Tasers for Teachers

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[Prologue:  Back in 1977, those callow days before the Internet and email, Don Novello aka Saturday Night Live’s  Father Guido Sarducci published a little 160 page book titled The Lazo Letters: The Amazing Real-Life Correspondence of Lazlo Toth: American. To quote Amazon: "In letters to stars, dignitaries, and chairmen of the country's most powerful organizations, Don Novello's alter ego Lazlo Toth pestered his victims for photographs, offered outlandish advice, fired off strange inquiries, and more. The strangest part? Practically everyone answered, leaving Toth with a hilarious collection of outlandish correspondence unmatched in the history of American letters.”   

The book truly is a riot and is still in print. I recommend it highly. Lazlo’s occasionally tortured prose only heightens the impact of his often misguided passion. But beneath the brilliant satire lies a darker side. Novello occasionally takes on the absurdities of the rich and powerful, pointing out with razor-sharp wit that “Look! These folks are naked. The Emperor has no clothes. They are not only naked, they are also stupid.” Having spent 65 years in classrooms, either as a student or a teacher, I feel qualified to assert that President Trump’s recent proposal that a good response to the continuing national disgrace of school shootings would be to arm classroom teachers falls beyond the pale of rational thought.  Frankly the proposal calls into question the President’s mental health.  It is clear from his personal history that at one time Donald Trump was a cagey businessman, adept at working a complex commercial world to his personal advantage. This recent proposal provides no indication of such acumen. Rather it seems to reveal evidence of significant intellectual decline. It hints of the aggressive and irrational outbursts commonly found in the victims of dementia. As such it becomes a natural target for Lazlo Toth: Real American.  If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, I hope Mr. Novello will accept my poaching on his nom de plume as just such a tribute from a fellow Buckeye.] 

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Right On Mr. President!

Well, I guess you Trumped those fake crisis actors from Florida! “Trumped,” get it? Ha ha. I don’t understand why there haven’t always been guns in classrooms. I mean guns for the teachers - forget that ruler on the knuckles, or a quick swat on the butt. Guns for the teachers! Yeah! I bet our founding Four Fathers didn’t leave their muskets at home when they rode over to the old one room school house! And how about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and John Wayne? Real Americans with guns!

But, Mr. President, here's an idea that might play better in the faking liberal press. “Tasers for Teachers!” It fits really well on a bumpersticker or as a hashtag. And there are other good things about the idea. Saving money! With tasers whining teachers can’t come asking for money for school budgets, books and stuff instead of guns. Tasers are cheaper than guns! And they don’t use expensive bullets!  Have you checked the price of ammunition for an AR-15 these days? Disgraceful! How are we supposed to defend ourselves at those prices!? Besides, from what I see on TV you get two taser-thingies that shoot out every time you pull the trigger! Twice the chance of hitting what you shoot at!  No need to pay for target training!  And dual purpose. If you just crank the charge down a bit, teachers could use the tasers on the students too! Those smart-aleck kids in the back row who are always laughing and checking their Facebook pages? Let’s see if they are still laughing after they catch a few thousand volts from the teacher’s taser! 

I think this could be really big Mr. President! The National Taser Association!!  Yeah! Yeah for the NTA!!  Scoop up those chicken companies who are abandoning the good old NRA!

Yours for safe schools! 

Lazlo Toth, Real American

Make America Grate Again!

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Clarity Will Take Some Getting Used To

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To begin at the beginning, I don’t remember life without glasses. Well, that’s not really true.  I wasn’t one of those babies you see in the newborn nurseries with glasses taped to their tiny little heads. I must have started school without glasses, because I remember sitting in the back of class and peering through my fist so I could read what was written up front on the blackboard.  I’m not exactly sure how that worked but it did. You turn your fist into a little telescope, peer through it and you can see the blackboard better. No doubt some deep principle of optics at work there.  

My teachers probably reported my strange behavior to my parents, and I’m guessing it was around then that I got my first pair of glasses. Hence for pretty much all my life I have “visually challenged,” very, very nearsighted.  I wore glasses until my sophomore year in high school. The musical that year was West Side Story and I was cast as one of The Jets - the Anglo gang. It was 1965 or 66, and so while the idea of dancing gangbangers seemed tolerable, Action singing "Gee, Officer Krupke" while wearing glasses the thickness of Coke bottles just wouldn’t wash. So, one rehearsal I went on without my glasses and casually danced off the stage and into the orchestra pit. My pride, a major aspect of any high school identity, was the only casualty - and I got contacts!

Now, contacts in the late 1960s were very different than today’s high tech versions.  But they were well-suited for the lifestyle of my next few years. Hard little disks of plastic they were well nigh indestructible.  No solution really needed. At night you could just stick them on any surface - the nightstand, between the pages of a book, or in the spirit of full disclosure, down the sides of a pack of cigarettes.  Come morning you just popped them in your mouth, sloshed them around a bit and transferred them directly back into your eyes. No big deal. I know, I know, sounds totally disgusting nowadays, but those were simpler times. Like the rest of the world I eventually moved into soft lenses with toric astigmatism correction that required a second mortgage to buy the necessary cases, fluids, etc. 

About 15 years ago a normal check-up at the eye doctor detected a cataract in my right eye, so I had that fixed.  Leaving my really, really near-sighted left eye untouched.  I had actually become rather attached to the visual anomaly in that eye. Those of you out there who are near-sighted may understand what I mean. An uncorrected near-sighted eye is also a pseudo-microscope.  I could take out my left lens and see tiny things in incredible detail. Great for removing splinters and - much more importantly - drawing tiny little details. And so I have lived in that visually-unbalanced world ever since.

Fast forward to, oh, maybe 6 months ago.  My microscopic left eye began to acquire a plastic wrap like persona.  I would pop the lens out several times a day, run it through its multiple solutions, and put it back in.  It would, seemingly, be better for awhile, and then not.  It eventually dawned on me that the problem might lie elsewhere. I went to see MyEyeDoctor.  

“Whoa,” she opined. “You are really nearsighted!”

“Yes, I am.” I replied proudly.

“And I can’t believe you can see at all though this cataract.”

“Beg pardon?”

That conversation led me to another round of cataract surgery about a week ago. And the world truly is different.  I can now read my powerpoint slides in class without having to stand directly in front of the screen. I can tell immediately that I did not leave my keys, phone, iPad, etc., in that empty space where I thought I had left them. My doc tells me that I now have 20/20 vision in that eye.  However, unlike the folks touting lasik in commercials I do not walk around muttering “I can’t believe I didn’t do this years ago.” More often I find myself thinking “This is strange.”

Take waking up for example. For most of my life I would ease my way into consciousness. The world first presented itself through a gentle haze. Back in 1967 the film Elvira Madigan made its debut.  It was largely forgettable except for the incredible visual quality - ethereal, yet lush, quite beautiful.  It was rumored to have been shot with a silk stocking stretched over the camera lens.  The point is that that is how I used to see the world in the morning.  Then, when I decided it was time to fully engage with the world, I would put in my lenses.  Now I open my eyes and "WHOA! WAKE UP, DUDE! HERE WE ARE! UP AND AT ‘EM!" The temptation to simply close my eyes and go back to sleep again is significant. 

And then, as I mentioned earlier, there is the drawing thing.  Those of you who bought my coloring book.  .  .  What, you haven’t? Well, I can wait. Just log in to Amazon and search for Schrag Color Me Chilled Out. There it is. Hit “Buy with One Click.” OK, back now? Good. As you can see there is a lot of detail in some of those images - even more if you were looking at the original drawings that are 17 x 14. Back in the  PL (pre-lasik) era, all I had to do was pop out my left lens an I could draw those tiny little lines. Now I have to scramble around for ultra-magnifying reading glasses. Not the same thing at all.

Mind you I don’t regret the surgery.  The dizziness and unsteadiness on my feet that I used to write off to just another little gift of getting older have either disappeared or been greatly reduced. Driving at night is no longer a nervous game of “dodge ‘em” in a snow storm. The TV has gained significant clarity. Typing is a lot easier. I can recognize friends, students and colleagues from a far greater distance.

So, yes, no regrets. But unremitting visual clarity is not always the unabashed “good thing” you might assume. I now wonder what we might learn if we could slip back in time and give the impressionist and expressionist artists modern eye exams.  We might discover that they were actually realists - painting to world exactly as they saw it.

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Gelato Implications in Collisional Augmented Poetic Constructions

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I’m sure my friends over in English have the proper phrase. 

We are talking about poetry, and they are academics. 

And that is what we do, isn’t it?  

We make up phrases for conference programs, 

Or titles for articles in learned journals. 

“An Exploration of the Epistemological and Theoretical Implications of  

Collisionally Augmented Poetic Constructions.” 

I am thinking of a form of poetry 

That draws meaning from the improbable  

Intersection of two trains of thought. 

It is approaching 2 AM, so one train is insomnia. 

The other, for no particular reason, is a piazza in Florence 

That houses, according to our guidebook, 

Two exceptional gelato shops. 

Both claim to be the best in the city. 

The inevitable intersection  

Of these two trains of thought  

Demands a deeper consideration of the  

Various flavors of insomnia. 

Basic, of course, is vanilla insomnia. 

A subtle form, you may not realize 

You are involved in it until you notice 

That midnight has turned to 2 AM. 

Mild concerns ping the cranium. 

Chocolate insomnia is the darker shade. 

You brought the seeds to bed with you. 

The “I should have saids!” the “Oh, yeahs?” 

Chocolate insomnia is a pillow thumper, 

A fan adjuster, a fetch a glass of water 

Variant of the breed. 

Your chocolate cherry insomnia 

Is all of the above, but sweeter.

Irritating, of course, but sprinkled

With a happy occasional recollection.

Perhaps the fleeting memory of 

A favorite face or place.

Not surprising, pistachio insomnia 

Can drive you nuts. 

Layered between chucks of dreams 

It masquerades as sleep, blending 

The real exasperations of the day 

With those we construct internally  

Until we are unable to mark the difference. 

Peach insomnia is rare and gentle. 

Sweet thoughts shepherd memories, 

Sunny and drowsy. 

Still awake, but pleasantly so, 

You drift down the river that leads, 

Sometime before morning, 
To actual sleep. 

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