“Reading the paper?” they howl. “You’re so weird.”

I’m proud of my subscription. I’ve been addicted to newsprint ever since I started clipping articles for current events assignments in 3rd grade. Hearing about the impending “death of print” makes me feel like I’m part of a rescue mission sent to save a civilization. Yet all of my satisfaction falls to pieces when I check my doorstep in the morning to find my paper has been stolen.

Living on East 83rd Street, I worry about my newspaper’s safety more than my own. Without a doorman to protect my deliveries, I look for my news on the concrete stoop outside my walkup, only half expecting it to be there. The unscientific statistics I’ve devised show that, on average, only one of two weekend papers makes it safely inside my apartment—a number I find ironic, since print is supposedly no longer in high demand. In 2009, dailies and Sunday papers in the United States saw circulation declines of 10.6 percent and 7 percent, respectively, during the April to September period. It was the steepest year-over-year drop ever recorded by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

I can’t imagine how one even goes about stealing a paper, picking it up off the street like it’s a free party favor from the gods of New York. It isn’t. While I want people to read newsprint, I’d rather they not choose mine. I’ve factored a subscription perfectly into my budget, even downgrading my BlackBerry to a basic cell phone. But the $30 I save each month on a data plan is only worth it if I get to read the inky pages I’ve purchased in its place.

Because of my news thieves, weekends bring anxiety. Rather than savor Saturday mornings, I leap out of bed and into the shoes I strategically placed by the door the evening prior. I take the stairs two at a time up from my basement studio and sprint toward the front of the building. Often, I’m too late. I trudge down the steps and crawl back into bed, uninformed and defeated.

“This wouldn’t happen if you just read your news online like everyone else,” my 21-year-old brother argues, just before uttering this next dreaded phrase: “Or if you bought a Kindle.”

Others in our respective age groups might agree. But I’m too attached to the mess of papers piled in the corner of my room and the ink stains on my tote bags and kitchen table. I might be the last holdout, but I won’t stand by while an industry I love gets stolen away. Instead, on those days when my paper is already being read by someone else, I’ll go out to buy another, if only to make a statement that we—the print industry and I—are not giving up on each other. n

–
Nicole Ferraro is an editor living and working in New York City.

This luxurious outfit, however, is not for jogging on the treadmill; in fact, the soft, thick fabric and sagging lines suggest the very opposite of physical activity. Bryan was instead recognizing my favorite weekend ritual: puttering around the house.

To be clear, puttering is not about being lazy, nor is it “dawdling,” which is about delaying something you should do. To putter is to move aimlessly, usually indoors. We zone out much like we’re stoned, but are in motion and vaguely productive. I know quite a bit about this. For as long as I can remember, I have puttered once a week, usually on Saturday. My mind, jelly by week’s end, regains its shape, and I feel rejuvenated—ready to get back to work, ready to be social or ready to dawdle about something really important, like eating a whole grain or calling my mom back.

Here’s a quick seven-step guide to a rewarding putter:

1. Carve out enough time. I block out at least four hours, so I can be loose with the time. I avoid goals or plans unless it’s to create a new iTunes playlist (“Moody” or “’80s TV Theme Songs”) or to craft a limerick for a relative’s birthday card so mine stands out from my brother’s and sister’s. I dress comfortably for the indoors—thick socks. No pajamas. I am not sick, nor a child.

Mat Zucker mid-putter in his gray velour tracksuit. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

2. No need for a plan. Puttering means wandering rooms of my apartment, sitting down and standing up at will, petting my dog and watching him eat, rubbing my ankles, re-tagging my LinkedIn contacts, looking at friends of friends’ Facebook photos or calling my friend Adam from college at work. When he asks what I am up to, I don’t have to say, “Nothing.” I now can say, “I’m puttering.” Same goes for updates on Twitter.

3. Change your mind mid-stream. One minute I am re-folding my jeans in light-to-dark order when, for no apparent reason, I feel compelled to compare the filmography of Joan Allen and Annette Bening on IMDb.com. Staring out the window is a good bridge from one activity to another for me. It’s like dreaming wide awake. Plus, there are pretty things to see. Like trees and birds. Or if you live near the High Line, a peep show in the Standard Hotel.

4. Accomplish minor tasks that make you feel good. For example, I might clean out one single desk drawer, untangle my headphones’ earpiece, group my books by spine color and label plastic bins with “White T-Shirts” and “Travel-Size Bottles.” If it turns into spring-cleaning, however, I stop immediately. Puttering is not chores. That’s why I hire a housekeeper for alternate Fridays.

5. Nosh versus lunch. When puttering, I don’t eat full meals, but I also don’t eat right out of the pretzel bag or frozen yogurt container. I prepare a nice plate like cheese and crackers, and I slice an orange and use a napkin instead of a paper towel. Coffee’s good at first. Wine is better later. I think about all my food allergies, compare my restrictions to my sister’s celiac disease and imagine how different my life would be if I could eat tomatoes. And then I think of Dan Quayle.

6. Enjoy light entertainment. Real Simple magazine and reruns on cable of The Devil Wears Prada keep me focused enough, but I save full novels and new movies for “Mush Day,” which my mother-in-law’s friend coined as a full day to curl up on the sofa with a big book. Internet quizzes of which celebrity I am most like are good since they have a quick payoff (Michael J. Fox before the Parkinson’s). Or if I am feeling intellectual, I play a game comparing lead stories in USA Today (“Boy Reunited with Dad”) to the New York Times (“Democrats…”).

7. Unexpected upsides. Relaxed, my mind now goes places it hasn’t visited in a long time. I discover a new, useful app for my smart phone (NYC 311), a new neighbor’s window to peer into (he’s cute!), a new favorite color (mauve) or simply notice my toenails are uneven and do something about it. Clip.

Everyone should putter now and then. We would be more pleasant to be around because we are relaxed, but we’ll also have something, albeit modest, to show for it. I was thinking of starting a puttering website, but that’s just too much effort. Instead, I’m hoping Bryan will next get me slippers. n

–
Mat Zucker is a creative director in advertising who putters around in Chelsea with his partner Bryan and dog, Ezra Pound.

In 1994, I was one of five female producers at Live with Regis & Kathie Lee. Regis would often come into our meeting and request a specific guest, always a sports star. I consistently volunteered to take the assignment because the other female producers had no idea who he was talking about. Fortunately, I had a secret source at my disposal: my precocious 7-year-old son, Brett, who knew everything about sports. I immediately dialed my son’s grade school and got him out of class and on the line.

“Brett, Regis wants me to book Jerry Rice. Who do I call to get him and why is he important?” I asked.

My son irreverently referred to me as “Rosie” rather than “mom” when he asked if I was living under a rock. “You didn’t watch the Super Bowl this weekend? Jerry Rice helped win the game for the San Francisco 49ers with 10 catches and three touchdowns. He’s a great wide receiver,” Brett said.

Rice was booked for the following Monday, and Regis told me his vision for the segment: sit-down interview followed by a football pass between Reege and Rice on Columbus Avenue. No problem.

On the day of Rice’s arrival, I went to the ABC guard and said, “I’m going to need you and a couple of other large guards to hold back the crowds when Regis and Rice come out for a football pass.” He looked at me with attitude as he proclaimed, “We are not authorized to go outside of this building.”

There wasn’t another staff person who was free to assist, so I sought out the largest cue cards I could find to use for barriers.

Rice was handsome, upbeat, well-
spoken and engaging—a producer’s dream. As the tête-à-tête was ending, I ran outside with my giant cue cards and started shouting at the crowds to move back. Regis threw the football. Rice ran to the opposite side of the street. All of a sudden, a giant construction dude jumped in front of my cue cards and knocked the football out of Rice’s hands. All I could think about was how upset my beloved Regis was going to be. I dropped the cue cards and started pummeling the guy as I screamed obscenities at him.

When I re-entered the studio, the audience started to applaud and cheer: My maniacal behavior had been caught on camera. My incredulous son, who had never heard me raise my voice in anger or even use a curse word, meekly asked, “Was that really you out there?”

Someone at the news desk apparently thought the incident was humorous and WABC aired the clip during the evening news sports report. Then Regis, who never missed an opportunity to milk a segment gone awry, decided to re-air that same clip—in slow motion—the next morning.

I’m sure there isn’t a soul today who remembers this incident, except for my now-grown son. Every year when the Super Bowl comes around, Brett loves to come back home to watch the game. He never fails to toss a football my way while quipping, “Here’s to a Jerry Rice catch.”

–
Rosemary Kalikow was a talk show producer at ABC and Court TV Network for 25 years. She is currently working as a freelance writer in New York.

He mumbled to himself, “Damn, I forgot the suit.” Noticing me, his eye focused on my half untied snow boots. “Tommy, here’s the ticket, hurry to the cleaners. I need that suit for the wedding.”

I death-marched down the stairs. Dad behind me, “FASTER, they’re going to close in five minutes.”

When I got there, Joe, the Spotless Cleaners manager, was turning off the lights. Smiling, with an edge, he opened the door. “Come in Tommy, be quick, I want to get out of here.”

Deed done, I earned a slow walk home. I was Hannibal’s elephant moving over the Alps, going knee deep with every step. I moved the suit to the back of my pea coat, resting the hanger’s hook on the back of my collar. This left both hands free for better balance.

With the satisfaction of a Sherpa’s job well done, I danced a jig and rang the bell in the vestibule, harking my return and an incredible urge to pee.  Running up the stairs, dad greeted me at the door, “Where the hell were you?”

I said nothing, smirked and turned my back, offering dad his suit from its resting-place on the nape of my neck. I ran into the bathroom, worked off my jeans, long johns and two pairs of underwear just in time.

When I stepped back into the kitchen, dad met me face to face at the bathroom door holding up the suit.

“Nice jacket. Where are my pants?”

“Huh?” I mumbled.

“My pants, where are my pants?”

A clothes hanger never had as thorough an examination as the one I put that hanger through. The pants were not on it, in it, on top of it or under it. The jacket, the jacket was good. Two sleeves, pressed, cleaned. But the pants, the pants made no appearance despite multiple prayers under my breath.

Dad put his slacks on and said, “Let’s go.”

Down to Hades we descended, third floor, second floor, first floor, no pants. Hallway, no pants. Down the building’s front steps, no pants.

Dad, “So which way did you walk exactly?”

This is where it got tricky. I set a new record for a dramatic pause. Words failed me. Left with nothing to say I showed him my exact path. Every nuance, every turn.

After one last look under the car directly in front of the house, we entered the lobby and began our ascent. Passing through the apartment door, dad went directly to his jacket on the hanger. He held it up, then draped it over his arm. Together they resembled Michelangelo’s Pieta. I think he was saying goodbye.

“We have closed many bars together, old friend,” Dad sighed, “I will miss the way the secretary at Pepsi looked at you, on me, when we did our sales calls.”

Dad said no more about the suit.

Two weeks later, I’m playing in front of my house and dad comes walking up the street. Getting closer, I see he has on a charcoal jacket.

Oh god, I’m thinking, he bought the same suit again. Not good.

“Hi dad, is that the suit? It looks great. Did you buy it again?”

“Nope, same suit,” dad said with a smile, “Every suit comes with two pairs of pants.”
–
Thomas Pryor is an Upper East Sider who writes the blog “Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts.”

When I found out in September that Marta* had seen half her family executed outside her home in Kosovo just four months earlier, I stopped caring that she wasn’t doing her American history homework. I had asked her about it after school one day and the thin mousy girl just smiled and shrugged. A fellow teacher later told me the truth and suggested the aftermath for Marta and the female witnesses was equally tragic. I couldn’t imagine what a privileged white boy from the suburbs had to teach this Albanian 16-year-old that would really matter to her. Knowing my students meant more than memorizing their native countries and hobbies.

In the following weeks, more stories emerged. Fernando, a mild-mannered Mexican boy, fought to stay awake in his chair each day. It turned out his 40-hours a week job in a restaurant outside of school was not enough to help his mother pay the bills. She had to rent out half of his bedroom to two young migrants who got off work at two in the morning and spent the next four hours drinking and smoking in his room while Fernando tried to sleep. Maria from Ecuador could only study in small stints in her family’s bathroom, the only room with privacy since 12 of her relatives shared a two-bedroom apartment in Queens. Half a dozen of my Arabic-speaking male students were not even living with their parents—their fathers had entrusted their upbringing here to the young men who ran their family corner stores and left these children to fend for themselves.

As a 29-year-old upper-middle class, college-educated Midwesterner, I was shocked that they could sit there in front of me for an hour each day acting like adolescents with the same hang-ups, zits and hormonal surges that I’d had at their age. They wore identical baggy jeans and facial expressions exuding a steadied cool. Only their accents and skin tones stood out. I imagined them mentally rolling their eyes at the demands I was placing on them and thinking: “Why should I care about history lessons? Do you know what I’ve been through and seen in my 16 years?” So much for “making a difference” in an urban public high school.

The rigidity of my classroom rules felt ridiculous, as if I was forcing them to engage in a childish game of obedience that had no benefits or discernible goal. The fact that they showed up at all each morning seemed to merit gold stars and big hugs. Yet what about the Constitutional Convention and Benjamin Franklin? I stayed up late each night creating elaborate projects on colonial history only to find my efforts thwarted by memories of the treacherous border crossings, war-torn villages and extreme poverty that haunted my students.

I’d had my own demons to manage as a teenager. Growing up a closeted gay youth had not led to the cathartic coming-out and ensuing waves of empathy experienced by Kurt on Fox’s hit new show  Glee. Like most of my students, I hid my feelings of isolation. I wore a stoic face and carried on as if nothing was wrong. I wanted to block it out and move on. I realized my students shared the same outlook. While talking after class one day to Simone, a young Haitian girl whom I knew had been raped, I off-handedly asked her how class was going.

“It’s fun. I liked it when we re-enacted that Supreme Court trial in class. I got to be somebody else for awhile,” she said, beaming.

Despite what they had been through, all they really expected of me was to provide a semblance of normalcy, a safe haven with predictable rules and routines that ran on a continuous loop day in and day out. No surprises. They wanted to be heard and understood, not pitied as victims. These kids wanted an environment where the most pressing issue was having the right pair of baggy jeans. Only then would the learning begin. This I could do. And through it all, I still learned how to swear in 12 languages.

*Author’s Note: The names of the students have been changed to protect their identities.

–
Michael Soet is the founding principal of The International High School at Lafayette in Brooklyn.

My traveling partner is my 8-year-old daughter Coco, with whom I have spent the past three Thanksgivings in Paris visiting friends. When I tell people that we’re Paris-bound, the follow-up question invariably is, “Are you bringing Coco?” I tell them that “we” is Coco and me. Phil, my husband, is staying home.

Coco is my perfect traveling companion. A New York City kid, she feels completely at home in Paris. To her, Paris is just like Manhattan—except that hamburgers are topped with fried eggs and skinned rabbits are sold in markets. She is a non-complaining walker, can find something to order on any menu, enjoys going to museums and loves poking around in shops. She accepts tidbits from my meager knowledge of French history without questioning their accuracy. And when I want to sit quietly and soak up the atmosphere, I hand Coco her Beverly Cleary book and she reads until I’m ready to move on.

But the pièce de résistance is that Coco loves being with me. I’m aware that in a few years, hanging out with mom, even in Paris, may not be what Coco wants to do. Now’s the time to accumulate fabulous memories that I’m hoping will help us through the dreaded teenage years.

I love seeing Paris through Coco’s eyes. The first time she saw the Eiffel Tower sparkling, the glow on her face rivaled its 10,000 lights. While climbing the tower of Notre Dame, we were equally excited when Coco spied birds’ nests and eggs in the rectangular windowsills. I was thrilled when she dashed over and stared transfixed at a Delacroix painting of a tiger and her cub in the Louvre.

The daughter of a Francophile, I was raised on a diet of classic French dishes, Madeline, Babar and Le Petit Prince books, with Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel records playing in our living room. Phil doesn’t share my enthusiasm—hence ma petite traveling companion.

During our trips, Paris’s romantic atmosphere rubs off on my impressionable daughter, and I become the object of her affections. Once, Coco looked at me in the middle of writing a postcard to her daddy and said, “I wish I could write a postcard to you so I could tell you how much I love you.” When we’re in Paris, Coco repeatedly tells me I am the best mommy in the world.

I was puzzled at first. She’s an affectionate child, but her behavior in Paris is way over the top. Then I realized that in addition to responding to the romance of Paris, she is responding to my transformation.

When we’re in Paris, we are both heady with love. She is enchanted by her happier and freer mom, someone with an intense vacation high who says “yes” every time she requests ice cream. This mother doesn’t constantly remind her to do her homework or issue the pick-up-your-room-right-now-because-in-five-minutes-we-need-to-leave-for-gymnastics directives. I am delighted to leave that person behind, too.

Traveling together allows Coco to learn things about me and see her mother in a way she’s not seen me before. And she’s right—I am much more lovable in Paris.

–
Sally Marshall, a freelance writer, lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

It was 3:02 a.m. when I was jolted awake by an ear-splitting racket. BANG! BANG! BANG! From my spot on the couch, I scanned my first-floor apartment for the source of the sound. As a bubbly, blond 22-year-old dying to prove I could make it in the big city, I had thought my stretch of East 54th Street was safe. But I couldn’t ignore the increasingly loud banging noise. It sounded like something was pounding on the metal-barred door to my tiny outdoor terrace. And then it hit me: Someone was trying to break in.

Before I realized what I was doing, I sprinted to my bedroom, dove down into the narrow space between my bed and the wall, and dialed 911. Soon I could hear myself describing the emergency: There’s someone out on my terrace trying to break in! They’re literally trying to break down my door! Between the continuing banging noise and my own pounding heart, I was starting to panic.

“Stay calm,” said the operator. “I’m sending someone right away.”

The noise suddenly ceased, but I remained curled up in the fetal position, waiting for help to arrive. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The only remotely dangerous thing about my neighborhood was the Madison, a 24-hour diner on East 53rd Street and First Avenue that delivered thick slices of cheesecake to my door anytime I craved it. Yet what did I really know about New York City? I was just a recent college grad with a cushy suburban upbringing, and had only just stopped feeling like a wide-eyed, dumbfounded tourist. And now this!

When two burly cops finally arrived at my apartment, I quickly ushered them to the scene of the attempted crime.

“Someone’s out there!” I yelled, pointing wildly.

The cops burst out the door to the terrace, wielding heavy-duty flashlights. I stood at the edge, waiting for one of them to spot the crowbar the robber had left behind, or—better yet—apprehend the criminal himself, cowering behind the mildewed lawn chairs. But after a few moments of poking around, they reported that they didn’t see anything suspicious.

“What do you mean?” I demanded. It seemed impossible.

“I mean there’s nothing out there,” said the taller of the two.

“Besides,” the shorter one piped in, “this outdoor space is blocked in on all four sides by buildings. There’s no way anyone could have entered unless they came down one of the fire escapes.”

“Well then go check the fire escapes,” I blurted out. When neither of them moved after a second, I started up again: “Listen, I wasn’t hearing things—”

“Fine,” said the short cop. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll go check it out.”

After climbing to the top of my four-story building, the shorter cop, now flushed from the cold and aerobic workout, delivered the verdict: “Nothing.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Give us a call if anything else happens,” he said as they made their way for the door.

Just then, something did happen: the banging started again. BANG! BANG! BANG!

“It’s back,” I shrieked. “He’s back!”

The cops exchanged a look. The short one cleared his throat.

“Miss,” he said, crossing his arms in front him. “That sound you’re hearing is your heat turning on.”

My what?

“Your heat,” said the tall one, an angry edge to his voice. “The sound’s coming from the walls. These old heaters make a lot of noise.”

“Oh really,” I mumbled, my face turning hot. I kept my eyes fixed on the cruddy parquet floor.

As the cops shuffled out my front door and mortification swept over me, I could only imagine that this snafu would soon become NYPD fodder. I could just hear it now: “Hey, Joe, you won’t believe this dumb blond we got a call from last night…”

I plopped back down on the couch, reached for my cell phone and called up the Madison. Could they deliver some cake and chamomile tea? I needed something to help me fall back to sleep.

–
Linley Taber is a freelance writer now living in Greenwich Village. She has had no further encounters with New York’s Finest.

I recently moved from my childhood home in Queens to an apartment on East 83rd Street. After a failed three-year relationship with my college boyfriend, and dating a few guys thereafter who proved disappointing, I decided my mid-twenties could be better spent single. I resented when men wasted my time but was more irritated that I let them. Proud of my stubborn independence, I moved in to a ground-level studio with perks like quiet, an eat-in kitchen, an outdoor patio and easy rodent access.

A native New Yorker, I was no stranger to mice, which visited our kitchen during cold winters. But as a first-time renter living alone, I was discouraged when I noticed tiny fecal pellets below the sink. I bought a trap at the 24-hour CVS next door and set it with a small piece of leftover pizza.

When I awoke the next morning the scene was disappointing: the trap was still set, the pizza was gone and new feces had arrived.

“That rat bastard ate the pizza and ran,” I said aloud, poking lightly at the contraption, which immediately bit my finger. After I iced it and checked for mobility, I took to writing haiku: “You pooped and you left/I set a trap with pizza/You ate the pizza/and dropped pizza-flavored poop.” I went to the hardware store to stock up on steel wool, which I shoved into every conceivable crevice of my apartment.

Despite my efforts, I felt unsettled. I walked around on tip-toes, threw out all my food and took to stomping on old Food Emporium shopping bags in the hallway outside my apartment in case mice were hiding in there. I researched “mouse infestation” on the Internet and learned that these pests hate the smell of peppermint oil, which I purchased for $19.99 from GNC and sprinkled around my apartment. My clothes, hair and sheets smelled like candy canes, and the fumes burned my eyes.

Things seemed quiet for about a week before I found another pellet in my closet. I had set two traps there, ones that the mice just crawl into to die privately. I set them with string cheese normally used for my breakfast. I shared. But rather than appreciate me enough to die in the traps, or even show up when I was watching, they defecated in my closet and went on with their lives.

“Just show yourself!” I screeched, tearing the closet apart in search of vermin. I moved my eight-foot sofa to the middle of the room, convinced I saw something run behind there. It may have been dust. I did the same with the bed, and the TV console. In the process, I sliced my thumb on an errant strand of steel wool and bled all over my cell phone when trying to text my younger brother for sympathy.

Damaged and defeated, I sunk on my couch to feel sorry for myself. As someone who scorned boyfriends as time wasters, I was spending my evenings in an over-priced rental playing games with hard-to-get rodents. Mice had replaced men in my life as a new source of aggravation, feeding my neuroses and insecurities.

That night I set new mousetraps and replaced the crusted string cheese with peanut butter, a food I didn’t like but bought specifically for the mice, who were masters at wasting my time and cash without granting me the courtesy of a face-to-face visit. Despite my avoidance of the dating scene, I still sit at home, like too many other single girls in New York, preparing food and waiting in the dark for some rat to stand me up.

–
Nicole Ferraro is an editor living and working in New York City.

This is how I’d imagine a Frank McCourt memoir about our teaching days together at Stuyvesant High School might begin.

We used to meet in the hallway near the principal’s office—Frank shuttling off to his fifth-period creative-writing class and me to my junior journalism students.

We’d stop and chat, exchanging tales of woe—like two inmates in the prison cafeteria before afternoon kitchen duty—but I’d always linger longer than I would with the other teachers because with Frank you knew you’d get a fun story, a fresh insight or a provocative question that would relieve the numbing grind for the rest of the day.

Teacher, mentor, colleague, friend. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Even then, Frank was recognized as a gifted storyteller by his students and colleagues who would listen raptly in the classroom or huddle around him at the bar as he regaled us with his now-famous epic tales of childhood misery.

To many of us, it wasn’t a question of if, but when, Frank’s talent would reveal itself to the world outside of East 15th Street and First Avenue.

Foreshadowing: at a Stuyvesant student awards ceremony, Jerzy (Being There) Kosinski offhandedly told McCourt that he, too, would make it one day.

“Yeah, but when?” said Frank.

*

During one of our impromptu chats in the hallway, Frank became animated when I told him I was the child of Holocaust survivors. “So, you think you’d ever marry a non-Jew?” he asked.

“No,” I remember answering quite definitively. “It would betray all the suffering my family has experienced.”

Frank told me he was intrigued by the whole question of intermarriage; two of his brothers, Malachy and Alphie, good ol’ lapsed Irish Catholics, were, at one time or another, married to Jewish women.

“It reminds me of what my mother, the late Angela McCourt, once complained about,” he said in the endearing brogue of his. “There’s notin’ in this family but Protestants and Jews, Jews and Protestants. God above, every time I cross the floor I’m trippin’ over little Protestants and Jews.”

I strolled on to my classroom grinning.

*

At my wedding, about four years later, I was reminded of the comment I made to Frank about never marrying a non-Jew. Technically, I had kept my vow; my Presbyterian-born bride had converted to Judaism, but the twinkle in Frank’s eye when I told him about my fiancée spoke volumes.

When the time came for toasts, a few close friends from college followed my brother up to the podium, and then a British fellow who worked with my wife. Right after he made his brief remarks, Frank sauntered to the microphone.

“I wasn’t planning on making a toast, but when I saw an Englishman get up here—and since they’ve oppressed the Irish for hundreds of years—I knew I couldn’t leave it at that…”

He got the crowd going with that. The rest of his discursive comments are a bit foggy in my memory—except a George Bernard Shaw quote that he cited as an admonition: “Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.”

When Frank’s comments went on a bit longer than the Englishman who preceded him, the Brit heckled, “Shaw also said, ‘All the world’s a stage…unfortunately.’”

Frank’s toast is the one highlight missing from the wedding video. I never bothered to check if the guy we hired went to the john and missed it or if in his seemingly indiscriminate editing, he decided for some reason to slice it.

I guess it’s hard to blame him because, after all, it was 1993, three years before  Angela’s Ashes appeared, four years before the Pulitzer Prize and six years before the movie premiere and long awaited sequel, ’Tis, that would continue to burnish the Frank McCourt legend.

One old high school friend kidded me that if I had that toast on videotape I could probably sell it to a TV newsmagazine or auction it on eBay, at the very least.

*

I miss those chance meetings in the hallway with Frank between classes. He had moved to the Upper West Side, not far from where I live, but I’d only run into him once or twice in the past few years.

We spoke every few months, when I could catch him at home between book tours, lectures, writing conferences, interviews, book parties, charity events and other demands on his time. It was a vicarious thrill to see his name pop up everywhere and to see that sometimes in life talent does win out in the end.

“I’m a beacon of hope to all geriatrics,” Frank once told me. “Don’t give up, you can keep doing it into your 70s, practically your 80s.” And sometimes listening to him talk about teaching, you realize that in spite of society’s view, it is a noble calling. At least in Frank’s case, it worked out for the best.

“Whatever I know about writing I learned from teaching,” he said. “They kept asking me questions and provoked me to tell stories, and in return I would provoke them to tell stories. The interaction was very fruitful.”

So wasn’t it a great profession altogether?

’Twas.
–
Tom Allon is president and CEO of Manhattan Media. He taught at Stuyvesant High School with Frank McCourt from 1986 to 1987.

The need for his new binder is also testament to the demise of the textbook. In social studies, in science, in Spanish, for reasons both financial and ideological, the school he attends hands out Xeroxed worksheets, Xeroxed pages of textbooks and websites, and somehow my son’s 7th grade brain, three-quarters of which is taken up with inchoate longings and Gary Larson cartoons, is meant to organize the scattered pages of information into a coherent whole.

I’m afraid to ask my son what he understands about Boyle’s Law, the Civil War draft riots or the conjugation of certain Spanish irregular verbs. Without the plodding linearity of the textbook to organize his thoughts on these topics, I wonder how he copes with the accretion of information from all these loose-leaf pages. It is only in math that he has a textbook, one that weighs about 50 pounds, and only in that topic, perhaps fittingly, that we see a progression from point A to point B. When he came home with a math textbook in the first week of 6th grade, he was ecstatic. He told us, not once but thrice, that if he got so much as a pencil scratch on its pages we would have to pay the school $50. It was then I realized, sadly, that he’d never had a textbook in all the years of grade school.

I fondly remember some of the textbooks I had while attending school in Northern Virginia in the 1960s. Most of all, I loved my 4th grade Virginia history textbook with its delicate painting of Gunston Hall in shades of pale pink, yellow and Wedgwood blue. In its creamy pages, I read the story of the Lost Colony and saw an illustration of the colonists looking at the mysterious word, “Croatan,” carved in the tree. My 4th grade English grammar textbook was filled with sentences parsed in patterns that looked like flight plans or football plays. And there were science textbooks with diagrams of electrical circuits and wind currents and experiments in shaded boxes. Yet, for all the textbooks I toted home, along with my groovy denim covered three-ring binder with its jean pocket on the cover, it’s hard to remember what I learned, especially in 7th grade. Somehow, one almost feels like at a certain point, after you’ve gotten the basics down, school is beside the point.

The point is that my son, by asking, well, actually, begging, for a new three-ring binder—and also by refusing to weed out ANY papers from his old stuffed one—is taking ownership of his education. I can imagine how he will painstakingly transfer each page into the new binder. For the pages in which the holes are ripped, my son might stick on a tiny white donut-shaped “reinforcement,” a touching remnant from my childhood, along with the satisfying manila dividers with their clear-colored cellophane tabs.

Yet, as my son goes about his ritual of transplanting papers into a new three-ring binder, I need to use mental “dividers” and separate my own nostalgia from the reality of my children’s school life, a life that is almost totally hidden from me. I must come to terms with the fact that just as my son’s and my 9-year-old daughter’s childhoods are theirs, with their play dates and schedules rather than my 1960s devil-may-care existence, so is their schooling, with its reliance on hyperlinks and idea webs rather than encyclopedias and sentence diagrams.

I know now it is a violation to do what I used to when my son was in 6th grade: take the loose papers he had left on the floor or dining room table and put them into his binder with a satisfying snap of the metal rings.

“Mom, where’s my math test???” “It goes in the pocket,” he would complain. Or,  “The Spanish worksheet goes in my folder since we’re still doing it.”

Butt out, Mom.

My 4th grader daughter means this, too, when I try to clean out her red vinyl homework folder.

“Why do you have math worksheets from a week ago in here?” “Why do you have this ELA test reading about a ham radio? You already HAD the test?” I ask her, on my way to the recycling stack.

“Nooooo,” she protests. Somehow, in all the numbing boredom of the ELA test prep, which she complained bitterly about for weeks, she has cottoned on to the excitement of owning a Ham radio—two words I hadn’t heard joined together since my own childhood.

“We have to keep this,” she says, and snatches the paper from my hand.

“Mom, can we get a ham radio? Can we? Can we?” my daughter asks me this as we are out the door on the way to school, her heavy backpack filled with library books, lunch, water bottle, folders and composition books.

Like the word “Croatan” carved on a tree, the one true thing etched in my brain from that entire Virginia history textbook, she has picked up a signal in the static of worksheets, test prep and workbooks. She doesn’t quite know what it means, but it’s lighting up a circuit in her brain. And that’s enough.

Nancy J. Brandwein is a freelance writer and editor who has had essays published in The New York Times,   Brain, Child and West Side Spirit and  Our Town, where she is a featured contributor for her weekly “Snack Attack” column.