ANTI-Snow Day Rituals

Preface: Over the past month or so, New England was hammered by a series of snowstorms, which resulted in more than a few snow days. My high school had at least five (honestly, I lost count); my niece's school had maybe eight-- three of which were just for "snow removal."

In the midst of what I started to call "January vacation", something truly bizarre happened: students and teachers started to get sick of all the time off. They actually wanted to go back to school.

So, during one of my snow days, I sat down to write an article about "Anti-Snow Day Rituals"-- a sequel of sorts to a piece I wrote in 2008. Convinced I hit a home-run, I sent the piece into my contact at the Hartford Courant-- who eventually declined it.

I guess I can't blame him. By the time I sent it in, the worst of the snow had passed, which made the piece much less topical. (Or maybe he just thought it was lame. Who can say?)

But, hey, I wrote it, and I think I have some good zingers in here, so I figured I'll put it on the ol' blog. Who knows? Maybe we'll have a freak blizzard in March, and this will suddenly become The Most Relevant Artcle Ever. With the winter we've had so far, it's anyone's guess.

Anyway, here's the Anti-Snow Day piece...

An urgent plea to school children everywhere: Put the spoons back in the drawer. Now.

It started innocently enough. Just a few weeks ago, on the eve of the first major snowstorm of the year, students of all ages were snug in their beds, sleeping in their inside-out pajamas with spoons under their pillows.

Maybe, earlier in the evening, they had thrown some ice cubes in the toilet. Maybe they ran five times around their kitchen table. The rituals vary, but the goal remains constant: to conjure up a glorious—and gloriously elusive—snow day.

Well, it worked—all too well. We got our snow day. And another. And another. We got so many snow days, in fact, that we actually started to get sick of them.

It seems as the snow piles up, snow-day enthusiasm goes down, for two main reasons. The first is purely practical: teachers and students alike are seeing how all these days off are eating into their summer vacations, and they don’t like it one bit. They want it to stop.

The second, more metaphysical reason has to do with preserving the sanctity of the snow-day phenomenon itself. Over the past month, we’ve watched our precious snow days degenerate into something commonplace, ordinary. What was once an unexpected break from routine has become the routine. The magic, the “will it or won’t it?” giddiness associated with snow days, is gone.

Once upon a time, you would wake up the morning of a potential snow day, look out your window, and dash downstairs, to the computer or TV, to check the school cancellation listings. And when your school’s name came up, you would thank God or your superintendent for this amazing gift.

All that’s changed. Now, when teachers and students see their school’s name on that listing, they don’t feel that sense of dizzying rapture. Instead, they feel apathetic, or worse: vaguely disappointed.

Thus, we now find ourselves in this Bizarro Winter, when students and teachers are clamoring to go to school. And so, we must act. We must re-set the universe. We must engage in Anti-Snow Day Rituals.

Never heard of Anti-Snow Day Rituals? Not surprising, because they don’t exist (for obvious reasons). But I’m sure we can come up with something.

The obvious route is take every activity you’ve been doing to encourage the snow, and do the opposite. Flush boiling water down the toilet rather than ice cubes. Instead of running around your kitchen table, walk around the same table, only backwards. (I don’t, however, recommend putting a fork under your pillow; this isn’t worth losing an eye over.)

Or perhaps we could borrow some of the techniques used by brides to ensure a sunny day for their wedding, such as boiling rocks or hanging rosary beads out windows.

Or maybe we just try something completely random: lining a window pane with rock salt, putting a black crayon in the freezer, eating Bit-o-Honey with toothpicks while wearing one red mitten. Silly and non-sensical, yes… but so is hiding a spoon under your bed while earing inside-out PJs.

Or maybe we forget all the ritualistic bombast and appeal directly to the Snow Miser himself, the wizard responsible for all this crazy weather. We could humbly apologize for all our past Snow Day Ritual transgressions. We could swear we’ve learned whatever lesson he was trying to teach us—about delaying gratification, about “how too much of a good thing is not a good thing.” And we could promise that we will never, ever put spoons under our pillows again.

Well… at least, not until next year.

Honestly, It's Tricky Talking to Teens about Lying

I co-teach Confirmation class in my town-- 9th and 10th graders. And last year, for one class, we did a lesson on lying-- something I see this a lot of as a high school teacher. Here's a typical example:

Me: “Hey, put your phone away.”
Student: “I didn't have my phone...”
Me: "But I just saw you, with your phone on your desk, pressing buttons..."

For many teens, it seems, lying is the default defense mechanism, and in some ways, I understand why: lying is so pervasive, we've almost become desensitized to it. Like Dr. House says, "Everybody lies."

And he's not wrong: parents lie to their children (Tooth Fairy, anyone?); children lie to their parents; advertisers lie to consumers; politicians lit to voters. Students lie to their teachers, and sometimes, teachers lie to their students. (Just so you know, kids: when a teacher says, “Of course, I wrote your recommendation... I just have to print it out,” that means he's going to go and write it that night.)

So, my co-teacher and I wanted to talk to our class about lying, but we didn’t want to stand up in front of them and say that lying is always wrong, because that’s too easy, and we live in a complex world. Nor did we want to say it’s sometimes OK to lie, because that makes it sound like everything is relative. Plus, we didn't want anyone to go home and say, “Hey, guess what, Mom. My CCD teacher says it’s OK to lie!” So it was tricky.

To get started, I presented to them five scenarios, and then we discussed whether the characters involved in each situation were really lying, and if so, was it acceptable to do so, and if they themselves would act similiarly in that situation. The scenarios are the following:

Connor was really under a lot of pressure—from his parents, teachers, and coaches—to improve his grades. But between basketball practices and his new girlfriend, he just didn’t have time to work on his To Kill a Mockingbird paper. So, the night before it was due, he found a paper on the Internet, put his name on it, and handed it in. He’d never done that before, but he promised himself next time, he wouldn’t let it come to this.

Theo was doing his math homework when he heard a pounding on his door. Startled, he ran over to the door to find his friend Marty, who said, “Some guys are chasing me, threatening to beat me up. Can I hide in here?” Theo quickly hid Marty in his closet. Only a few minutes later, when four huge lacrosse players showed up at Theo’s front door looking for Marty, Theo calmly explained that he’s been doing homework all day and denied that he saw him. The thugs bought the story and walked away.

Sarah’s parents were going away for the night, and she was having a big party. Amanda really wanted to go, but she knew her mom wouldn’t let her. So she told her mom she was just going over to Sarah’s to watch movies and play Taboo.
“So it’s just going to be you and a few friends?” Mom asked. “Yes,” Amanda replied. Mom: “And her parents are going to be there?” Amanda: “Yes.”
Mom: “And no drinking or anything like that?” Amanda: “No.”
“OK,” Amanda’s mom said. “I trust you.”

For months, Meredith was trying to get “in” with this certain group of girls, so when they invited her to go to the movies, she jumped at the chance. Only problem: she had already promised her friend Isabel that she would hang out with her. She thought about asking the girls if Isabel could go to the movies too, but she knew that they didn’t really care for Isabel, because of a stupid misunderstanding that happened way back in sixth grade. When Friday came, Meredith told Isabel she was tired and was going to stay home—then, of course, immediately went to the movies with the other girls. She felt bad about lying to Isabel, but what else could she do?

“I went to the Mall today and bought this new sweater!” Kathryn gushed, giving a fashion show to her friend Meghan. “I absolutely adore it! What do you think?” Unfortunately, Meghan didn’t care for Kathryn’s new purchase at all. She thought the whole thing—the color, the style, even the buttons—was wrong. Plus, she didn’t think Kathryn looked very good in it. But she didn’t want to make her friend feel bad, so when Kathryn asked her point-blank what she thought of it, she smiled and, mustering up as much fake enthusiasm as she possibly could, said, “Oh, it’s the cutest! I want one just like it!”

The scenarios generated some very… interesting discussion. For some, we had consensus. In the case of the "Marty is going to get beat up" story (an World War II ethical dilemma I modified to make it relevant to adolescents), pretty much everyone agreed the boy had to lie to save his friend from physical harm. So we talked about conscience and determining the greater good.

The one about the girl who bought the ugly sweater was trickier, but manageable. Most students agreed they would lie in that case, although some of the boys argued for brutal honesty; if someone's feelings get hurt, too bad. So we talked about the idea of tact, about how the girl could perhaps skirt the issue by pointing out something nice about the sweater ("The buttons are very unique" or "I'm so glad you like it").

Of course, some of the students suggested that's pretty much the same as lying, and I'm not sure I completely disagree. (An author named Cassandra Clare wrote, "Tact is lying for adults.") But we countered by saying that perhaps, in this case, you'd rather be dishonest than rude, and maybe it's more charitable to spare the other person's feelings than tell the truth. So far, so good.

Then we got to the two scenarios involving social activities-- lying to mom about a party, or lying to an old friend about a newer, "cooler" friend. Those discussions, to be honest, were a little on the discouraging side, with many of the students saying they'd probably do the same thing. In both cases, they recognized that the person told a lie, but they argued it was necessary. (And besides, everyone lies to their parents, so no harm, no foul.)

Finally, as an English teacher, I was most disheartened by the discussion about the kid copying off the To Kill a Mockingbird paper. Almost every single kid in the class tried to tell me plagiarism isn't lying. "But you're lying to your teacher!" I insisted. "By putting your name on it, you're saying this is your work, when it isn't!" They didn't buy it.

After we went throught the scenarios, we had them do an examination of conscience. We asked them to think of a lie they told in their lives and ask themselves a series of questions. (Does this lie serve my own self-interests? Will this lie, in the long run, make the situation worse or better?
If I get caught telling this lie, will other people get hurt? If I get caught telling this lie, will people be disappointed in me? Is it important for you to be considered a trustworthy person?)

Did any of this work? Not sure. But hey, at least we brought up a prickly issue and talked about it truthfully. And even though my co-teacher and I were a little discouraged by some of their answers, at least they were honest about it. Hey, it's a start, right?

French Onion Soup and the Etymology of "Companion"

(Note: Yeah, it's been a long time since I posted something to this blog. What can I say? Blogging is relentless, and I'm... well, I guess I'm relentful. But over the past few months, some of my students mentioned they had wandered by the site and encouraged me to post more. So here's something I had written for one of my classes. Enjoy...)

“The bread bowl,” I tell my wife, “is one of the greatest inventions ever.”

She looks up quizzically from her Asian Chicken Salad as I continue in between slurps of my French Onion Soup. “It’s not just the delicious collision of the soup and the sourdough bread that I respect. It’s the efficiency of it all: you actually get to eat the container in which the soup is served. The container becomes part of the meal. How ingenious is that? ”

We’re sitting in a booth at Panera on a busy Saturday afternoon as I make this observation. We’re out running on errands alone, without our twin sons—in fact, we were buying decorations for their tenth birthday party— and we decided to stop for a quick bite. And the introduction of the meal suddenly transforms this afternoon of errands into an actual date.

Parents have to do that once in a while, you know. It’s nothing personal: we love our kids, but occasionally, we have to remind ourselves that we’re not just parents. And so, while eating our meals, my wife and I catch up on a few things. We chat, not just about the sheer awesomeness of bread bowls but about the kids’ upcoming party, curious stories from our jobs, something funny she saw on TV. We laugh. We enjoy each other’s company. And I realize it’s not the bread bowl that makes the afternoon special; it’s the company.

As it turns out, the word “companion” actually involves bread. Like French Onion soup meeting a bread bowl, the word “companion” is actually a combination of two Latin words: the prefix “com,” meaning “with”; and “panis,” meaning “bread.” (The name “Panera” comes from the same root.) Thus, a “companion” is literally someone “to have bread with.”

“Have bread with”? What does that have to with companionship? Think about it: bread is not just one of the world’s most popular foods but also one of the oldest. As a result, over the years, it has come to represent not just a specific kind of food, but food in general.

So, if you hear someone in prayer saying “give us this day our daily bread,” he’s not asking for something onto which he can spread his peanut butter and Fluff. He’s talking about both physical and spiritual nourishment.

So if you think of bread symbolizing food in general, the etymology of “companion” makes sense. After all, you don’t want a share a meal with just anyone. Sharing a meal with someone suggests a level of familiarity and comfort. When you go into the cafeteria, you’ll want to eat with people you know, people you like.

Knowing the etymology of “companion” really helped me appreciate not just the word but also the importance of sharing a meal. Think about this the next time you’re at a restaurant with someone you love: what’s better—the food, or the company you’re keeping?

Dino-Musings

I know I have been sort of remiss in posting lately... but I have been writing, I swear!

About a month ago, I had a piece published in the Hartford Courant about my latest addiction, the online quiz site called Sporcle. You can check out the piece here.

And today, I had a piece published on a cool site called The Faster Times. Described as "a new type of newspaper for a new type of world," The Faster Times attempts to redeem the dying art of great journalism. Really, an impressive site, with a great mission and some great content.

This week, the Faster Times folks were generous enough to publish something I wrote, a piece entitled "When Did Studying Dinosaurs Get So Complicated?" You can check out the article (and my goofy mug) here.

The "initial shiver of inspiration" (Thanks, Nabokov) for this article came from my nine-year-old son, who has long been a huge fan of dinosaurs. Not that that's particularly remarkable: he is a little boy, after all; he has to love dinosaurs. (I think there must be with some kind of dinosaur chromosome or something.)

Personally, I know I was fascinated by the things when I was his age. But as I read his dinosaur books along with him, I realized something strange has seemingly happen in the past thrity years: we have new dinosaurs.

Hey, I know, I know. How can there be new dinosaurs? They've been extinct for, like, six gazillion years. Then how do you explain all these new-fangled dinosaurs that appeared in my son's books-- dinosaurs I had never heard of before?

Parasaurolophus. Coelophyses. Troodons. And others whose names I couldn't even pronounce. (My son, of curse, had no problem with the names: I remember stumbling over a particularly prickly name while reading a book to him, and he said, slightly exasperated, “Daddy, it’s Compsognathus!”)

So I asked myself, "Where did these crazy things come from, anyway?" When I was a kid, there were maybe five dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurs Rex, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Pterodactyl. That was it--except for maybe an occasional reference to Diplodocus. Are paleontologists inventing new dinosaurs, just to mess with us?

All that dinosaur angst ended up inspiring the piece that eventually became the one currently appearing in The Faster Times, which is less about terrible lizards and more about the loss of childhood innocence. But I had some other dinosaur-related observations, ones that I ended up cutting from the piece, that I thought I could re-print here. (Ah, praise be the junk-heap that is the blogosphere!)

First off, while writing the piece, I found myself wrestling with one of those overwhelming questions: Why doesn't anyone talk about Brontosaurus anymore? Are you telling me they've not only added dinosaurs, but they've taken one away?

Well, I did some research (i.e. I checked Wikipedia), and apparently, the Brontosaurus was a grown-up version of Apatosaurus, which had been discovered first; thus, the name “Brontosaurus” became extinct.

That Bronotsaurus tangent got me thinking about Fred Flintstone, who loved nothing more than his Brontosaurus Burger after a tough day working for Mr. Slate. Then I started thinking about the Flintstones' bizarre longevity. I mean, they still make Fruity Pebbles cereal and Flintstone Vitamins-- despite the fact that most kids, I'd wager, have never actually seen a Flintstones cartoon.

Think about it: Magilla Gorilla, Captain Caveman, Snugglepuss-- they've all faded from the cultural consciousness. But as long as kids eat breakfast, the Flintstones will live on. Capitalism rocks. (I can't decide if that's a pun or not.)

Final observation that never made it to the final piece: about fifteen years ago, I went to the Museum of Science in Boston and saw a new exhibit for a dinosaur named...Ultrasaurus. And I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh, come on. Now they’re just getting ridiculous.”

I mean, honestly: Ultrasaurus? Doesn’t it sound like a Marvel Comics cartoon super-lizard or something? “An asteroid is careening toward the planet to wipe out dinosaur life as we know it. This looks like a job for—Ultrasaurus!”

Anyway, check out the articles. Till then, enjoy the Bronotosaurus Burgers.

"Make It So!": Jean-Luc Picard and One-On-One Writing Conferences

Sometimes, I wish I could run my one-on-one writing conferences with my students the way Jean-Luc Picard runs his starship.

Who would skip a meeting, after all, with the no-nonsense, chrome-domed Captain of the Enterprise? Who would dare give Picard a “revised” draft that looks suspiciously identical to the one from the week before? Moreover, Picard wouldn’t delicately dance around the black holes in a student’s text; no, Captain Picard gives orders, not suggestions-- orders which he always punctuates with the ominous tag-line, “Make it so.” Granted, Professor Picard’s students wouldn’t gain much in terms of self-actualization, but in terms of a polished finished product, they’d certainly learn how to make it so.

Of course, while it would be easier to run a conference like this, it certainly wouldn’t be better-- for me or my students. But as an English teacher who meets frequently with his students in individual writing conferences, I always thought I could take something away from Picardian pedagogy-- namely, his commitment the so-called “Prime Directive,” which any card-carrying Star Trek fan would define as follows: when a Federation starship visits a new planet, the crew members can observe the indigenous cultures, but they cannot interfere with their normal evolutions. Basically, it’s the interplanetary version of the chaos theory-- the “if a butterfly flaps its wings on Jupiter” conundrum.

When I first started teaching in 1995, I used a model similar to the “Prime Directive” for my writing conferences: I saw myself as a visitor in these strange, new worlds my students committed to paper. And although I praised the things I enjoyed, or asked them to clarify moments of confusion, or perhaps helped them see untapped potential already inherent in their texts, I never introduced anything foreign into these worlds. We were simply having a conversation-- at least, that’s what I told myself.

And yet I couldn’t reconcile my understood role as “observer” with my recurring frustrations with conferencing. If I were truly just observing and conversing, why did I feel discouraged when the students didn’t incorporate our “conversations” into their drafts? Or when they did incorporate my suggestions, why the uneasy self-consciousness that they were pursuing these ideas for my benefit, not theirs? My students couldn’t win-- and because I couldn’t figure out why, neither could I.

Then I remembered my “Star Trek”: you see, the “Prime Directive” almost never worked. The Enterprise crew could never simply observe; their visits always seemed to affect change.

In a similar way, I could see that my comments artificially affected my students’ papers, that the gradebook gave me the power to influence their ideas; as a result, I could never have a true conversation with my students in conference, despite my best intentions and pretensions. Thus, for me, the “Prime Directive” model-- the ideal of instructor as detached observer-- proved just as unrealistic and unproductive as “Make it so!”

Here's the straight dope about conferencing, the plain truth that no English teacher really wants to admit: in conference, we're not simply observing; we're interfering in these worlds. We may try to maintain the illusion otherwise; we may preface a suggestion to a student by saying, “This shouldn’t influence your decision,...” but we can't resist the urge to make comments that can only influence his decision.

This charade manifests itself in other ways as well. For example, I talk about “audience,” but when you boil it all down, isn’t the person holding the gradebook the only one they really care about? Or in conference, I double-talk with comments such as, “Well, don’t do this just because I brought it up...”; but in reality, isn’t that what good students have been taught to do-- listen to their instructors?

The awareness of that power probably means I should abandon the ideal of “conference-as-conversation.” However, I can’t forsake the “conversation” model completely, because the alternative-- the overly-directive, “here, write this down!” approach-- is infinitely less appealing. So where does that leave us?

Somehow, we need to find a compromise: a one-on-one writing conference can’t just be a "conversation"; we need to give something to our students. We need to negotiate a place somewhere in between the two poles of “Make it so!” and the “Prime Directive.”

Some may blast this “compromise” as a cop-out-- that we’re being disingenuous with a student if we appear to be having a conversation when we’re really pushing her to think in a certain way through our leading questions. Perhaps with misleading prefaces such as “I don’t want to influence your decision...,” I am giving my students false sense of choice; on the other hand, I think the alternative-- eliminating choice altogether by saying something like, “You absolutely cannot write about this”-- has far more dangerous implications.

I started this entry with an example from science-fiction, but I'd like to end with an example from science-fact: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Now, I'm not a science guy, and I acknowledge at the outset that I have a vague-at-best grasp of the whole thing, but here's the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as I understand it: we can never "see" an electron in its natural state, because the very act of observing it affects it, changes it. There's more to it, of course, but I think this ultra-ultra-ultra-simplification works as a metaphor for what I'm talking about: as teachers, we can't simply "observe" a student text; our very role as teachers affects it. And instead of fighting it, instead of trying to convince ourselves otherwise, maybe we should just accept that fact.

After all, that's something else I've learned from Star Trek: resistance is futile.

TISK (Things I Should've Known), Vol. 1

As with many great things, the idea started on Christmas Eve.

My wife had mentioned that her sister had made a stuffed artichoke for her and her husband to have for dinner that night. And because my wife knows me well and knows that I have never actually had a stuffed artichoke, she proceeded to explain the process of eating one; apparently, you take off a leaf, put it in your mouth, and scrape the bread crumbs off with your teeth.

(Later on in the week, a lively debate ensued as to the prpoer way to do this scraping business: my wife and her family always had the bread crumbs facing up and scraped them off with their top teeth, while my brother-in-law insists that you should actually have the bread crumbs facing down, and scrape with your bottom teeth. An unsolved mystery of the universe, I suppose. But I digress.)

Back to Christmas Eve. As my wife is explaining all this to me, I realize something: not only have I never consumed a stuffed artichoke, I don't think I even know what an artichoke looks like. If an artichoke every mugged me, I'd be hard-pressed to pick it out of a vegetable line-up.

And that's a fault, I decided. Not because I'm going to start eating artichokes, but because it seems that knowing what an artichoke looks like is something I should know-- if only because everyone else seems to know it.

And thus came the revelation: 2010 is going to be my year for learning things I should have known years ago. The simple things. Everyday things. Artichoke kinds of things.

And not only will I learn about these simple things, I'll write about what I've learned in this space, my poor, long-neglected blog.

First, some answers to some frequently-asked-questions about TISK (Things I Should've Know):

How philosphical/ existential are we talking about here?

Not philosophical at all. I'm talking factual information, not unanswerable questions like "Why did I have a girlfriend at home for my first semester of college?"

Does this have anything to do with you turning 40 later this year? This whole thing smacks of "bucket-list"...

It's not a bucket list. I'm not talking about things I want to do, just things I want to know. So don't bother cuing up your Tim McGraw.

Why write about this stuff? Why not just learn about it?

Partly to chart my journey, partly to resuscitate this blog, and partly to help me commit this stuff to memory. Personally, I've always found that the best ways to remember something are to write about it or to teach it to someone else.

If this is stuff hat everyone else supposedly knows, won't it be a little mortifying for you to advertise your ignorance on the Web like this?

Maybe, but it's the price I'm willing to pay for enlightenment.

Um, if it's just factual information posted here, couldn't someone just go to, say, Wikipedia instead?

Absolutely... except in those rare cases where the information is too basic and commonplace for even Wikipedia's standards.

In any case, above you will find a picture of an artichoke. (Turns out I did know what one looks like. Whaddaya know!)

Cross one off the list.

Diamonds Are Forever

So, once again, it's been awhile since I last posted something. Hey, I've been busy. Doing what, you ask? Uh... hmmmm... well, for one thing, I was coaching my sons' baseball team. (Yeah! That's it!)

And, to commemorate the end of the Little League season, I thought I'd re-print (with some minor changes) my very first article for the Courant, which originally ran on October 12, 2003. The piece chronicles my time coaching in Charlestown, Massachusetts, from 1994 to 1998. (Man, that's a long time ago...crap, I'm old.) And, to my knowledge, it's the only baseball article in the history of baseball articles to incorporate, in a meaningful way, a quotation from William Wordsworth.

My apologies to any of my former players mentioned in here, most of whom are now, no doubt, college graduates by now. (Again: crap, I'm old...)

Anyway, here's the piece:

I remember praying for rain.

Call it a ritual; only instead of eating ceremonial fried chicken or wearing lucky underwear, I would pray for a well-timed deluge of the local baseball diamond to delay the infamy of actually playing the game, if only for another day.

Even when cursed with sun, I used procrastination offensively; I spent many anxious dugout minutes constructing mental matrices -- considering the number of batters before me, their approximate averages, and the skill of the other team's infielders -- to calculate the odds of making the dreaded Third Out. Poor attempts to trick time, I admit. And time returned the favor: Things slowed way down on that field -- the walk to the plate, the time in the batter's box, even the trip around the bases when I got to them ("Take that piano off your back!" my coach would yell to me). Yet the fastballs still blazed past the logo on my shirt ...

So why return to the minors 11 years later, as a coach? To redeem my own unheralded baseball career? To beef up my resume or impress women with my sensitivity? Maybe to "prove something" to my father, who was still my hometown's Little League president? Or perhaps it had more to do with my favorite Wordsworth quote, paraphrased: "The best portion of a good man's life are his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."

Ultimately, I don't really know what inspired my cold-call to the local Little League commissioner, the ample-bodied Wayne Davis, in 1994; luckily, Wayne-O didn't ask.

I'm quite sure Wayne never knew what to make of me. A recent college graduate, I just moved to Boston the previous September. I had no family in the city -- no kids of my own or even any distant cousins. And, as far as he could tell, I didn't excel at or even particularly like playing baseball. But I did have a few things going for me: my own clipboard; three dedicated assistants, Mac, Ace and Jason -- whose cool names, I hoped, compensated for their lack of skill; and, most important, persistence.

We coached for five consecutive seasons. Five years, five annual trips for ice cream and five rosters populated by players of all temperaments and abilities. We had all-stars like the Buhay boys, Danny and Timmy, who seemingly played three different sports at any given time. We had Kerry, the 9-year-old girl who could out-throw anyone on the team, including the coaches. And we had our share of kids like Bobby Stone.

Ah, Bobby Stone (always say first and last name, like Charlie Brown) ... I'm quite sure he prayed for rain. And why not? The kid was terrified of the ball; he hurled himself violently into the dirt on every pitch -- right down the middle, high and outside, didn't matter. Bobby Stone thought everyone was against him, even the coaches. And maybe he was right; we invested so many frustrated practices just trying to keep the boy vertical for his entire at- bat, we almost gave up. But, in truth, I liked Bobby Stone. We needed the naturals to win, but I needed Bobby Stone -- mostly because of my sneaking suspicion that, when I played, I was a bit of a Bobby Stone.

The Bobby Stones notwithstanding, Mac, Jason, Ace and I did enjoy a few successes as coaches. A couple of times, we watched as our team went to first place, once after an undefeated season. With a record like that, you'd think I'd have a few knuckleballs of wisdom to pass on to aspiring coaches, right? In truth, I have a few.

First, always put your name on your glove; with all the post-game commotion, the odds are good someone else will walk off with it accidentally. Don't try to coach alone; you can't juggle everything, and besides, who else will want to listen to your war stories about the unassisted triple play?

Don't argue with the ump; you may think you're standing up for your kids, but you're really undermining the spirit of sportsmanship. Don't have scrimmages as practices; they degenerate too quickly. Concentrate on catching and throwing; at this level, defense wins games.

Don't even bring up bunting.

And that crap about "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love" -- don't believe a word of it.

Maybe, to my shame, I wanted my acts of kindness named and remembered. And maybe that's why, when I look back on my coaching career, I keep returning to this one spot of time.

It's our second year, after the first win of the season (not too many follow that year). I take aside our spunky pitcher, Ryan Collins -- who brought religion to the team by blessing himself before every pitch -- and privately present him with the game ball. Bursting with excitement, Ryan asks if I have a pen. I don't -- we kept score in pencil --and ask him why.

"I wanted to write your name on it," he tells me, before running off to show his mom his blank trophy. Meanwhile, I remain crouching there by that first baseline, thinking: Of all the times not to have a pen!

By signing that baseball, by cementing that moment through the power of ink, I could have guaranteed that our time on the field would be kept somewhere, preserved. Somewhere in Ryan's bedroom -- maybe on a bookshelf, maybe under the bed, to be uncovered only when he packs up for college, but somewhere -- would remain a baseball with a name on it. And I could live again.

Of course, Ryan Collins wouldn't remember he said that; he probably didn't remember two minutes later, and I think that's precisely what ate away at me that night. I want the instant replay to apply in the minors. And I mean, permanent instant replay. I want the kids we coached to remember their time on the field with nostalgia, not as obligations that fell in between thunderstorms. And, when they do remember their baseball days, I want them to recall their coaches not just as the guys who yelled frantically from the baseline to get the ball back to the pitcher. I want them to show up on ESPN someday and mention their former coaches by name. But, in a simpler way, if they grow up, get good grades, go to college and just end up as good people ... well, I want to take a little bit of credit for that, too.

And I know that's unfair. I vaguely remember my own Little League coaches as nice-enough guys, but none of them affected my life in a lasting manner. And yet, I somehow assumed my coaching experience would work differently. We spent our time telling them to get their gloves down when stopping a ground ball, to lift the bat off their shoulders, to run past first base. Somehow, from that, they were supposed to learn, "Don't do drugs, drive carefully, be good to each other."

The four of us -- Mac, Ace, Jason, and I -- always said that one of the best parts about being a coach is the distance: your responsibility to these kids ends with the last out. Yet I found myself referring to them as "my kids," as if we had anything to do with them when a bat and ball wasn't in the vicinity. In truth, I was just someone who told them where to go next inning. I had to give them back.

To rescue me from complete self-absorption, Mac once offered: "Is it about whether they'll forget us? The question is, will we ever forget them? No way."

And this has comforted me. And so, while some more accomplished Little League veterans get ready to do battle in the upcoming World Series, I'll be remembering that impromptu post-game practice when we stayed with Ashley and used a Wiffle ball and bat to help her get over her fear of hitting. Or that season-ending loss, when Steven came over to give me a hug, as tears crushed down his disappointed, befreckled face. Or that 1994 championship final, when Bobby Stone planted his feet in that box and swung the bat, connecting ...

Five years in the minors. Five summers, with the length of five long winters. Five years, five rosters, and a few insights. Don't yell at the ump; you don't want to be remembered that way. Put your name on your glove. Make sure they step on each base.

Oh, yeah. .. and always have a pen handy.