Time

Time is an interesting thing. We measure it in numerous and different ways.

To a child waiting to spring from their seat and go out for a recess, a minute feels like an hour.
To a child having the time of their life at a sleepover, an hour feels like a minute.
To a college freshman frantically trying to finish their exam, a minute slips through their fingers like water.
To a college freshman anxiously awaiting the arrival of their family, a minute feels like ages.
To an adult who is mourning a loved one, a year feels like the blink of an eye and yet also the length of a decade.

We all measure time in different ways and our concept of time changes depending on what we are doing, working towards or hoping for. How can time be something so concretely fluid?

Is there a way to stop time and soak up the love we feel? Or is there a way to speed up time in moments of immense heartbreak and loneliness?

Today, my students and I were reading a Time For Kids and exploring the greatest inventions of 2016. We were looking at and discussing the Tiangong 2 space station and a student raised their hand high into the sky. You know, the kind of hand raise that looks like they are going to take off from their seat? I was sure his comment would not be at all connected to our discussion, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"Ms. Green! Do you think they'll invent a time machine? Because I know how to travel through time!"

While this comment made me giggle a little bit (inside) ... it got me thinking about what I would do with a time machine. With a machine that would allow us to literally bend the constraints of time... When would I go? Who would I go see? And how would my arrival change our future?

I'm sure we all can name a definitive moment in our history that we would love to "replay" or "redo" or "remove" from our history ... but at what cost? Would it be worth it to see a loved one again, even if it might cause greater heartache?

I don't have the answers ... I can't even share my opinion. But the concept of time is definitely an interesting one.

When would you go? Who would you see? 

Growing Up

When you are a child, you think constantly about growing up.
I see this on a daily basis with my students who are acting well beyond their years and dreaming about when they can be a teacher because that means they can run out to Subway for lunch. They dream of growing up for greater freedom and for the ability to make decisions on their own. They think being a grown up sounds easy, and wonderful, and fun. So, I can't help but wonder ... when does that all begin?


The Earliest Years

This yearning to grow up all begins as a young child prior to going to school. There is no age limit to dreaming about your future or pretending to be grown ups. A child's imagination can develop by the age of 2, so even before they are speaking in full sentences they can start imagining their life in different ways.

You start to dress up your friends and siblings (or in my case, forced - sorry Gully-Guh) and coerce them to play house or store with you while you act out your future. It usually includes the required house, car, stellar clothing options and of course 2.5 children and a pet who usually took the form of the nearest Sesame Street stuffed animal. There weren't any obstacles in your way aside from nap time and even that could be incorporated into your game. Your life was perfect in every way and the only thing that could make it better was taking a trip to the 'store' to buy some cookies.

The Middle Years

You enter upper elementary school and you start to get serious about your future. This isn't kids play anymore. You wouldn't dare being caught playing house or dressing up and Mr and Mrs with your friends or, God forbid, your brother. No, there is far to much at stake now.

You start to play M.A.S.H with all of your friends, thinking you were so stealthy to even play if 'behind' your teacher's back while watching Bill Nye. You start to realize that it may not be all gravy to be an adult and you start to factor in some poorer options. You don't only include a mansion, apartment and house you start to include a shack and pray to the sweet baby Jesus that you don't have to live in a shack.

The beauty of the game MASH was that you got to choose the categories and you could imagine your life in as many ways as you wished. The downfall? You always had to include one terrible option in each category. So if you were choosing your future husband you always had to include someone you wouldn't want to marry even if he was the last man on earth - usually taking the form of Screech or Urkel. Yes, you had a 75% chance of choosing the best options, but that 25% was a terrifying factor. The odds start to feel stacked against you and you realize that a lot is left up to fate (or your best friend's counting abilities).

The I'm Almost a Grown Up Years

In high school you start to enter the dating world and for the first time start to look at members of the opposite (or same) sex in a different light. You start to recognize their positive and negative traits and wonder if you could see yourself staying with them at least until the end of high school. You start to recognize that having your parents finally treat you like an adult isn't that great. I mean how are you possibly supposed to pay for your own car insurance, gas and save for college while having a personal life? Can't they see that is impossible and something is just going to have to go?! Don't they want you to develop socially?

Then you leave for college and you are officially a grown you. You live on your own (okay, with 60 of dorm mates) and are required to wake yourself up every morning on your own, attend classes, get your work done AND do your own laundry. Suddenly being a grown up doesn't seem so great. Can't your mom come visit every other weekend and do your laundry so you can go to the hopping house party? No? Well, crap.

Grown Up
Then you become a grown up officially by age and status. You live on your own, hold down a steady job, pay your bills on time and buy your first car. You are responsible for everything in your life and are expected to understand it all. On top of all of that you are supposed to date, get married and start a family. It seems like an awful lot and you start to yearn for the earliest years when you could put your brother in a dress and tell him to play your best friend and you were going shopping.

In the words of Meredith Grey: When did we become adults and how do we make it stop?

Is a cow birth like a human birth?

Today I took my students on one of their all time favorite field trips of the year which, of course, happens to be my least favorite field trip of the entire year. This is a field trip where we traipse around town visiting three local farms. This trip gives our students the opportunity to visit three different types of farms and learn about what they do and how they work. This field trip is put on by the local FFA high school students, many of whom do a wonderful job.

This trip can be incredibly educational, especially for those students who have never had the opportunity to visit a farm before. Today became an interesting day, as the farm field trip typically does.

Today our students had the unique opportunity to see a calf being born. This is an incredibly amazing experience that most students will never have the opportunity to witness. In fact, it is an opportunity that most adults will never have the opportunity to witness.

However ... this does open up a massive door to questioning about how the birth process works. And because my students are inquisitive nine and ten year olds ... it absolutely bridges the gap that leads to how the human birth process works.

Imagine this...

I approach the dry dock station with a group of 12 fourth graders. Here we can easily see that one heifer is secluded from the others in the dry dock. The high schooler tells us that she is in labor right now. She asks questions of our students such as: how long do you think the gestation period is and how many calves can a heifer have?

When students failed to answer the gestation period correctly with responses such as 3 months, 1 year, 15 months and 6 months she explained that it was the same as human births. Finally, students were able to respond that it was a 9 month gestation period as they stare with wide open eyes at the heifer who know has legs protruding from ... well ... you know where. Their eyes are saucers as they try to take it all in.

Excited whispers abound. Are those legs? What is happening? Why is she making that noise? Is she really just eating?

As we are ushered quickly to our next station, my students surround me and ask several questions about how long labor can last and if it is the same for human babies. They ask questions about what the purpose of a bull or steer cow is and how the heifer gets pregnant. They ask if this is a similar process to a human baby? Then they ask about the process of labor and if it is similar to human labor.

Now, it is my turn to have eyes as big as saucers. I was a deer standing frozen in the headlights of a semi barreling down the highway. How do you answer such questions when your general mantra is to avoid the 'how babies are born' question like the plague?

To that, I have no answer. I responded with a, "Make sure you are listening to the presenter" and prayed continuously that they don't remember their questions tomorrow!

At the end of the day, a beautiful calf was born to the amazement of all students on the trip.

Not So Measured Musings

Personally, I think that Beyonce has it all wrong. She is singing an anthem to the single ladies of the world lamenting the fact that if you liked it you shoulda put a ring on it. Maybe she has it all wrong, maybe the goal isn't to finally put a ring on it but just to find someone you may someday have the briefest glimmer of wanting to put a ring on it. The problem is that when you reach a certain age and a certain point in your career path and you find yourself still living the single life ... you stop worrying about putting a ring on it but start worrying about where you may find the man who could someday put it there.

Gone are the days of meeting someone out in the real world in a “meet cute” situation. No longer are we living in the days of Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner where the man flawlessly and romantically sweeps a girl off her feet. Gone are the days when you just happen to bump your cart into another as you turn the corner - and the other cart happens to be being pushed by a single, tall, dark and handsome man. Gone are the days of flowers, swooning, opening doors and wooing of ladies.

If all of that is gone … I can’t help but ask myself - is it really worth it?

Well, as long as you are still a hopeless (hopeful???) romantic such as myself you want to think that the dream of the meet cute is still alive. Except, your meet cute isn’t going to happen randomly at the store. It has to happen online as you weed through the millions of profiles of online daters. It has to happen in the bizarrest form of speed dating where instead of talking about yourself, you write a personal ad and hope that one of the millions of fish in the sea take a chance and bite at your hook.

So join me people of the Blogger world ... Join me on the journey of my not so measured musings where I chronicle the trials of online dating, teaching and anything else that comes to mind.