To Pee, or Not to Pee

Sorry for the crude pun, but I've got to talk about a serious subject and needed to inject a little levity. I think we've got a crisis on our hands. I first noticed this problem a few years ago when I was at a conference for a job I had at the time. At break, the large hotel meeting room emptied and most of the people walked hurriedly to the restrooms. As usual, there was a line in the women's restroom, so there I stood, leaning up against the ceramic tile, listening to other women pee. My supervisor entered a stall ahead of me and I heard what sounded like Angel Falls behind the metal door. One after the other, we women entered the stalls and peed like Clydesdales.

What is wrong with a world that forces people to wait so long to pee? Why do we do this to ourselves? And in particular, why do intelligent working women allow themselves to be pushed to the bladder's limit? I imagine the bladder like the elastic at the top of my Hanes Her Way panties. Sisters, it ain't gonna last forever, especially after such abuse. This can't be good for us.

On Tuesday, I substituted at Ft Walton Beach High School, arriving late because I only got the notice that morning and I live not far from a place creepily named Mossy Head. No matter how many times I go to the bathroom before I leave the house in the morning, I know I'm going to have to go three or four times before the clock strikes noon. Tuesday was no exception. I arrived at the school shortly after 8 a.m. and found my classroom. The kids had a test that day, so I got them settled down and handed out the test packet. Groans and muttering followed; someone called their teacher a "tree-killer." Nine o'clock and the next class rolled in. Again, I handed out the tests and the kids set to work. Ten o'clock and fourth period was underway. At the end of the class, one of the students was lollygagging and I asked him to hurry up. "Oh, sorry. Do you have to be somewhere?" He asked. "Look, I've had to go to the bathroom since 8 o'clock!" I snapped and he scooped up his books. When I got to the bathroom, the door was locked. Back to the classroom for a key. Next time I got there, a woman standing outside said, "There's someone in there." What? They have a one-holer for faculty? What kind of school is this?!? I rushed down the hall and found another bathroom. I made it.

I think working women are particularly bad about allowing themselves to be pushed to the limit in this regard, although women with small children may find themselves just as crunched for time. So much to do and no time to pee. This is an area where men have all the advantages. On the way back from a camping trip a couple of years ago, my husband and I pulled off a back road because we both had to pee. He turned his back to the road and took care of business while I wandered around trying to find a place to squat where I wouldn't be cavity-searched by the shrubbery. Then, there was the matter of using my few squares judiciously and burying the tissue in a mound of leaves. Never mind trying to squat, keep your balance, and not pee on your shoes at the same time. Of course it's not fair, it's just biology.

Okay. I've gotten that off my chest and have probably gone on longer than your patience. What a weird thing happened to me this week. I don't know how to account for it, except to say that I may have been touched by fairy dust or something as magical. I was watching students take that poetry test and I experienced a huge swell of love lap over me, a surge strong enough to make my knees quiver. How lovely those kids were, each one unique, special, a solitary creation like no one else. I thought about how their parents loved them, how they potty-trained them, took them to kindergarten, baked them birthday cakes, made them phone home if they were going to be late. I thought about all the care and attention that had gone into bringing each one of those teenagers to the here and now, a Tuesday morning in late February. I guess I appreciated, really appreciated, for the first time, the trust that society puts in its teachers -- even a lowly sub like myself. For six or seven hours each day, parents know where their kids are and, generally, they trust the kids are going to leave that school experience changed in some positive way.

What can cause one person to look at another person differently? What can enable us to put on the X-ray vision glasses of love and, for the briefest second, crawl into another person's life enough to emphasize, to soothe and say, "It's okay. I understand"? It's a rare experience, I think, and a gift. Not something that happens because you will it, but a thing that happens because the conditions of the heart are right -- humility and attentiveness are key -- and something else, a Bigger Love, moves in. Or maybe not moves in, but passes through.

It was strange to have a classroom full of test-taking students all day. It was as quiet in there as an "undiscovered tomb." (I've been trying to figure out where I picked that expression up. If you know recognize it, let me know.) It was quiet and somehow wrong. "Wait, this is not the way I'd teach class!" I wanted to shout. How silly. They were only taking a test, afterall. Not dead. Not sleeping. Still teenagers under the woolly blanket of silence.

I liked that room, the way the teacher had it set up, the way the desks and the students faced each other. It's the first classroom I've seen set up in a way that makes sense, the way I'd do my own classroom. I think you ought to be able to look at someone who is speaking without doing a Linda Blair turn. The walls were painted sunny yellow and the floor was blue linoleum tile. The teacher had a thing for Hawaii or all things tropical; there were colorful trees and flowers, birds and fish along the walls. Who said that color should be reserved only for elementary kids?

I am becoming convinced that a classroom's environment makes a difference in student attitude. I subbed again for Mr Lewis at Crestview this week and, I'm sorry, the man is a slob. There was a dirty Tupperware container behind the desk and stacks of papers all over the place. Piles of handouts, tests, books, worksheets -- like the guy was building his own tower to the sky. How do I know that an environment like that makes a difference? How do you explain that the desks in that room were the dirtiest I'd seen? The day before, I'd been in Mrs Nelson's immaculate classroom and there were NO pencil marks on any of the desks. It seems right that along with reading, writing and arithmetic, we should be teaching respect. A clean and orderly classroom goes a mile in that direction as the teacher models what she expects.

In Mrs. Nelson's class, I had to ask the kids to watch the teleplay production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" six times. I sympathized. Have you ever seen that play, with Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman? Bor-ing. What's more, in each class, we only got through the first 40-50 minutes of the program. I felt like I was on a conveyor belt, doomed to see Willy become untethered in time again and again and again and again . . . . Don't get me wrong. I think "Death of a Salesman" is a great American play. I'm glad I read it in high school and that was that. It's the kind of thing you want to do once to say you've done it, then get on with your life.

My husband is almost done rebuilding his bass boat. This is the boat that my father "gave" to him shortly after we moved to FL. Ed figures he's got more than $700 in repairs in the boat, and that's not counting the tax and license. He had to rebuild the floor, tinker with the electronics, redo the hydraulics, and do some fiberglass repair. I can't wait to get this thing in the water so he can move on to his next Big Project.

My grandfather came home from rehab this week and is doing well after bilateral knee replacement. We can all breath a sigh of relief. He's off the heavy pain meds and no longer spouting conspiracy theories. Last night he ate so much turnip greens he got the runs. Seems his stomach needs some time to recover from the hospital food. My grandmother is home again and happy about that. I did tell you that she went through three roommates at the nursing home. Now, she just has to live with my grandfather. What a wonderful pair those two make. Their relationship has given me real insight into what life and love after 63 years of marriage could look like.

Next week I'm back at Crestview High School for FCAT, the standardized testing all Florida students are subjected to. In our Professional Foundations class, we determined that the American education system has entered into the Era of Accountability. The country, under the leasdership of Mr. Bush and his No Child Left Behind roadshow, has gone gaga for standards and measures. Research I read indicated that receiving a "failing" score as a school did prompt drastic changes in scholastic achievement. But, the question is: do standardized tests accurately measure what students know? Do they measure what each student knows, or do some types of learners perform better than others? Can standardized tests be fair when not all students receive the same quality of instruction? These and other weighty questions are still unanswered. We shall see. There's one thing for certain: when/if I become a teacher, standardized testing will be a huge part of my professional life. That's where we are until the pendulum swings back the other way.