The Language Barrier

To enrich our home school education and taking into consideration we lived just hours away from the Mexican border, it was decided by the powers that be that the Stallings children would begin taking Spanish lessons. As neither of my parents spoke a word of anything besides the Queen’s English, calls were placed, arrangements were made, and that’s how we met Mr. Chow.

He looked exactly the way I had expected him to look. An enormous man of indeterminate age, he had acquired the knowledge of five or six languages and now spent much of his time tutoring struggling high school students and performing in local plays. I secretly suspected that he did little else other than learn the words of foreign lands and eat lots. Enthusiasm during his lessons produced an alarming amount of white spittle in the corners of his mouth, a problem my little mother tried in vain to alleviate by providing him vast amounts of water.

That is not to say that he was not kind, he was. Just the same, nobody in the family looked forward to Tuesday mornings. 

We sat in the kitchen, Mr. Chow and my mother anchored on opposite ends of the dining table, four small students filling the middle.  Mr. Chow’s first order of business was to give each of us what he considered the Spanish version of our name.  Apparently there was no translation for the name of Tyler, so Mr. Chow simply called him “Tigre.” Referring to the boy as a striped jungle cat was actually a remarkably appropriate moniker as my 5-year-old brother was going through what my family now affectionately refers to as his “animal” stage.

For the better part of his toddler years Tyler had faithfully worn boots, a cowboy hat, and moved only with the aid of a stick horse. Just as this phase started to fade, a more startling one began to emerge. It began with Tyler’s imaginary friend, Jack, who just happened to be a horse. Tyler and Jack, the imaginary horse, could be seen talking together and galloping around the backyard for hours.

Soon, Tyler stopped speaking for extended periods of time, choosing instead to sit silently, giving us wise, knowing glances in response to our questions. When provoked, his animalistic instincts would lash out.

“Pick up that mess!” My mother would scold.

“Grrrrrr” Tyler warned, doing a remarkable impression of a rabid wolf. He might emit a few high-pitched yips at her after she turned her back.

Tyler possessed an extraordinary ability to mimic the sounds and mannerisms of all sorts of animals. Dogs were much too easy and commonplace, he soon branched out to dinosaurs, horses, even squirrels.

He seemed to hold a certain fascination with birds, particularly with the idea of hatching out of an egg. He would sometimes cover himself with a blanket and then slowly, very slowly, he would begin emerging. First an arm- a wing, then his nose, a sharp little beak punching through his birth capsule to the air. Once he was released, he would gather himself, perching on the sofa, ruffling his feathers and breathing deeply, as hatching oneself is quite a lot of work. The little bird would look around the room, jerking his head with quick sharp movements, examining his new surroundings.

The most startling thing about Tyler during this stage was the way he moved. Not content to crawl on his hands and knees as most children do in imitation of a four-legged animal, but instead he adopted the mannerisms of a gorilla. Crouching on muscular legs and powerful forearms, he would propel himself at alarming speeds.  A knee-level speeding flash of animalistic fury.

“He has quite a lot of muscle mass for a five-year-old.” I remember the pediatrician saying, a little worried, as she palpated the bulging biceps of the kindergartener.

The rest of us had normal Spanish names, but then again, the rest of us did not act like animals. I was called “Christina.”

My mother had initially set out to learn Spanish with us, but she too grew bored by the repetition of Spanish verbs and being constantly berated for not learning the vocabulary and soon she disappeared all together.

“Will you be joining us today, Jaime?” Mr. Chow would ask, expectantly. His Spanish pronunciation of my mother’s name sounded like “Hi-May.”

“Oh, not today, Senior.” My mother would beg off, “so much to do.”

She would avoid eye contact, not daring to meet the looks of her betrayed children who were forced to endure the lessons that even she could not bear.

For reasons I do not remember, Mr. Chow eventually faded from our lives but my education in Spanish had just begun. A number of home school families began sending their children to Spanish classes with a retired teacher. She turned out to be an all-together unpleasant individual who specialized in turning the wonders of learning another language into unadulterated drudgery.  Our parents never believed us, but she also kept a gun by her backdoor.

“It’s probably just a pellet gun.” The carpool mom would say, as if this was a perfectly plausible and acceptable explanation.

These lessons were much more intense, scheduled twice a week in two-hour intervals. I remember very little about these classes other than the fact that I hated them. However, to her credit, the gun-woman did teach me something by faithfully playing a cassette tape that featured a rather catchy jingle that spouted off all of the South American countries with their respective capitals.  I can still remember most of it. Caracas, Venezuela. Caracas, Venezuela. Bogota, Columbia. Bogota, Columbia…

To escape the boredom, I would take quite a few bathroom breaks that became increasingly longer as the class progressed.

After an especially lengthy absence, the teacher would inevitably speak to me about it upon my return.

“What?” I would ask, puzzled.

A deep sigh, then she would repeat the phrase, this time in English. “What took you so long?”

“Oh, that. I’m not feeling so well” I would attempt to adopt a doleful expression. “Maybe I should call my mom,” I would continue, weakly.

Of course, even I knew this was no use. My mother would never come pick me up early, no matter what the circumstances. That lady had all of her errands carefully planned to the minute around all of her children’s extracurricular activities and she would not tolerate an interruption. On more than one occasion, I would jump out of the suburban at tennis practice, walk to the rear of the vehicle to retrieve my racket from the trunk, only to watch the car squeal away as my mother fairly peeled out, racing to her next destination. I would go running for the pro shop to use their phone to call my mother and beg for her to come back. It was common knowledge that once she reached the highway, there was no way she was coming back and I would be forced to sit on the sidelines, racketless and forlorn.

No, there was no chance my mother would come early, but sitting idly on a toilet somehow seemed better than sitting in that class.

To fulfill my foreign language requirement when I entered high school, I thought it prudent to extend my Spanish education. Granted, my previous experience had equipped me to do little more than decipher the menus of the local Mexican restaurants, but surely all of those hours of struggling through verbs and vocabulary would leave me in good stead to endure a couple high school level courses.

Spanish 1 was taught by the beautiful Coach Furgison. A tall man with broad shoulders and the owner of strong biceps and jaw line that captured the hearts of many. He did however have one rather significant physical shortcoming- he only had one hand.

That’s not exactly true, I suppose he did have something attached to the end of his arm that for all intents of purposes was supposed to be a hand, but the shortened fingers and lack of mobility gave the poor man the unfortunate appearance of a claw and that’s what most of us referred to it as behind his back. The claw.

Despite being marred at birth or perhaps mauled later in life, Coach Furgison was blessed in his looks in every other way and several of my classmates were thoroughly enchanted, but I would hear none of it. The man had a claw.

Concerned more with his duties as assistant football coach than our verb conjugation, I learned very little that first year. However, Spanish class was very interesting because he would translate whatever phrase we could think of. Thus, our Spanish final consisted of ten inappropriate phrases as suggested by members of the football team, such as “who’s your daddy?” and “I did it all for the nookie.” Since our abbreviated final afforded us with at least another 90 minutes to kill before we could leave, we watched Tommy Boy (in English) to cap off our foreign language education experience for the year.

I was more than a little concerned about being automatically promoted to Spanish 2 when I in fact knew absolutely nothing. Granted, I had made perfect grades due to dutifully studying my Spanish phrases and not getting on Coach Fergison’s nerves, but surely this would not cut it in Spanish 2. Surely you must know how to do something in Spanish 2.

As it turned out, I was wrong.

Coach Stroud was the boy’s Head Basketball Coach and thought of himself as a very important person because of it. He also considered himself to be a very intelligent individual and he had me fooled for a little while, too. He would often make bets with the class that we could ask him any question out of the Trivia Pursuit box and if he got it wrong he would give all of us 100s on our tests. What that pompous imbecile didn’t tell us until the end of the year was that he had memorized the whole box of questions. I suppose this was something else he thought would give him an air of cleverness, but in actuality I think he had more in common with Mr. Ed the “talking” horse, who was also a fake.

Like Mr. Chow before him, Coach Stroud also insisted that we adopt Spanish names. I chose the nickname of “Mary Juana” which I still think to this day is rather clever, even though Stroud said that the Mary part didn’t count as Spanish.

During one of his many absences, we were once forced to join a neighboring Spanish 2 class for the day. These were truly superior students, equipped with the Spanish vocabulary to name every object in the room, nailed down or otherwise. They could rattle-off insightful phrases such as “will it rain today?” or “where are my shoes?” without hesitation. They also could sing a number of Spanish songs which their teacher recorded by means of a small recorder. Shoeboxes of cassette tapes lined the wall and I have no earthly idea what she did with them.

After trying unsuccessfully to incorporate us with her brood in a number of Spanish exercises, their teacher was exasperated. “Don’t any of you know anything?” she cried.

Despite these shortcomings, Coach Stroud will forever have a soft, safe place in my heart thanks to his creation and unwavering support of the 105 Club.

The 105 Club was a group of exactly three members, varsity athletes of one sport or another that for whatever reason, Coach Stroud sympathized. I was honored to be a member of this elite organization.

As a high school athlete who lived in the middle of nowhere, we all missed a good portion of our afternoon classes as away games usually required a significant road trip. Most of our teachers required that we complete our work before we left, or at least come in early the next day to get caught up.

Not Stroud. Upon our return, he would ceremoniously inform us what we missed the previous day. Usually just the usual homework, but often a quiz or test as well. In mock seriousness he would call us, one at a time, to his desk.

In a judicial tone, he would inquire. “If you had taken that test, what do you think you would have made on it?”

We each had our own methods when responding to this. I took the thoughtful approach. After much silent deliberation, I would pronounce, “Well, a 105, Coach.”

“Just as I thought,” Stroud would agree. With a flourish of his red pen, he would write “105” in the grade book and I would go sit back down.

Despite my participation in the 105 Club as a high school student, you will be surprised to know that this did not translate into academic success at the college level.  

I currently study Spanish via the highly acclaimed Rossetta Stone program with little success.

The Living Arrangement

My father’s relentless determination to shelter me from the equal evils of Liberals and male predators extended well into my college years. Fueled with good intentions, he soon managed to locate, research, and arrange a rather curious living situation that was all but guaranteed to promote and preserve my morality and virtue through the formative years of higher education.

When I pulled up to Lancaster House I was impressed. Located just across the street from the university, the main house was a solid looking Victorian, complete with shutters and flower boxes and flanked by ten or so “cottages” where the students lived. I sat in a small decorative room that could only be described as a parlor where I met the elderly Mr. & Mrs. Lancaster who insisted on being called “Pa” and “Ma.” They even referred to each other with these parental monikers making me wonder if perhaps they had actually forgotten their real names.

Graduation created several vacancies at the Lancaster residences, and due to the fact that I could not convince any of my friends to sign up with me despite the charm and convenience, my single name quickly rose to the top of the list to fill a spot in the “Carriage House.” I  thought the name of my new residence sounded charming, but I was more than slightly apprehensive about the idea of moving into a house without knowledge or influence on the selection of my future roommates. I decided to file this new experience under “adventure” and in the vein of Aldous Huxley, I packed my t-shirts and TV in preparation for my big move.

Lancaster House was built over a hundred years ago and has the historical landmark plaque nailed to the front porch to prove it. However, I soon learned what it possesses in charm, it pays for in the way of living space and modern conveniences. While the exterior was picturesque, closer inspection would reveal chipped paint draping decrepit buildings in various states of disrepair. I suspected that we actually were living in old slave houses from the Civil War era.

General maintenance of the property also left something to be desired. When we alerted our elderly landlords of the increasing number of insects found in our residence, Pa acquired an industry-sized can of poison with an attached spray gun. He would shuffle along, feebly spraying a fine mist over every surface of our little apartment as we tried to shield our food, beds and toothbrushes from the toxic shower.

As explained during my rigorous interview process (read: Ma & Pa gave me cookies to eat and a homemade brochure to read while asking me hard hitting questions like where I was from, what church I attended, etc.), there were a number of rules that came with living in this fine establishment. This was all laid out to us during the annual meeting Ma christened the “Fajita Greeta.” Each house received a handmade flyer informing of us of the day and time and a firm warning that attendance was mandatory. On the day of the big event, Pa would grill up some steak Me-he-can style and the 30 of us would cram into our well-meaning Slum Lord’s living room so Ma and Pa could lay down the law. The rules were as follows: no drinking at all (whether at the residences or not), no visitors of the opposite sex after 10 PM any night of the week, and weekly clean-up checks every Friday.

While it is part of the college student’s nature to reject all authority and boundaries, I took these guidelines in stride. I had drunk my weight in Smirnoff Ice during my senior year of high school so I was fine with a short hiatus from the booze. Considering I shared a 750 square foot space with three other people (that was in fact over a garage, no less) was not exactly conducive for hosting visitors of either sex no matter what the time of day.  Clean-up check presented somewhat of a problem because though I do not consider myself to be particularly untidy, I do not make up my bed everyday and I did not want to scrub toilets. However, once we realized that the “judges” were actually sophomore guys, we simply left cookies with a somewhat threatening note and we received the highest scores in the compound.

With so many tenants, a rent drop box of some kind would seem to make a lot of sense, but Ma and Pa would have none of it. Instead, once a month we were required to walk to the main house and personally hand over a modest sum in rent and then submit to at least a solid half hour of polite conversation with our elderly proprietors. If you happened to pop in after six in the evening, the two of them were usually already in bed. Not necessarily asleep, but simply dressed and waiting. As if the act of going to bed was an event that demanded an extensive preamble.

On more than one occasion, I was invited up to their bedroom where I stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed. Ma would be tucked in the covers, clad in a beautiful nightgown, complete with long sleeves and an ornate collar. Pa would often be wearing only long socks, a thin undershirt, and boxers, sitting comfortably in a chair. The two did not seem to think anything was unusual about my presence or the utter ridiculousness of the setting, and after awhile, neither did I.  

My younger brother K.C. also lived in one of the neighboring Lancaster buildings. His dwelling looked very much like one of those ready-made sheds you see in the parking lot of Home Depot, although any of those would probably have been a vast improvement to the shack he lived in.

While my brother’s roommate was a year older, he held K.C.’s opinion in exceedingly high esteem and regularly submitted to his bidding. He made the mistake of admitting to my brother that he had done rather poorly in his studies the year before, due almost entirely to an unhealthy obsession to computer games. K.C. soon solved the problem by insisting that he put a pass code on the roommate’s laptop so that he could monitor his playing time. My brother would then use his discretion as to whether or not to allow the roommate access to his own computer.

“Do you think I could play for a little while?” The roommate would timidly ask, careful to never interrupt my brother or to bother him in anyway.

“Well I’m not sure.” K.C. would say, his eyes registering concern, bringing a hand to his face and rubbing his chin in contemplation. “You have that test in accounting next Tuesday. I think you should study for that.”

“You’re right,” the roommate would pleasantly agree, and reach for his textbook.

What my brother might have lacked in a genuine friend, he compensated for in the way of a willing subordinate. I was not so lucky. While my roommates and I acknowledge each other on a Facebook friend level, I do not have their phone numbers and they are not invited to my birthday parties. That being said, it could have been worse.  Only Gayle ended up hating me.

Gayle’s proudest accomplishment was receiving her engagement and senior rings in the same month, a triumph of love and academics. At any excuse, she would proudly hold up both hands, fingers fully splayed, to best display the circular golden prizes trapped on her bony index fingers. I suppose the expectation being that all onlookers would stop and gaze admiringly, much like perusing the trophy case in a high school hallway.

Her fiancé lived in another city, which must have been inconvenient for Gayle, but it was far worse for us. Gayle spent literally hours on the phone, and due to the fact that the walls of our living accommodations evidently held little to no insulation, the rest of us served as an unwilling front-row audience to the trials and tribulations of the long-distance relationship. While this can be unpleasant to endure at any time, it was absolutely unbearable in the dark hours of the night, which is usually reserved for a ritual I fondly refer to as “sleep.”

Maybe it was the crying, or perhaps it was the constant whining for verbal affirmations of love. It could have simply been hearing the same human’s voice for so many hours of the day and night- but finally, I had enough.

“I’m going to hide her phone,” I informed my roommate, a diminutive girl I usually only spoke to as the circumstances dictated; “Have you seen my keys” or “Do you mind if I change the channel?”

Obviously surprised by being addressed about something other than one of my immediate basic needs, Erin looked up from some horribly complicated Math homework that smart people who are stupid enough to be Math majors are required to do.

“You mean Gayle’s?” she asked.

“Of course, “ I answered confidently, feeling better about my plan with every passing second, “I’m going to hide it.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

It was a valid question and I realized that I hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. I didn’t want to get in trouble for stealing, especially since I now had a witness that could testify against me if Ma and Pa decided to hold high court in their living room and I wasn’t entirely sure of Erin’s loyalties. I looked to Heaven for help, and was suddenly flush with inspiration.

“I’m going to hide it in the ceiling.”

Probably because our “Carriage House” was actually a sketchy storage space over a garage and was never intended to be inhabited by human beings, most of our accommodations were makeshift at best. The ceiling was an office style drop ceiling, complete with the square grid and foam tiles of its kind.

I boded my time and in a rare moment of telephonic silence, Gayle went to take a shower and left her cell phone, still smoking from overuse, on her desk. Hannah, the miserable underling that was forced to abide in the same room as the garrulous beast and who no doubt suffered more than her fair share, knew better than to ask me what I was up to. I barged into their room, jumped on a chair, punched a ceiling tile up and threw that evil instrument into the dark depths of the attic. I went back into my own room and laughed a great deal with Erin in a rare moment of housemate camaraderie and then waited for the fun to begin.

In about the same amount of time it takes Lance Armstrong to ride his bike around the block, Gayle realized her phone had gone missing. Still dripping wet from her ritual bathing, she began scouring the house for her phone.

At first, she was calm, the only sign of the building panic was a quickening of her movements. I must have left it in the living room, she must have thought. Or maybe, this is exactly why I need a water proof case!

But then, as if the whole thing had been stage managed, her phone began to ring. Gayle began flying around the house looking for the phantom phone.

“Where is it?” she kept asking us, her desperation growing with every ring.

“I really don’t know, Gail.” We said. “You’re the one who’s always using it.  I’ve never even touched the thing.” I tried to feign ignorance, but even I could not help but chuckle, infatuated as I was with my own wit.

It wasn’t long before Gayle’s little detective ears figured out that the ringing was actually coming from above.  My Benedict Arnold of a roommate soon ratted me out.  

Gayle, standing on tip-toe on a chair, her ring-adorned fingers searching blindly in the attic space above, gave me a look that can only be described as hateful.  

“Why would you do this?” her voice cracking under the anxiety as the call went to voicemail and there was a brief silence before her minion dutifully called her again. Erin was quick to point out that she never thought it was a good idea. I tried to laugh it off but it’s hard to be nonchalant when everyone in your household openly hates you.

I wasn’t invited to Gayle’s wedding that summer and I didn’t live with either of those girls the following semester. It just didn’t work out that way. 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

My mother has elevated the yearly ritual of Christmas cards to that of an art form. Months of careful planning begin as soon as the current issue gets stamped. Driven by a fierce, self-imposed pressure to do more than just capture a solid family photograph, but to do something creative, something innovative, something even better than last year. Like a mad scientist or a sleepless music composter, she wakes in the night, frantically scribbling down her ideas, lest they slip her memory and be forever lost.

What will we wear? Perhaps the siblings who are married should wear a separate color from the rest of the family. Should I get their names monogrammed on their shirts? Such are the questions my mother must wrestle with in preparation for the next shoot.

My mother’s mailing list is an extensive spreadsheet kept on her computer and backed up by an additional hard drive. It contains not only hundreds of contacts’ names and mailing addresses, but also a record of if they sent our family a card in previous years. Failure to contribute to the Christmas card cycle for three consecutive years usually means deletion from the list. Studying, evaluating, adjusting, editing, my mother pours over the master list like an IRS tax auditor.

The Christmas cards we receive are carefully placed in layers like bricks onto the windows of the breakfast room so that we can critique them while we eat.

“They paid a small fortune in stamps for that one,” someone might comment, nodding towards a larger square in the rows of rectangles.

“That’s exactly what we did for our card three years ago! They’re always copying us,” another member of the gallery laments.

The Frosch’s card one year was the stuff of legend. It featured a beautiful picture of the three siblings and then unfolded to reveal the oldest daughter holding the hand of her new husband. “That is just too good,” my mother said, her voice reflecting the respect of a worthy Christmas card competitor and regret for not having thought of it first.

Our journey as the reluctant subjects of my mother’s creative Christmas carding began when I was about five. Upon the birth of her third child, my mother now had the minimum number of participants required to form a basic nativity scene. She set to work hand-sewing costumes of Joseph and Mary and clearing a portion of our backyard of plastic toys so that the background would not take away from the authenticity of the sacred scene.

After an altogether unholy photo shoot, fraught with the tears of frustration and injustice of being one of my mother’s photo subjects, the final product was surprisingly pleasant. Little Joseph dressed in robes and bearing a staff, standing solemnly over the Holy Babe.  I am kneeling next to the manger, my hands folded together and my golden bowl-cut bowed in reverence. My sister, Jesus, comfortably swaddled in the manger by means of a white sheet and a wicker basket. The only visual evidence of turmoil was the strawberry on my sister’s forehead as our less-than-pious version of Joseph had dumped the manger over during a lull in the action.

My mother was unconventional and fearless, which is exactly not the type of person you want in charge of photographing you. One year, having dressed the lot of us in black tights and matching holiday sweatshirts, she ordered her minions to sit in the middle of the local mall’s holiday display. I tried to explain that the decorations were designed to promote excessive spending and not as a photo backdrop, but she would hear none of it. Caught up in the moment of her creative vision materializing right there, in front of Dillard’s.

“Everybody’s staring at us,” I complained through a forced smile. This, the result of some rather harsh training that my mother had instilled early on; no matter what the circumstances, the show must go on.

“Of course they are,” she beamed. “You look adorable!”

My mother has photographed us in the Floridian surf, our legs freezing in the waves and our faces burning in the sun. A summer vacation to Alaska resulted in a Christmas card being born on an ice glacier, my mother magically producing Santa Clause hats out of her purse and positioning us next to a team of sled dogs. Once, dressed in monogrammed sweatshirts, we were ordered to crowd lovingly around a truly filthy little sheep that smelled awful. “Behold the Lamb of God,” the card read.

Another card in my mother’s portfolio includes a photographic representation of John 1:8. The English translation of the ancient Hebrew reads, “I am the light of the world.” In Christmas card, it translated into five kids crowding uncomfortably close around a candle, our eyes mesmerized by the flame like a swarm of moths.

“That one just didn’t quite turn out,” my mother later admitted.

Occasionally, my mother’s artistic direction would take a more casual approach, such as capturing a family game of Scrabble. All of us smiling brightly in our plaid shirts while the game board just happens to spell out words like “Wonderful,” “Counselor,” and “Prince of Peace.”

These yearly photo experiences were always uncomfortable, but they became increasingly embarrassing as I grew older. My mother chose a particularly vulnerable period in my life at the age of fifteen to ensure that if I wasn’t the laughing stock of my high school, I would at least not have any friends. 

It was nearing the end of September and my mother still did not have an idea for the year’s card. This was highly unusual— like winter catalogue models, we normally conclude our shoot somewhere between the months of May and August to ensure that fall is left clear for the necessary editing, text copying, previewing, distribution, etc. All of us secretly hoped that once, just once, we could catch a break, while my mother grew increasingly frantic with each passing day.

While doing a little shopping at the local Merle Norman, my mother’s prayers for creative inspiration were answered in the form of shirts bearing the face of a sunglass-wearing Santa. I can just imagine her perusing the jewelry, or perhaps fingering a fine leather belt, when her eyes scan the rest of the store’s wares. “Look at those adorable Santa shirts!” She gasps. “And I’ll have all of the kids wear sunglasses, too.” She is already planning out the scene in her head while she simultaneously ponders where she is going to find the suitable eye ware for her three-year-old. 

I had put up with a great deal in my young life, but those Santa shirts were just too much. The entire area code would be getting a copy of this card and my already shaky social life could not possibly withstand the blow. My desperate pleas for mercy fell on the calloused, uncaring ears of a dictator. Before the day was out, Fidel Castro has us all dressed and in position.

I tried to foil her plan by hiding my Oakley’s, but that turned out to be a mistake as she quickly offered up her own dreadful sunglasses. The giant lenses flared out past the width of my face and then wrapped clumsily around each eye socket, shielding my pupils from even the faintest suggestion of sunlight.  Under threat of eternal grounding, she forced the offending accessory over my crying eyes. If you look carefully at the photo, you can still see the tear streaks running down my face.

As if one cross was too little to bear, my paternal grandmother will also occasionally force a family-wide Christmas card. Despite having well over 20 grandchildren, that determined matriarch still manages to find clothing that more or less matches and fits— usually in the form of sweats. Year after year, we gather in front of the fireplace, my grandparents sitting proudly in the middle, the rest of us lined up around them in uniform, like a marching band. This photo process must be repeated for five or more cameras as nobody in the family trusts anyone to give them a copy of the picture.

“I’ll get doubles!” Someone in the mob cries out.

“Oh, we’ll just do one or two more,” my grandmother yells while the wail of crying babies grows louder and whatever holiday dinner the family has gathered for gets a few degrees colder. Growing even more cunning in her old age, my grandmother refuses to feed anybody until her prey has been properly photographed, ensuring that nobody leaves. The crafty old woman takes advantage of the fact that we are a people with an enormous appreciation for food.

The crown jewel of my grandmother’s Christmas card collection is a black-and-white photo taken when I was eleven. Ordered to wear a long dress and forbidden to smile, we were posed around a covered wagon my grandmother just happened to be keeping in her garage. I was accessorized with a large milk bucket and a sunbonnet. My grandfather holds a pitchfork in one hand and a baby in the other. The happiness of my grandmother can still be felt, radiating off the photograph.

Group photo sessions are never easy, but deciding which picture to use can be even more challenging. As my siblings and I have grown older, our opinions have grown louder. We realize that though we have no hope of controlling the costumes or props, we can at least attempt to look normal despite the ridiculousness of our surroundings. All of us crowd around the laptop as my mother scrolls through the results of our latest photo session. We pretend to be looking at the pictures in their entirety, but each of us are focused solely on our stamp-sized statement to the world— our face.

“What about that one?” Claire points to one of the rectangles that has captured her with an especially beautiful smile, her head tilted at just the right angle. Never mind the fact that my father’s eyes are closed, or that Anna’s hair is completely covering her face, or that Tyler is missing from the photo entirely.

My mother has the final say, and to her credit, I think she strives to be fair. She tries to choose a picture that makes most of us look more or less attractive, which is hard to do with ten squirming participants. That is not to suggest that my mother has ever compromised her own personal appearance in the photo. In all my years of Christmas carding, I have yet to see a card go out that didn’t look especially good of her.

Despite my mother’s best efforts, there have been a few cards that have slipped by without being shellacked with props, costumes, or clever tag lines. The 2009 card is considered by my mother to be a complete failure largely due to the fact that we are not wearing identical clothing and the text inside simply reads, “Merry Christmas from the Stallings.”

Of course, whatever relief our dignity enjoyed was brief as my mother renewed her efforts and rededicated herself to her art. The following year brought not one, but two separate photo sessions, each requiring not only different outfits, but were also conducted in completely different states. Both were centered around an outdoor fire pit and marshmallows. For most of October (crunch time in my mother’s Christmas card delivery schedule) my phone was inundated with text messages from my mother pleading for me to come up with a clever way to incorporate the word “s’more” into the text of our card.

“Otherwise, we’ll just have to write ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” she complained, exasperated.

Election

Not unlike FBI Agents and Wal-Mart employees, I am required to wear a plastic identification badge that bears my name, title, a barcode, and a particularly unattractive photograph of my face. The ridiculous picture is the work of an unlicensed professional armed with a very powerful camera a mere 24-inches from my forehead. The inevitable result is not exactly a glamour shot.

My badge informs all onlookers that I am “Teacher/Reading – 6^th” which means in terms of a paycheck, it is modest. In terms of working hours, they are from 7:55 AM until 4:00 PM. In terms of power, I have little.  In terms of responsibilities, I have lots. The reason being the district incorporates a particularly sneaky little phrase in teacher contracts that reads something along the lines of, “and other duties as assigned,” a humpback whale of a clause covers everything from school dance chaperone to crossing guard attendant.

Every October “and other duties as assigned,” means that I will be volunteering my personal service to student campaigns as an impromptu poll worker.  Student Council Representative is the highest elected office in the land a sixth grader can obtain and competition can be particularly fierce. Students campaign, give a speech, and the two candidates with the most votes become Representative and Alternate, respectively. The rest are losers.

Perspective candidates filled out the required form and began laying plans for the impending campaign that would last approximately 24 hours as the vote was planned for the next day. I had meant to tell them earlier, but I forgot.

The following morning Election Day was in full swing. Students made paper buttons proclaiming their love and support for one candidate or another. Candy changed hands. Mechanical pencils proved to be particularly effective bartering tools. Like all good politicians, candidates required that voters pledge their unwavering loyalty before handing over the goods.

At long last, 4^th period advisory arrived and it was time for the speeches. Speeches aren’t exactly required, but I had forgotten to make copies of a crossword puzzle so I needed a time-killer, plus I thought it would be interesting. Seven brave souls marched to the front of the class and more or less explained what previous experience they did or did not have, what revolutionary ideas they had come up with for the school, and what made them right for the job. Ethan declared that he was so responsible that he had never been late to a single class in his entire eleven years of life. I immediately marked him tardy.

The students were extremely concerned about voter privacy and the security of the ballot box. I eventually realized that many of the more opportunistic (read: greedier) of my students had promised votes to most of the candidates that were offering candy incentives. I toyed with the idea of making the students raise their hands to declare their vote, or better yet, march up to the front of the class one by one and mark their vote on the board. I could only imagine the looks of betrayal and disbelief as candidates watch their promised voters cast their ballot for someone else. However, to avoid the risk of riots, or worse- tears and angry parent phone calls, I went with a secret vote instead.

I cut index cards in half to save supplies and to ensure nobody was stuffing the ballot box with fake votes. I was not expecting our mini-election to take very long, but it did. Stricken with guilty consciences, students wrestled with the right decision, torn between the relative merits of Snickers and Skittles. Many took a long time to write anything down at all.  I watched a girl with a “Vote for Hannah” button carefully write “Isabel” on her ballot with her newly acquired “Vote for Ethan” mechanical pencil.

Once all decisions were made, I demanded silence and began to tally the votes. The seven candidates’ eyes roved from the pile of ballots on my desk to the faces of their future constituents.  Forbidden to talk or risk getting thrown out of the race, the runners are forced to mouth their messages across the room. Who did you vote for? the candidates silently ask. You, the voters lie.

Aaliyah and her economy-sized bag of gummy bears have run away with first place but there is still a three-way tie between Gianna, Ethan, and Madison for the position of Alternate and now I find myself with my own moral quandary, though it has nothing to do with candy.

I know very well that it is against the Teacher Handbook to play favorites and most of the time I do not have a problem with this policy as I dislike most sixth graders as a rule. However, in the interest of full disclosure it should be known that I love Madison Patterson and I am currently working out the details to clone her for my own child one day. She is a very small girl with golden blonde hair in a perfectly styled pageboy that curls just under her little chin. She boasts such characteristics as intellect and humor and the particularly endearing quality of wanting to please me at all times.

I am not one to be interested or involved in the affairs of my students (academic or otherwise), but I desperately wanted Madison Patterson to win. I found myself justifying my actions to myself. After all, she was more than qualified for the job as a member of the Cupcake Club and a competitive gymnast.

Just as Aaliyah bought herself a position of power with colored gelatin, it seemed only realistic that there be some creative interpretation in the counting of votes, much like the doings of ACORN and absentee ballets and hanging chads.  But just as I was about to announce the beloved Madison as the Alternate, the sick feeling that is called integrity crawled up into my throat, hijacked my vocal chords and forced me to say, “We have a three-way tie. There will be a run-off election to determine the winner of the Alternate position.”

Sick with worry, I distributed fresh index cards and waited for the worst.  The students went through the voting process much more quickly the second time around. Their consciences’ clear now that Candy Queen Aaliyah was safely in office, they could now cast their ballot for one of the other people they had previously promised to vote for.

Two minutes later, the polls were closed and I began to count. I had noticed a number of  “Madison” ballots when I picked up the votes and I was hopeful that I would not be forced to compromise my professional ethics in exchange of dirty middle school politics.  However my assurance was short lived because vote after vote bore the name of Ethan. Damn those mechanical pencils!

With only one vote left to count, there was yet another tie between Madison and Ethan and I was once again brought to my breaking point. I could feel 60 eyeballs watching my every move as I wrestled with what to do. I began to rationalize ways I could rectify the situation in Madison’s favor.  After all, didn’t I get a vote? I am the teacher. And since I am the senior member in the classroom, shouldn’t my vote be the equivalent of say, ten student votes? That seemed perfectly equitable. Whoever said this was a democracy anyway, I was the leader, no- the dictator of the classroom. I should just appoint who I wanted to represent C220 with a tap on each shoulder with a sword.

Nobody would know. Except for me.  Just me.  And that was enough.

With a heavy heart but a clear conscience, I unfolded the final vote.

In carefully written pink ink, a heart over the “i" was the name, “Madison.” 

The Field Trip

Despite my father’s penchant for personal independence and a stress-free home life, my parents chose the less traditional method of home schooling to educate the lot of us. The idea being that one-on-one instruction and the absence of the evil that runs rampant in public school hallways would transform us into solid Republican citizens who also happened to be quite knowledgeable in reading, writing, and arithmetic- if not quite so informed on the social graces of our peers.

My father was an advocate of home schooling in a political sense, as an active board member for local and statewide organizations that promoted this “do-it-yourself” method for teaching your dependents. However, he was conspicuously absent in our own little classroom.

He did, however, made a few memorable attempts to incorporate himself into our academics throughout the years. The first was a weekly lesson over ancient history. At the age of nine, I probably benefited the most from these collegiate-like lessons in which he would sit us down in a row and begin explaining Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire with the aid of carefully constructed maps and very old, complicated texts. As the eldest, I was manufactured with an innate responsibility to set a good example and diligently tried to sit at attention and feign exuberance during these lecture-style lessons, while my siblings managed little more than keeping their eyes open and mouths shut.

We soon developed an enormous appreciation for my mother’s method of tutelage, most of which was conducted via written communication as our home-based elementary school curriculum was structured very much like a long-distance correspondence course.  Each day we reported to the “school room” (i.e. what normal people would have called a den) and found on our desks a Post-It note with a list of assignments neatly written in my mother’s careful handwriting. What we may have lost in actual instruction, we more than made up for in self-advocacy and a deep sense of autonomy.

We soon appealed to our more compassionate parent to protest the cruel and unusual treatment that filled our Monday mornings, but to no avail. My father could have been teaching us finger painting or witchcraft for all she knew, but I really don’t think she could have cared less. As the mother of four children all with ages in the single digits, she was thrilled to have some precious time away from us.

After a few lessons, my father caught on that his students were in elementary school and not college students, and though we knew enough to keep our pediatric traps shut, he realized his words were bouncing off unyielding ears. The weekly lectures slowly stretched to every other week, to once a month, to nothing at all.

Deeply relieved that our history-loving father was now safely back at the office, we enjoyed a few months of bliss before the next educational onslaught began.

When I was eleven, my father decided it was high time that our home school education be supplemented with a field trip to retrace the battlefields of the Civil War. The fact that our home in Midland, Texas was approximately 1,500 miles away from most of the major action was only a trifling inconvenience.

I was more than slightly nonplussed by the idea that a good portion of my summer holiday was about to be spent being force-fed facts about the War Between the States while normal people went to swim parties and took family vacations to Disney World.  However, I was a rather philosophical child, having come to the realization that resistance was futile at approximately the age of two upon the arrival of the first of four unsolicited siblings, and accepted these unfortunate circumstances in stride.

In retrospect, there were several valid arguments I could have presented against this Civil War “vacation.” The first being the fact that despite the time and resources of my loving mother and against all odds, I had actually managed to fail sixth grade math and would probably benefit more from a pack of multiplication flashcards than a road trip to Gettysburg.

The second and more pressing point was that I looked ridiculous and should have been quarantined to my bedroom sentenced to reading stacks of Teen Vogue until I gained some much needed fashion sense. At the very least, I ought to have been protected from prying eyes until I had outgrown the awful hairstyle my mother had recklessly allowed. My golden hair was cut to eyebrow level in a perfect circle around my little head and with the aid of a curling iron and vast quantities of Rave hairspray, was curled, parted, and finished with a generous swoop to one side which gave me a rather androgynous appearance that looked very much like Charlie Bucket in the 1971 film, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Due to the fact that we could not possibly shove both our persons and our possessions into a normal-sized sports utility vehicle, my father rented a rather unbecoming 15-passenger van.  The van possessed severe shortcomings in terms of style and comfort which my father attributed to the vehicle’s age, but I was reasonably sure that nobody was ever that excited about this particular model when it rolled off the conveyer belt at some Dodge plant in Detroit. Like a baby rat, hairless and squirming, it was repulsive even in its infancy. I almost felt sorry for it.

That van may have always been ugly, but after several hard years as the carthorse for fellow vacationers at the local Enterprise, it matured into a truly magnificent automotive dinosaur while also developing the inconvenient ability to consume large amounts of gasoline without achieving significant distance or speed.

My siblings and I were elated when my mother acquired a rather bulky travel television complete with built-in VCR to entertain her brood on the road to knowledge. Weighing in at approximately 45 pounds, it was a solid black brick of revolutionary technology and we thanked God that at least one our parents understood the basic needs of children. We propped the precious machine up on a small suitcase between the captain chairs at the front of the vehicle and secured it by means of elastic bands from armrest to armrest so that our box-o-fun did not turn into a weapon of death when my father put a little too much pressure on the van’s rather unpredictable brake pedal.

However, my father, teetering dangerously between opportunist and sadist, purchased an enormous quantity of educational videos in the form of low-quality reenactments of Civil War battles and documentaries on all generals and heroes of the era to ensure that our hours in transit would be edifying as well as fun-filled. We managed to sneak aboard a few videocassettes of our favorite cartoons, but my father was always quick to remonstrate, “why don’t you kids put on that one about Grant? We’re almost to Shiloh and you’re going to want to know about that!”

 We knew enough not to argue, and also that the TV we were so excited about was now rendered useless.

While mercifully much of the trip now blurs together, I do know much of each day was spent cramped together in our noble chariot as we journeyed from battlefield to monument to fort to cemetery. My siblings and I fought our own daily civil war as we struggled for breathing room and battled for AA batteries to power our personal cassette players in an effort to drown out whatever documentary was blaring on that damn TV we had come to hate.

Occasionally the car would stop, and a couple of us would be forced out of the comforts of air conditioning to have our photograph taken next to the grave of one general or another. I often wonder what became of those snap shots. Perhaps my mother should have had them framed and displayed them in the living room as a kind of unique conversation piece: And here’s one of the girls next to Robert E. Lee’s tombstone...

A full three weeks later, our heads now crowded with our newfound knowledge and a renewed appreciation not only for the sacrifices of our forefathers, but for enough personal space to fully extend our limbs, we rolled back in to Midland.  As we jumped out of that damn van, I knew exactly how Neil Armstrong must have felt when he made it back to earth.

The field trip continued to haunt us months later when we discovered our father had sabotaged Christmas with the Civil War paraphernalia he had garnered from the many gift shops we visited on our journey. We hunted through the history books, miniature cannons, and post-cards in our stockings in search for toys, candy, and a normal childhood.

(My father is currently planning another educational jaunt to Plymouth Rock).