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We tend to view our own birthdays like we view New Year’s Eve: a marking of the passage of time, which can turn into wistfulness about what was accomplished the previous year. Resolutions about the coming year are common on birthdays as well.

Those around the birthday person tend to view the event a bit differently. For some it’s a time to poke fun at how old the person is (because, as we know, making fun of a person’s inexorable march to death is hilarious) or, more specifically, to poke fun at how much older that person is than than the person doing the poking.

For others, it’s a celebration of a year spent with the person. What is life if not a collection of interactions with others? Rather than focusing on the time left, it’s a chance to focus on the time already spent.

The most important people in our lives are those that have not only taught us something about ourselves, but have taught us how to better ourselves. While they accept us as we already are, they challenge us to be better than we are, and not usually by direct command. Rather, their presence in our lives is challenge enough.

Author John Steinbeck was born on this day in 1902. Sixty years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Almost thirty years later, I read my first Steinbeck novel. He’d been dead for 23 years already, but Of Mice and Men instantly became my answer to “What’s your favorite novel?” Since then I’ve read almost every book he’s written, and I’m currently reading Journal of a Novel, which is a series of letters he wrote to his friend and editor while he was working on East of Eden.

Like most life-touching things, I’d be hard-pressed to explain what is exactly that I like so much about his writings. His most famous works are set in a time foreign to me – the Great Depression – and are stories of people who work the land, a long way away from my technology-driven life. His characters are flawed and real. The “things don’t go like you plan” message in Of Mice and Men must speak to me on levels I don’t even realize – in fact, it wasn’t until a year or two later that I realized the title was referring to the Robert Burns poem where “the best-laid schemes o’ mice and men/gang aft agley.” (I know, right? That should have been easily evident.)

So today, 104 years after the fact, I celebrate John Steinbeck’s birthday. It’s possible (likely, even) that he would have been a difficult person to befriend, but today’s a day for appreciating those who have affected our lives and challenged us to be better than we are.

Happy birthday, Mr. Steinbeck.

Years: 1982-83
Teacher: Mr. Johnson

I think it was Leo Tolstoy who asked “War! (huh-yeah) What is it good for?”* If Mr. Johnson’s teaching methods are any indication, it’s at least good for instructional films on the topic. My entire fifth grade experience can be nearly summed up with the phrase “war films.”

Mr. Johnson seemed really old to me when I was in fifth grade and even now I don’t really have concept of how old he was. I believe he was a veteran, but I don’t know which war it was. My guess would be the Korean War, as I’m pretty sure he was too young for World War II and a little too old for Vietnam. That’s all speculation, of course. All I know is that we watched film after film of World War II. They were the black and white newsreel type, and when they were done, they always elicited the same response in all of us:

“Backwards! Backwards!”

It’s surprising how often he let us do it. I’m not sure what the appeal was, but we always wanted to see the exact same film we just saw, only in reverse with no sound. I’m sure it was funny to see all the soldiers, tanks, and planes going backwards, but I’d bet it was more because that took up more class time. It’s the eternal struggle of students versus teachers: teachers want to teach, students don’t want to learn; teachers want to utilize class time, students want to get the teacher off-topic. In that sense, it’s much like the war films: ground is won, ground is lost, there are casualties, and every so often, somebody brings out the heavy artillery and concessions are made and reparations paid. Getting a diploma is like getting a signed peace treaty – “We will no longer pursue this war. You can no longer badger us and we won’t try to make you learn anything else.”

Mr. Johnson couldn’t see all that well and he was pretty gruff. If you were in the back of the classroom you could goof off fairly safely if you weren’t too overt. Bad kids had to sit in the front row. I remember this because I sat in the front row a lot.

I didn’t always sit in the front row, though. I know for a fact that I sat in the back-right corner of the classroom for a while. I know this because my efforts at class clowning were aided by the wall in that corner. Mr. Johnson would frequently leave the classroom for brief periods of time and we were expected to behave. I, of course, took these opportunities to not behave. For a short time I accomplished this by doing headstands up against the wall very briefly. Unfortunately, one day I wasn’t brief enough and Mr. Johnson saw me when he came back in. A firm believer in “let the punishment fit the crime,” he had me do a headstand in front of the room against the wall for an extended time. I’m not sure how long it was, but it felt like hours. I was told later that my face had been super-red. I’m sure it was dangerous to make a kid stand on his head for a long time, but that’s just how Mr. Johnson rolled. He also didn’t waste time sending kids to the office – if you had earned yourself a spanking, you got it out in the hallway. Anybody that happened to be in the hallway at the time was privy to all of the proceedings. Whether that was meant to be an example or another facet of the punishment, I’ll never know. It served as both.

Fifth grade is the year I start having memories of what the other kids were doing. My previously-mentioned not-friend-yet Josh knocked the clock off the wall above the chalkboard one day, right as Mr. Johnson came back into the room. Josh was pretty tall, and I think he was showing how high he could jump. The look on his face as he caught the clock and looked up to see Mr. Johnson can only be described as “mortified.” I may have secretly delighted in his getting in trouble, I’m not sure. Josh was popular. Really popular. He was smart, athletic, and funny, a sure recipe for success in school. We weren’t friends, on my part probably because I was jealous and on his part probably because he had enough friends already, and, frankly, why bother? Again, this is speculation on my part, and I leave it to Josh to give his side of the story should he ever be inclined.

This was the year Larry K. joined our class and he and I started a destructive friendship. Whether it was shooting the bratty neighbor’s kid in the leg with a BB gun or almost burning down his house by using kerosene in the wood heater, Larry was a never-ending source of danger. Our class took a field trip to his family farm, and I remember he showed me a family of baby raccoons that were hidden away in the barn. I also remember him telling me later that they were no longer alive, and I got the distinct impression he might have had a hand in it. The thing about Larry was that he was given to telling expanded versions of the truth, so it was difficult to distill actualities out of his conversation. At the same time, if the conversation was about destructive behavior, it was easy to believe he was being factual.

We already had one set of non-identical twins (is that “fraternal”? I can never remember) in the class, but this year we got a set of twin sisters who were, by nature of being new, weird. That’s just how it works: new kids are weird kids. I’m sorry. That’s nothing against them, it’s just how the rules work. We didn’t make them, we just followed them. They were identical twins, and, as it happened, they were born on my birthday, making us ersatz triplets. We didn’t really play that angle up until we got to high school, but it was strange to me to share my birthday, and with twins, no less! Because they were new and weird, though, we (the guys) concocted a scenario in which Scot J. was in love with one of the twins (Kerry), mostly to give Scot a hard time for some now-forgotten reason. I hear rumors that Scot’s a millionaire now. Hmm. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I can’t decipher it.

Though we got a small morning snack break in fifth grade, we stopped having two recesses. It was Life’s way of teaching us that with age came less fun and it was usually disguised as “more responsibility” or “character.”

Two things I remember being very popular in fifth grade: fruit roll-ups and The A-Team. Fruit roll-ups I got to experience fairly regularly, in all their difficult-to-eatness, The A-Team, not so much. My brother and I weren’t allowed to watch TV aside from occasional parentally-approved things, but The A-Team certainly wasn’t on that list. I caught an episode or two here and there, but most of my appreciation for Mr. T has come after the fact. His in-your-face no-nonsense fool-pitying approach to life should be a lesson to us all, I feel.

Sixth grade meant moving into the “other half” of the building, and into a whole ‘nother phase of life.

*This is a Seinfeld reference, lest you think I am misinformed.

Years: 1981-82
Teacher: Miss Linder

Ah, Miss Linder. My first teacher crush. She was pretty, she was nice, and she smiled a lot. Oh, and she wasn’t much taller than us fourth graders. What’s not to like? *sigh*

The great thing about early elementary school years is that part of your day is taken up by teachers reading to you. Every afternoon, right after recess, Miss Linder would read us a chapter from a book. I’m sure it was partly to settle us down and partly to get us interested in books, but it had the extra benefit of eating up school time, so I was all for it. If your teacher had a pleasant voice (and Miss Linder did), well, that was just icing on the cupcake.

A chapter a day means she must have read several books to us throughout the year, but the only one I remember is Where the Red Fern Grows. I don’t necessarily remember the plot, but I remember it’s one of those sad books where everybody’s dog dies for some heroic reason and it’s meant to teach kids about … I’m not sure. Heroism? Pet death? Botany? One of those. I seem to recall we were all pretty bummed about the book at the end.

Somewhere along the way I lost my ability to listen to people read. No matter how hard I try, I can’t grasp what they are saying and my focus wanders. Any time someone says, “Hey, listen to this!” I have to try to explain that it would be better if they just let me read it. It’s caused some hard feelings along the way and I feel bad about that. It’s never been about the person reading, it’s just been that anyone was reading. The written word has more power to me than the spoken word. I think it’s because I can read back over it if I need to figure something out. If I miss something someone said, that’s pretty much too bad. There’ve been movies on DVD that I’ve put the closed captioning on for this exact reason, and it’s also why I’d choose being deaf over being blind – I mean, if I had to choose.

For reasons I can’t fully explain, I look back on fourth grade as the last idyllic time in my life. Whenever I’m asked “What point in your life would you go back to if you could?” I invariably choose this grade. It wasn’t really a transitional year – fifth grade would handle those duties. It was the last year of the lower half of elementary school, so we were on the highest rung of that ladder, and that’s always nice. That whole process of starting over at the bottom at each new stage of life can be daunting: fifth grade, ninth grade, freshman in college, and each new job – trying to learn your place and get acclimated can be too overwhelming. I don’t even like to go into new businesses where I don’t know where to pay for things or how to ask for product. I absolutely hate auctions for that same reason. The unfamiliar is unwelcome in my staked-off little area of the world.

This was the year that Josh W. skipped third grade and joined our class, but I had to be reminded of that fact by him. My memories of him start in fifth grade and we didn’t actually become friends until high school. We’re still friends today, so I feel a little bad about not remembering his first year in my class, but my memories of him from fifth grade aren’t so favorable, so maybe its better to not have memories than to have not-good ones.

These haven’t really been “memories of” so much as they’ve been “musings on” fourth grade, and that’s because I don’t have a lot of specific memories from that year, just general “feely” ones. This was the year I got glasses and also the year I started piano lessons, but those aren’t really “school” memories, so I’m not going to mention them. I’m also not going to mention my sticker collection, especially not the pages full of scratch-and-sniff ones. I will particularly NOT mention that the skunk one was one of my favorites.

I will mention, however, that fourth grade was the year I wrote my first short story. It must have been for a class assignment because I don’t know why else I would have written it. It was a mouse’s point of view of the Nativity scene, and all I remember is that at one point, Joseph lifted the mouse so it could have a better view of the manger. I can’t even imagine writing something like that now – I mean, picking up a mouse and holding it around a newborn baby?!? Germs, man! Think! Apparently, I’ve grown into these phobias.

I think back on fourth grade as being “happy.” It wasn’t that other grades were so unhappy, it’s just that this grade seems, in my memory, happier.

Fifth grade was where the business went down, man.