the after life. The Shaman’s name was Jorge and Rosen felt that he was the “real thing” and he here in New York for a short period to do some healing work with people.

Jorge was a modest, small, handsome, middle-aged man dressed in blue cargo pants and a preppy blue sweater. He was former engineer from Lima, who went through special training to be a healer in the forests of the Amazon. He spoke very good English and the first thing he told us was that he was not a “Shaman”, he was a healer. Jorge explained that as part of his training process he had to go through certain experiences that would help him to understand the human condition of those that he was to heal. The first was to give birth, and the second was to die.

Jorge explained that through certain plants and a night in a cave he was able to experience something of these human conditions. The death experience was the one that he had come to describe. I did not take notes so I will just relay the most important things that I took away from his talk. The experience that he described right after death was of liberation of soul from his earthly body. The second was that he still had very strong attachments to those still living on earth. At this point, there was an instant understanding of what he did to all of these people that he had contact with in this lifetime. The repentance was very strong for those he had wronged. Also, there was enormous sadness and regret for all of the positive feelings that he had held in his heart for those still living. He had a realization that these feelings, especially love and forgiveness, should have been expressed in his lifetime. Then there was a “purgatory” where these strong feelings were dealt with so that he could move on to the next phase. Jorge was not at liberty to discuss the next phase but this phase involved creating a new identity for the soul from the one that had been established in the earthly body. This process is individual and all souls must experience this for themselves.

Jorge’s talk was just another reminder for me not to let unexpressed feelings of love and gratitude remain private. We never know when our time will be called and it would be very painful to regret what could have been so easily dealt with here on earth in the now.

Previously Published on Open Salon under Snarkychaser August 18, 2010

A Very Organized Teacher

September 30, 2012May 7, 2020by Laura Stinchcomb

schoolhouse

I am tolerant of quirks, I embrace anxiety and I cherish eccentricity. Five years ago, the fact that my daughter’s teacher was rumored to have OCD did not deter me at all. In fact I believe that certain anal tendencies are what make teachers and lawyers best suited to their professions. However, what transpired over that school year made me hate (yes hate) my child’s third grade teacher. Her need to control made her an inflexible and an unkind person to my daughter.

My daughter is considered “profoundly gifted” by the school district, which means that her IQ scores fall in the top 1% of population. This is the threshold that our school district considers significant enough to encompass an “at risk” the student population. Gifted children manifest their gifts differently. My daughter is very verbal but the verbal skills seem to come at the expense of other ordinary skills. She can’t file, she can’t write quickly, she has trouble with organization and she moves in slow motion. She was also a very tall and awkward child who looks much older than her age. We had a history of teachers that had been unkind to her because they didn’t understand that, as smart as she was, she has some significant processing disabilities. Unfortunately, this new particular teacher was very big on systems and filing and her specialty was organizing.

The teacher was renowned as an organizer; she spent many days out of the classroom teaching other teachers to be organized. She had a homework collecting system that resembled a Rube Goldberg machine. Designated children would collect the children’s homework, organize the homework in numerical order and then check off whether the children had handed in their homework, and then they would be put in a pile to be graded by a parent that helped the teacher. Every quarter, the teacher sent the parents a spreadsheet to update us on grades and missing assignments. My daughter had 32 missing pieces of work one-quarter. I suggested to the teacher that she just collect the homework directly from my daughter. It seemed a simple solution but she balked because her system worked perfectly.

One of the first writing assignments that she gave to these little eight year olds was to write an essay on obsession. This should have tipped me off. I thought it was neat at the time. The teacher also had frequent cleaning days where the children would spend entire days cleaning the shared pencils, scissors and rulers. The teacher did not allow anyone to bring in her own pencils because she wanted to control the supply. The teacher’s class room was spotless and clean. One day, my daughter was watching a commercial on TV and said “Mom, I feel an impending sense of doom every time I see this.” It took us a while before we realized that her teacher used these plug in air fresheners in the classroom.

Once, when my daughter returned from her pull out program, the teacher handed her the math book and told her that she would need to learn decimals by reading the text book that night at home. She had missed the lesson for the day. She was told by the teacher, if she did not learn decimals on her own, she would not be able to do her homework or pass the math test. The teacher explained that she was going to be away for the next few days teaching seminars on organization.

My daughter cried every day that year, she would just say that the teacher had so much filing in the classroom. My daughter had nightmares in which the teacher was possessed by an evil force. My daughter was perceptive enough to know on some level that the teacher was possessed by an overriding need to control her environment. My daughter also realized that this was a force that was beyond the teacher’s control.

For that year, I was consumed with my own feelings of helplessness. My suggestions to the teacher to help her to deal with my daughter’s inability to keep up with the organizational demands of the classroom were met with disdain. The teacher would explain that her system worked and that my child should be able to meet all of the requirements.

In the end, when I play over the school year in my mind, I can only come to the conclusion that the teacher had some kind of disability that made it hard for her to be flexible enough to meet the needs of children that did not fit neatly into her mold. Other factors were: 1. The teacher was so overwhelming driven by her ambition to be the most organized teacher in the school district, 2. My inability to be an effective advocate for my daughter. I did not know how to work the system.and 3. The teacher’s lack of empathy.

By the end of the year, this teacher had the lowest class score on our NJASK standardized test. Third grade is the first year for this assessment. As a consequence, the teacher was moved to first grade. I am told that the first graders are required to file and keep large binders. I am just glad that our disorganized family did not get her as a teacher again.

Previously Published on Open Salon July 29 2010 under Snarkychaser