I Found it...It's Mine

When I was in the fifth grade an adult friend of the family gave me a University of Texas spiral notebook. It was white with an orange longhorn picture on the front. I put my name inside the front cover and took it to school.

That same day, I came back to my desk after changing classes for math and it was gone. After searching the classroom I found it in Mike Jones’ desk. He had marked out my name and drawn pictures on the longhorn. When confronted by the teacher and myself he claimed to have found it. Never mind that he found it in my desk and it had my name on it. The twisted idea that simply finding it gave him ownership somehow made sense to Mike Jones.

Having taught elementary school for 11 years, I hear it all the time. “I found it,” is the reply all to quickly given by students who just happen to be in the possession of something that belongs to another student. I’m forever telling my students that just because you find something does not mean that it belongs to you.

I don’t think the line between finding something and stealing something is all that hard to see. Something is either yours, or it isn’t, there’s really no gray area.

Last night I left our garage open by mistake. I’ve done if before, but up until this time I’ve been lucky, if you can call it that.

This time, however, some items were missing. First, my gas powered trimmer. Now, while having to replace the trimmer is a hassle, I wasn’t really all that happy with the way it was working, so it’s not that big of a loss. However, the second item this person “found” was my air compressor, which I’ve written about here. This one hurt. I love my air compressor.

What these people do is drive through the alleys late at night looking for garages that have been accidentally left open. When they see an open garage, they dash in, “find” a few things and dash out.

I guess in the big scheme of things we were lucky. The items lost are easily replaceable and we weren’t hurt.

But I’m left with this question…

When will “I found it” stop being an acceptable excuse for stealing?

Good-bye Marlene

We recently had to have our cat Marlene put to sleep.

She was old and had been battling several different illnesses, not the least of which was diabetes, for longer than we've had her.

Only a few months after I had gotten home from Dallas Rehabilitation Institute Melissa and I went to Operation Kindness, a no-kill shelter here in Dallas, just to have a look.

We were led to a room small room with a cement floor, at least half a dozen liter boxes, walls lined with floor to ceiling carpeted cat perches, the distinct smell of cat urine and more cats than could be counted.

I don't remember how I first saw her. I do remember that nothing really attracted me to her...at first. Most of the cats were either terrified of you, or didn't see you at all. Marlene, laying on one of the many cat perches, just watched us. She wore a torn up, braided yarn collar that had carved a permanent part in the fur around her neck. When I reached down and petted the unkempt, matted fur she came alive.

She's one of our special cases, the volunteer said. She just showed up on the front porch one day. Too sick to run away, she just laid in the box and cried.

As I picked her up and she began purring loudly, then made herself at home in my arms.

We didn't even look at any more cats. The Operation Kindness Vet took us aside and gave us a brief medical history. He told us she had been pretty sick, but they had nursed her back to health and she was doing pretty well. She had had some kind of a gum infection, so they had removed about a half the teeth from the top of her mouth. His best guess was that she was two years old. Give of take six months.

We paid the fee, put her in the cardboard cat carrier they gave us and headed for the car.

She threw up twice on the way home. She never could ride in a car without getting sick out of at least one end.

We went straight to our vet who said her blood work came back a little suspicious and to keep her away from our other cat, Matiste, until he got some tests back in a day or two.

We took her in our little apartment and let her out of the box. I don't think she had never been on carpet that wasn't on some kind of perch. It was like taking a kid to Disney World, because she started purring loudly and kneading as she walked. I don't remember how long she did that knead walk thing, but it was several days. We took her collar off and were sad to find the part in her matted hair was not going away. She was plump. She was sickly. She was a mess. But we loved her.

Our other cat was strong and one big muscle. Holding Marlene was like holding a big water balloon. She would just ooze right through your fingers. The vet called and told us the tests came back fine and that it looked like she only had asthma so she would probably cough and wheeze from time to time...which she did. After a couple of weeks we noticed that her collar part was gone and that her coat looked really pretty. Like she was taking care of it again.

That was about 13 years ago. Marlene was 15 or 16. That's over 100 in cat years. Her health has slowly been going downhill for several years and we had been giving her pills for her blood sugar for about three years and were looking at having to go to daily insulin shots. This morning she was acting very strange and couldn't seem to snap out of it. The vet had told us she could have a kind of diabetic episode and that we should take her in if she does.

It didn't take long for him to determine that all he could do is prolong the inevitable, and through tears Melissa and I made the decision.

Between the three of us, we have had a lot of tears.

We said good-bye to a good friend.

I hope somewhere she's finally able to catch a mouse.

An Extremely Something Poem

An extremely angry man
With an extremely angry wife
Had an extremely angry dog
And an extremely angry life

His two extremely angry kids
Made an extremely angry noise
As they extremely angry played
With their extremely angry toys

He ate extremely angry food
At his extremely angry meals
His extremely angry car
Had four extremely angry wheels

This extremely angry man
Had an extremely angry day
When an extremely happy man
Came his extremely angry way

Now this extremely happy man
Did an extremely happy thing
To the extremely angry man
He did extremely happy sing

The extremely angry man
Made an extremely angry face
But the extremely happy man
Kept his extremely happy pace

Then the extremely angry man
Began to feel extremely strange
And this extremely angry man
Made an extremely happy change

So the extremely happy moral
To this extremely happy tale
Is if you be extremely happy
You will not extremely fail

The Green Side

We painted my daughter’s room yesterday. It’s been pink for about six years and she’s been really sick of pink for almost half that time.

Thanks to my Dad’s “We ain’t paying no one to do what we can do ourselves” philosophy, I can paint both the interior and exterior of houses and do a pretty fair job. However, with interiors, usually I’m just painting white over white, which is a fairly simple task.

Not so for this paint job.

I knew I was in trouble color wise, when she said, “I think I want green walls.” “We’ll see,” was my hasty reply. All the while I’m shuffling through my mental card catalog of reasons, searching for just the right excuse for why not to paint green.

Then it hits me, and I sat back with my mind at ease, knowing full well that there’s no way my wife is going to let a room in her house be painted green.

And I was right…at first.

When confronted with the green room idea, she shot me a “No way!” glance. Then politely gave the standard, “We’ll see” reply, adding on some wise parental comments about needing to find a color that would work well with the furniture.

I smiled and went about my business secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be painting anything green.

But my daughter had other plans and she’s quite the schemer. She set her sights on Mom. She knew that if she could lure Mom over to the green side of the force, then she could easily crush the anti-green rebellion.

Little did I know that while I’m off doing who knows what (probably driving around in my new Chevrolet Trailblazer), my wife and daughter are still discussing the whole green room thing.

You should know that my wife, while not actually employed as or even making money at it, is quite an artist. Her father who has a wonderful eye for art and her mother, a former art teacher/painter who successfully dabbles in all kinds of art, have genetically instilled a true gift of artistry in my wife.

I wasn’t there so I don’t really know what happened. However, I know things were going well for the rebellion, and we were holding our ground. That is, until my daughter pulled out her secret weapon.

“Hey Mom, what if we paint the walls green with a ceiling blue and you could paint clouds on the ceiling?” At that instant, miles away, I felt a disturbance in the force.

I got home to find that not only was green the new color of choice, but we already had paint chips from Sherwin-Williams and were working on the right combination of green and blue to work with the existing décor.

And I stood by helpless as green became a reality.

With help from my daughter, I painted. First the ceiling blue and then the walls green.

After finishing, I cocked my head to the side, looked the around the room and stepped over to the green side.

Because it really does look good.

TAKS Season

For Americans this is tax season. With the April 15th dark cloud looming over their heads, people everywhere are trying to get their all their financial information together, organized and properly 10W-somethinged for the U.S. government.

For most Americans this is your only tax season, and it comes once a year.

However, for many Texans there is also TAKS Season.

You may not live in Texas and even if you do, you may not have school age children. For those of you who happen to be out of the public education loop…in Texas public schools we have a little thing called the TAKS test. (Pronounced like tax) TAKS stands for Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

As a teacher, the TAKS test is the greatest producer of stress I have in my life. And it’s trickle down stress. The state puts pressure on the superintendent, who in turn puts pressure on the district administrators, who in turn put pressure on the principals, who in turn put pressure on the teachers, who in turn put pressure on the kids.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for accountability, but ours is a flawed system.

I’ve been teaching for only 11 years, but in that short amount of time I’ve had no less than three students who the state has determined, after a battery of tests, have IQ’s that are too low to qualify for special education and must therefore take and pass the TAKS test.

And that's only one of a plethora of flaws...