This Life in These Times

“Make it as general as possible. Then you’ll be able to reach the greatest audience with the slightest message!”
                              –Advice from my deranged uncle

Yohhh, world!

How many of you are out there? A hundred million? A billion? If I get a mere thousand responses to this first blog–that’s like a tenth of one percent of my potential readers–then I’ll be satisfied!
I’m a little self-conscious, though, about how this will translate into Urdu or Swahili or Hungarian. Will a certain “something” be lost by Google?

I just Google-translated a page of a Turkish newspaper, and came up with sentences like this one: “With the crisis of the capitalist system has created, unemployment is growing snowball.”

Well, the general idea comes through. Please note, though, those of you out there in Turkmenistan or Patagonia, whose first language is not English: I’m a MUCH more fluent, elegant writer than you may be able to directly appreciate! You may have to sort of shovel up my message, like dirty snow. But when you have it all piled up, it’ll be obvious what it is. And then, imagine how the greatest writer of your country’s literary tradition would say it! Russians, imagine Pushkin. For Turks, Orhan Pamuk will do.

OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me introduce myself. I’m a sixty-one year old man in Walnut Creek, California, in the USA. I’m writing this at 8 AM. At noon, I go to my job as a preschool teacher, work till 6:30.

When I’m not working, I write. Sometimes I write about the hilarious and endearing things the children at school say and do. I also write poetry, children’s stories (fiction), memoirs, essays, and reviews. So there’s no telling what you may read here next.

Don’t be fooled by my age. Inside I’ve thought of myself, through most of my adulthood, as 21. I’m not sure why. It may be because “the sixties” were simply so intense and formative. I “came of age” at the end of that decade, literally and figuratively. My most powerful experiences, ones that I’ve been assimilating all these years, took place around then.

I think I’ll close this installment with one of the anecdotes in a book  I’m working on, about being with our preschoolers. I’m trying to get FEEDBACK on these pages (the book is about 150 pages). So if you’re at all inclined, please let me know what you think. Include your assessment of the impact of the piece on a 1-10 scale, 1 being blahh and 10 being,”perfect for what it’s trying to say”. Also give more specific comments.

Thanks. See you next time.

***

YOU CAN’T PRY OPEN THE BUD

A cute, blonde three year old proudly told me one day, “I know how to count up to thirty-one!”

“You do?” I replied. “Let’s hear you!”

The little girl joyfully proceeded. She was pretty accurate, too, though I’m not sure I’d go to her as my bank teller.

“That was very good!” I said. “Now I’ll teach you how to count up to thirty-two!” She agreed—somewhat reluctantly, it seemed—and we did it.

From then on, every day when I’d see her in the play yard, I’d tell her, “Today I’m going to teach you…” and I’d add one number. It got to be a running joke between us—literally, as she’d usually be running from one end of the play yard to the other when I’d shout my proposal.

After the first couple days she would no longer say “ok”. Instead, she’d smile or laugh and shake her head. I always went up a number, anyway, for my next offer, as though she had agreed to the previous one.

One day recently, when I told her “Today I’m going to teach you to count to thirty-eight!” she actually got out of her little posse of horses, or whatever it was, running along the sidewalk, came over to me, and shouted to me in no uncertain terms, “I’ll learn when I grow up!!”

visit my website: http://www.REALnothings.com
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http://www.redroom.com/blog/maxreif/just-back-from-the-san-francisco-writers-conference-2009
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