The Ghost in the Music Room (RE-POST from 9/13/14)

I thought this would be an appropriate re-post for Halloween. Enjoy! (Originally published 9/13/14)

I have a ghost in my music room. I'm not kidding. I don't even believe in ghosts, and my school is only six years old. But there is seriously a ghost in my music room.

A couple of years ago, I was teaching preschoolers. Two other teachers were also in the room. My guitar sat on its stand near my far wall. No one was near it. We weren't bouncing around or doing anything that would have caused sympathetic vibrations. All of a sudden, the guitar played. It was as though someone strummed his/her fingers right over each string.

No joke.

I have credible adult witnesses.

Something played a glissando on one of my glockenspiels while I was alone after school one day. Again, all of the instruments were tucked away safely on the shelves. No one was even near them.

One spring afternoon, my third grade students were dancing "La Raspa," and the CD player started slowing down like a warped record on a turntable. (I'm sure some of you remember those old things.) The kids froze and stared at me. Normally, they would have giggled at the silly sounds coming from my stereo.

But my students take the ghost very seriously. In fact, after telling them the hilarious story about my guitar playing on its own, I realized, from their anxious expressions, I might be freaking my kids out. So I named the ghost "Fred."

That was until the opera singing incident.

"I swear I heard a woman's voice coming from your room at around ten o'clock," one of the night custodian's told me last year. "She was singing opera. She sounded just like you, but no one else was even here.

So it's unlikely that the ghost would be a "Fred," unless he's a countertenor.

Our current custodian told me she was cleaning near my room when she heard someone whisper her name and then break into laughter. Again, it was late evening, and no one else was in the building.

"I've been cleaning your room for a week, and I haven't heard anything," scoffed the other night custodian who was listening in on our conversation.

"Just wait," we said in unison.

This week, I've heard a knock on my exterior door twice while teaching class. Both time, the kids and I looked out the window, and no one was there. No wayward children were wandering around the courtyard either or running away guiltily after playing a little ding-dong ditch.

My husband, Dan, thinks that the music room might have an opening to a parallel world.

"Think about it," he said. "The woman is an opera singer who sounds just like you. She laughs, which you do a lot. She likes music and hangs out mostly in your room. The ghost could just be another you."

"Because that's so much more believable than a ghost," I said.

"It's quantum physics," he said. "You know, string theory?"

"You mean like Fringe?" I said. "Are you the Peter Bishop to my Olivia?"

"Do you want me to build you a window to the other universe?"

 

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Decluttering Dan (RE-POST from 6/2/12)

Dan freaked out the other day when he discovered that I had cleared out a pile of papers that had been sitting on our kitchen counter since the beginning of October. It reminded me of this post from 2012. (Originally published 6/2/12)

"You're going to blog about this, aren't you? You'll exaggerate, and people will think our house is trashy and cluttered like a hoarder's house or something . . ." Dan threw a few receipts onto the dining room table, the same dining room table that I had declared paper-scrap-free just seconds before. "Our house isn't trashy, you know. Most houses are a lot worse than ours."

This was coming from a man who, during his bachelor pad years, "sorted" his clothes by throwing the dirty ones on the closet floor until laundry day.

Dan and I don't fight very often. Dan doesn't talk much which means he doesn't "talk back" much either. (It's nice having a quiet husband.) Besides, we're on the same page about most everything. But our one consistent source of contention comes down to organizing random papers - bills, receipts, junk mail, owners manuals, warranties, etc.

That's not to say that Dan isn't an organized person. What looks like mounds of scrap paper to the naked eye truly is some sort of system that he has worked out somewhere in his head but has failed to share with the rest of us. Even his "dirty-clothes-on-the-floor" approach had a kind of order-from-the-chaos feel to it. (Dan did have a laundry basket, by the way. It sat empty beside his piles of clothes.)

When Dan and I first started dating, his kitchen table was covered with piles of papers.

"I still need to look through them," he would mumble.

But I wasn't worried. I just figured I would just introduce him to my foolproof filing system if we ever ended up together for eternity, and that he would acclimate quite well, as he had done when I suggested he use the empty laundry basket as a dirty clothes holder.

Throughout our eight years of marriage though, our dining room table has rarely been cleared off. And here is the problem with using our dining room table as a filing cabinet. It is the first thing people see when they enter our house. It is like the living room that my brother and I weren't really allowed to "live in" when we were growing up. We could play in the family room or the rec room, but the living room was the room that would serve as the spread for InStyle magazine if my mother ever became a bestselling author. (Okay, now you understand about my background and about why piles of stuff send me into a neurotic frenzy.)

I tried making Dan a to-do file. It sits by my to-do file bursting at the seams with papers and receipts, some of which are two or three years old. I touched it the other day, and a CD entitled "Ubuntu 11.10 Desktop 32-bit" fell out.

"I still need to look through that," Dan muttered when I asked.

Sometimes the piles of papers are joined by the contents of Dan's pockets - a cell phone, a wallet, car keys, a pair of sunglasses, a work badge, spare change, a stick of gum, and whatever else shows up in men's pockets these days. I'd rather not know.

Here is the conversation that ensues when I attempt to help Dan come up with a new system:

Dan: "Did you move my pile again?"

Me: "Yes, it's in the cedar box in the kitchen."

Dan: "I won't remember to look for it there."

Me: "You won't remember to grab your keys before you drive your car?"

Dan: "There's too much stuff in that box. I'll get confused."

Me: "You're that easily confused? By a couple of gift cards and prescription receipts? Anyone walking by our house can see your wallet, cell phone, iPod, and car keys sitting on the table. You want to invite thieves over for dinner or what?"

Dan: "And where are my piles of papers? I still need to look through them."

Me: "You mean the owners' manual for the TV we bought six months ago? They are also in the brown box, along with the remote control from the old TV that you must have been using as a paper weight since we obviously have no use for it anymore."

Dan: "See. I forgot to go through them because you hid them. When they sit on our dining room table, it helps me remember to go through them."

Me: "So write it on the whiteboard on the fridge."

 Dan: "I don't look at the whiteboard."

Me: "I do. I'll help you remember. Believe me. I will help you."

It struck me that this conversation was similar to one I had heard many times as a child - about my father's compost pile. My mother thought it was gross. My father, an avid gardener, thought it was necessary. (Personally, as a lover of all things organic, I am quite fond of my compost pile.) Dan and I were turning into my parents.

Needless to say, the table is clear for now. There is a big note on the whiteboard that reads, "Dan's filing" under our to-do list. I wonder how long it will take for those piles of papers to sneak their way back onto that dining room table.

For the latest blog updates, visit and "like" Rebecca Turner-Duggan.

The Halloween Candy Dilemma (RE-POST FROM 11/4/11)

This post was originally published on 11/4/11. Enjoy this blast from the past!

As my husband and I prepared for Halloween, I was consumed with a nagging sense of guilt that had been festering over the last few years.

My students get almost more excited about Halloween than they do about Christmas, all that frenzy over a pillowcase full of free sugar. On top of that, on Fridays at my school, the kids can buy popcorn, Popsicles, and - on special occasions - cotton candy. This year, the "special occasion" happened to fall on the Friday before Halloween - as if they weren't going to be eating enough junk already.

Of course, I suppose I contribute to this problem. I have a couple packages of Dum Dums and Smarties (notice the cute juxtaposition) hidden in my classroom for students who help me move instruments or risers around.

Our school also sponsors a special trick-or-treat night where the kids can parade through the school, after hours, in their costumes, while the teachers stand in front of their classrooms and pass out candy. It actually makes for a fun evening, and it's a great excuse to see the kids in their Halloween best. But it also means kids get two nights of trick-or-treating or, in other words, double the candy.

I started to reevaluate my feelings about handing out candy on Halloween. Plus, I was not happy with the Hershey Corporation's recent use of foreign student slave labor. How could Dan and I promote a healthy lifestyle and be socially responsible on Halloween, the sugariest night of the year?

On Cotton Candy/Popcorn Friday, I discussed my misgivings with my co-workers in the faculty room. One teacher said that she and her husband give their grandkids graham crackers and a couple of pieces of candy. Another teacher said that she buys playing or trading cards at Costco as alternatives to sweets.

"I'm thinking about handing out apples and toothbrushes this year," I lied, knowing I would never have the guts to do that.

“That's a good way to get your house egged," said one of the student teachers.

Dan and I had just watched a TV show the night before where one of the characters decided to give full-size candy bars to the trick-or-treaters.

“I’m going to be the hero of the neighborhood,” the guy announced proudly, accompanied by a laugh track. Dan and I - sheepishly - shared that sentiment.

We didn't want to be the uncool, granola neighbors. I had heard my students talk about those people.

"Oh, you're that house," one of my former students said when I told her I had considered handing out fruit this year. "Some hippie lady gave us organic chocolate, and it's disgusting."

"One lady said she ran out of candy so she gave me an apple instead," another student once told me disdainfully.

So, Dan and I found ourselves at the grocery store staring at shelf after shelf of chocolate gluttony.

"We could get sugar-free candy,” Dan suggested half-heartedly.

"That's almost as bad as giving them dental floss."

"It's kind of the parents' job to monitor how much candy their kids eat."

With that part of my conundrum rationalized, we took up the daunting task of deciding what kind of candy to buy. As I said earlier, we were boycotting Hershey this Halloween. Dan also said he had heard socially irresponsible things about Nestle.

"I don't know about Mars. It's probably just as bad," Dan said.

"Well, ignorance is bliss, I guess."

(And yes, I discovered later, Mars Incorporated has had similar labor/fair practice issues in the past. It is supposedly taking steps to rectify this, not that my expectations are all that high.)

Then we had to decide how many bags to buy. The big bags were 30 cents per ounce, and the small bags were 20 cents per ounce.

"I'm not spending that much on these weirdo kids just so they can have free candy and get diabetes," I said, reaching for the small bags. "No more than one - two pieces max."

"It's okay if we have leftovers," Dan hinted.

"Yeah, we can just eat it all to keep the kids from making bad nutritional choices."

It took the first little Woody from Toy Story ringing our doorbell - "Twick ow Tweat!" - to make me forget about my aversion toward the candy industry.

"You want a piece of candy? Here, take four or five!"

We ended up running to the store and buying two more bags.

At school the next day, one of my fourth graders brought me an apple. She was only the second student to bring me an apple in my ten years of teaching. Did she really love me, her wonderful music teacher? Or did she just make the mistake of trick-or-treating at the neighborhood hippie house the night before?

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The Day I Killed the Shredder

A few weeks ago, my husband, Dan, came home to, "You need to fix the shredder."

I had been shredding some old documents from school, and I had gotten overly confident about the number of papers I could feed through at a time.

The shredder decided it had enough, and I, determined to finish the job, reversed and forwarded the machine several times, the papers balling up more and more between the blades.

Eventually, I unplugged the shredder because the motor wouldn't stop running, and nothing was moving through the machine anyway.

"It almost worked," I told Dan as he pulled out a screwdriver. "I was so close."

Dan just stared at me with his famous crinkled eyebrow expression.

A few minutes later, after he had tinkered a little with the shredder, I heard him say, "Maybe I should buy a new one."

"It’s that bad?" I asked.

"It’s pretty bad."

"Are you mad at me?"

"Yes," he said, but he didn’t sound very mad.

A while after that, after much grumbling and grunting, Dan stared at the machine and exclaimed, "What the heck is going on?"


About a half-hour later, Dan announced that he was going to buy a new machine, a wider one, because you had to feed paper through our current shredder absolutely straight, or it didn't work.

"That's not exactly what happened," I said. "I just tried to shove too many papers through at once."

"No, really. I've been thinking about it."

"You're being too nice to me."

"I'm always nice to you when you do stupid stuff."

A little while later, after opening top of the shredder, Dan said with a sigh, "That didn't help like I thought it would."

"Holy cow!" He was now covered in tiny pieces of paper. "Okay, where did the other screw go?"

About fifteen minutes passed, and then I heard the familiar sound of a properly working shredder.

Dan rolled the vacuum into the living room without a word. I gave him the thumbs up sign and smiled.

"Is it the wrong time to ask if I can shred the rest of my documents?"

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When the Utopia Ends (RE-POST FROM 10/13/12)

 I wrote this post two years ago. It still holds true today. 

It has happened. The honeymoon is over.

Here is the hallway chatter from today:

"It's the weekend!" (with a relieved sigh).

"Thank goodness it's Friday!"

"Math with this class is like being in a very dark place."

Even my student teacher said, "I feel like I've worked really hard this week, putting out fires and keeping kids entertained."

Now that we are eight weeks in, the weather changes, the darker mornings, and Halloween being just around the corner are taking their toll on our up-until-this-point calm beginning to the school year.

Just this morning, I heard someone say, "I think this is the smoothest start we've had since our school opened."

Then this afternoon, I saw two of our repeat offenders from previous years looking chagrined and being marched inside from recess. And these kids had been doing so well.

In my class, a kid stood with his hands down his pants and yelled, "I think I broke the root of my tooth!"

Another one said quite loudly, "I just don't feel the beat! I just don't feel it!"

And yet another brought a plush toy frog to music and, instead of singing "This Land is Your Land," croaked, "Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!"

"Am I doing something wrong?" my student teacher asked.

"No, it just means they feel comfortable with you now. Take it as a compliment."

Then I added, "But don't forget to nail them to the wall if they deserve it."

So we're back. The never-a-dull-moment aspect of my career has resurfaced. As crazy as it sounds, it is why I love my job. And I am sure I will have many more entertaining anecdotes as the year progresses.

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