Costco: Hyper-Capitalist Crucible

I made my triumphant return to 6:30 AM basketball this morning-- my pulled rib muscle feels much better and once again I can launch (chuck?) my patented long-range-high-arcing-randomly accurate three-pointer-- and I even dribbled the ball a few times, wending my way around the court; soon after, I had to wend my way through the halls, to get to my class to teach, dodging and weaving the masses while carrying my gym bag-- no easy task-- but all of this was light work compared to the swerving and weaving I did driving to Costco and the much more aggressive shopping cart pushing maneuvers I performed inside Costco-- I left work early to run this errand and thought things would be relatively mellow on a Tuesday afternoon but making my way through the traffic on the Route 1 jughandle was something out of Mad Max-- everyone was out roaming around burning fossil fuels and everyone sucks at driving once I arrived there was no respite: the Costco parking lot and warehouse were equally insane . . . just a moronic wasteland of people and cars and shopping carts-- and I am a fast walker and a fast cart-pusher, I've got places to go and things to do, but everyone else inside Costco always seems to be puttering along, browsing cheap cargo pants and remaindered books or stalled out and scrolling on their phone, their enormous Costco cart blocking the aisle-- it's infuriating, especially once I've grabbed the frozen salmon and shrimp, because then I want to get the fuck out as soon as possible, before the seafood defrosts, and I will lay waste to anyone in my path-- young, old, romantically entwined, bickering, whatever-- get the fuck out of my way!-- and then, once you get to the front, you've got to choose a line . . . and you'd better choose carefully . . . you need to evaluate the cashier, evaluate the carts, evaluate the idiots pushing the carts-- but I made it out alive and relatively quickly (though, to my chagrin, I left the dog crate in the back of the car, and I had bought both paper towels AND toilet paper, plus a case of wine and several cases of beer, so I had to put the beer and wine inside the dog crate so I would have enough room for the rest of the stuff in the back seat) and then I got to decompress at acupuncture and erase the stress from all this manic hyper-capitalistic behavior (and now I'm drinking some Conehead beer that I bought at a steep discount-- the irony! . . . I'm using the very stuff I bought in the stressful crucible of Costco to relax because I got stressed out going to Costco).

No Joy in Dave-ville

This morning, while playing basketball, I took an elbow under the right side of my ribcage (from a "kid" I taught in 1996) and I think I strained or bruised an intercostal muscle-- so it hurts to take a deep breath, it really hurts when I sneeze, and there is no joy in my life because it also hurts when I laugh.

Typical Tuesday Butt-kicking

Tuesdays are tough-- I dragged myself out of bed for Tuesday AM basketball-- now that our school doesn't allow non-district employees to play, it's vital that I make it so we have ten-- and when I made the left onto 27, I saw flashing lights and my first thought was: who me? but, of course, it was me-- I guess I ran a red light-- I truly didn't see it, but the cop let me go, perhaps because I was in old man basketball gear and wearing a school ID; or perhaps because I apologized; or perhaps because he graduated from East Brunswick High School-- who knows?-- but I made it to school on time, shot quite well from deep, covered some very young people, and totally overdid it . . . then I quickly showered, threw on my sandals, raced to class, and graded a buttload of college essays and some sophomore timed writings while my students watch Grosse Pointe Blank . . . and I think I read too many essays in the dark because by noon I had a splitting headache, the kind where it feels like there's a spike in your head, right above your eyeball-- but the nurse gave me some Tylenol and I ate some enchiladas and then Stacey provided me with a gluttonous amount of Swedish fish, and that seemed to mollify the headache-- then I taught a couple more classes in a post-headache-haze, drove home, accompanied my son to the Post Office to mail seven packages of Lladró ceramic statues that he sold on eBay-- but we had to leave the Post Office line several times because he got a zip code wrong and he didn't write return addresses on the boxes-- lessons learned-- and then I went to acupuncture and Dana really zapped my neck and calves with a bunch of needles and now I'm sore and tired but I've still got to cook dinner and scrub off some mold that Ian noticed on the ceiling in the shower . . . typical Tuesday.

The Coffee Is Coming From Inside the Cup!

One of the most satisfying moments of Tuesday morning 6:30 AM basketball-- especially after a miserable shooting performance-- is drinking the morning coffee that I forego before the game (so as not to defecate in my shorts) which I leave on my desk in my classroom and I enjoy while I teach my first-period class-- the coffee tastes good, of course, and the caffeine keeps me from getting a headache . . . but this morning my Contigo brand coffee mug was giving me problems, and I couldn't figure out why-- it was leaking from the top . . . coffee was oozing out from under the lid for no apparent reason-- and I tried taping some paper around it, but-- much to the amusement of my Creative Writing class-- this did not work (as evidenced by the photo) and so I gulped down what I could and then after a short discussion, the class convinced me to throw it out . . . normally I would bring something like this home and put it back in the cabinet and avoid that cup for a month or so, then forget what happened, or watch my wife suffer the same problem and then think: oh yeah, that cup leaks . . . but not today . . . today, in a much more accurate manner than I shot my morning threes, I tossed the leaking cup into the garbage-- good riddance!-- and next week I will bring the new mug that my wife bought me and things will be less damp.

Hands Like Feet, Feet Like Hands?

Low numbers for early morning basketball-- we started with nine but Mcinerney pulled his hamstring-- so we played full-court four-on-four with no subs and it was freewheeling and chaotic, which resulted in me having to occasionally dribble the ball for prolonged periods of time . . . and this cemented the counter-intuitive and absurd fact that I am better at dribbling a ball with my feet than with my hands.

Despite Our Best Efforts . . .

On Thursday the guidance department "pushed in" to my three senior English classes for half the block to counsel the students on how to apply to college and I recognize that this is a fairly intense and stressful presentation for the students; guidance covers applications, recommendations, college essays, self-reported grading, and all kinds of other clerical tasks that are required when you apply to college, so when I teach the second half of the block, I always try to lighten the mood . . . I play a bit of the This American Life episode "The Old College Try", the part when Rick Clark, the director of admissions from Georgia Tech describes some insane parent emails and how awful most college essay are . . . and during this segment, Clark reviews an email from the parents of a second grader who are already seeking suggestions on how to get their future electrical engineer-- who would prefer a southern culture instead off MIT-- into Georgie Tech . . . and these insane parents claim that their son "will be an Eagle scout by then," which is quite a prediction, considering the dedication and time that it takes to earn all those badges . . . so I asked my students if their parents had any success influencing them in some pursuit, any pursuit-- a sport, musical instrument, pastime, hobby, TV show, movie . . . anything . . . and in three classes there was a surprising, a shocking, lack of influence from parents-- most kids would concede zero influence in their pursuits, but there were a few who admitted some limited influence: one kid enjoyed Dumb and Dumber, which his dad made him watch; another played the drums for a bit and then quit; a senior boy got his love of '90s grunge rock from his mom; and a few kids admitted that they tried to play a sport that their parents liked, but almost all of them quit; and there was actually one kid who was persuaded to continue Scouts during COVID and he's closing in on Eagle Scout status . . . but these few were the exceptions that proved the rule; in all my years teaching, I had never asked this question in class and I found the answers profoundly disturbing-- I may need to do a larger study-- because it seems, despite all our efforts, parents have remarkably little influence on their children (and it actually made me feel quite lucky that my kids played tennis and soccer all the way through high school and both still enjoy basketball . . . I wish they kept up with music and read more literature, but I also got to enjoy quite a few good movies and high-quality TV shows with them and they both still enjoy watching a decent movie . . . and I guess that's all you can ask for, it's better than zero influence, which seems to be the default in this very small, very anecdotal study).

Please Don't Sit So Close to Me

A well-deserved Happy Hour for the gang today at B2 Bistro-- I was proud that I survived the First Long Week, which included Back to School Night and Friday AM Basketball-- but, as usual, I was the first to arrive at the bar (because I RUN out of my class to my car when that final bell rings, to beat the traffic, even if I'm in mid-conversation with a student) and when I arrived one side of the bar was completely empty so I sat near the corner overlooking the lake, thinking the late arrivals would fill in around the bend of the bar but then an older couple came in and I watched them walk all way down my side of the bar, past all the empty seats, and the little oldish lady said to her husband, with a fantastic Jersey accent, "I want to be able to see the wataa" and then she wedged herself into the seat right next to me, like with her elbow touching mine-- and at first I thought I might stick it out, for principle's sake-- just fucking sit there next to her-- show her who was boss-- how dare she bully a lone man with a beer doing the crossword like this?-- but that sentiment lasted two minutes and then I acknowledged defeat and moved over a seat . . . I have NEVER had someone sit so close to me when there were other available seats but these two seemed like regulars, so perhaps I was in her seat.

These Metaphors Are Like School in the Summertime . . .

At the beginning of the school year, because educating the youth is such an ambitious, abstract, indeterminate, and unpredictable journey, everyone is always throwing metaphors and similes around-- myself included; here are a few that have come into play over the last two days of in-service meetings (and a few that I will be using tomorrow, on the first day of school with students)

1) our new principal used a bunch of metaphors, including:

--we want to keep the ceiling high for the students but sometimes we have to raise the floor to help certain kids out

-- the world consists of the ratio 10-80-10 . . . 10 percent are leaders, 80 percent can be swayed, and 10 percent are bad seeds . . . you just need to get the leaders to sway the 80 percent and you won't have to worry about the ten percent that complains about everything . . . I think I'm in the 80 percent

--be a coffee bean-- when the water is boiling, don't be a hard-boiled egg or a carrot? get transformed into a magical energetic liquid . . . I certainly drink enough of it

-- Maslow before Bloom

2) during the AI presentation from another administrator, things got very metaphorical; we saw a traffic light graphic for the amount of AI we might allow on an assignment-- red is none, yellow means let the kids use AI for ideas, green means use AI and cite it, and then there was also a blue light on the graphic? these meetings were long and I can't remember what the blue light indicated but I'm guessing that's where we give up that's and allow our AI overlords to program our minds? 

-- also during the AI presentation there was a mustard metaphor? the presenter had a lot of mustard in his fridge and he used AI to help him brainstorm ways to use the mustard? a jet pack was also mentioned-- maybe AI helps you fly like a jet pack? . . . I was spacing out . . .

3) my wife, who teaches elementary school, learned to "keep it simple, build it together, throw Playdoh on the ceiling"

4) our head SSO officer talked about possible school shooter "carnage"-- not a metaphor!-- but then he said if the shooter got into the room you'd need to "open a can of whoop ass," which is not only a metaphor, but a euphemism, to say the least

5) tomorrow, I will use a few metaphors as well, mainly to discourage cell-phone usage and AI usage

--I'll make the case that school is the gym for your brain . . . and so you shouldn't have a robot lift weights for you, or ride an electric scooter instead of an actual bike because we're trying to get some mental exercise

--if you're working in a group, then it's more like a team sport than a business transaction . . . same idea as the previous metaphor, we still play soccer and basketball with limited technological use-- there's a difference between wearing nice cleats and having a flying drone play the game for you

-- I liken cell phones to smoking in class-- no smoking!-- it's unhealthy for you and there's also a proven second-hand cell-phone effect . . . when you're playing with your phone, it certainly distracts you but it also distracts the people around you

--I also compare class to a movie-- no phones in the movie theater!-- albeit class is a rather slow and boring movie with no A-list actors, a script that needs revision, unprepared actors that don't know their lines, terrible special effects (aside from the giant wasps that invade class every so often) and a very boring set . . . but whatever, it's a little bit like a movie . . . perhaps . . .

6) I will leave you with a motto that I recently invented that just might make sense:

"we don't teach kids content, we teach kids to be content".

Pickleball . . . More like Clique-el-ball

Let's bask in the beauty of the title of this post for a moment because the rest of this experience will probably be a letdown . . . after all, no one wants to hear about another bald-goateed-fifty-something's pickleball exploits, but this is my blog and my life, and now that I've finally purchased a used car, I'm using the used car . . . 

so yesterday my buddy Jesse-- an EB grad who seems to play pickleball three hours a day, got me an invite to an impromptu tournament run by Ming's pickleball TeamReach group, a highly organized, tightly run group of quality players-- a dynasty of pickleball, if you will-- that mainly plays in Fords . . . and in this ten team tourney, you got. partner randomly assigned to you-- but they tried to make the teams fair-- so I was paired with this dude Kyle, a tall athletic 30-year-old bartender who was a little hungover and operating on three hours of sleep-- they knew I was a solid player but perhaps thought I wasn't as spry and athletic as some of the other folks because I'm on the older side (and not as slim as many of these pickleball guys) but if you pair me with a tall athlete, even if he's a little rough around the edges, there's going to be trouble-- so we went undefeated in group play, winning five or six and row, and ensuring top seed and then we had a close game in the semi-final-- one of the players was excellent, but we had beaten them once in group play and knew how to target the other guy-- and then we won the final game 11-1 . . . same deal, one excellent player and one mediocre player and then Kyle and I were awarded a first place medal and I was given the official invite to the group-- the secret password to the TeamReach account-- so I'm glad to be a part of that crew and will get to play some excellent pickleball with them . . .

then this morning, I was given the OK to return to my brother's elite 4.5 group that plays sometimes on Saturday morning-- I played with them a few weeks ago and I did well, so I was invited back-- but this is a weird world-- so when I was playing this morning I saw this guy Don I had played with a few times with my brother in the past when I was down at Veteran's Park and Don and I recently decided we were going to play a tournament together-- at the 4.0 level . . . I've never played in an official tournament (and I've only played in one unofficial tournament, which I won) and then he was like "I'm trying to sneak into this group because I didn't get an invite, even though I've played with these guys!" and I was like WTF, now I'm involved in some cliquey bullshit-- but I got him into a few games because I said we were going to play a tournament together . . . still, I was kind of amazed at the weird insularity of these pickleball groups-- Don is an excellent player but maybe he doesn't have a 4.5 rating, I don't know-- because I have no rating because I haven't played in any official tournaments, I was just lucky to have my brother vouching for me but Don and I played quite well against some great players so maybe I helped him get into this group or maybe I've doomed myself because I stirred the pot and got out of my lane and all those metaphors, and I'll never be asked back again . . . if you ask my wife, I'm the guy who always invites everyone, I hate excluding people-- especially the one black guy, and Don is the one black guy . . . not that this is a lily-white crew by any means, Indian guys and Turkish guys and Asian guys, so don't get me wrong, there's no racism going on here, pickleball is very inclusive of social class, ethnicity, race, etcetera . . . more so than perhaps any other sport-- because with pick-up basketball you can get some reverse-racism--  but I digress, and I guess the moral here is if you want really good pickleball games you've got to have some organizer like Ming or whoever organizes my brother's group and they need to be a bit exclusionary . . . so once again we return full circle to my fucking brilliant title of this post.

I Also Got Kneed in the Quad

I completed a classic Quadrathlon today: I finished teaching Act IV of Hamlet; biked to the park; played an hour of pickleball; and then played two hours of full-court basketball with my son Alex and a bunch of youngsters . . . and now I wish I turned the A/C on before I left.

The Tennis Team is Hot

My tennis team eked out a 3-2 victory over Bound Brook today, in the heat-- we ran out of water but the other team graciously provided us with some, and one of our players ran out of gas and lost in a tiebreaker because his opponent doggedly ran down every shot, despite the unseasonably scorching temperatures-- but our first doubles team came through I the clutch and we live on to play another match next week when it should be cooler (and then, once we got back to Highland Park, my son Alex and I went down to the park and played some two-on-two basketball with some guys that played tennis in Highland Park back in the day-- and we shot poorly but sweated superbly).

Dave's Calf Blooms Like a Spring Flower

This morning I made my triumphant return to 6:30 AM before school basketball-- we only had nine so we were playing full court four-on-four and my legs were NOT ready for this-- apparently PT and a bit of pickleball are not training for full court sprints with young people . . . but I survived, my calf felt good, and I even made a few shots (but missed far more than I made) and it was nice to get a work-out in before a long day of teaching Shakespeare and then riding in a van to Iselin to coach high school tennis.

Ankle Surgery Part II

Ian survived his rescheduled ankle surgery-- although apparently, he was in some serious pain right afterward . . . which was remedied by a couple doses of fentanyl-- and now his ligaments and tendons are repaired and his ankle contains a screw and wedge that will hold things in place . . . and hopefully he will heal quickly and be back on the basketball/tennis court soon.

Professor G. Truck and Doctor C. Morton

I'm proud to say that I stopped reading random articles on the web and I went to see an actual doctor today-- Kinshasa C. Morton MD, to be precise: he's an excellent sports medicine specialist (I've seen him before for my shoulder and my knee) and he was much more authoritative and knowledgeable than the internet . . . he lubed up my leg and used an ultrasound machine to locate a tear in my right gastrocnemius-- which I believe is my upper calf muscle-- and while he said I'm going to need some physical therapy to help heal, he was also very positive and said I could continue to walk and cycle and row-- I should just avoid all the fun stuff: soccer, basketball, tennis, and pickleball-- until after a few weeks of PT . . . so it will be a weird start to tennis season next week-- I can't really hit with the kids-- but hopefully I'll be on the mend soon enough.

Upstream, downstream . . . Minnesota 81/Rutgers 70

What a strange and perverse mental illness-- to look forward all day to a time when you will watch a remote event on television that will probably drive you to the brink of madness-- but believe that if you get emotionally involved enough, you will have some influence over the event-- and believe this enough so that you enjoy joyous high and suffer precipitous lows, project streams of profanity, enter existential futility, entertain possible resurrection, and finally go to bed, sweaty, frustrated, and fatigued, though you've only sat on your couch-- and you'll do it again Thursday night because the Rutgers men's basketball team is playing Purdue.

Dave Will Survive

Another boring evening last night-- I really felt like shit, congested and glassy-eyed and all that fun stuff that happens when you have a cold-- so we watched some college basketball and the first episode of Resident Alien-- which I found more amusing than my wife-- but this morning, despite sleeping poorly, I came back from outer space and managed to record some of my new podcast and play 90 minutes of indoor soccer, and all the trotting around helped drain the mucous . . . so I think I'm going to recover just in time to go to work tomorrow . . . blech (and my wife has off because her district budgeted enough snow days, while my district did not-- so at East Brunswick High School there will be learnin' on President's Day).

In Thirty Years, I Should Run For President?

Last week, I made a triumphant return to indoor soccer and I was able to play for 50 minutes before I felt a twinge in my calf--but I must confess, I also felt fat and out of shape on the soccer pitch, I've been going to the gym and playing pickleball and while pickleball may require some burst of speed and plenty of shuffling in a squat stance, it's not really stop-and-go aerobic exercise; this week, I was able to play for a little over an hour-- I got my 10,000 steps and then stopped before I hurt anything-- and wow, was I winded-- and I still felt fat and slow and without good touch, but I did score a nice left-footed goal on the volley, off a looping cross . . . so I am cautiously optimistic about athletics in 2024-- and my wife and I are trying to eat fewer carbs and more protein, so maybe we'll lose some weight this week, which I am assuming will really help my fitness in sports like soccer and basketball (I was annoyed last week, I didn't drink all week-- until Friday and Saturday, or eat dessert after dinner, and I still don't think I lost a pound . . . as I approach age 54 my metabolism has really slowed down-- when I was in my forties if I quit beer and dessert for a week, I'd lose five pounds).

There Are Too Many Fucking Shows

We signed up for a free Apple TV trial so we could watch Slow Horses (and because my wife is stuck at home healing from foot surgery) and last night we sampled some other Apple TV shows: Smigadoon!-- which was mildly entertaining (from my perspective) and hysterically funny (according to my wife) and two episodes of Mythic Quest-- which we both found witty and compelling-- and then I had to bail out when my wife started some Irish show called Bad Sisters . . . I know this is a first-world-problem, but the amount of shows on all the platforms is actually stressing me out-- we have text threads of recs from our TV-watching friends and while I understand this is the time of year when everyone is watching lots of TV-- it's cold and gray and the holidays are over-- and this is exponentially magnified this year because my wife can't leave the house-- plus there's the Australian Open and college basketball . . . I'm barely reading anything . . . but it appears that winter is over and my wife might get her stitches out tomorrow, so maybe instead of "dry January"-- which is a terrible month to quit drinking anyway-- but maybe instead of that silliness, we need to do "no wifi February" and release our brains from this digital capture.

Dave is Still Standing (unlike his wife)

What a week . . . I had to make numerous parent phone calls to discuss AI issues in student work-- and this got in the way of my planning for my four preps and grading the vast amount of writing that needed to be graded, so I pretty much lost my mind and freaked out quite a bit . . . one of the downsides to knowing your work colleagues so well is that you're not afraid to melt down in front of them . . . I probably need to start working at a place where I am only professionally acquainted with my co-workers because I'm way too familiar with the folks at my current job . . . which I guess often happens to veteran teachers-- I also accompanied Ian to meet the orthopedic surgeon to discuss options and schedule his ankle/foot surgery to fix his tendon and the fact that his foot bone is 40% out of the socket-- and we met with the same surgeon who was soon to operate on my wife's foot so then I had to endure the stress and anxiety of knowing that my wife was going under the knife for Morton's neuroma . . . and now she's laid up for a couple weeks until her foot heals so it's up to Ian and me to do the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and general household chores-- but who is going to shave my back hair, which is getting out of control? and then-- hopefully-- my wife's foot will heal and we'll repeat the same ordeal at the end of March with Ian . . . what a week and what a year, already-- and I have made a wise concession to ensure that I can offer aid when necessary: I'm not playing any impact sports than could possibly reinjure my calf (which is feeling great!) until my wife is on her feet again, because if I go down from playing indoor soccer or basketball or pickleball, then we'll really be fucked . . . or maybe not . . . maybe we'll just wallow in our own filth and order lots of take-out, which could be fun.

 

You'd Like to Go Second? No Problem . . .

THREE . . . count them, THREE-- that's right, I generated three great moments in education over the past two days-- for an average of 1.5 great moments per day; so without further fanfare-- because this is already too much fanfare-- here they are:

1) yesterday, a girl in my College Writing class asked me a strange question: she wondered if I knew anything about the PE mid-term . . . and though I told her that I did NOT know anything about the PE mid-term-- why would I know anything about the PE mid-term?-- but I told her I was totally willing to hypothesize about what I thought should be on the PE final, and then I went into an impromptu monologue about something I am fascinated with-- the sundry and miscellaneous rules of in-bounds and out-of-bounds in various sports . . . and while the girl that asked the question tuned out immediately-- before I even finished contrasting tennis and basketball!-- some of the athletic boys in the class got involved, and we went through a number of sports, hashing out when a ball or player was considered in-bounds or out-of-bounds and we agreed that knowledge of these rules would make an excellent PE final and we had a generally excellent time speaking on this topic-- especially because our hypothetical final monumentally annoyed the girl who originally asked the question;

2) in Public Speaking class this morning, we were about to present informational speeches and when I asked for a volunteer to go first, once again-- and this happens all the time-- a girl asked if she could "go second"-- this is a common and logical request in Public Speaking class . . . the kids are great-- they actually signed up for Public Speaking so they like to speak in public . . . but they still don't want the pressure of leading-off, so I'm always getting requests to go second or third-- but someone has to go first . . . and today, in another great moment of teaching, I finally solved that dilemma-- a girl asked if she could "go second" and another student quickly claimed "going third" and someone else actually claimed the fourth spot-- so we were all lined up and ready to roll, but someone needed to go first and then I had an epiphany, a stroke of brilliance and I said: "Ok . . . I will go first" and the kids looked at me like: "Wtf?" and then I drew a line on the board and I said: "Tennis" and, once again, they were like "Wtf?"

3) then I did an informational speech on the topic of "In? Or Out?" and first I went through sports where the ball is "in" if it hits the line-- soccer and volleyball and tennis-- and then I discussed the anomalous nature of basketball, where the ball is "out" if it touches the line-- and we also reviewed how the sides and top of the backboard are in-bounds-- but not the supporting braces up top; we talked about football and the fact that if your foot hits the line, you are out; I outlined the complication of pickleball: the ball is "in" if it hits the line, unless the serve touches the non-volley zone line, then that serve is "out"; I brought up darts and what happens if the dart splits the wire (you get the higher score) and that started a whole debate on if darts and bowling were even sports at all (they are) and then I broke down the weirdness of baseball-- the ball can roll foul but if it rolls back into fair play before the base, then it's a fair ball-- and if it hits the foul pole then it's fair, so yu should call the foul-pole the "fair-pole" and then I actually learned something new from the lacrosse girls in my class-- and this rule seems plumb-fucking-crazy-- in lacross, if the ball goes out-of-bounds after an unsuccessful shot, when the ball crosses the end line, then the team whose player/player's lacrosse stick is closest to the ball is awarded the ball . . . wild stuff-- and now I'm making this extemporaneous informational presentation into a Google slideshow, entitled "Is it IN? Or is it OUT?" so that next semester, when a student asks to "go second" the class will be in for a real surprise (and perhaps no one will ever ask to go second again . . . but maybe I need to prepare a number of these boring and technical speeches, so that any time I don't get a volunteer to go first, the entire class gets tortured . . . there so many great topics I could present on: Transcendentalist Philosophy in American Literature, How to Keep a Salubrious Sleep Schedule, Here Are Some TV Shows Old White Guys Like, Seven Ways to Improve Your Pickleball Game, and -- of course-- How Robert Moses and the Automobile Destroyed Our Once Great Nation).