Left to my own devices

Lou Skizas died on November 17th. I just read his obituary in Sunday's paper, and a lot about his life is contained therein. I knew him as "Mr. Skizas" -- he was one of my teachers, so we weren't on a first name basis. It's true that, in adulthood, I've come to know many of my teachers of yore much better. Some of them have becomes friends. Such was not the case with Mr. Skizas, though our paths did cross over the years.

"Hanging on to the past It only stands in our way" - Tina Turner , I Don't Wanna Fight There he was, being exalted. The man (well, he was a young man then) who'd thrown a basketball at me at point blank range after yelling, "Think fast!" then laughing when I'd had no time to react. The ball had hit me square in the head. To this day, I can still remember the immediate blackness after the impact, of not being able to see anything for a few moments, and then the ringing pain that reverberated throughout my skull for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes. The aforementioned incident happened during high school P.E. class. The person who did it was someone I rarely, if ever, interacted with. He was just a person in my class who liked to bully people, and I happened to be his choice of assault that day. And then, several months ago, I saw him. Not in-person (thankfully), but online. His picture was posted on a mutual friend's ...

For a lot of people, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is humorous piece of cinema, entertaining a multitude of audiences for over four decades, and helping to cement the comedy troupe's bonafides as masters of hilarity. Sure, it's all those things to me, but it is also more. There is a sobering element to it that has nothing to do with the film itself. I was a junior in high school and, up to that point, had only ever seen the Monty Python's Flying Circus TV show. A multimedia class taken earlier in high school had seen a fair amount of students using Ren & Stimpy and Monty Python audio files for projects (or just to mess around with), and so I'd heard snippets of dialogue from Holy Grail before seeing the film (if I never hear "We are the knights who say 'ni'" ever again, that will be okay).

It would seem a tad dramatic to remark that I am here today (as opposed to being long-dead) because of one particular person, though it would at least in part be the truth. His name was Chris, and he was a classmate back in high school. He was a popular kid and I, well, I was not. He was young, blond-haired, handsome. I idolized him, in that perhaps unhealthy way that adoration of the concept of the person can lead to not really knowing the actual person. Chris wasn't perfect by any means, but then who is? I should probably clarify something at this juncture: Chris isn't dead. Sometimes I write these missives and it is because someone I knew has died recently, or has been dead for some time, and I remembering them for some reason. So, no, Chris is very much alive. In fact, the impetus for writing about him here is that I saw his picture on social media recently. And, no, he isn't the person I was writing about in the last blog post .

His face was staring back at mine, frozen in its digital essence. The person had commented on the post of an online friend and, well, there it was, a link to his profile along with an accompanying picture. Pretty standard stuff as far as social media is concerned. Only the person whose photo was staring back at me through the computer screen stimulated a minor negative response within my psyche. He was someone I'd known in high school and who had engaged in some minor bullying. Bullying is, unfortunately, commonplace. It can occur during adulthood, but seems rife during our youth. Beginning in fifth grade, right on through senior year of high school, bullying was often just a regular part of my school life. Some of it was slight (verbal taunting, etc.), while at other times it was more serious (threats, or actual acts, of violence). Again, this person's profile that I'd suddenly come across online was in the former camp. And yet it was enough for the connotation to ...

There was once a friend who told me he loved me. He said it very matter-of-fact, though there was some unease within his person about it. We sat there, on the bleachers at high school, blowing-off P.E. class one slightly overcast day, and we were talking, just shooting the breeze. There was a lot of subtext to our conversation, though I wasn't really analyzing it at the time. I was expending a lot of energy talking bitterly about being friendless, and how I didn't really fit in anywhere. There was a nasty undercurrent to my words that I wasn't aware of.

Yesterday marked a touchstone moment in the U.S., as students across the country participated in " walkouts ." This was an occasion for students to express an array of thoughts and emotions, ranging from a desire for stricter gun control, to simply sorrow over the loss of so many of their peers to school shootings. They were peaceful protests, but protests nonetheless. Where you're at on the spectrum of agreeing or disagreeing with what they did may vary, though not wanting to get shot in your school seems pretty reasonable to me. Some folks have taken to sharing a meme on social media platforms this week -- in direct anticipation and response to the walkouts -- that encourages students to "walk up, not out." Following are suggestions provided for the walk ups: Walk UP to the kid who sits ALONE and ask him to join your group Walk UP to the kid who never has a voluntary partner and offer to be hers Walk UP to your teachers and thank them! Walk UP t...

Two recent conversations -- one public, one private -- both about seemingly disparate topics, have ushered forth to my mind their conflation in one general regard: We tend to value most, the time of our life when we were young. Sometimes, the sense of nostalgia can be warm and fuzzy. Other times, melancholy. On certain other occasions, it can be crippling. But it all seems to center around the time of our lives when we were young. Consider a situation in my town where a few older houses might be torn down to make way for an expansion of one of the local high schools. The vote to approve this passed handily a year ago, however, a preservationist group has officially protested the demolition of the houses. It has created quite an interesting public conversation in the community about looking ahead, vs. what is worth saving from our past. The dialogue, thus far, has been both fascinating and frustrating. While we've learned more about our city's past, we've also seen t...

A friend's new profile photo appeared on my Facebook feed, a friend I've known since the late-1990s. Honestly, my first reaction was, "He's aged a bit." But then, looking back at the photo a moment longer, I thought, "He's actually still as beautiful as I thought he was almost two decades ago." And the beauty isn't just a remark on the physicality. It's an observance of the person, of the soul. Imperfect? Yes. But still beautiful. Ageing is an odd thing. It's been hard to escape the markers of feeling older because of the evolving physical landscape of places one once knew. The site of the hospital where I was born now sustains an apartment high-rise. Where once I knew fields at the edge of town, there is now a thriving shopping area with residences and, possibly, a new high school on the horizon. Many favorite shops and restaurants have come and gone over the years. The changing of insentient things during the passage of t...

We were standing in the waiting line at a visitation a few weeks ago, my mom and I. It was for the mother of one of mom's old high school and college friends. There were a lot of people there, and the line was moving slowly. A middle-aged woman approached us, creating a moment of recognition for mom and her. After talking briefly, the woman walked off, and mom mentioned how she'd been a high school classmate. Mom also said, "She pretty much looks the same." Now, I was a little thrown by my mom's remark about her old classmate. I could have pressed her about the comment, but didn't. The time and place seemed inappropriate. But I was curious. This woman, though she looked fairly innocuous and unassuming, by no means looked as though she'd just come out of high school. She looked, well, like a middle-aged woman. No harm in that, however, I wondered what mom had meant by how the woman pretty much looked the same. Was it just a turn-of-phrase?

There was an  article  recently in the local paper about a man who, ten years ago when he was a student at my old high school, was shown some kindness by one of the deans. She gave him a winter coat, which he desperately needed, and now that kindness is proving fruitful as the young man is helping with Unit 4's Warm-A-Kid drive. The effort is seeking to provide coats for kids who need them this winter. Check it out. All of this reminded me of the kindness and attention visited upon me by another of Champaign Centennial High School's finest deans. I refer, of course, to Mrs. Nicole Storch. She was dean long before my time at the school, and retired while I was there, much to my dismay. It's true that I've had lots of teachers whose influence and teaching style made a difference, but only one dean truly made a difference during my time in public school. I probably owe my sanity and perseverance to the efforts of this woman.