In the middle of learning – by Donald Gately Ed.D

One would be hard-pressed to design an environment more conducive to a lack of concentration than our present circumstances. The term “go to work” has gained greater currency for me during this crisis. We “go to work” because at home you can’t accomplish a damn thing. Try to write an important letter with your kids at home, bills you have to pay sitting right there, your neighbor blasting doo-wop from his garage, and a refrigerator across the room that probably has cheese in it. It’s not easy. 

By the end of the week I cannot focus enough to write a narrative with even a whiff of cohesion. I’ll simply offer some random thoughts:

One of my favorite Brooklyn expressions. On a sunny day, maybe you didn’t go to the bother of packing up the car or taking the bus to go to the beach, but you wanted to get a tan, so you would do something that was described thusly, “I’m gonna lay out“. I have few insights to offer on this expression, it speaks for itself. Note the lack of anything else that’s going to happen in the course of “laying out”.  While you’re soaking up the sun, are you going to read a book, listen to music, talk to your friend? “Nah, I’m just gonna lay out.” This pronouncement was accompanied later by a turn of phrase I heard uttered by my mom countless times, an expression also likely native to Brooklyn. When one returned to the house from “laying out”, she’d say:  “Oh, you got color”;  which translated meant that the time you spent in the sun mitigated that pasty Irish pallor you walk around with 10 months of the year. It was meant as a compliment. 

If Hell has a smell it’s the smell of a bag of potatoes that you forgot was sitting at the bottom of a closet near your kitchen. Nothing compares to this as far as every day, surprising, household odors.  It’s what kids spray from head to toe on themselves before going to middle school in Hell.

My daughter was so happy she saw Frozen the musical for her birthday last year now that the Broadway play has officially announced it’s closing. When the quarantine is over I’m going to bring it back. But my version is going to be a gripping tale of a people struggling for connection and social power via a cruelly temperamental computer app called “Zoom.”  My play is going to be called, “Frozen.”

For various reasons that deserve their own blog post, my wife is not a sports fan. She’ll watch sports if it includes brunch but other than that she just doesn’t see the point. In that respect she’s one of the big winners of the quarantine. No NBA, MLB, NFL, Premier League Soccer (brunch).  None of these sports leagues are swirling around her with their pointlessness. She even resents sports metaphors, which, even in normal circumstances, are hard to avoid. I thought somehow this situation might awaken in her an appreciation for the escapism that sports brings, but it has only reconfirmed what she’s always believed, we can do without it.

Why are you reading this, shouldn’t you be washing your hands. I’ve been trying to keep my posts short, I want the CDC to recommend that you wash your hands for as long as it takes to read one of Don’s blog posts. Get on it! 

If someone put together a highlight reel of great moments in “Adult Unfocused History” they would include a video of former Atlanta Braves first baseman, Adam Laroche. LaRoche has ADD. In 2006, he fielded a routine ground ball and lost track of how many out there were. Jogging to first base he was beaten out by the runner, allowing the Washington Nationals to come back and win the game.  ESPN reported: 

LaRoche concedes that his mind occasionally drifts off to other things while he’s in the field or sitting in the dugout. Playing a sport that comes with so much idle time only makes things worse. 

This likely sounds familiar to people presently forced to stay at home. We’re all playing baseball now. Idle time allows the mind to drift to other things. 

I’m going to talk about those “other things”.

You learn quickly when you’re an educator that kids think you’re old. I was 23 when I first started teaching, I thought I was pretty young, cool even. To my students, I may as well have been Methuselah. In a Zoom class with a group of fifth-graders yesterday,  I joked that I’m so old that I was around for the last pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918. They believed me. One kid asked me what it was like. I told him pretty much like it is now, the Wi-Fi wasn’t as good.

I need to get new equipment for listening to Zoom calls. I have a great deal of activity swirling around me as I work from the dining room table. I need earbuds to drown out the background noise. But I’m developing “earbud ears”. That’s when you’ve had those things in your ears so long that you feel like they’re still in there even when they’re not. Is this widening the opening to my ear cavity? I’m afraid the “murder hornet” is going to fly in there. 

One of my favorite characters in the COVID crisis is Dr. Deborah Birx. She’s the image that comes to mind when you hear, “Elementary School Principal”.

When she cautioned us about going out to the supermarket,  I heard:

“OK children, the temperature is below 55° and it might rain, you know that means we’re not having recess today. Don’t have your parents call, it’s right there on the website. Stop asking your teachers, it’s not their decision, it’s just the thermometer. We can’t go out to recess. Now lineup on both sides of the hallways we’re going to the library.” 

Dr. Birx would also probably tell us, “Wash your hands, boys and girls, make sure you wash your hands. Do it as long as it takes to sing happy birthday. But you don’t have to sing it out loud, stop singing Happy Birthday out loud Donald. The bathroom is next to my office and you’re driving the secretary crazy.”

Best of luck focusing. There’s a ground ball coming your way and you can’t remember how many outs there are.