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Whiplash: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, can be caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.

Whiplash! – “M” mm. How is it he is never lacking for ideas?

I love mysteries. When someone is looking for something and asks me for help, I love to be on the chase. I like reading mysteries also. Mysteries are probably one of my top favorite genres after, science fiction and fantasy. Give me a good mystery to read or watch and you will lose me for a while.

Math problem solving was always fun for me too. I loved logic problems. Those were all mysteries for me to solve. My favorite technique for solving mysteries was to look for patterns. There are times when I see patterns that no one else sees. That means I get the correct answer a unique way or I get an incorrect answer with some creative logic to back it up. Either way, I love to solve mysteries.

When was young I made up these pretend IDs with my friends as members of a detective agency based on the TV program, “77 Sunset Strip”. When my son was young we would pretend to be famous detectives of an imaginary agency. He was Inspector Shaunk and I was his assistant Hinches. You can never be too old to love a good mystery.

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You should strive hard to never make a mistake! Whoever thought or said that made a big mistake. Albert Einstein is attributed to saying, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”  For that matter, anyone who has never made a mistake hasn’t learned anything new. Making mistakes is a fact of life. What we do with those mistakes determines what we learn or don’t learn (if we make the same mistakes over and over again.)

Most of the knowledge that I have about technology and computers comes from me being willing to make mistakes. By being willing, I am taking risks and accepting the fact that even if I lose all my data, I have learned what not to do in the future. Note that I also back everything up multiple times and to multiple places as a sort of insurance against me making a mistake. How did I learn that? During my first year of computer use, I was doing report cards on an Apple //e using the program Apple Writer. The program was on an unprotected 5-¼ inch floppy disk. You put the program in the drive, loaded the program then switched out the Apple disk and put in a blank 5-¼ inch floppy data disk which needed to be formatted (erased) so you could store the report cards that you were working on. That doesn’t work very well if you forget to swap the disks and end up erasing the Apple Writer program disk, which is still in the drive.

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Memory…What a wonderful thing to have. If I could only remember what I was going to write about it.

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So what mysteries have you had to solve lately? If you could be any famous detective either real or fictional, who would you choose? What is the most important thing you ever learned from a mistake? If you happen to remember what I was going to write about for memory, feel free to let me know in the comments, as old age keeps creeping up on me!

We’ll meet, don’t know where, oh yes “N”

Whiplash: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, can be caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.Whiplash! – “L” if I know what he’s going to write about next!

Ha. Ha. Very funny. Go ahead laugh. You don’t need a reason, just laugh. Science says it is good for you. Forget the adage that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown. That has never been proven. However, I can attest to the fact that when I laugh no matter howI’m feeling, beforehand, I usually feel better afterward.

I do need to be clear on this. When you laugh, you may feel better, but depending on the conditions that have brought on that laughter, the other people around may not feel the same joy. If you see someone trip and fall into a vat of jello or hear a person fart in your class, your urge to laugh will be strong, but think about how the other person might feel. Over time in relating that story, it may be more acceptable to share and laugh, but you really need to think about it before doing so. Laughter may be a given impulse that provides you with some health benefits, but so does self-control and empathy.

Whiplash!

Learning languages other than your own, may be a good thing for stimulating your brain and help you communicate with many different speaking people, but don’t let it fool you; unless you’re learning a new language at a very young age, it ain’t a piece of cake. Take it from me.

My parents were both born and raised in Germany. When they came over to America they had to become proficient in English. My father also had a background in French, having lived there 5 years before he came to America. By the time I was born, both my parents were fluent in English. To my detriment, they never taught me how to speak German or French. Even when I took French in Junior High School and High School, my father rarely helped me at all. French was the only class that I ever had a failing grade in. I decided to learn a different language on my own when I was in my 30s. The first language I tried was American Sign Language (ASL). I took 2 years of undergraduate college courses. I learned a bit but was never proficient in it. I even used some of what I learned in my teaching, but very basic stuff. When I was 63 years old and discovered that I had a brother in France, I decided to re-learn French, which I have been doing using online training for the past 5+ years. Recently I’ve added German as a language I’m working on, using the same online courses. Those foreign languages have too many gender-specific words to learn and their grammar rules are definitely “foreign” to me. Needless to say, I continue not to be proficient and yet I plod on.

Whiplash!

Listening is a very important skill to have. Too many of the people in this world learn how to hear, but are never taught how to listen. To hear something involves taking in sounds that are produced, whether from person to person, or nature, or some noise producing device and realizing that they are sounds. In some cases, those sounds need to be interpreted. I hear water splatter on my roof and know it’s raining. I’m in a group and hear voices and know there is communication going on. I am watching TV and hear someone talking near me and realize that they might be talking to me. But in a lot of cases, it just involves taking in the sound.

Listening, however, means much more. If I hear talking that is directed at me, I can do more than just spout back the words that have been spoken (that’s an advanced form of hearing) but I can interpret what the words mean and can react and respond to those words, acknowledging their content. Generally, listening involves eye contact with the person that is communicating, whether it be in person or via electronic media. Listening leads to conversation, a deeper understanding, and learning. Good listening skills can encourage compassion, empathy, and love. If the people in our government would only learn to listen as opposed to only hear, we might be better off as a civilization.

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What makes you laugh? Have you ever had to control your laughter because it wasn’t appropriate? What languages do you know? When did you learn them? Are you listening to any of this?

À bientôt/Bis bald…“M” mm. How is it he is never lacking for ideas?

Whiplash: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, can be caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.

Whiplash! – “K” I’m getting used to this…not another change!

There was a book of Swedish folktales that I wanted to purchase that was translated by a fellow storyteller, Richard Martin, who lived in Germany. I followed the link on his website which directed me to the Swedish website that was selling the book. I clicked on purchase the book and it said as soon as I paid the invoice (400 Swedish Krona) that I would have the book sent to me. I entered my name and address in the U.S. and awaited a place where I could click on to pay for the book. I assumed that there would be some link which would allow me to put in a credit card or use PayPal. Neither happened. I did get a confirmation email that I had ordered the book.  A little over a week later the book was delivered by mail to my house. Included in the package was the invoice for 400 Swedish Krona. I was confused, so I emailed the publisher and was told that I had to pay in Swedish Krona, as the Swedish banks no longer take checks and there was no credit card or PayPal possibility.

I could have sent 400 SK through the mail to the publisher, which is what he suggested, but I was a little skeptical of sending cash through the mail and finding a way to get Swedish Krona was not a simple task. I finally asked help from the storyteller in Germany. He agreed to pay my bill through an interbank transfer, which could be done from Germany and I reimbursed him through PayPal.

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Most of my entire life was spent teaching children that were in 4th – 6th grade (9-11 year olds). When I retired from teaching and began substitute teaching, I was careful to only sub for classes within that grade span. Then my district reconfigured their schools so that the school I was most likely to sub in was 3rd grade – 5th grade. With some trepidation, I added 3rd graders to my list of acceptable assignments. Occasionally I would accept assignments at the other school (Kindergarten – 2nd grade) knowing that I would be put in a 2nd grade class. Then came the day when I was working half-day at one school and was told that they needed me for the afternoon at the other school. When I got there, they

told me I had been assigned to a kindergarten class! I had never in my 40 + years of teaching worked with kindergartners. Luckily my first period with these students was lunch, so I immediately went home, which was a 3-minute drive away, and retrieved my guitar. Being a storyteller/musician made the rest of the day somewhat bearable. I loved the kindergarteners that said I was the first boy teacher they had ever had. I did what the teacher had planned, tied some shoelaces, helped some kids with their jackets, sang and told stories and when it was all over I went home exhausted. I give a lot of credit to kindergarten teachers, it takes a lot of energy to keep up with them on a daily basis.

For me, I’ll stick to the older kids.

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The dishes pile up in the sink in our kitchen

My wife starts to wash them and I ask to pitch in.

There’s more than enough of the water and soap

As we wash and wash, the end’s near so we hope.

But the water is dirty and they’re not quite as clean

There are smudges and marks that still can be seen

So we have to start over and wash once again

And there’s water all over the floor, what a pain

When we think that we’re done; kitchen’s floor nice and dry

What appears is a new pile, once again there’s a sigh

Maybe next time we’ll eat less, then again if we’re able

We’ll just scrap all the dishes and eat right off the table.

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Did you ever have to pay for something in a currency not your own? How did that work out? If you’re a teacher, what grade are you most fearful of ever teaching? How high do the dishes pile in your kitchen?

See you next time…“L” if I know what to write about next!

Whiplash: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, can be caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.

Whiplash! – “I” can’t keep up with all these changes.

I get my ideas for writing from a number of sources.  While I was teaching my writing was focused on my teaching. Those journals covered the 33 years that I taught. I wrote when I felt like it based on what was going on in my class and district. After I retired, I wrote on all different topics, depending on the mood I was in and what popped into my head. Pretty much all of those writings can be found on this blog. I go to a writer’s group once a month; in those meetings, our leader gives us a prompt with a number of choices to pick from. For those writing pieces I have 15 – 20 minutes to write; they’re also found on this blog. For the A to Z Challenge the past four years, I’ve been brainstorming with others (family, friends, colleagues, and students) to both come up with ideas for the theme and what to write about for each letter.

My goal continues to be to try and write every day. I continue to collect prompts and ideas from various writers’ groups and from a daily calendar that my son gifted me. I started out strong on my goal to write daily, but have not been as consistent as I want to be. April is always a good time to get me writing a lot again. There’s this A to Z thing.

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A person in my writing group once wrote about the Klondike diet that she was on. For those of you that don’t know what a Klondike bar is, it is a chocolate covered, rectangular bar of ice cream. My favorites are Mint Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, and Double Chocolate. The focus of this diet is that you keep eating ice cream, specifically Klondike bars each night and you lose weight. Surprisingly as it seems, having ice cream before 9:00 at night, mostly Klondike bars, seems to work for me. My wife’s theory is that when you have a fatty snack before bedtime your body uses up a lot of metabolism in trying to digest it while you sleep, increasing the possibility of weight loss. Whatever the reason, when I weigh myself in the morning after having an evening bar, I am usually at the same weight as the day before, or I’ve lost weight. I guess I would need some control subjects to see if this is scientifically accurate. But as long as I can eat my Klondike bars and maintain weight, I don’t care.

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Where does your imagination come from? Are you born with it? Do you have any control over it? I’ve heard it said about some people, that they have no imagination. Is it possible to not have any? What triggers your imagination? Do your dreams come from your imagination? Are there particular parts of your brain that control imagination? If so, are there ways to stimulate your imagination or mute it?  I imagine some of you have some thoughts on this subject. Care to share?

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So where do you get your ideas to write from? Do you write at all? Are you willing to join the Klondike bar diet? And, Is imagination real or just a figment of our imagination?

Till we meet again…Whiplash! – “J”walking is a ticketable offense while reading this blog