I, Sir, Am Not an Ottoman, a Sideboard, or a Chifferobe

The last couple of days I have been subbing for a speech and drama teacher.  She has a class doing monologues.  Part of the assignment is to fill out a biography for the character portrayed in their monologues.

I understood the assignment immediately.  She wanted them to consider their characters as people, not just as roles.  She wanted to give the characters depth by making the students aware of details in the characters' lives.  And I thought to myself that this wasn't just for this class.  These principles apply in every day life.

We all go through life constantly interacting with other people.  It is a fact, however, that we do not have the emotional depth or energy to consider the feelings and humanity of every single person we encounter.  That would be exhausting.  So to a certain extent, those people with whom we are not personally acquainted, who only fill brief roles in our lives, become just furniture.


I am familiar, through one reading or another, with the concept of different types of respect.  There is thin respect.  This is the respect we are taught that we owe to people on a daily basis, or in certain roles.  This is the respect which we employ when we call teachers Mr. or Ms., or when we hold open the elevator door for a stranger.  While some people may be woefully short of this, it is still a large factor in everyday interactions.  If someone operates on a daily basis with a high level of thin respect for the people around him or her, we consider this person to be "nice."

But they are still only aware of the people around them as furniture.  There is no meaningful interaction.

To reach a deeper level, to get to the point of thick respect, then the individual must become aware of another individual as a person.  This is usually achieved through disclosure.

To apply this practically, I'll give you a glimpse into my day as a substitute teacher.

When students see me for the first time, they do not see me.  They may observe details of my dress and behavior and arrive at conclusions, but they still do not see me beyond my role as a substitute teacher.  For those capable of thin respect, who have been taught by their parents to apply thin respect, this may actually mean that they treat me better than they treat their regular teacher.  I am an adult in a position of authority.  Others, unfortunately, see only an opportunity to get away with things.  In both cases, I am only a piece of furniture in their world.


So I tried an experiment today.  While I was reading the instructions for an assignment, a student short on thin respect was talking.  I stopped.  I walked up to her.  I held out my hand.  I introduced myself:  "Hi.  I'm Mr. Houser.  And  you are?"  She said, "I know your name.  It's on the board."  "Yes,"  I said.  "But I wasn't sure if you realized I am a person, not a television or background music to be ignored or talked over."  I smiled as I said this.  Disarmingly, I hope.  She smiled back.  "Sorry,"  she said.  The "sorry" was a sign of thin respect.  Progress.

I then explained to the class what I had done, and why.  I didn't use the terms thin and thick respect.  I tied it to the lesson.  Then I told them that the principle could be applied to their monologue characters.  I told them the more details they could provide in the characters' lives, the more real the characters became. I told them I could tell them a detail about me, and I would become more real as a person.  Then I told them one.

I told them that my father had lost his right hand as a young man in an industrial accident.  This grabbed their interest, and at the same time gave us common ground.  Most of them had fathers.  The fact that I had a father, too, made me more human.  They had questions.  I answered them.  I had subbed in the same class the day before, and had found them to be an outspoken, unfocused bunch, reluctant to get down to work.  I had asked them, as a substitute teacher, to work.  I received a half-hearted response at best.  Some had ignored the assignment entirely.

When I asked them to work again, the response was different.  I may have still been a substitute teacher, but I was also a person. 

A Family Walden

My family is fortunate enough to own some land.  I guess I should qualify that.  I have ancestors who worked hard and bought some land and we have been fortunate enough to hold on to that land for over a hundred years.  The land itself is beautiful.  Not grand, not awe-inspiring, but beautiful.  A year-round creek, a cave or two, small bluffs, open pastures, wooded lots.  A great place to be a kid, and not a bad place to be an adult.

There is peace to be found in the land.  Some people can reach that peace by simply being there.  In the evenings, there is a hoot owl that calls from a holler through the ridge opposite the old farmhouse.  In the summer, the air down by the creek is usually about ten degrees cooler, and the sound of the water over the rocks is soothing.  The wind rustles the leaves in the summer and fall, and in the winter will make a lonesome sound as it moves through the naked branches.  On the hill overlooking the farm there is a small stand of Osage orange trees which offers a shady viewpoint.  All of this is there, and all of it will work to ease a troubled mind.  But the troubled mind has to be in the right state first.

Sometimes there are too many things rushing through a troubled mind.  All the problems, the difficulties, and the trials of modern life can stand between the troubled mind and the peace the land has to offer.  The good news is that we as a family know the secret to achieving a state of mind that allows us to really appreciate what exists in our section of the valley.

When we arrive, we usually have a plan of action.  My older brother and his son seem to be currently obsessed with fences and gates.  Robert Frost understood the deal about fences, even though in New England they had walls instead of fences.  "Something there is in Nature that hates a wall"...and a fence.  Usually it isn't natural.  Cows aren't particularly fond of fences, but nature take its toll as well.  They work hard to put in new fences, new gates.

My  younger brother is determined to rid the farm of any unnecessary brush.  He clears the brush from the banks of the creek to allow better recreational access.  He does this by hand.  There are sections accessible to the brush hog for the small tractor we have, but some areas are not.  He clears the brush, stacks it, burns it.  When he is finished, the area is clear.  The cattle have more area to graze, and we have a clearer view of the trout that live in the stream.


My father mows.  People see the farm, and they think that there are still people living there.  The lawn never gets out of hand.  There is quite a bit to mow:  the immediate lawn around the house, then down past the garage to the vineyard, and the vineyard itself.  There is also a small area on the other side of the creek we maintain as a park area.

My area is the garage.  We have taken to gathering in the small, separated building once used as a garage.  It was built in the 70's. It was not built well, and since then, issues have arisen.  I try to find creative, inexpensive ways to improve the garage.  I'm currently insulating it and paneling it with old barn wood.  The wood I am currently working with is rough cut, different sizes.  It comes from a shed, but the shed was built from the remains of a barn that was torn down long before I was born. I think it is beautiful, but I have a long way to go.  I also need more barn wood.  But there is time.

We also often work together on projects.  After one hundred plus years of farming, there is a lot of outdated equipment, old fence, rusting metal scattered here and there.  We work together, gather the metal.  Take it to be recycled.  A good load will give us over a hundred dollars, sometimes close to two.  We use this money for supplies and equipment.  We also cut firewood together.

We get things done, but we know it is not about the product of our labor.  We compliment each others' accomplishments.  But in the end, we know that it is the labor itself that is of value.  It is an investment, not in the land, but in ourselves.  When we have worked to a certain state, we can better enjoy what we have there.  In the land.

Of the several generations who have worked this land, I think most of them understood innately what we have rediscovered.  They had fewer distractions than we have, and they had to work harder in order to keep the land.  We play where they worked.  So maybe we only get a taste of the feast they enjoyed.  But a taste can be enough.  It is for us.

Why Do I Need English 3? What Good Is Transcendentalism Going to Do Me? I'm Going to Be a Sanitation Engineer.

I had the joy of substituting the other day in an English class, for an English teacher whose work I respect.  I love what she has her students reading and what she has them doing.  Her classes are fun.  For me, anyway.

Maybe not so much for some of her students.  There are a few who are willing to give enough of their energy and effort to try to understand what she is doing and where she is taking them.  Others, not so much.

I read in a recent article about the gap between Asian students and American students.  The strange thing was, this gap doesn't really seem to become apparent until middle school and high school.  Before then, the scores are comparable.  And almost anyone who observes a high school class can probably tell you why.

They don't care.  Not all of them have become apathetic, of course.  There are many who are still invested in their education.  But many are not.  And I have a take on how this came to be.

In current education, the value is not placed on education.  It is placed on what education can bring.  And I don't mean enlightenment or understanding.  I mean a job.  I mean money.

How many times have you told someone on the verge of quitting school or a teenage child not doing well in school that they'll end up flipping burgers?  All the discussions I hear when it comes to education that are aimed at students are geared toward future income.  As if that is all that education can bring.  Not to mention that we are becoming a society of degree holders who can't find a job.

We don't tell kids in elementary that they are going to end up flipping burgers.  We try to make learning fun.  And they learn because, well, because people like to learn.  We like to know stuff about stuff.  But then when these same kids get a little older, we dangle this carrot of success and threaten with the whip of failure, and learning becomes secondary to succeeding.  It is under these conditions that apathy is born.

So one of those students asked me the titular question when I asked why he wasn't doing his assignment.  There were actually a few students involved in the discussion.  I found myself going down the whole job road/ college road without even considering an alternative argument.

I forgot to bring up the other benefits of education.  Just like most people.  Shame on me.

I forgot that being aware of your surroundings, and understanding things around you help you exist in this world.  That education can assist in developing compassion.  That education is crucial to personal development, particularly in small communities in which a broad array of experiences and ideologies do not readily offer themselves.

So why English 3?  Why learn about the Transcendentalists?  Because they were all about learning the place of the individual in society.  This is important stuff.  We, as Americans, value our individuality.  It is one of the tenets on which our country was founded.  And while the Transcendentalists may have taken the idea to extremes, it is only when individuals take ideas to the extremes that we can learn the full potential of those ideas.  You don't have to agree with them.  But you should think about what they said.  At the very least, you should know what they said.  And you should know how what they said affects everything around you.  Music.  Ideas.  Art.  Culture.



Everyone should have their own version of Walden.  A place, an activity, a retreat to ponder the value of their existence beyond how they relate to society in a monetary way.

So when you grow up, you want to be a sanitation engineer?  A cosmetologist?  Those are worthwhile undertakings.  But it is impossible to be only a sanitation engineer, simply a cosmetologist.  You will also be a citizen.  There are obligations that come with that.  Responsibilities.  Privileges.  Know what they are.

You may be a husband.  A wife.  A father.  A mother.  You will definitely be a person, and a member of society.  Be a good one.  Understand what a good member of society is, beyond what you see around you.  There is so much more to know.

I believe in education as a means of personal development.  I believe that reading, writing, and the study of the world around us can help us achieve a potential beyond the merely monetary.  I don't believe that education is only to be found in the classroom, or in a book, but I do believe that studying the thoughts of others will enhance the experiences that we encounter every day.

Sour Mood

I'm cranky.  I didn't sleep well last night.  I made poor nutritional choices today (pie and cookies for lunch).  I worked hard in the yard and Griswolding my house and then cutting some branches off a tree at Mom and Dad's.

I put up the Christmas tree.  I hate that tree.  It's a cheap Wal-mart tree.  It sheds.  We used to get a real tree, but we stopped getting them because they shed.  Now I have an artificial tree that sheds.  I put on the lights.

The kids were supposed to hang ornaments.  They were goofing around, trying to juggle them.  They kept getting distracted.  I had to force them off their computers to take part.  Then the dog took a crap in the living room behind the couch.  At that point, I lost it.  Then my wife banished me up here.

She knows me.

She knows I'm tired.  She knows I've had too much sugar.  She knows the kids are being especially annoying.

Do other people get like this?  I see happy pictures on Facebook, and happy descriptions of trimming the tree.  I think I like literature with a darker tint because it helps me realize that yes, this does happen to other people.

The good news is that I will snap out of this.  I will be happier tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, after this sugar processes through my system.

When I'm in this kind of mood, Bukowski it probably best for me.  There was a guy who understood how the world could crap down the back of your neck sometimes.  He could see that, as much as we wish for the opposite to be true, Norman Rockwell moments are rare and brief.

This was the guy who wrote:

"It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?" 

I can completely identify with this idea.

He said much more.  I think I enjoyed Bukowski more when I was younger, when I needed the reassurance more that the world can be that way.  And that it was okay.  That it could be that way, but that it wasn't important.  There is an Eastern philosophy feel to his work.  He was in the world, very much in the world physically, but somehow he managed to keep himself at a certain level of remove from the world intellectually.  He was certainly an active participant emotionally as well, but had an awareness that kept him at a level of sanity, even at his most insane.  He was able to reflect.

The quote of his that most perfectly expresses this duality of intellect and emotion:

 "Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way."

I feel better.  Thank you, Hank.  His friends called him Hank, not Charles, which is the name he wrote under.  Thanks, Hank, for reminding me that even though I'm not perfect, no one is, or should wish to be.  We all have our moments.  And we all live through them.  Maybe my wife will let me come back downstairs now.

Critical Thinking

I substitute teach now.  Substitute teaching is easy, especially if done wrong.  If I just go in, take roll, allow the kids enough freedom to amuse themselves but not enough to cause each other bodily harm or violate school policy, I have an easy day.  If the teacher I'm substituting for actually left a substantial lesson plan, things get a little bit tougher.  I have to establish authority, set expectations, earn respect, and encourage and motivate students who may be more accustomed to substitutes who go with plan A.  A little tougher, but not much.  After all, it's not like I have to grade anything, or do any planning.

Which I hate.  I love planning lessons.  I like reading writing assignments.

So today I substituted, and things took a left turn.  The students were supposed to go to a lab to work on a paper, but the teacher didn't sign up for the lab.  This situation left me in limbo.  Time to improvise.

I've been thinking a lot about critical thinking.  As a teacher, the most important thing I can do is to teach students to be critical thinkers.  In the freefall of the classroom without a lab and therefore without a plan, I decided to have students write a definition of critical thinking.

I asked them, "What is critical thinking?"

I received some good responses, some good definitions.  I also received some bad ones.  "Critical thinking is thinking critically."  Ummm.  No.  "Critical thinking is thinking hard and coming up with a solution to a problem."  Better, but only marginally better.  I received some definitions that emulated definitions from the dictionary.  "Critical thinking is the process of using logic to determine the best course of action when confronted with a situation or problem."  Fancy.  But I still think it misses the point.

In my considerations of critical thinking, I've come up with a working definition that is simple.  For me, the critical thinker can gather not only facts from observations, but also meaning.  Or meanings.  Plural.  But more on that in a bit.

I told the students (seniors) to use critical thinking to give meaning to the results of a study about which I had heard.

The authors of this study took two groups of people, 30 American 6th grade students and 30 Japanese 6th grade students.  Each group was given a math problem to solve.  The math problem was impossible.  There was no solution, but the students weren't given that little bit of information.  Within ten minutes, the Americans had all given up.  The most common statement was "We haven't gone over this yet."  When the Japanese students were given the problem, they had to be stopped after an hour had gone by.  Not one had given up.

The majority of students came up with the following meanings for the results of the study:  Americans are lazy.  Japanese people are smarter.

They didn't think critically.


Their response was based on media messages, stereotypes, what they had heard from their parents, and a general low self-image generated by popular culture and the repeated disparagement of the American educational system.

A critical thinker would look beyond that.  A critical thinker would look at the study from several angles.  The first thing a critical thinker would do would be to break down the study.  The students were given an IMPOSSIBLE problem.  Therefore, the Japanese students were essentially wasting their time in trying to solve it.  That being the case, the Americans were smarter to quit.  Sometimes the only solution to a problem is to walk away from it.

A critical thinker would look even deeper into the study.  A critical thinker would start thinking about what the findings meant in terms of culture.  Eastern culture emphasizes the struggle.  It is glorious and noble to struggle.  The end result is only a secondary impetus to engaging in the struggle.  Whereas Americans?  It's all about the end-game.  Just win, baby.  But also about innovation.  If the traditional means of seeking a solution doesn't work, find a different solution.  Or re-frame the initial problem.  The problem wasn't the math problem.  The problem was they had been given a math problem.  They found a means of solving that problem.

A critical thinker would go beyond the study, beyond the results of the study, into the reactions of people who had heard about the results.  What is their first reaction?  Is there a secondary reaction?  What do the reactions say about the individual reacting, and does that individual typify the culture, and why?

It all comes down to asking that question.  Why?  This is the question the critical thinker asks that the non-critical thinker doesn't.  What is an easily answered question.  How is a little more difficult.  But Why never has an end.  There are causes with causes, and behind those causes are even more causes.  Why is too daunting for some people.  They are willing to accept the first answer that comes along and look no deeper.  But they never know if the first answer was the best answer.  They will say that it is.  They will believe that it is.  And if they never think critically, they can remain convinced that it is, until someone, often painfully, points out the error of their ways.

Knowing Me

Most people don't know each other.  Unless people spend most of their time in constant contact with one another, constantly filling each other in on all the events in their lives, how those events affected them emotionally, and their responses to those events, then they...



Oh, wait.  That's what Facebook is for.  And texting.

Well, okay, most people (aside from young adults and certain people that most of us will eventually unfriend due to the ongoing drama in their lives) simply don't maintain that kind of communication.  So we don't know one another.  And even those that do publish their lives on Facebook moment by moment are still giving a very subjective narrative about themselves.  If we even bother to read their posts, we can only hope we are reading between the lines correctly.

I have friends on Facebook  I haven't seen in twenty years.  They picture me as they knew me then.  Even those who have known me more recently may not know where I am now and what I am like.  I would like to think that I am constantly changing, constantly trying to be a better person than I was yesterday.  But just because I would like to think that is true, it may not be.  I may be worse.  But I can state with some confidence that I am not the person I was five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago...more.

Significant events in our lives change us.

A short list of events in my life which have profoundly changed me, and what I think about them:

At age 23, I quit drinking alcohol.

I had a problem.  I quit.  I have had people tell me they admire me for that, or respect that.  In all truth, it was a matter of necessity.  Drinking is bad for some people; drinking the way I did was very, very bad for me.  If I hadn't quit, I probably would have died.  I'm surprised I didn't.


I appreciate that people admire me for quitting, but the truth is, I took the easy way out.  I read an excellent quote on abstinence which sums up completely my feelings on that.  St. Augustine said, "Abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."  Abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, any addictive substance, is hard to implement, but easy to maintain.  Moderation, on the other hand, is easy to implement, but difficult to maintain.  Over the long haul, I took the easy way out.  I can maintain abstinence from alcohol.  I admire people who can maintain moderation.

At age 30, I was married.

Marriage required me to adjust the way I communicate.  I'm still prone to say what is on my mind, but marriage taught me to wait for the correct time, and to carefully consider my phrasing.  Many of you that knew me as a younger man probably recognized that at the time I was going to have my say no matter what anyone else thought.

  Now I am more careful, because I do care what at least one other person thinks.  When I am having a serious conversation, I am prone to very long pauses so I can say what I mean in a way that will mean something to the person to whom I am speaking.  My wife has told me that some people might not be sure if they like me because I don't talk much, and people tend to distrust that.  Can you imagine me being that way?

At age 33, I had my first child.


My time alone decreased yet again.  This was the first experience in my life where it was mandatory that someone else's needs came before my own.  In most relationships, the other person's needs can often wait, or they can attend to themselves to a certain degree.  It doesn't work that way with kids.  There is only right now.

At age 35, I was fired from my first job.

I had a very good job on a monetary scale.  I hated the job, and it wasn't good for me, but it allowed me to provide very well for my family.  Getting fired from that job was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me.  It caused me to experience financial distress due to the number of bills we had built up in our pursuit of the insanely acquisitive American dream, but it also allowed me to conceive of a world where I didn't dread going to work every day, a world in which I could be happier on a daily basis.  My subsequent jobs weren't much better, but I realized they were only jobs.

At age 40, I elected to go into teaching.


I made the decision, but I had my doubts.  Turns out I loved most aspects of teaching.  The students, the interaction, the inner growth that I experienced as a teacher.  I looked forward to most days at school.  I made a true discovery that most people, even the unruliest of students, can be talked to in a one on one situation and reasoned with.  I learned so much about language, and people, and myself.  I found a calling that would allow me to be happy.  Aristotle said, "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."  I found one that didn't, or at least one that didn't degrade my mind as quickly as my previous jobs.  But...

At age 43, I was fired again.

Why was I fired?  It wasn't lack of enthusiasm for the job.  It wasn't due to a lack of ability.  It certainly wasn't anything tawdry or scandalous.  The truth of the matter is, I don't know why.  The administration gave only hints.  I think the closest thing to the truth was that my philosophies and those of the administration were not compatible.  Funny how sometimes the vaguer things are, the closer to true they become.  But the effect of this termination on my personality is still yet to be determined.  I'm still not at ease in my mind with where I am on this.  One way it has definitely affected me is to make me more compassionate towards others who have experienced or are experiencing failure.  And it has made me more accepting of and grateful for my own failures.  We fail today so that we learn how to fail better tomorrow.  I think when we say someone is an unqualified success, we do them a disservice.  To be truly admirable, success must overcome failure.


Me at 45.

We are all the product of our pasts.  Here's a little of mine.  Of course, this is a subjective look at myself and my experiences.  Is there any other way?  There is no doubt that you know me better now if you have read this far.  Later today I may post on Facebook about my experience at Wal-mart, or something I cooked for dinner.  That won't tell you much about me. But the drama?  I'll leave that to the younger people, I think.

The Answer to the Question, How Long Will I Feel Like This?

Many of my friends on Facebook are former students.  Young people.  And I witness daily at least one case or another of a freshly broken heart.   But it isn't always the young people.  I see people my age who go through the same thing, just not as often.  That's probably a good thing, but still...

So many.

Broken hearts happen all the time.  To everybody.  But there is nothing quite so personal or so painful as having one.

I think I suffered from quite a few broken hearts.  Enough that I actually became pretty good at understanding what I was going through, why I was going through it, and what I had to do to make the pain stop.  So here's some advice for anyone dealing with a broken heart:

1)  Let yourself be sad.  You can try anger, you can try righteous indignation, or you can try denying sadness and pretend to be manically happy.  But the truth is, sad is the appropriate response.  You are losing something.  It's okay to be sad.  Sad is part of acceptance.

2)  Once you have gained acceptance, then it is time to realize that while it may not feel that way, you will get over your broken heart.  You have to.  You know that feeling where you wonder if it's even worth it to get out of bed, to go to work, to go to school?  It goes away.  It will.  It takes time, but it will go away.  And you do have some power to make it go away.  The most important phrase I learned concerning how to deal with a broken heart is this one:  "I'm going to have to start getting over this eventually.  Why not start now?"  And then I would get up and go to work or go to school or go for a bike ride or mow the yard.

3)  One of the easiest things you can do to help yourself get rid of a broken heart is:  nothing.  Even if you do absolutely nothing to get over your broken heart, it will heal.  At first, every waking moment will be consumed with the knowledge that you have a broken heart.  Then after a while, you will have to start reminding yourself occasionally that you have a broken heart.  Eventually, you may even go whole days without thinking about your broken heart. Of course, this is the slow method.  This method may take a long, long time.  I don't really recommend it.  There are two other quicker methods, and both work, but the side effects are completely different.

4) Quickest way to get over a broken heart:  Fall in love with someone else.  Yes, you can really do that.  It will be a brittle kind of love, most likely.  Rebound love.  This love will be driven by self-interest.  You don't want to let self-interest do the driving because self-interest has extremely short-term goals.  Self-interest will lead you to pick the wrong partner.  If the wrong partner discovers first that he/she is the wrong partner, he/she will leave you and you're back to square one on the heartbreak thing.  Or eventually that broken heart heals (as it would have done anyway) and you realize that you selected someone to be with for all the wrong reasons and you need to bail, probably breaking that person's heart in the process.  Side effects: broken heart #2 or spending a lot of time with someone you eventually realize you don't love.

5) Not so quick way, but quicker than doing nothing:  Devote your time to growing.  If the heart is a muscle (and I'm talking figurative heart, we all know the literal heart is a muscle), then when it is broken and healing, you need to devote yourself to working out the other strengths you have in order to compensate for the one that is healing.  Work on your friendships.  Spend time with people who you like to be with.  Work on your inner life.  Go places, do things, see things.  Do interesting things, even if you don't feel like it.   Go on a wild cave tour.  Ride in a hot air balloon.  Eat a sea urchin.  Read a book that you have always thought you should read but never have.  Strengthen relationships within your family.  Build something.  As you do this, your heart will heal.  And when it has healed, you will be a stronger, more interesting person overall.

I don't claim to know everything about how to get over a broken heart.  I only know what has worked for me.   To answer the question, "When will I stop feeling like this?" is not a simple answer, and the answer isn't really satisfactory.

You will stop feeling that way when you do.  And when you decide that you want to stop feeling that way badly enough to do something about it.