This post is actually a guest blog that I did for the Geisha School Dropout written by Julie Kang who has been "chronicling the glorious indignities of motherhood since 2005."
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A few days before the verdict, I started listening to the audiobook version of Hofstadter's Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. I am only a few chapters in, but the gist of the book seems to be that we create all meaning in life through the creation of analogies. We constantly categorize everything we see, hear, feel, etc. based on our previous experiences and derive meaning based on how well we can fit the new experience into our mental file cabinet of understanding.

When I heard the verdict, this is immediately what I did. I compared it to Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell and the Jena Six. Then I thought about the 2000 election and Disney World and all the other reasons that Florida sucks. And then I thought of my own personal experiences with racism and dirty cops and the biased legal system. And I started mentally tagging the word Zimmerman with all kinds of labels to try and make sense of it all.

I watched others do the same - on both sides of the argument, and it made me feel a little hopeless that there would ever be justice in cases like this. I applied labels like "things that are: tragic, and racist, and worthy of protest." At the same time I applied labels like “same old shit, and what can I do, and Fuck America!" And for every label I was applying, folks on the other side were assigning categories like: "liberal bullshit, and race baiting, and court of law, and blown out of proportion." And the whole thing becomes another exercise of picking your side but never resolving anything because the argument on both sides is the same: "This issue is analogous to everything I believe in, and the fact that you disagree with me, just proves my point."

Don't get me wrong. I am constantly on the edge of going to battle for all that is right in the world. I worry about my boys and don't want them to have to share the numerous unjust experiences I have had (never mind be a victim of something as horrendous as what happened to Trayvon Martin). I am an optimist at heart, and I still hold on to the ideal that somehow we will all learn from this. I desperately want Trayvon's death to mean something in spite of this verdict and in spite of all those who can't empathize with my experiences and therefore apply different labels.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the perfect solution, but I think it lies somewhere in the difference between “action” and “reaction.” We are really good at (myself included) waiting for this type of thing to happen and then talking about it (and making analogies from it) until the next tragic thing happens. I want to be done having the unwinnable, reactive arguments and start taking action outside of the debates.

Travesties of justice like the Zimmerman case will always be fuel on our activist fires. But if we need to find a way to fight for legal reform, and for a society that is color celebratory instead of color blind, and for a world where our kids are safer and happier and more enlightened without falling into the traps inherent in reacting to things that make us, and our efforts, instant analogies in the minds of those who are more privileged or conservative, or intolerant. So maybe next time someone asks me about the weather, I will respond with, “The forecast predicts clear skies with a lot of heat, just like my plan to educate folks about how beautiful the world can be if we commit to making it that way. This isn’t a non-sequitur, but a better starting point. Join me in a better future.”

When I was a kid, when school got out at the end of the day, we all filed out of the building and onto busses that headed off in different directions to drop us somewhere near our houses.  I am sure it happened occasionally, but as a kid, I don't remember a single parent driving onto the school grounds to pick their child up, ever - save a few broken limbs or prescheduled doctor's appointments.  Maybe a quarter of the kids walked home, but the rest of us sat on giant yellow vehicles and waited for our stop.

Apparently something has changed since then.  Head to any one of the private or public schools that my kids have attended, and there is a very different ritual that goes on.  To be fair, at some of the schools, the options for bussing were limited, so many children didn't even have the option to partake of the unique social phenomenon of the school bus.  In these cases a car line is perhaps necessary, but even in my experience with schools (public mostly) where a bussing option is obligatory, a car line forms with parents, grandparents, older siblings and nannys jockeying for a spot in the queue.  Here is specifically how it works at my younger son's current school:

School lets out at 3:05pm and the process of matching up students with cars begins precisely at 3:15.  A car line noob might decide that this starting time is a fine time to show up, but when he gets there, he immediately worries that there must have been an explosion or some other disaster on campus, or that at least his watch is not working properly because at 3:15 there is a line of cars that winds down from the pick-up spot, the entire length of the private road, and out onto the main road causing a jam at the intersection and the people in the neighborhood to start writing down license plate numbers because pickup cars are blocking access to their driveways. One solution at one of my older son's previous schools was to create an amusement park-esque maze in the satelite parking lot and onto the paved section of the playground where cars would weave around cones as they slowly moved to the front of the line to pick up their kids.  The last time I arrived "on time" it took approximately 25 minutes to finally get my kid.

In other words, most people know to get their early.  How early you ask?  Well, the other day I had a meeting that ended at 2:00, so I drove directly to the school thinking that I would grab the first spot at about 2:20 and then finish up some work on my ipad in the car. I did indeed arrive at 2:20, but I was still NOT first! 55 minutes I waited to pick my kid up as close to 3:15 as possible, but I still couldn't grab the coveted first spot.

What I and a few other parents will do is actually come at the very end of the designated pick up time.  After 3:40, any students left are rounded up and sent to the extended day program (which comes with a fee) so I typically aim for about 3:35.  The result is driving right up the road and not stopping until I pull up to the sidewalk where my son is waiting.  It is tempting to feel triumphant for such an efficient job, but then the door opens and I get that look from my son that says, "Why don't you care about me as much as all the other kids?"  I try staring back with, "You aren't the last kid to be picked up.  Look, that kid is still waiting..."
"Really, you are comparing me to that kid?" is the telepathic reply, and then he knows to ask if we can stop for ice cream on the way home or some other thing that exploits my parental guilt.

I am used to that by now, but it still leaves me asking, "Why?"  Why is it so important for these parents to pick their kids up as close to the end of school as possible?  Do they miss their kids that much?  Not likely.  Do they all have soccer practice, or swim team, or piano lessons to get to?  Probably, but for the amount of time parents spend playing chauffer to get their kids to all these activities, is picking the ones that start right at 3:30 really worth an extra half hour or more sitting in school yard traffic?  For those who send their nannys, maybe it is some kind of passive aggressive punishment for threatening the parental relationship between them and their child.  Or maybe it is just more evidence of a world that has become increasingly more competitive to the point of no practical reason to be early at all outside of proving to the other parents that you love your child 2 minutes and 37 seconds more than they do.

My parents met me at the bus stop on the very first day I rode the bus home, and then that was it.  All the other days, I stepped off the bus, walked up to the top of the hill, banged a right across the neighbor's back yard and let myself in the side door.  My stop was one of the last on the route, and I was a little jealous of the kids who got to walk home or had an earlier bus stop.  But I didn't feel any less loved.  I hope my kids don't feel less loved either.  Cause they can continue to count on seeing me at 3:35.

I have a strange habit.  Often while sitting on the couch watching TV, or lying in bed reading, I get the strange urge to stick my hand straight up in the air and hold it there for a minute or so.  My family used to laugh at me for doing it, or "call on me" like I was attending some kind of living room lecture, but now they just accept it as one of my quirks.  They used to ask what it was all about.  "I don't know.  It just feels good.  Rather, it just feels right," I would say.  I too, had chalked it up to some kind of short circuit in my synapses, but in my recent commitment to being more self-reflective, I caught my hand shoot up recently and took another stab at understanding.

Perhaps I am "raising my hand."  Maybe, subconsciously I feel that I have more to say to the world and I am just waiting to be called upon.  The progressive educator in me prefers my students to just speak freely and let the dialogue flow without the need for archaic signaling that this would be an appropriate time for the sage on the stage to allow commentary from one of the lesser students.  But this is the system I grew up in, and maybe I can't fully accept that I do not need permission to speak to the universe.

Could it be the world's easiest stretch?  As I get older and my muscles seem to grow tighter every day, I know I should be stretching more.  My doctor's say it.  All the fitness magazines say it (which is why i don't read them).  My hips have been screaming at me to stretch every since I had surgery on both of them 2 years ago. Needless to say, I don't often respond to the call, so maybe my body is trying to do it subconsciously.

Black Power Fist?  It isn't usually a fist, but this gesture is one of the first things my father taught me growing up.  He was a white dude who wanted to make sure he instilled a strong sense of culture in his adopted son. You can read more about that can of worms in a future post on my NORWAY (NO Really, What Are You) blog, but for now just accept that it seemed like a good idea to him in the early seventies.  I am not sure when I started the hand in the air thing, but my dad passed away about 7 years ago, and if he were to haunt me, I am sure possessing my arm to do the Black power fist would be high on his list of tricks to try.

And then it came to me.  It is an act of defiance!  Many of my students have heard my spiel on the petty rules that society tries to pass off as laws under the direction of religion or government:  Thou shall not do this or that or we will take away your rights or your soul or feed you to the lions.  But things like entropy, and conservation of matter, and gravity - now those are real laws!  You can't break them no matter hard you try!  But we DO try.  It is human nature to try!  And as I laid in bed the other night, looking up at my hand floating above me, watching it sway slightly back and forth as it resisted the pull of the whole world around it, I understood.  

I will fight you till the end, gravity!  I may not cliff dive or skateboard anymore, and I know my days of backflips and acrobatics are numbered, but I will die fighting!  I DO have something to say to the world.  I may not be stretching my body, but I will stretch the limits you try to enforce with THIS act of defiance.  This Black-(hole) (quantum)-Power (pseudo)-fist is for you!  Suck it, gravity!

Yesterday, I looked at my website several dozen times.  Two days ago, I put a few tiny pieces of myself on a few tiny web pages, and so now what?  Are people looking at it?  Weebly says about 80 separate people stopped by, but who are those people?  Still no comments.  Does that mean that it isn't comment worthy, or just that those who looked didn't have anything to say?  Perhaps those who looked were repulsed, or insulted, or simply angry that they wasted their limited time looking at trash like this.  Maybe this was a bad idea.  The nerve of someone, who admits he doesn't like writing, starting a blog and then having the first entry basically broadcast to anyone who might have read it, "Hey, look at me!  I am about to do something I hate doing!  Doesn't that sound boring?  Don't invest any more time reading because clearly it won't last.  Remember, I hate this!"

Woah!  Where does all this fear come from?  I have been too successful in my life to be someone crippled by fear.  So what if it is what our society is based on?  Of course, our society was also built on the backs of slaves, and we seem to still be fighting that fight, so maybe it makes sense to be fearful of that which is new or hard or public or personal.  Okay, so one more thing to fight against (and two more things to write about in future posts: Fear and Slavery)!  But for now, let me attempt to share my goals for myself (becoming a blogger) and for this blog in general:

1. Understand my relationship to writing (see Blog post #1)
2. Understand my relationship to a culture of fear (see above)
3. Inspire dialogue (okay, that is something new - a.k.a write stuff that people want to read)
4. Build a habit of daily reflection (this is where I commit to 3 blog posts weekly and make my first attack on #2)
5. Build community (I realize the flailing I am doing now with these initial blogs aren't going to unite friends and family, let alone recruit others to create meaningful bonds around anything, but I am optimistic about eventually hitting my flow, and here I will have a record of how it started)
6. Find joy (I'm not entirely sure what I mean by this yet, but it's definitely part of it)
7. Laugh (This is kind of part of #6, but I want to name it specifically because I specifically want to laugh: with and at myself and others and the world.  Also, 7 seems better to me than 6)

So now, I guess I print this list out and tape it to the lower left corner of my laptop, right?  Sounds like a plan. Thanks again for reading, and please let me know if you did.  A comment would be great, but even a simple "Like" would be rad.  This may just be the fear talking again, but your comments may help bring me a little closer to understanding it all.  Thanks for your support.

As the title suggests (or actually just states outright), I don't like to write.  I have never liked to write.  I would much rather be doing a whole host of other things like exercising, watching TV, playing games, playing music, talking, or just sitting doing nothing.  I don't keep a journal or a diary.  Writing a simple thank you note is like torture for me.  I am even annoyed when I have to write a check.  

So why have I decided to start a blog?  Well, I would love to say that I hope that regular practice will make the process easier and slowly begin to develop deep down within me an affinity for putting words to paper.  But despite generally being a very optimistic person, I am particularly pessimistic that this experiment will have any effect toward lessening the pain and suffering I am about to put myself through.  I mean, I have been writing for something like 35 years now - through grade school and high school and college and grad school and a career as a teacher and school administrator.  I have put in over double my 10,000 hours.  I have a writing callous on my middle finger that looks like a birth defect and sends my kids running away screaming, "Dado, don't touch me with your disgusting finger bump!"  Screw writing!  It couldn't save the Ancient Egyptians even when it possessed magical powers and looked way cooler than the squiggly lines we make.

In any case, I have still committed to writing this blog, but just because I want to better understand WHY I don't like writing.  I am a creative guy with lots of ideas in my head, and my wife doesn't always appreciate me talking her ear off every night.  I should want to do this.  I should be embracing it.  And as I mentioned above, I have done it enough that I should be at least halfway decent at it.  So WHY? WHY do I hate it so?  Well that is what I am hoping to get out of this, and I apologize ahead of time for all the times that I get overly metacognitive and write blog entries analyzing what it felt like to write other blog entries.  But maybe I will learn something, and for all of you out there that also have a distaste for this form of civilized communication, perhaps it will give you something to think about as well.  Please let me know your thoughts. It's time for me to stop this agony and go back to sitting and doing nothing.