My Son Ian Makes A Short Film

I had an English department meeting after school on Monday, and so it was my younger son Ian's responsibility to hustle home from school and let our dog out. She's only a year-and-a-half and it's a long day for her. Ian is in middle school (8th Grade) and his school lets out at 2:50 PM. I would be stuck in the meeting until 3:30 PM and then have to drive home

As the meeting was nearing its conclusion, I texted Ian to make sure he had gone straight home and let Lola out to do her business. I received this short video (without any textual explanation) as a reply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh0RKxu1hoI&feature=youtu.be

Ian's terse video reply to my text

The synopsis: a view of a ladder from above, the camera pulls back to show an open window, and then the camera pans around and there's an ominous shot of an empty room . . . no dog, nothing.

I interpreted this video in the worst possible way. In my mind's eye, Ian came home from school and saw a ladder next to the house. The window above the ladder was open, indicating something nefarious, and when he went inside, he found that the dog was missing, along with all our most valuable possessions.

I called him, frantic.

"Ian, are you okay? Did we get robbed? Is Lola gone?"

"Hey Dad. Everything is fine. I forgot my key and the secret key wasn't out back, so I found a ladder in the backyard, threw it over the fence, and broke in through the bathroom window so I could let Lola out."

"Wow . . . okay, awesome. Great. I'll talk to you when I get home."

EXT: Ladder Below Small Window

When I got home, I commended Ian for his ingenuity, agility and strength. The ladder was wedged alongside our deck and it's heavy. I'm was impressed that he could lift it and toss it over the fence. And he really had to squeeze through that tiny window, headfirst. He said he grabbed the sink and then leaped onto the toilet. It was something only a wiry 13 year old could pull off.

Then I criticized his filmmaking, particularly his shot selection.

"Ian, the end of that movie doesn't indicate that YOU broke in the house. You needed to show the dog . . . or you smiling . . . or something to indicate a happy ending. Not a weird desolate shot of an empty room! That says something bad happened!"

"Dad, I would have called the police if something bad happened."

While I was impressed with Ian's grace under pressure, I was not impressed with his ladder safety. As you can see from the photo below, he did fully extend nor did he lock the ladder's spreaders. The American Ladder Institute would not approve.

Yikes

I hope this won't happen again. We put a key back into the secret location in the yard (which I obviously can't reveal here on the internet . . . though if anyone tried to break into our house, Lola would definitely lick them to death) and I'm going to be especially didactic about shot sequences and visual resolutions the next time Ian and and I watch a movie.

A Three Anecdote Week

Sometimes life has no narrative arc. Things don't connect. There is no theme. This was one of those weeks. Stuff certainly happened, but with no particular pattern. It was existential and absurd. Moving at times, but also fragmented and ridiculous.

The week began wonderfully. It snowed Sunday night into Monday and school was canceled. My nemesis-- the goose poop in Donaldson Park-- was covered by a thick blanket of the white stuff. So I bundled up and headed down the hill to the river with our dog Lola. She enjoyed the snow enormously. It was early enough that no other dogs were around, so she was off-leash, sprinting and bounding and bouncing through the snow. She's only a little over a year, and it didn't snow much this winter, so this was a real treat. We wandered to the far corner of the park, where someone had built a snowman. Lola had never seen a snowman before and she did NOT like it. She charged toward it, stopped twenty feet away, barked like mad, and then retreated.

She did this several times. She though the snowman was alive and possibly dangerous.

To assuage her anxiety, I walked over to the snowman and stood next to it.

"Look, Lola it's fine . . . it's not alive . . . it's a snowman!"

I patted the snowman's head, to show her it was inanimate. Lola took a couple tentative steps in our direction, so I continued the patting. But I patted a bit too hard (I was wearing gloves so it was hard to judge the force of my patting). The head fell off the snowman. Decapitated.

Lola yelped and ran like hell.

The next day it was back to the grind. I had to finish grading the college writing essays, enter grades into the computer for progress reports and start teaching The Crucible (which I hadn't read in years). My seniors were acting like seniors and my sophomores were acting like sophomores. The winter doldrums.

But then one of my students inspired me. She told a story I'm sure I'll repeat for the rest of my teaching days. This student is a super-swimmer. She got a full ride to Rutgers for swimming. Her day goes like this: she gets up at 4 AM and swims hundred and hundreds of laps, goes home, does her homework, and then she swims some more in the evening. 10,000 meters a day. I barely drive that much.

She brought her computer to my desk and showed me a preliminary thesis for her final paper. I told her it looked pretty good. She said she had thought of it that morning, at 5 AM, while she was swimming. I told her that it was awesome. Great use of her time. What else are you going to think about while you swim back and forth?

So she was swimming away, thinking about horizontal and vertical identity traits and how they connect to feedback loops and algorithms and the dynamic between natural and sexual selection, and then she had an idea. But she was worried she would forget about it. So she got out of the pool and went over to the whiteboard, where they write the times and workouts for the swimmers, and she started writing.

"You got out of the pool and starting writing your thesis?"

"I didn't want to forget my idea!"

"Did the coach and the other kids think you were insane?"

"Pretty much."

When practice was over, she took a picture of the whiteboard with her phone, thus preserving her idea. I was really impressed with her. I congratulated her on her dedication and resourcefulness. It was one of those moments when you feel great about being a teacher. You realize that some kids are actually thinking about stuff from class outside of class, getting smarter on their own time. And the image of her dripping wet in her racing suit, writing a complicated synthesis thesis on a whiteboard next to a pool full of elite swimmers doing laps, it's something out of Good Will Hunting or A Beautiful Mind. There's a mad scientist quality to it.

The next day, Wednesday, my phone started blowing up during class. Calls and texts. It was Phil-- the guy I coach with-- and he had bad news. One of our player's father had passed away from pancreatic cancer. Franco had been in remission for many many years, but the cancer returned and in a matter of weeks, it was all over. I coach his son on the middle school team and the travel team and so I had gotten to know the family a bit-- Franco was a real beloved figure in town. He was a major advocate for pancreatic cancer awareness, and after he survived the first bout, he went to seminary school. He then served as a chaplain at the Reformed Church up the street from my house.

They were having a vigil in his honor at his church that night, and I wanted to bring my younger son and a couple other soccer players from the team. I was getting organized to go pick them up when my older son Alex walked into the house. He had just returned from tennis practice, tired and scattered. I tried to explain the situation.

"You know Noah? From Ian's soccer team?"

"What? No . . . maybe? I don't know."

"Well, his dad passed away, Ian and I are going to the vigil. You're going to have to make yourself dinner. There's taco meat in the fridge. Okay? We're leaving and then I'm driving Ian and Ben to soccer practice. Mommy's at Zumba. Okay?"

Alex looked at me and said, "Today at practice, Chun Lee gave me this Mexican candy and I ate too much and it was really SALTY!"

"What? Alex, look at me. A man died! We are going to a vigil! I can't talk about Chun Lee's Mexican candy right now."

"Oh, okay . . . what?"