On Magazine Subscriptions and Being a Grown Up

I just sent out $70 worth of checks to pay for magazine subscriptions. GQ, Vanity Fair, and Details, come hither. Whenever I subscribe to one, I get special deals in the mail to subscribe to others at half the cover price with promises of special free prizes because I'm such a valued customer. Case in point: Details is sending me a free messenger bag with my paid subscription. Now, I need another bag like I need a whop upside the head. But it's free, and I wanted the magazine subscription anyway. My momma didn't raise no fool.

When I was a tubby little thing growing up in the double wide back in Mississippi, I always promised myself that when I was a grown up, I'd subscribe to magazines. There's just something so adult about having a magazine subscription (or three, in my case). It communicates that you are cultured, aware, understand what's going on in the world. That you keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. Now, I know my subscriptions don't communicate that I'm the most politically and globally informed citizen, but dammit, I know what width ties are in season for the fall. And canvas slip ons are making a come back, y'all. I get gourmet recipes I'll never try, the latest celebrity gossip, and weird stories about sting rays that jump in fishing boats and puncture men's hearts in one fell swoop. It's glorious.

When I was a little boy, I wanted magazine subscriptions and wheat bread. My momma wouldn't get me either. But, boy howdy, you can bet now that I'm grown, I've got them in spades.

What were some promises your child self made to your adult self?

Young Marriages Don't Make Adults: On Friendship, Distance, and Hometown Blues

Robin called me upset the other night. Like normal, I was out having some beers with the grad school crew, and like normal she was jealous. "I am afraid of my future, because I'm afraid of my present, " she said. What a precarious situation to be in, I thought. I told her that I'm so damned excited about my future because each moment of my present only gets better, and she told me I need to grow up and move back home. "I need you to live closer to me," she said.

I told Robin what I should have been telling myself for a couple years now. I'm not prepared to go back to our small Mississippi town because I don't know how to be an adult there. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm new at it, but I'm doing alright with this whole adulthood thing: I pay all my own bills on time, I have my own health insurance, and I know how to penny pinch. What I meant when I said that is this: I have never lived as an adult in my hometown. I packed off to college when I was eighteen, and spent my summers in transit between Mississippi and Arkansas, then eventually exclusively in Arkansas. Now I'm in Tennessee, an adult living my life in a way I don't think I could back home.

I have so much freedom living away. I don't feel compelled to come in at any certain time or restrict what I say (or what I write) certain ways. I'm not looking to get married and I don't care to father a child any time soon. I don't have to constantly look over my shoulder to see who is going to report back to my grandmother who they saw me out with and where. This seems to be the life that I would have to lead if I answered Robin's call and headed back.

Robin is a different kind of adult than me. She got sucked into the perils of small town life, and I regret that for her, because she was too smart to let it happen. But I imagine she had a harder time being a girl with parents who didn't really support her going too far away to college, who pressured her to get married when she was 22, who never seem to be satisfied with what she does with her life unless she mimics their lives. Robin has been my best friend since we were in 10th grade, and I remember she had big dreams. She wanted to work for the FBI, wanted to investigate alien abductions like on the X-Files. She went off to Ole Miss and got her bachelor's in Forensic Chemistry, even went on for a year of graduate work, only to get scared, drop out, and move back to Horn Lake and in with her husband's parents. To top it all off, she got a job next year teaching at our old high school. None of this is what she ever wanted to do.

But she did it, and now she's unsure. I try to tell her that she'll be fine, that's she's doing great, that everything happens for a reason. I want to be there for my friend, at least emotionally, but I don't know how to help her out of the hometown rut, because in many ways, I never experienced it. She has her life planned out for her: high school teacher, wife, SUV driver, soccer mom in the same town where her parents did the same things. It's different for me. I don't know where I'll end up, because I'm not giving up my dream of the writer's life. After taking a year or so off after this MA degree, chances are I'll end up in a Ph.D. program somewhere, then enter the job market and take employment where I can find it. Used to, the thought of spinning out of my hometown's orbit scared me to death, but I'm dealing with the encroaching reality of distance much better now. It's thrilling to think I might wind up half way across the country.

As for Robin, well, bless her little heart. I'm not prepared to be her neighbor again in the foreseeable future, but I know I'll keep on answering the phone when she calls for me to put her back together then school me about being an adult.

On Cleaning Up and Coming Out

My Old College Room Mate is coming to Knoxville for a visit this week, and I'm terribly excited to see him.  When the house sitting gig is up, I have to spend a day scrubbing my kitchen and bathroom, vacuuming and dusting, and strategically arranging my tacky Goodwill nicknacks so OCRM won't give me grief.  I love him, but he's one of those bitchy types, the kind who stares you down before you leave the house and says, "are you really going to wear that?"  

He is so much like Ouisa Boudreaux, crotchety, abrasive, but has a heart of gold.  I'm terribly excited to see him, because he can keep me in stitches and have an intelligent conversation with anyone, but particularly the literature crew, because the boy reads.  He thinks.  He knows his stuff.

Old College Room Mate called me the other night, late.  He'd been drinking, and so had I, and he confessed what I already knew:  he's gay.  Or at least he's trying to figure out if he is.  I'm proud of him for taking that step.  Back when I was with him every day, OCRM was a bit standoffish, afraid to let people know him too much.  He always denied any speculative rumors of his sexuality, and he had the conveniently located Colorado "girlfriend" who never was around.  So, for him to explore his sexuality and practice assuming a gay identity is major.  For him to invite me along on this process is flattering.  

Identity issues are tough.  Sometimes I feel like I know that more than anyone.  I find myself wanting to give OCRM tips on how to successfully navigate himself through the closet door, but I realize that the process is different for everyone.  OCRM came to terms with his sexuality by first entering into sexual relationships with other men and denying the gay label associated with those activities.  'Gay' is a tough label to willingly accept, because it casts its bearers in the role of Other forever.  It makes them suspect, opens them up to countless, "bless his little heart" epithets.  I readily understand why OCRM has been so reluctant to put on the Homo Hat.

Coming out was different for me, probably because I was so young.  When I was fifteen I told my high school friends one-by-one, and much to my surprise all were completely fine with it.  After that I worked on finding something within the cauldron of stereotypes associated with 'Gay' that I could latch on to and learn to perform my identity.  I wrote poems.  I colored my hair.  I auditioned for the school play.  I did everything I could to learn how to live as a gay man, as someone who accepts the label and the marginal status in stride.  Any type of sexual contact with another man would come much later, because I was too scared of men--too scared, or at least unsure, of the man I would become.  Like sex for any teenager, I didn't know what to do (literally, in my case) or how to do it.  Unlike other high school kids, I wasn't willing to fool around until I figured it out.  Experimentation would come later, when I was in college and more used to living as openly gay.

At sixteen, I came out to my parents, shortly after the 9/11 attacks when I thought the world was going to end and I couldn't face Jesus without having confessed my dark secret to Momma and Daddy.  Coming out under fire, I was greeted with mixed-and-unexpected responses from my parents.  Daddy, the stoic, emotionally frigid, ex-Marine, law enforcement officer said "Well, that's okay."  To this day we've never talked about my sexuality again.  Momma, on the other hand, cried in bed for two days and told me how disappointed she was in me.  Isn't it funny how the meanest things someone ever says to you come from those who you are closest to?  I'll never forget when my momma told me she'd sooner me be dead than gay.  I was devastated, because I'd been raised to believe my mother would always love me.  And she did, and she does.  I don't fault her for what she said, because I know she didn't mean it.  Like me, my mother was learning to play a new role, one she'd never pictured herself in before:  the accepting mother of a gay son.  After her two-day crying jaunt, she got out of bed, went back to work, and to this day is my biggest fan.  Sometimes people have to do the wrong thing in order to know how to do the right one.

I want to share all this with OCRM, to let him know that coming out, especially initially, is an emotionally over-wrought process.  He will feel more loved than he has before, and he will get hurt.  He'll feel regret, that perhaps he'll change and not be gay after he's told his friends and family, and then what?  He'll develop a heightened sense of awareness about other people's intentions and attitudes, because a part of him always will be on guard.  A part always has to be.  

Ultimately I want him to know that despite the challenges, the fact that he'll be coming out all his life to every new person he meets, it's something he needs to do in order to feel better about himself.  Disclosure, honesty, self-acceptance:  these are keys to successful maturation, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  I want him to know that loving himself is key in situations like these, followed closely by surrounding himself with people who love and support him.  There are a lot of negative people with ill-intentions towards difference, but those are not the people to dwell on, because by fearing them we give them what the want.  I want him to know that he is lovely and he will always be loved because he deserves nothing less.  

But before all that, I want him to know that I am not a bad housekeeper and I do have some semblance of taste, so it's off to cleaning, scrubbing, and installing the curtain rods I've been meaning to get around to for 8 months.

I Am Poem

I am a broken screen door,

what creaks at night and frightens.

Wood slats on an old house.

I swing out big like promises, big like hope.

I am a noise maker.

I am slapping the walls, knocking around inside your brain

dry rot taste in your mouth.

I am memory, the past, an old soul with a fresh coat of mustard paint

chipped at the hinges.

I am used, useful, fixable, functional.

Eyes see through me.

Breeze blows through me.

I am weak and courageous.

Flimsy and firm.

I am your defense against the storm.

Thanks to Steph for posting this prompt.  It's my new favorite writer's block defeating tool, followed closely by the I Am From poem.  

The Poltics of Small Town Voting

I made the leap, y'all. I did the unimaginable, though completely inevitable. I'm excited and ashamed and don't know if Daddy will still respect me, call me son, and slip me gas money every now and again after I confess my transgression.

I switched my voter registration from Mississippi to Tennessee. *Gasp* There, I said it, it's forthwith known throughout the world that I'm a traitor to my Dixieland DeSoto County roots.

Well, really, it's not that catastrophic. It's just more convenient to go down to the precinct in Knoxville in November, cast my vote for Obama, and walk away with my head held high. It sure beats the hell out of the alternative: absentee voting, which is what I've always done until now. In Mississippi, in the primaries, you have to vote with your party, and when I called back in February, I could feel the contempt oozing through the phone lines as I told the woman at the courthouse I'd be needing a Democratic ballot. "Oh, really," she drawled, and I was sure she'd "mistakenly" lose my address. I still shudder when I think about it.

In college, I was very active with the UCA Young Democrats and the Young Democrats of Arkansas. Hell, even the Young Democrats of America, because back in August of '05, I went to the national convention in San Francisco as a representative from the Natural State. Where I wasn't even registered to vote. Oh, the shame.

Despite myriad opportunities to switch my registration, I never did it. Spent countless hours tabling in the Student Center registering others to vote, but never did confess I wasn't an Arkansas voter. Granted, I am a voter. Make no mistakes about that. I've voted in EVERY SINGLE election I could since I turned 18. Even those inconsequential elections to determine the Superintendent of Education and county commissioner. It's just the way my daddy raised me. Daddy is not a religious man. He is skeptical of institutions that require 10 % of your monthly income and water-dunking initiations. But the man votes. Voting is singly important to him, and he raised Jeffrey and me to understand that it is our duty as Americans to vote. He fought for that right in Viet Nam, dammit. Not to vote would be to slap him in the face.

And not to vote in Mississippi will break his heart. Though I haven't lived in Mississippi full-time in 5 years, my father still operates with the understanding that once I'm finished with school, I will move back to DeSoto County, set up a trailer on the 40 acres, and cut his grass when he's too old to do it himself. I won't go into the pros and cons of that set up right now (except to say that I hope Jeffrey feels more inclined to accepting that future than I do), lest I distract myself from the issue at hand: My father is a life-long Mississippian, a law enforcement officer in the Magnolia State, and damn proud of it. He always talked me out of switching my voter registration to Arkansas for some reason or another, and I heeded to his daunting tales of jury duty, the perils of switching my car insurance, and the destruction of the family unit as we know it if I did not vote in the same place he did.

But last night I was out at a free concert in Market Square. The Obama folks were out, and I wanted to find out how I could help out. Well, mostly I wanted a free sticker. When I saw the voter registration forms, I unhesitatingly filled one out. The Obama girl assured me she'd mail it in, and in ever how many weeks, I'll be a registered Tennessee voter. I'm more than a little bit excited.

But please, don't tell my daddy just yet. This is a delicate situation.

For the scene kids, humanities graduate students, and every other young adult who takes himself too seriously

I'm gonna rant a minute, because dammit, this is my blog and I can.  Gird your loins for Timothy at full blast, and if the good lord's willing this will be brief.

Dear Disillusioned Twenty-somethings of America,

Quit your bitching.  Especially those of you with mothers and fathers who love you, college degrees, and hybrid cars.  If you so choose to make everything you do, say, and eat (God.) a political statement, I support your choice.  But don't reprimand me for eating cheese (regardless of the metaphors you use, cheddar IS NOT crack).  Back off of my friends who light up in bars where everyone else is smoking.  It's a bar, dammit.  If you can't stand the smoke, well, you know the rest.  Remember that your reading of Joseph Campbell, Jacques Derrida, and Karl Marx is merely an interpretation, not permission to instigate fights with people who would otherwise probably like you despite your ridiculous upper-middle class oppression.  At least a little.  And for God's sake, get a haircut, take a shower, and get rid of the bandanas around your necks.  Your mama loves you and wants you to wash behind your ears and under your arms, your grandma does not approve of your strategically planned grease ball 'do, and none of you are cowgirls, regardless of what you do with your lassos.  Clean people get jobs.  Jobs give you experience.  Experience, not club drugs and philosophical texts, makes you wise.

Rock crack babies.  Read to the blind.  Recycle til your heart's content.  Do something productive instead of bitching about how the world is going straight to hell.  And don't blame me for global warming because I bought my socks at Wal-Mart.  Blame your SUV-driving parents.

I love you, twenty-somethings.  I'm one of you, and I'm not saying I'm better.  Hell, I'm bitching, too.  But I am saying this:  Learn to act and not speculate, practice and not theorize.  Soy yogurt won't change the world, but teaching a kid to read will.

Bless your hearts.

Timothy

End rant

Until August, Mr. Sisk

I finished up my summer teaching stint last Friday. No more waking at 6:00 a.m. until August. Well, that's probably not accurate either. I teach afternoon classes next semester, and the earliest class I'm enrolled in begins at 11:10. Ah, graduate school.

I'm gonna miss my students from Project GRAD. They were a rowdy bunch, but they were good kids on the whole, and I really believe they've got what it takes to be successful in college. I'm glad I had the experience working with three different classes, because it taught me that just because something works well in one class doesn't necessarily mean it will in the other. One class was a dream, one class was more often a nightmare, and one class was usually somewhere in between. I'm glad I got to experience the full range. I think I might be doing this again next year, and despite your best efforts to convince me otherwise, Laura, I want even more to be a high school teacher. So that's what I think I'll do for a little while after the MA, then see if I feel so inclined to go on for a doctorate.

I'll leave you with a picture of me and my 8 o'clock class, the dream. These kids really shocked me. Starting out as my worst behaved group, they really came a long way by the end of the program. I'm so proud of all of them.

A Father's Day Musing from a Chronic Daddy Worshipper

Everyone knows I suffer from Daddy Worship in the highest order.  I think my father is the best man in the world, and I've written about him several times on this blog.  Despite his hesitation (or inability) to demonstrate affection, my father is the most loving, kind-hearted man I know.  He regularly goes without in order to provide for other people.  When I was little, just after my parents divorced and what little money my father did make was spent on child support and trailer payments, he always, always took my brother and me out for pizza on Friday nights and McDonald's for breakfast on Sunday mornings.  He always made sure we had school clothes and money for field trips and book fairs and anything else we needed, and in many cases wanted.  My father, the ultimate provider.

I was much older when my grandmother confided in me that during those trying times in the late 80s and early 90s my father would often go without eating lunch at work every day of the week in order to have money to spend on Jeffrey and me when we went to visit each weekend.  As a child, I loved trips to my father's house for a few reasons.  Weekends at Daddy's meant hours spent playing with my cousins who lived next door.  It meant eating hamburgers and tea cakes at Grandma's and sitting out under the shade tree at Muffy's.  But, I think what might have been most important to me at least for a while as a naive and pretty much spoiled pre-pubescent boy was that it meant on our weekly Walmart trip, Daddy would buy me whatever I put in the shopping basket.  It never was much, mind you; usually just a package of pens or markers or a Hot Wheels car.  I never asked for outlandish things as a child.  But knowing now how much my father gave of himself to be able to give me those things makes them mean so much more.  And makes me feel a little guilty for not appreciating them as the love tokens they were.

I won't gush too much about Daddy today.  This blog's full of Daddy Worship posts, as are my writer's notebooks, as I'm sure will be the pages of my future volumes of poetry.  I only hope I can be half as hardworking and self-sacrificing as my father is when I grow up.  My daddy's a good man.  My daddy can beat up your daddy.

Happy Father's Day.

"Let us all be from somewhere"

Anyone who has known me for more than five minutes (or has read this blog for more than five posts) knows that for quite some time now I've been preoccupied with the ideas of home, place, and where I'm from.  I am from Mississippi.  That's where my people are, that's where I was raised.  This is something I'm prouder than ashamed of, though I've apologized for my Deep South roots too many times before.  No more.

When I moved away to college, I resented Arkansas until I loved it and began to resent Mississippi.  A bad thing indeed when one resents his home.  

When I finally became well-versed in Natural State, felt pride in calling myself Arkansan, I up and left that home behind for the long, skinny state of Tennessee.  Repeat resentment cycle.

I'm an East Tennessean now, by way of Central Arkansas.  My heart will always belong to Northwest Mississippi, as well as every other place I will live.  Let us all be from somewhere, the more somewheres the better.   I think, though, my somewhere will always be a nowhere place just south of the Tennessee state line.  

A Primer

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go

to be in Michigan. The right hand of America

waving from maps or the left

pressing into clay a mold to take home

from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan

forty-three years. The state bird

is a chained factory gate. The state flower

is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical

though it is merely cold and deep as truth.

A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”

can sincerely use the word “sincere.”

In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.

When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.

There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life

goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,

which we’re not getting along with

on account of the Towers as I pass.

Then Ohio goes corn corn corn

billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget

how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.

It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.

The Upper Peninsula is a spare state

in case Michigan goes flat. I live now

in Virginia, which has no backup plan

but is named the same as my mother,

I live in my mother again, which is creepy

but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,

suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials

are needed. The state joy is spring.

“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”

is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,

when February hasn’t ended. February

is thirteen months long in Michigan.

We are a people who by February

want to kill the sky for being so gray

and angry at us. “What did we do?”

is the state motto. There’s a day in May

when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics

is everywhere, and daffodils are asked

by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes

with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.

In this way I have given you a primer.

Let us all be from somewhere.

Let us tell each other everything we can

Bob Hicock

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Congratulations are in order!  One of my dearest undergraduate creative writing professors (whose wife is an even dearer former creative writing professor and current mentor, friend, and faithful reader of mine) has just published his first novel and received tenure in the Writing Department at the University of Central Arkansas.  Congratulations, Dr. V!

Below is the press release:

Fiction writer John Vanderslice (not to be confused with the Indie songster of the same name)  announces the publication of his first novel, Burnt Norway, with Florida Academic Press. Vanderslice has published numerous short stories in journals such as Crazyhorse and the South Carolina Review and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, but this is his first published book.  A comic, metafictional romance (or, novel within a novel), Burnt Norway will be published sometime in the fall as an inaugural book in their New Voices series and will be available online and through various other sources.  Look for more updates soon.

In a fiction workshop I took with Dr. Vanderslice my final undergraduate semester, he encouraged me to keep up the "white trash" aesthetic I was working up (or, as he called it, "Kmart Fiction").  Because of his encouragement, I came to graduate school unafraid to share my own less-than-ideal perspective in my creative work, unafraid of the honesty present in my own voice.  So, thanks Dr. V, and congratulations.

Retreating

Well, in t-minus 59 minutes I'll be packing up my tooth paste, books, pens, and shorts and trekking across town to house and dog sit for my writer friend Charlotte. For two weeks. Normally I'm weird about staying at someone else's place for more than a night or two because bliss is being surrounded in my own mess. But this time it's going to be different. Firstly, I can pop back home to check the mail and NBC's Tuesday night line up (Charlotte has no TV--one of those). Secondly, I'll be finishing up my teaching gig this week, so I'll spend my mornings at school anyway, which relieves the stress of Being In Someone Else's Mess for more than the duration of a nice visit. But next week I'm off the teaching hook, and I plan to treat Charlotte's house like a writer's colony. I'm so excited.

Her house is in Old North Knoxville, the historic district near the good bars and the Agee walk. It's an old Craftsman bungalow style, with a lovely front porch for afternoon people watching, and a lovely pale green sun porch in back, completely screened and outfitted with a ceiling fan for afternoon reading and writing. In such posh digs, I plan to treat myself to beer beyond the cheapest available and venture out to a deli off Broadway I hear is amazing. Oh, and the farmer's market. I'll walk her dog in the cool each morning, then sip coffee on the porch and write a few pages before I sit down to the dirty work of revising the stack of stuff I need to overhaul for the thesis project and sending out for publication. I'm even taking a new notebook with me, which I fully intend to fill up with all types of scribbles--poems, stories, lists, ideas, drawings. No notebook would be mine if it didn't house a few grocery lists between leaves of poem drafts. I'll share the juicier bits as they are created.

After my retreat is over, I think I'm going to pack off to the old homestead for a few days (depending on gas prices and Daddy's generosity) for a late June lunch date with my best friend from high school and our old AP English teacher.

Don't worry, though. I'll still be updating.

Bon Voyage!

Mr. Sisk Goes to the Doctor

Mr. Sisk was in absentia yesterday. No, it's not what you think. He didn't decide he couldn't handle teaching the confused and attitudinal youth of Knox County. In fact, the more he thinks about it, the closer he comes to deciding that's exactly what he wants to do when he finishes school. But Mr. Sisk had to miss school yesterday because he had a 24-hour stomach bug.

I'll stop with the 3rd person references for clarity's sake.

Stomach cramps woke me in the middle of yesterday night and I was unable to sleep due to frequent trips to the bathroom. Around 4:30 a.m. I finally dozed off, only to wake again at 6:00 to get ready for school. I still felt queasy, but I thought "I can do this," so I got up, showered, dressed, and began preparing myself for the last day of my first week of teaching. I felt like I might vomit the whole time, but decided to eat a little something in order to calm my stomach. I settled for some ice water and a bite of banana. Almost immediately, I lost my breakfast. After moving to the couch where I lay nauseated and guilt-ridden for fifteen minutes, I called the director of Project GRAD and apologized profusely for my absence and left detailed instructions for what I expected my classes to do while I was out. Then I called the doctor and snagged an 8:45 appointment.

One Phenergen, 2 sprites, a half a liter of Powerade, and 14 hours of sleep later I'm a new man. I feel much better today, and that means I can get around to the household chores I've been putting off. Pile o' laundry, prepare to meet the washing machine. If I'm lucky, I might even get to go see Sex and the City with Laura this afternoon, and tonight I'll hopefully find something fun to do with my friends. Yesterday was the first time I'd stayed home exclusively for more than 5 hours in a very long time. I needed to cool my wheels, but I'm ready to get back into the game today.

I'll share this funny anecdote before dashing off to the Laundromat:
Yesterday on my way home from the doctor, I stopped at the Pilot station across the street from my apartment complex. It was around 9 a.m., and an old man in front of me purchased two 12 oz. cans of Sprite, a tallboy Busch, and a tallboy Bud Ice. When I got to the counter with my Powerades, I asked the cashier if folks came through here this early buying beer on a regular basis. She responded, "It's all these apartments around here. Folks that don't have to work *knowing eye squint*." Then she gave me a copy of the newspaper for free and told me to have a good day. For some reason, whether it be her tone of voice or the fact that I live in one of those apartments around here, I got a kick out of her response. And I got a free newspaper, which makes everything sweeter.

The Mr. Sisk Effect

If the baldness didn't convince me, this week I learned that I am, in some people's perspectives, an old man. By some people I mean jaded teenagers with better things to do than spend their summer on a college campus.

On Monday I started teaching three classes of 15-16 year olds in this program at UT called Project GRAD. What happens is groups of students with a C average or better from the under performing schools in Knoxville come to campus for two weeks and take college prep classes. At the end of the program, each one of them gets a $4,000 college scholarship. That's a big deal, and I'm ecstatic to be a part of it. I've always been for the under dog, because in a lot of ways I've always been an underdog, and I'm glad I get to help these kids on their way towards becoming somebodies, even if only for a measly two weeks. We all have to start somewhere.

I made the decision last year to have my freshman students call me by my first name. I've been Tim for nearly a quarter of a century, and I thought it would be awkward changing to Mr. Sisk. I knew the time was coming, but I wasn't trying to rush it along. Mr. Sisk just seems so old sounding. That's who my daddy is, for crying out loud, and my daddy's pretty agey. But I decided for this program I'd be Mr. Sisk. It wasn't much of a decision really. Monda (The Goddess of Teaching Teenagers) told me long ago that when I start teaching, especially at this age level, I have to be Mr. Sisk in order to maintain distance and command respect. So my decision was made. I amped up my ethos by introducing myself as Mr. Sisk, a teacher in the UT English department. I left out the fact that I'm a peon Master's student with very little experience. They need not know my life history, right? Besides, it would ruin the Mr. Sisk Effect.

I gotta tell ya, I think I like Mr. Sisk better than I like Tim. Mr. Sisk is poised and professional, but he still really cares about his students. He's not afraid to keep misbehavers after class and let them know that giggling and hitting (yes, I've had some hitters, even at 16) aren't going to make it through his class if the behavior continues. He's not afraid to scold, when need be, and he's not preoccupied with whether or not a group of rambunctious teenagers think he's cool. He's a teacher and he knows, in teenagers' opinions, teachers are never cool the first week of class. But if they command respect and show that they care, students will learn something, and they'll be more prepared for college. And in his opinion that's pretty damned cool.

Mr. Sisk is personable and interesting. Despite his frumpy attire, which he selects with the express intent of making himself appear older and thus increasing his ethos, he's thoroughly intrigued by his students, laughs at their jokes, reads and comments on their poetry after class (a sure fire sign that he's got them under his spell), and he always maintains a positive disposition even when presented with challenges. He's shaping up to be like the best teachers Tim ever had, and the type of teacher he wants to become.

I gotta tell you, the Mr. Sisk Effect is addictive. I might even have to bring him out again next semester with the freshmen.

Oh, and FYI, despite the challenges, I LOVE my students. They keep me on my toes, but damn if they aren't bright, funny, and a helluva lot of fun.

Rocket Ship Mazes and Sunburned Scalps

Add this to the Perils of Premature Baldness list: Yesterday I volunteered to wrangle children through an inflatable rocket ship maze at the Children's Festival of Reading sponsored by the Knox County Public Libraries. My dear friend Matt told me about the festival at Happy Hour with the Boys (Monda, I've assumed your capitalization habits) on Thursday night at the sushi bar. He got roped into volunteering because his mom is the children's librarian at the downtown branch. I volunteered because I heard the words "play," "children," and "moon bounce." Honestly, in my past life I was a kindergarten teacher. It was great fun, but very sunny. By the end of the day, I was red faced with a sunburned scalp. Anyone got any aloe vera?

The sunburn was worth it though, if only for two reasons, listed in order of coolness. 1. Matt's Mom and Dad (nicest people you ever want to meet) took us for beer and pizza afterwards. 2. A little boy no more than six came through the inflatable rocket ship maze's rear exit, looked up at Matt and me wide-eyed, and exclaimed, "There's a dead astronaut in there!"

Kids DO say the darndest things.