Author: Sharron Burnett

My mom was a stickler for using words correctly. One of her pet peeves was hearing someone make a grammatical error or mispronounce a word. If that person was a stranger she held her tongue, but if she knew the individual committing a usage sin, she would abruptly correct the violation. It sometimes angered me that she would do so. I often explained to her that there was a big difference between using the wrong linguistic structures in writing versus when speaking. I pointed out that speech is more informal and therefore more prone to idiomatic difficulties. Sadly my refutations were in vain. She expected everyone to think before opening their mouths and she actually judged folks by the way they spoke or misspoke.

I have a friend who has an aversion to unkempt feet. She goes absolutely bonkers if she sees someone wearing sandals with dirty or unmanicured toe nails. While she never addresses the offenders with her concerns, she always reacts in a  negative way that they must surely notice. She has compassion for a homeless person in that state, but not for someone who just does not seem to care how gross their feet appear to others. She wonders why they don’t just cover them with socks or closed toed footwear.

Someone else that I know can’t stand to hear people chew. Unless she is also eating and the sound of others enjoying a bite is muffled, she literally has to leave the room. To her obnoxious chewing is akin to running fingernails across a blackboard. She claims to feel physically ill when the slurping and chomping and movement of tongues is too loud.

I’ve thought and thought about what my own pet peeve might be, but I suppose that I am mostly immune to feeling discomfort from other folks’ behaviors. Perhaps my many years of working in schools has made me more accepting of others’ annoying habits. I doubt I would have lasted very long in my profession if I had been even marginally upset by some pet peeve or another. I learned the importance of mostly being chill with my students and their parents. I tended more toward attempting to understand why they had various bad habits, rather than becoming irritated by them. 

If I had to dig deeply to actually identify at least one pet peeve it would be that there is still far too much ignorance in this world in spite of the vast amount of knowledge that is available for the taking. I do not mind that someone does not have a raft of degrees, but I worry that far too many of us are simply taking shortcuts when it comes to accepting or rejecting information. We base too many of our important decisions on hearsay or hunches. We listen to television personalities rather than doing the hard work of researching topics and ideas to learn about what is real and what is a hoax. Whenever I hear sound bites being repeated as reasons for accepting certain philosophies, my reaction is to grit my teeth and worry that our general laziness in seeking truth will be our societal downfall. 

I suppose that my life as a teacher has been dedicated to encouraging young people to learn how to think. I hark back to my own school days and remember the warnings of the best of my teachers to always dig for the facts and truths rather than falling prey to propaganda or lies. I took their words to heart and so my life has been focused on an effort to learn more and more about everything before making decisions or following a particular path. I don’t mind having my beliefs challenged, but I would be remiss if I did not then do some study to determine what is real. I don’t understand why this is not a generally held way of living. 

I won’t even call a plumber unless I know something about him. The few times I’ve had to blindly go with a repair person it has turned out badly. It’s easy enough to learn about a company’s certifications, business ratings and to see examples of their work. While public opinion is certainly one aspect of making a judgement, I would never go to a doctor based solely on what others have said about him/her. I want to know where the physicians went to college, where they have hospital privileges, what their peers think about them, whether or not there are any lawsuits against them. 

We have to make decisions day in and day out. Sometimes the ones we face will have a long term impact on our lives. Arming ourselves with information helps us to weigh pro and cons in a rational way. Our emotions often come in handy by providing us with a sixth sense about something but we have to look at the facts as well. For that we should be using all of our senses and a raft of research. If we all did this I suspect that we would be able to come to more sensible conclusions for solving the problems of the world instead of bickering.

Society has never quite figured out how to deal with women and women often struggle to figure out how to deal with themselves. Biologically women are designed to bear children, but that is not the only thing they are equipped to do. Women have proven themselves to be intellectually equivalent to even the most brilliant men. Nonetheless, it has taken centuries for women to be generally accepted as equal to their male counterparts. They have made great strides in demonstrating their abilities to tackle jobs that were once only the domain of men. They now head corporations and serve in powerful political positions, including the Supreme Court and the vice presidency of the United States. Still, their salaries are often lower than their male counterparts. They are questioned about their dedication to balancing their careers and their families. They walk an uneasy tightrope that can be confusing and exhausting. 

I was watching a Master Class featuring Hans Zimmer describing what it takes to create music for movies. At the end of his discussion he noted how his passion had often taken him away from his family for extended periods of time. He missed Christmases with them, worked through nights without knowing what was happening to them. He indicated that success in his chosen craft often depended on his dedication over all else. He told a story of asking his son if the work had made him a bad father. The son responded that he was a good father, just different. 

Sadly, I find that women who are good mothers, but just different, are all too often judged as somehow being derelict in their female duties. Women are still asked if they have a steady beau  and when they plan on marrying, albeit not as often as in past times. In unspoken ways a woman of childbearing age is often considered a risk when it comes to hiring and promoting. Our society still places the bulk of the child-rearing duties on the woman, leaving the man freer to devote himself to work. 

While we have certainly progressed in our attitudes toward women the balancing acts that they must perform often make them wonder if they are only mediocre at every task they do. I found great joy in teaching. My work never fit into an eight hour five day a week timeframe. The forty hours registered on the official time clock was really more like eighty as I stayed late tutoring, planning and conferring with parents and my fellow teachers. I took home work in a rolling cart every single night. I lived on a tightly run schedule that required me to give my best to both my job and my family. It didn’t always work out as well as I wished.

There were so many times when I felt as though I was neglecting every facet of my world. When my mother was sick and I was helping her, I let my job slide as well as my care of my daughters. When I was in a particularly busy time of the school year I hardly saw my children or my mother. When I took off time when my children were sick or to be present for their performances, I felt as though I was letting down my students. Guilt was a constant companion and I harbored a feeling that I wasn’t particularly good at anything that I was doing. I suspect that my story is much like that of every woman who attempts to juggle and spin plates at the same time. 

Now that I am retired and looking back on my life I realize that I did my very best. I loved all of my responsibilities and my accomplishments both at my job and at home. In the long run, however, my family was indeed more important to me than any of the other things I attempted to do. I hope and pray that my husband and my daughters realize that nothing ever meant more to me than they did. Unfortunately I think that the mere fact of being a working woman creates such doubt all too often. 

I have friends who devoted their lives to caring for their families. They were phenomenal in ways that I was unable to duplicate because there were not enough hours in the day. I have other friends who chose to dedicate themselves to careers that lead them to the highest ranks. They too have my deepest admiration. Both sets of women made choices based on their personal needs and preferences. I applaud them for following their hearts. 

I’m among the many women who have divided themselves into many parts. Somehow we find fulfillment in our lives even as we sometimes limp along frustrated and so very tired. In the end the only questions a woman needs to consider are, “How happy are your choices making you?” “Do you feel that you are doing your very best?” It’s okay to attempt to be a good worker, mom, spouse, friend even if the way you do it is different. 

I once had a student who was notorious for falling asleep in class. His nodding off was not a critique of the teacher’s ability to create an exciting lesson, but the result of his tendency to spend late nights on the phone with his many girlfriends. He was a very bright young man who sincerely wanted to do well in school, but according to his father was so handsome and charming that the girls flocked to him. Being a gentleman, he simply had no idea how to turn them away without hurting their feelings. Thus, he spent many hours each evening calming and reassuring them with extended sessions on the phone. 

While I agreed with the father’s assessment of his son’s personality, I was unwilling to use it as an excuse for his lackluster academic performance and his daytime slumbers. I was determined to help the boy to reassess his routines and prioritize his activities to focus more on learning and less on expanding his social reputation. I scheduled a private conference with this student and asked him what he thought it would take to keep him awake during my Algebra I class. He thanked me for caring about him and made a bold suggestion.

His idea was to allow him to sit right in front of the area where I provided my instruction in functions and polynomials and such. Since this was in the times between chalky blackboards and computerized smart boards, I mostly delivered my lessons with an overhead projector. I used whiteboard markers to write my examples on glass screen of the projector and all the while I had the benefit of facing the students rather than turning my back to them. I used a spray bottle filled with water to quickly erase an example and create a clean slate for moving on to the next one. Therein came the brilliant crux of the young man’s idea for keeping him wide awake no matter how tired he became from his nightly sojourns with girls. He wanted me to spray him in the face with my water bottle as soon as he nodded off.

My initial reaction to his idea was incredulity. While it demonstrated that he was indeed quite creative, it did nothing to amend his propensity for staying up all night entertaining the ladies. I felt that the correct route to classroom attention and participation lay in getting him to sleep at night so that he would be alert during the day. Nonetheless I agreed to place him right in front of me while I taught, hoping that he would be embarrassed to fall asleep in such close proximity to my ire. 

For a couple of days he was able to engage in the lessons and prove himself to be as intelligent as I was sure he was. Sadly, his resolution to refocus his routines collapsed before the end of the school week. Soon I would witness the fluttering of his eyelids as he struggled to stay away. While I was able to lean over the projector and give him a nudge to keep his attention, the continual need to wake him up broke the flow of my teaching and slowed down the pace of the lesson. Our interaction became a sideshow and source of laughter for the rest of the students. The plan was a total bust until I finally lost it one day, picked up my spray bottle and aimed it in his direction. 

As the fine mist of water landed on his head he immediately sat up straight and smiled at me as if to thank me for my willingness to work with him. On that first foray the entire class dissolved into a wave of hysterical laughter. When the sleepy student corrected them by insisting that he was like a Pavlovian dog who needed reinforcement to change his bad behavior, they somehow understood that they had just witnessed a serious moment and they immediately resumed a more studious demeanor. 

 I continued the lesson with great success. I had to spray the drowsy student a few more times, but he always came back with a determination to ignore the need to doze that his body was urging him to do. Over time our experiment proved to be fruitful. The young man would often last for an entire class period without surrendering to slumber even when his eyelids became heavy. He demonstrated his intellect with delving questions and informed answers. He began turning in his homework regularly and making exemplary grades on his tests. He liked the way he felt and worked harder and harder, falling into a state of slumber less and less.

Eventually the hero of this story stopped sleeping in his other classes as well. He came to school bright eyed and ready to work. He admitted to me that now he had a problem with falling asleep while talking to his girlfriends. Since nobody was there to awaken him he more often than not managed to sleep through the night after dozing off in mid-sentence. 

I never again pointed my spray bottle at another student. Somehow even with the positive results that I had my slumberer, it felt unbecoming to resort to such tactics to keep my students awake during lessons. Instead I tried to make my teaching more interesting and relevant to them. I worked with them to learn how to take control of their daily routines as well. I’d still have an occasional child of Rip van Winkle show up for class, but never again would I encounter a student who was a certified day sleeper. I would not forget that charismatic soul who had his days and nights turned around. I hope that he is still doing well. He was certainly charming, but more importantly, he was so very bright. It was worth the effort to help him discover his potential even if the method for doing so was unorthodox. Sometimes thinking out of the box produces miracles.

I’ve always been fascinated by the International Balloon Fiesta that takes place each year in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This year the event is scheduled for October 1-9, and I’d love to be in the city when this extravaganza is in full force. I imagine that it would be a magical sight. Being there is on my bucket list, but it is more of a dream than something that I think will one day become a reality. My biggest concern is that I don’t like crowds even when there is not a plague and I suspect that Albuquerque is bursting at the seams during this city wide celebration. 

Last summer we visited Albuquerque and stayed in a wonderful RV park that advertised the annual event by boasting that is is a perfect site for viewing the festival of balloons. The ad suggested that we make our reservations early because the place fills up quickly and often requires reservations years in advance. I’m at a stage in life when nothing is certain and anything might happen. I do best just seizing the moment and serendipitously heading out on a journey without notice. Of late my track record with planned activities has been abysmal because of unexpected crises. I prefer now to just go with the flow. 

Nonetheless, I am fascinated by those hot air balloons that so delightfully fill the sky with color and splendor. My imagination takes flight at the very thought of what such an experience would be. I marvel at the folks who navigate the craft and think of how brave the passengers must be. Part of me wants to be with them and part of me feels that just being an observer from down below is good enough. 

I had hoped that I would see a balloon or two when we were in Albuquerque last summer, but I saw nary a craft gliding through the air. My cousin who lives there told me that there had been a fatal ballooning accident shortly before we arrived and the investigation into the incident had cooled the adventurous spirits just a bit. Nonetheless she agreed that seeing those incredible floating structures was delightful. She noted that she had seen hundreds of them over the years and the thrill never got old. She also confirmed that our campsite would be a wonderful place to see most of the balloons that come for the fiesta. 

One summer long ago we were passing through Albuquerque after a visit to Mesa Verde. We had planned to camp in a nearby state park but the warnings that there was an infestation of rattlesnakes sated our desire to be in the great outdoors. Instead we reserved a motel room for the night inside the city. When we awoke early the following morning there were several balloons in the sky. We were fascinated and giddy with delight. The little taste of joy that I felt upon witnessing that sight has stayed with me for decades now. 

I can’t explain my fascination with hot air balloons. I find myself wondering who would ever have thought of inventing such a conveyance. China is said to have developed hot air balloons as early as 202 CE. Their creations were unmanned lanterns that were designed as signals for the military. Much later the first “manned” balloon was conceived by a pair of brothers in France in 1783. They launched a craft with a sheep, a duck and a rooster as passengers. It floated through the clouds for fifteen minutes before abruptly crashing to the earth. 

We’ve all learned that hot air rises. This is the most basic principle of a hot air balloon. Because the heated air inside the balloon is warmer than the surrounding atmosphere the craft ascends into the air. To return to earth the pilot brings down the temperature in the balloon and it begins to descend. The balloon can stay in the air as long as there is fuel to keep the temperature inside the balloon higher than the air surrounding it. Balloons can stay afloat around four hours. Certified pilots use the speed and direction of the wind to “steer” the craft. By taking the balloon to different heights they somewhat control its path through the sky.

On any given year there are around twenty balloon fatalities in the United States. Overall it is considered to be a relatively safe adventure. A person is far more likely to die in a car crash than in a balloon, but I wonder if that is because the vast majority of us ride in cars, but very few go up in the air in a hot air balloon. Balloons move so slowly in tandem with the prevailing winds that motion sickness is not a problem either. it would seem to be ideal for a risk averse soul like me, but I doubt I’ll be signing up for a ride anytime soon. For now I’ll just dream of one day seeing a fleet of those lovely conveyances passing over me in the sky. 

I collect Christmas ornaments wherever I go. I have a special tree that features all of my lovely keepsakes from trips I have taken. It is my favorite holiday decor. It brings back the best memories of my lifetime. On one of the branches is a dazzling hot air balloon from Albuquerque. It whispers to me to be daring and make that reservation at the RV park for the first week in October so that I might sit quietly gazing up at the sky. That would be a fiesta for the eyes. Maybe it’s something that I need to do.

One of the most difficult aspects of my teaching job was hearing stories of horrible abuse being perpetrated on some of my students. So many were being used as sexual objects or whipping posts by the very people who should have been protecting them. In the earliest days of my career their situations almost derailed my intent to be a lifelong teacher. The things I learned were so egregious that I became an emotional wreck. I knew that my efforts to help them were shallow at best, Most of the time all I was able to do is alert the school counselor and the principal and hope that they would be able to alter the horrific trajectory of the students’ lives. 

I still see their faces and their stories echo in my brain. They are the ones who broke my heart because I understood that their childhoods had already been severely damaged. I think of the girl whose mother shaved her head and damned her for bringing head lice into the family. I see the young boy shivering in a bathroom stall with a pair of scissors at this throat ready to end his life because his mother had once set him on fire. I recall watching the twelve year old girl grow great with a child implanted in her whom by an uncle. I remember the tears of a young boy whose mother left him in charge of the family each evening as she went out to earn a living with prostitution. I think of the eleven year old child whose family held him responsible for his sister’s rape because he had lost track of her when he was babysitting. 

Such stories of children being used terribly by adults are not as uncommon as most of us want to believe. I know that learning of such things was an horrific eye opening experience for me. I grew up in a loving home and neighborhood. If such things were going on around me, I never heard of them save for the murder that took place on my street when I was nine years old. I suppose that my mother shielded me from such things and the bubble in which I lived was air tight. Nonetheless she was constantly warning me to be aware that such things do happen. I thought that her advice was hyperbolic because my own world seemed so perfect and safe. 

Of course I learned as an adult that there had been an undercurrent of dark events even in my seemingly safe surroundings. My feeling that something was off with one of my teachers was ultimately revealed to be true when a story of his abuse of a student came to light. I found out that the daughter of one of my mother’s friends had aborted a baby with a knitting needle when she was fifteen. I realized that the whispers about a man’s death were a cloak for his suicide. I knew that my favorite uncle died from his cancer even though my elders thought they had kept that sad truth from troubling me. I realized that even in the seemingly most perfect setting horror can find its way inside.  

I count myself quite fortunate for growing up in a loving and happy environment. I appreciate my mother’s efforts to protect me from harm and the harsh realities of the world, but I also know that I reached a point at which it became important for me to know of the atrocities of life so that I might be able to spot potentially harmful situations. I learned about such things mostly from reading books. I found out about the dark side of humanity in beautifully scripted paragraphs that horrified me and enlightened me. I saw that there have always been people in the world who use other in despicable ways. 

While it was disheartening and even a bit traumatic to read such things. They also taught me why my mother was so careful. It prompted me to be more aware of people and surroundings just as my mom had always counseled me. The stories of characters in dire situations helped me to put a face on abuse and injustice that I might not otherwise have had because I had been so sheltered. While such discoveries were shocking, they did not create confusion in my mind. On the contrary, the truth behind them helped me to be a better more understanding person.

Our duty as parents, educators, adults is to protect our children from harm. It is a noble and important purpose, but in the process we don’t want to keep our kids so innocent that they will not know what to do or how to react when they face dangers or corrupt behaviors. If they do not understand that such ways of behaving actually exist they may believe that something is wrong with them, not the perpetrator, if they encounter abuse. Exposing them gently but honestly to truth over the span of their childhoods is important. Talking with them about the things that they fear in an open manner is the best way of dealing with the traumas that they encounter or imagine. If we don’t broach such topics in the home, certainly the child will encounter them from their friends.  It’s best that we do not leave it to children to teach each other. 

There is much concern these days about the books that children read and the lessons that they learn from teachers. While I have seen rogue educators who do and say inappropriate things, such individuals are few and far between. Most people in schools are dedicated to improving the lives of their students, not endangering them. Books can be powerful tools in this endeavor. While sometimes they reveal harsh truths about the world, they also create teachable moments that strengthen the resiliency and goodness of the students. They also induce critical thinking which is perhaps the most important skill that any child will need to survive in the world as it is. 

Charlotte’s Web is a difficult read. Children invariably cry when they hear its story, but we should not be quick to whisk it away because it creates difficult emotions. Death is something what happens, even for little eight year old girls. Knowing about it and taking about it softens the shock of the blow if and when it occurs. I does not make the pain go away, but it helps to know that it is part of a shared human experience and that there are ways to keep moving forward. 

To me this is what good literature and history is about. It reveals the cracks in our society, but it also demonstrates that somehow we humans pick up the pieces of personal and collective disasters over and over again. It teaches us to be wary of any situation or person who makes us feel uncomfortable. It builds more trust to know the truth than to be the victim of lies about reality. 

I am a fortunate soul. I have been essentially untouched by evil thus far, but I have seen its effect on others. I know that it is out there and I am always aware of the pitfalls of being naive. My knowledge makes me strong, not fearful. I do environmental scans watching for signs of trouble. I am in touch with the heart beat of the world around me. I have learned this from my mother, books and teachers willing to share the truth with me.