Any Given Day

“What kind of mother would leave a four-year-old outside unsupervised?”  That was my reaction many, many years ago in my small, insular Utah community when I heard the story of Rachael Runyon.  Her busy mother had sent Rachael and her three older brothers outside to play in the summer sun while she watched from inside.  She alternated making lunch and cleaning the kitchen with perfunctory looks out the kitchen window.  And in a glance, Rachael was gone.  Abducted by a brazen kidnapper from her mother’s distracted care.  Her preoccupation with the dishes suddenly vanished as she stood at the kitchen sink.  Rachael was gone.  

            Three children and many sleepless nights later, in my comfortable New Jersey community, the doorbell roused me from a short nap in the middle of the afternoon.  I had spent the previous night testing my daughter Chrissy’s blood sugar every few hours.  Sometimes it seemed her diabetes was more demanding than a newborn. So while she and her brother were in school, I parked my four-year-old Daniel, my youngest, in front of the video.  (Something my pre-mother self swore I would never do.) It must be the UPS man, I thought as I rushed to the door, trying to shake off the daze of an afternoon nap.  I opened the door to my neighbor, holding Daniel’s hand.  He had been happily playing in the front yard, alone. And I thought of Rachael Runyon.  There but for the grace of God go I.

            Teaching and parenting are unique callings.  They require adults to devote hours of attention to children, usually without respite.  Both are very solitary occupations.  We

are alone in our homes and our classrooms.  There we laugh, we play, and we teach.  There also children test our patience when our energy is zapped.  But only those present within the walls of a classroom or home know what happens there.  Most teachers are happy, and most parents are decent.  Yet our contracts with society are rather tenuous.  Society understands our jobs are often thankless and our pay—be it kisses or apples—is not commensurate with the demands and it seeks to placate us with special days for mothers, fathers and teachers.  (When was the last time you honored your dentist, accountant or lawyer?)  At the same time, however, it demands our credentials be impeccable and our behavior perfect.  Our voyeuristic society revels in the nanny cam and whenever a teacher or parent is caught, there are thousands of Americans collectively thinking, “What kind of person would do that?”

Discipline is the task we hold teachers and parents to the highest standards.  To discipline is to systematically instruct a disciple or follower in proper behavior and conduct.  But frequently children do not want to be disciples; they are not little adults eager to be instructed.  They just want to have fun.  And it is at the intersection of their fun and our responsibility that we parents and teachers sometimes lose tempers and we make mistakes.  And we are liable for those snap judgments made in the heat of the moment.  And while I might join society in its snap judgments about egregious parents or teachers, when I read of the teacher, such as Brad Turner who not only lost his job and his teaching license but found himself in the center of a civil lawsuit when he attempted to discipline a student for throwing grapes on the floor, I silently say to myself,  “There but for the grace of God go I.”           

I am only a substitute teacher.  But I am a teacher nonetheless. Today I was reminded of this when I caught myself at my kitchen sink. 

I walk into a different classroom every day.  I must think on my feet.  And experiment.  Anything to engage students, whom I do not know, who thrill at seeing a substitute.  They too want to experiment, to walk the thin line that separates propriety and an in-school suspension.  Today I am in 11^th grade U.S. History. The topic is Hiroshima.  I love U.S. History.  I love Japan.  I lived there for sixteen months.  There could not be a more perfect fit.

I look at the lesson plan.  The class is 80 minutes long.  The teacher has left a 67-minute DVD.  That leaves me thirteen minutes.  When there is no lesson plan, thirteen minutes can be an eternity.  Even videos are not a sure thing.  But Ms. Jones has left some preparatory material, and I have a lot to add. Thirteen minutes is but a blip.  That leaves me fashioning an anticipatory set that can be quickly accomplished.  I cue the DVD, and then I scrawl Hiroshima in Japanese.  (Not in kanji, mind you.  Only in hiragana—the simplest Japanese phonetic alphabet.  It is a bit like writing in rudimentary block letters as opposed to neat, proper script.  But I am counting on the fact that my students will never know the difference.)

Then I stand at the door and welcome my students.  “Konnichi wa,” I say, bowing, my hands pressed together.  

The students stare.  Then laugh.  “Dozo,” or please, I say motioning with my hand for the students to enter the room.

“You’re speaking Chinese, aren’t you?” they question.

“Chigaimasu,” I humbly beg to differ, I reply.  “Nihonogo de hanashimasu.”  I am speaking Japanese.

This is fun.  The students do not also realize the paltry extent of my Japanese.  (There are, of course, no Japanese surnames on the roll—only Chinese or Filipino.) They are perplexed and intrigued, a state not often achieved by a substitute.

But during those brief gleeful moments, I walk into the classroom with some of the students.  The bell has not yet rung, yet I have left my post at the door.  Then, as luck would have it, there is a commotion in the hall.  I return to find a large girl, a very, very large girl, with a half-nelson hold on a not-so-particularly small boy.  I must take razor quick, decisive action.  I feel like the Will Smith character Jay in the movie Men in Black: during a training simulation he must choose to shoot either the obvious threat, a lunging, snarling beast about to attack a man with a briefcase, or a cute eight-year-old girl toting books on advanced physics.  He chooses the girl with the books.  My decision is not so clear-cut.

A teacher can touch a student only if someone’s safety is at risk.  Is someone at risk?  Who?  The boy?  Or me?  Physically intervening will escalate the situation.  Can I handle this with my voice?  I summon my most commanding voice. “Stop that,” I yell.

I am pleasantly surprised. She releases her hold.  But then he quips something back.  She lunges for him again, missing. 

“Stop that,” I yell even more forcefully.  And to the small crowd, I add, “Get to class.”  I pause.  “NOW!!”  

It works.  The crowd disperses and to my surprise the girl strolls into my class.

I begin my lesson.  But it is not as much fun.  Questions dart through my head. Why did I let my attention be diverted?  Why was I not patrolling the hall?  Would this have happened if I had been at my post?  Should I have called security?  Can a substitute even assign detention?  What if they hadn’t listened to me?  How would the newspaper have portrayed me? 

What kind of teacher would do that?  I now know the answer to the question.  I am that teacher.  And the truth is, so is just about any teacher.   Experience helps.  So does a level head, compassion and caring.  But any given Monday or Tuesday, almost any teacher can make a very simple mistake. And any given day after, there will be countless, indignant armchair quarterbacks questioning that teacher’s call.  Some of those teachers are exceptional.  Some are not.  But none of them gets the benefit of the doubt.

Long ago, male physicians learned to protect themselves by having a female nurse present when conducting gynecological exams.  Service representatives record their phones calls for quality assurance. Policemen have videotapes admissible in court.  Lawyers have attorney-client privilege to mask some of their mistakes.  CEOs have press secretaries and public relations firms to positively spin their mistakes and nice retirement packages just in case.  Teachers have only a classroom of trust.  A trust that surprisingly is not shattered more frequently and a union, which pays the bills when accusations fly, but cannot save even innocent teachers from public pillory.

Me?  I have no union.  I am only a substitute teacher.  I stand at my kitchen sink, and I think I understand what kind of mother Rachael Runyon had.  There but for the grace of God go I.

Texting Mother

When did mothers suddenly become so popular? I have spent the past few weeks pondering the question.

I am not talking about the preschool set. Mothers have always polled exceptionally high among that demographic, especially those with persistent separation anxiety. I am talking about teen-agers. They who roll their eyes at their parents’ sage suggestions. They who bud their ears to avoid adult dinner conversation. They who lol with their bffs when their homework, which never seems to get done, beckons.

Last week, in an hour-long high school honors class I confiscated four different cell phones, one mid-test. This despite my oh-so-pleasant request, prompted by a student blatantly texting as I introduced myself as their substitute teacher, that they put their cell phones away. Because my request only prompted half of the class to act, I followed up with a not-so-veiled threat to confiscate any phones that I saw in use.

“But it’s my mother,” the first boy protests as I demand his phone. I hope he is cleverer in class than he is in his texting. Only a few feet from my desk, he has assumed the “standard” classroom texting pose, both hands under the desk, the phone centered in the lap held just under the edge of the desk.  A pose that often prompts colleagues to embarrass the violators with innuendo as to their actions.

I can only assume from his furtive glances from test to phone that he is cheating, texting a friend or searching the Internet to find the answers he does not know. But, not ready to unleash a firestorm of privacy and first amendment issues, I dare not look at the text. I put the phone in my pocket without so much as a glance. I treasure my paltry income as a substitute teacher. I then lean down to pick up the fluorescent blue study guide stretched out underneath the desk of his less tech-savvy neighbor. My how the nature of cheating has changed.

Does his mother know, I wonder. Not that he cheats, but that he blames it on her.

The second student attempts the “camouflage” pose. She assumes her prime spot in a back corner of the room and her large bag situated just so on her desk protects her texting from my purview. She is far more interested in reading her texts than the class novel. At least she has finished her test. Aware of my presence as I move into her zone, she does the “quick slip,” a quick slide of the cell phone from the desktop to the pant pocket, a move not nearly as discreet as most students presume. She hopes the bag hides her move. But it does not. And, like a shy child hiding in her mother’s skirt, she hopes to hide behind the excuse of texting her mother.

It is March 25^th.  Perhaps she celebrates Mother’s Day in Slovenia, I think. Perhaps she forgot to buy her a present. Perhaps she worries her mother will feel neglected. Perhaps.

“It’s her mother,” a voice claims automatically as I ask for the third phone. My eyes are no longer young, but I am fairly certain the gallant defender cannot read her text from his desk two rows behind her, even though she has assumed the “about face” classroom texting pose, her torso uncomfortably twisted, leaning into the aisle, in order to face the rear of the room as she texts. Like a two-year-old who covers her eyes and assumes the world can no longer see her, this student assumes her back turned to me makes her cell phone invisible. She has heard my threat. She has seen me confiscate. She has recognized my intent. But there is an urgency she cannot ignore. She is driven to text.

Mother must be a helicopter parent, I conclude.  Or a tiger mother. Compelled to please, she has aced the test and cannot wait to share her success with her mother. Her text is clearly worth the risk.

The fourth student does not even try to hide his cell phone. There are eight minutes left in class. He employs the “it is my right” pose. He sits on the front row, elbows planted on the desk, holding his phone up to eye level as his thumbs fly over the keys, oblivious to my stare as I stand a few feet away. He seems genuinely surprised when I move only inches away and hold out my demanding hand, flat, palm up in the universal classroom sign language for “hand-over-your-phone.”

“But I thought class was over,” he protests. Which translated means, “If I do not find the class work compelling and if there is less than ten minutes remaining in class, then I have the right to use my cell phone.” A god-given right, I am sure, if I were to poll the class. At least he does not claim he is texting his mother. Surely she must feel neglected.

Two years ago pollster Joel Benenson found that the average student sends more than three texts per class. That means that there were at least sixty-three text messages sent during that honors class. (Perhaps a few less if I were to factor in the four confiscated phones.) If I were to assume that by average, Benenson means a true arithmetic mean and not a mythical average like that in Lake Wobegon, and if I were to assume that there are at least a few students in my class who do not just appear to be, but are actually completing the test and reading their books instead of texting, then I am led to an astounding conclusion: there are two or three students in my class who love their mothers so much that they sent them at least five texts during the hour I was with them. (I certainly hope those mothers appreciate my efforts.) Furthermore, if all these students text their mothers as often as is claimed when caught, then the average mother should receive at least fifteen texts from each child every day. Imagine all those average, happy mothers. Getting texts, affirming they are far from average in their children’s eyes. Every day. Every hour.

None of my three children sends me a text each day. They whom I have willingly nursed and diapered. They for whom I have whooped and cheered unreservedly during tediously long little league games. They for whom I have applauded wildly as I shivered during torrential downpours at band competitions. They who have unlimited texting for which I pay. I consider myself fortunate to receive an occasional text requesting a ride home. Which, as I consider these statistics, creates great maternal angst. And questioning. Why am I so unpopular with my children? Am I not average? (For my children are certainly far, far above average.) Do my children not love me? Have they forgotten my number?

And ultimately I am led to choose between two conclusions: either my children do not use their cell phones during class or they do not love me. Naively I am assuming the first.

Can You Hear Me Now?

"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!" (Matthew11:15).

The image: Our ears. We use our ears to hear, to listen and to perceive and understand our surroundings. The Savior frequently suggests we use our ears to hear not only the temporal but also the spiritual. Developing our spiritual hearing is critical because frequently the Lord speaks using parables or symbols in order to protect sacred things from the unworthy.

The food: “Elephant ears” are delicate, flaky cookies also called palmiers, or palm leaves, by the French. (Do not confuse these cookies with the carnival fare, also called elephant ears, which are fried pastry, a lot like a Utah scone, which should not be confused with English scones.) These cookies are incredibly addictive and very easy to make.

The recipe:

2 sheets puff pastry, thawed

1 ¾ cups sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, if desired

Thaw the puff pastry thoroughly, about thirty minutes. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Mix sugar with salt. Spread ¾ cup sugar on a clean, flat surface. Unfold the pastry over the sugar. Mix remaining the sugar with cinnamon, if desired. Spread ½ cup sugar over dough. With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 10 X 13-inch rectangle while pressing the sugar into the dough on both sides. (There will be a lot of sugar remaining on the flat surface.)

Starting at the long ends of the rectangle, tightly each side until they meet in the middle. (For larger cookies, roll from the short end.) Place the rolled dough in freezer until stiff, about 15 minutes. Repeat the process with the second sheet.

Remove the chilled dough and with sharp knife cut slices ¼-½-inch thick. Place the slices cut side down, about two inches apart on parchment-lined cookie sheets.

Bake about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown and puffy. The cookies burn easily, so watch carefully during the final minutes.

Store in an airtight container. Cookies can be crisped a day later by heating for a few minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Activities:

• Marco Polo: Choose a player to be “it.” With his or her eyes closed or covered with a blindfold, the “It” tries to “tag” someone by using his hearing. This player shouts “Marco” and the other players respond with “Polo.”  This continues until the “It” tags another player, who then becomes the new “It.”

• Parable Go Fish

Preparations: Make a deck of cards using either the names of the different parables or the elements of a specific parable you will be teaching. Label each card, and if you like, find a corresponding picture. Print the card on card stock and make four copies of each card.

For example, for the “Parable of the Sower,” I made up five different cards titled, The Parable of the Sower, Seeds on the Wayside Eaten by Birds, The Seeds in a Stony Place that Have No Root, Seeds Choked by Thorns, and Seeds in Good Soil that Bring Forth Good Fruit.

To play the game:

·      Deal each player 5 cards. (More if your deck is large or there are only a few players.) Place the remaining deck or “pool” in the center of the players.

·      Take turns asking for particular cards to match those in their hands. For example, “John, do you have any “The Parable of the Sower” cards?” John must turn over all of his Parable of the Sower cards, or if he has none, he tells the requester to “Go Fish.”

·      Play continues until one player has no more cards. The player with the most matches wins.

What Are the Odds?

"Daniel, it's seven o'clock. We need to leave in ten minutes." I yell up the stairs. Daniel is a good boy. Responsible. He has a bit of his sister Chrissy in him. He can go from 0 to 60 in three seconds and get out the door in five. When he wants to.

I finish dressing. Khakis. I just can't bring myself to be a schoolteacher in jeans on casual Friday. Blue sweater. Blue socks. Brown shoes. Should I wear my clogs, casual and comfortable, or my loafers.

I brush my teeth.

"Five minutes." No grunt. "Do you hear me?" I ask. Finally, a grumbled acknowledgment.

My hair looks funny. I fiddle with it. What are the odds? I thought it was impossible to have a bad hair day on Friday.

"I really don't want to be late to work." More grumblings.

I brush my teeth.

"I mean it." Tone a bit aggravated. It is already 7:15. What is the probability I will be on time? The odds are even if we leave in five minutes.

I grab my computer. Throw a sandwich in a bag with a banana and juice. Grab my jacket, get my keys, quickly slide my feet into my shoes. I decide against the total comfort of the clogs.

I will be late.

I start the car. I wait. In a whirlwind, Daniel finally scrambles in.

“I’m going to drop you off at Suvio’s.”

Grumble.

“If I can bypass the high school traffic, I might yet make it to the middle school on time.”

Grumbled acceptance and slammed door.

I make it to the middle school parking lot with one minute to spare. Grab my computer and my purse. Begin a hurried walk to the door. But something’s not right. My gait is off. There is a looseness on my left side.

I look down at my shoes. Two different shoes. Not a right and a left shoe, but a right and a left shoe from two different pairs of shoes. The left is suede and has a tassel. My loose, go-to comfy loafer. The right is smooth leather and a slightly darker brown than the suede. It is plain, no tassel, and the opening rides up much higher on my foot. My tight, supportive shoe. There is no loaf in this shoe.

No time to run home. Maybe no one will notice, I think.  I hope.

And as I rush through the door to sign in, I remember my mother. She must have been about my age. One morning she too was running late. She overslept. She dressed quickly to get out the door in order to meet her carpool. Only in the car as she relaxed did she realized she had forgotten to don a bra. And this in an era when only defiant love children went without.

She suffered the entire day. Uncomfortable in a day of meetings in a world surrounded by women she felt were far more sophisticated and well-dressed than she. (Alas, she loved her fellow sisters of the General Board of the Relief Society, but she always felt she never quite measured up.) But she survived. She made it home without anyone ever being the wiser. That is, until she told me and I summarily told everyone I knew about it.

“I am Mrs. Stornetta. I will be your substitute teacher today.” And I wonder. What is the probability that at least one of my forty-nine students that morning will notice? I am a little uncomfortable. Seventh-graders can scrutinize. Why am I threatened by the seventh-grade fashion police? Were I a betting woman, I would bet against myself.

As students begin to consider how many combinations of sneakers and loafers and red and black and plaid caps Johnny could wear, I think of a new problem. Mrs. Stornetta oversleeps. Her three pairs of brown shoes are lined up in a row. What is the probability that she will choose a pair that matches?

Yet no one notices. Except the office secretary to whom I confess my fashion faux pas. I hope she is a bit more tight-lipped than I was about my mother's confession. I quickly leave the school as soon as the bell rings. Like Cinderella I want to make it home before my good fortune wears off. And as I kick off my mismatched pair and slide into a comfy chair, I think of my mother again. I am my mother.

What are the odds?

Burning Brightly

So today I am pretty tired and pretty busy. I was up at 5am. Must make it through work. Then I must prepare a dinner for Sister Suarez. A broken ankle.

I come home at lunch (because I was at TJ--Thomas Jefferson Elementary School). Chop onions, garlic, carrots, and celery. Hope the scent of the onions and garlic on my hands will not repulse the third graders I am working with. Saute in olive oil and leave it. Go back to TJ.

Come home after school. Reheat sauted vegetables, add tomatoes, herbs and simmer my marinara sauce. At the same time proof yeast, then make Italian bread dough. As it kneads in my KitchenAid, I sit down for a few minutes to check bread recipe.

Then when sauce has simmered, begin with the pasta. Cook box of pasta while rolling out bread dough. Make three long loafs. Cover and let them rest on my pizza peel.

Drain pasta. Begin second box of pasta. (Yes, I should have boiled it all together in one pot, but I just wasn't committed to making that much pasta when I started.) Combine sauce, pasta, and mozzarella, Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano. Put Ziti in oven.

Slash bread loaves with my lovely new lame. Brush with egg white. Spray with water. Take Ziti out. Put bread in on pizza stone. Spray oven with water to create steam. Set timer for three minutes.

Remove second pot of pasta. Drain it. Spray loaves a second time. Set alarm again.

Then the smoke alarm goes off. A frequent occurrence since we have replaced the smoke alarm. It is very sensitive. Daniel, in the family room, turns off alarm.

Begin combining pasta, sauce and cheese for two smaller pans of Ziti to freeze. Spray bread the third and final time.

"Mom," Daniel says, "There's a fire."

"I know. I know. Some crumbs must be burning in the bottom of the oven," I reply.

"No, Mom." Daniel is insistent. "There's a fire."

I look. I have learned to trust my seventeen-year-old. He is frequently more perceptive than I.

Daniel is right. Yes. There is a fire. A real fire. It is flaming high. It is flaming bright. There is a beauty in the bright orange flame lapping at my towel on my cooktop. I had forgotten to turn off the burner.

A greasy dishtowel--I had used it to cover my orange rolls last night, all four dozen made the night before for Relief Society anniversary dinner--was next to the burner. The dishtowel, which, of course, I should have washed by now, must have fallen onto the burner.

We maneuver the dish towel outside. We pour water on it, hoping to get the flames out before the deck is damaged. The dishtowel is black. It is really burned. But the flames go out. Wet black char and white crumpled towel sit outside the patio doors.

I will miss that dish towel. One of those flour sack dish towels. One that is perfect for covering rising rolls and bread. One that has come to me from my mother's kitchen. One that someone (not me) has taken the time (in the days of Relief Society bazaars) to embroider a pretty lady with a full red skirt. I will miss that dish towel the next time I need to cover my orange rolls.

But what I will really miss is Daniel. How can I let my baby go to college. Who will tell me that my kitchen is on fire when he is gone?

I will miss him.

Do Not Call Us Baby Boomers

My birth has always been defined by Sputnik. Mine. Spike Lee’s. And the four million and three hundred thousand other Americans born that year. Fifty years ago, on the fourth of October, a small round metal ball with a diameter only a few inches longer than most of us measured at birth hurtled through the Russian sky. It began its orbit around our world as our mothers stroked their bellies, mixed our Similac or pinned our diapers. And as its four trailing antennas beeped its presence to amateur radio operators across the continent, nearly twelve thousand of our mothers awoke from anesthesia to count our little toes and fingers. We were the inaugural babies of the Space Age.

For fifty years popular culture has told us that we were Baby Boomers. Yet we know differently. For we have never really been part of that generation. True we were the blessed offspring of the greatest generation. But it was our older brothers and sisters who were the boomers. Where were we when “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” first aired? Melanie Griffith, Judge Reinhold and I were all in our bassinets. We knew “the Beav” only in reruns after school.

Ours is a generation defined not by JFK, but by Neil Armstrong. Only Caroline Kennedy, whose father no longer hugged her, truly remembers that November day in 1963. Katherine Harris, Jim McGreevey and I were sent home from First Grade as we watched the flags lowered to half-mast. We remember that day. But for us it was a day swirled in adult whispers. The pink pillbox hat, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, the horse-drawn caisson and even JFK, Jr.’s brave salute entered our consciousness reconstructed—from television clips, news photos and our parents’ stories. That day lives in our memories, but only as recollected bits and pieces of another generation’s defining moment.

That “one giant leap for mankind” was to be our first significant collective memory. That hot July day, Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, and I were budding adolescents, eagerly anticipating our first days in junior high school. But we stopped to look at the grainy images on our televisions, some of them color, along with 500 million others worldwide. We saw Neil Armstrong take that first step and plant that American flag. And we jubilantly drank our Tang and knew that America had won the Space Race. We were proud to be American.

The Space Age was integral to our lives. NASA was organized as we learned to take our first steps. As Kindergartens, Ray Romano, Nancy Cartwright, and I watched George Jetson commute to Spacely’s Space Sprockets in his flying saucer car on our black-and-white televisions. At school we were the first generation to watch the countdowns of Gemini launches and to add and subtract, not in neat columns as our siblings had, but on number lines that extended far into space. In third grade, we did our homework, memorizing multiplication tables and constructing Venn Diagrams, as we heard the Robot on television warn, “Danger, Will Robinson!” Time that should have been spent perfecting long division in fourth grade was wasted on learning to count in bases 6 and 8 and cheering as Scotty once again beamed up Captain Kirk just in time. Even as college students we spent hours waiting in line to buy tickets for Star Wars.

We have never felt like Baby Boomers. It was our sisters who swooned and our brothers who gyrated when the Beatles invaded America. Instead Donny Osmond, Gloria Estefan and I were learning to read. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan. It was our brothers who played their LPs. Where were we at Woodstock? Even the precocious Cameron Crowe was still in high school. We never learned to twist and shout, we danced to disco.

We watched from bedroom doorways as our siblings donned bell-bottoms, mini-skirts and peace symbols. We covered our ears when our fathers, proud GIs, yelled at our brothers to cut their hair and at our sisters to turn down their music. While our brothers burned their draft cards, we played with GI Joes. While our sisters burned their bras, we stuffed our training bras. As much as we wish, we are not Forrest Gump. We were not at the Lincoln Memorial with Abbie Hoffman. We were in fifth grade. Me. Susan Ford. And Andrew Cuomo.

Please do not call us, we who were born in 1957, Baby Boomers. Our culture is not theirs. We are the lost generation sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Historian Steve Gillon calls us Shadow Boomers. To marketing consultant Brent Green, we are Trailing Edge Boomers. At least social commentator Jonathan Pontell has the courtesy to abandon the term boomer when he calls us the Generation Jones. Yet we are not as nondescript as the surname implies.

We, for whom Gemini is not an astrological sign of the Age of Aquarius but a spacecraft, are a generation in search of a better moniker. A name that reflects our dreams of moon colonies and Martians. Of infinity and beyond. Space Pioneers is too outdated. The NASA generation, far too broad. For NASA’s history stretches far past the fringes of our generation. I say we embrace our inner cosmonaut. Call us the Sputnik Generation. After all the Cold War is over.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Caucuses: Governor Huckabee and His Humor

Humor hides the man behind it. Twain was sardonic. Thurber was a misanthrope. And who the hell trusts the truthiness of Stephen Colbert? Which leads me to ponder, just who is the real Mike Huckabee?

This much we do know: he is a Southern Baptist preacher politician. It seems he has blended the two dichotomous roles, that of a preacher beholden only to God and that of a politician beholden to a vast and fickle electorate. As a preacher he plainly speaks an inerrant truth, yet as a politician he must obfuscate the truth in order to appease and accommodate. And it is through humor that the man who claims to not “separate my faith from my personal and professional lives” tries to blend these two roles. His preacher persona of country folksiness exudes a straightforward honesty, but hides the truth like a politician.

“Would Jesus support the death penalty?” Anderson Cooper pressed after Huckabee had successfully dodged Tyler Overman’s question in the CNN/You Tube Republican debate in Florida. “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,” the governor replied, deflecting the question yet a second time. In his television ads running in Iowa, Huckabee touts his Christian credentials with headlines like, "CHRISTIAN LEADER." Before a national audience, however, the politician employs his preacher folksiness to avoid offense.

“I can’t buy you — I don’t have the money,” he told Republicans at an Iowa Straw Poll one weekend in August. Then with the perfect timing of a stand-up comic added, “I can’t even rent you” (Nagourney). His aura of preacher friendliness, which he claims qualifies him more than the staid businessman Romney, wins the crowd. Yet lurking beneath his humor is true irony—his years as governor of Arkansas were clouded with numerous accusations of financial impropriety.

Which reminds me of another of his jokes written in his 2005 book, Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork. “When I was a kid in school, a teacher asked my class to have show-and-tell with the theme being ‘religion.’ Children were encouraged to bring a symbol of their faith and explain it to the class. The following day, a Catholic girl brought a crucifix, a little Jewish boy brought a menorah, and I brought a casserole in a covered dish” (5-6).

This joke, which Daniel Sacks records in his book Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture in 2000, appears ad infinitum on the Internet. What I find most curious is that Huckabee appropriates a joke, long a part of American religious joke-lore, as a “Personal Reflection.” How personal can a reflection be when there are countless versions of it? Indeed the little Fred, Tommy or Johnny of the joke changes Protestant religions with the alacrity with which I repent of gluttony and forsake chocolate. He is Baptist, Southern Baptist, Methodist, Nazarene, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Quaker, Presbyterian, and Unitarian Universalist. Even a Mormon version exists. (A religion, which the politician suggests by implication what the preacher believes, is not Christian.)

When, I wonder, did Michael become the child in the joke? And, more importantly, why? For, as any folklorist will tell you, the origin of this joke is less important than what it tells us about its teller. If we are kind, we must presume it is Mike Huckabee the preacher telling the joke. (Or perhaps his unimaginative ghostwriter.) In the fervor of his sermon against obesity, the governor assumes an evangelical role, like a preacher who rhetorically assumes the voice of Moses in the climax of his sermon. The joke is only a literary device he employs to personalize his crusade against obesity.

But if we are political, we wonder why Mike Huckabee would compromise his integrity for a joke. At the very least he is guilty of self-deception: it is difficult to reflect on a personal event that never happened. In a biblical sense, by plagiarizing a common joke, he is guilty of bearing false witness. In a political sense, he misspoke. And in a comic sense, he borrowed. But why? For the sake of a joke is my only conclusion.

17^th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes purports a commonly accepted theory of humor. He claims, “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others” (Gruner 13). In some sense Hobbes theory describes the undertone in Huckabee’s humor. His amiable humor belies a “holier than thou” mindset: his laughter arises from a “sudden glory” in recognizing his supremacy over others. Or as Howard Fineman observes, Huckabee “is a mix of humility and high-strung ambition. He is out to prove to the world that he is not a man to be underestimated just because he worked his way through an obscure Bible college in Arkansas.”

Undoubtedly Hobbes views humor much bleaker than I. Humor is delightful, essential. There is a reason a sense of humor always ranks high on the list of characteristics Americans seek in a mate. America reveres its stand-up comedians. Humor gets us, struggling couples and our country, through rough times. But we are mistaken if we do not look beneath the laughter to see what humor both reveals and hides. As Hans Christian Anderson observed, “he who takes the serious only seriously and the humorous only humorously has understood everything only very poorly” (Cracroft 17 ).

We know Rudy Guiliani is vitriolic, adulterous, and America’s Mayor. We know that Mitt Romney is mechanical, oscillatory, and Mormon. We know Mike Huckabee is funny. What we do not know is the man behind the humor.

Cracroft, Richard. "The Humor of Mormon Seriousness." Sunstone 10.1 (1985): 14-17.

Fineman, Howard. “The Huckabee Factor: Assessing the Preacher’s Post-debate Bounce.” Newsweek. 29 November 2007.

Gruner, Charles R. The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999.

Huckabee, Mike. Quit Digging Your Grave with Your Knife and Fork: A 12-Stop Program to End Bad Habits and Begin a Healthy Lifestyle. New York: Center Street. 2005.

Nagourney, Adam. “For a Joke-Telling Candidate, a Second-Place Finish.” 13 August 2007. The New York Times. 26 December 2007. "http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/us/politics/13huckabee.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1198159484-CaBe1+pjdvMr8ENz006GWA">