The great peanut mystery and other delights
The great peanut mystery and other delights
I’m reading Ross Gay’s sequel to The Book of Delights…The Book of More Delights. Yes, lately I am almost perpetually reading or re-reading Ross Gay. It’s not a bad life strategy. But as usual, I’m inspired to list my own delights so here are a few I’ve encountered recently for your Friday reading pleasure.
The great peanut mystery
From time to time, whole peanuts begin to appear in our neighborhood. In the backyard. Or in the front landscaping. When I went on a walk the other day, the peanut trail continued down toward the river.
The peanut mystery isn’t really a great mystery. I have no doubt that if I asked my neighbor, Charlie, the mystery would be solved pretty quickly. Either because Charlie is the one putting out the peanuts, probably for the benefit of some critter (Charlie is a great lover or critters which is a great quality to have in a neighbor) or because Charlie knows exactly where the peanuts are coming from, as Charlie knows pretty much everything that goes on in our neighborhood (also a good quality to have in a neighbor).
Next time I bump into Charlie, maybe I’ll ask. I have no doubt the peanuts have some central point of origin and are being spread around by critters, squirrels or blue jays being my most likely guesses. Probably I won’t ask Charlie, content in sitting in the mystery of the peanuts and amusing myself by looking for them like clues.
The workers next door
Madison, the town where I live, is a small town (population 12,266), but not at all a quiet town. With the weird spring-like February, every manner of vehicle is out cruising the streets and every single one of them have altered their mufflers in a way surely designed to maximize the assault to my nervous system.
On top of that, this week a crew of workers arrived to do some work on the building next door to us, a house that belongs to the Catholic church and once served as their rectory. So there’s that noise, though as my husband and I say to each other, it’s better than the sound of cutting bricks, which, yes, is a sound we had to listen to in close quarters for an extended period of time and is a whole other story I’ll not get into here.
The rectory already looks better and I like watching their progress as they replace windows and scrape the peeling paint. Yesterday as my husband and I were getting into the car to drive to Columbus to get my dental implant (not really a delight), one of the guys was singing along to the radio they were playing. Just one line, his voice carrying over the open yard. He had a lovely voice and, of course, his singing had nothing to do with me, but it felt like a serenade. A good-bye. A hello. A good luck. A little burst of joy at the sunshine and the warm weather sent out into the world.
The flash
Let me just confess that when you’ve been teaching for over twenty years, you develop certain expectations. I’m not saying they’re good. I’m not saying I’m proud of them. I’m not saying that I’m not constantly working on moving beyond these expectations.
All the same, at the beginning of a semester, when I look out at the faces of the kids, usually in my intro class, as these are students who are not familiar to me, certain assumptions about the kind of student they will be arise. Yes, sometimes they run along gender lines. I don’t believe women are smarter than men. Well, okay, maybe I do, but not naturally or anything…just that women have to sort of be smarter than men in order to get by in this world. I do know that on average, the women in the class will be way more on top of their shit. They will have planners, with multiple ink colors and highlighters. They will be the ones who read through the syllabus for the easter egg and send me pictures of kittens for extra credit. No, not all women are organized and not all men are disorganized, but it’s a trend. Let me also add than when it rains, not a single man will use an umbrella.
Anyway, I have these expectations because they’re hard to avoid living in the world we live in, which is bombarding us from the get-go with expectations and stories about who people are and how we should treat them. What’s delightful is when all those expectations turn out to be wrong. When the student you least expected to light up in discussing a reading or a podcast suddenly does.
What’s delightful is when you witness that flash, the moment when a student makes a connection between some concept or theory and their own life. That moment when they get it. Sometimes it’s so quiet, you have to pay close attention. No one else sees it. The other students are busy putting things in their calendar or texting someone on the cell phone beneath their desk, which they think I somehow cannot see.
That flash is such an important moment and really I’m the only one who gets to witness it. Even in the midst of the apocalypse that is higher education in general and my institution in particular, that flash still happens, like a rainbow or a falling star. Rare and beautiful.
My parents have several peanut plants all over their yard from forgetful squirrels!
Loved this. Those beginning of semester expectations when everything is possibility, the peaks when we see someone get it, the valley when we hit the mid-way mark and it turned out this wasn't the semester when somehow we became the teacher that motivated every student to excel, and for me the waves of affection I felt for everyone of them as they toiled over their final exams, no matter how they or I did, because here we all were, survivors.