Just Call Me Grandma

As an elementary music teacher, who sees almost 500 students a year, I've been compared to several cartoon characters and celebrities. 

 

But the 2024-25 school year was the first time I was ever compared to a grandma.

 

To be fair, I probably am older than some of these kids' grandparents, and I do have a few children of former students that I call my "grand-students." 

 

One day, my first grade class kept saying things like, “You look good today, Mrs. Duggan.” 

 

"I really like your shirt." 

 

"Me too." 

 

"That's a nice shirt." 

 

When this particular class was over, they lined up at my door, and one of the students said, “My grandma has that shirt.” 

 

Another student chimed in, “Yeah, I think my grandma does too.” 

 

 

That evening, I was at a rehearsal, and one of my (adult) friends commented that he liked my blouse.

 

"Thanks for not saying your grandma has one too," I said.

 

A couple of days later, I was running my air purifier because it was spring, and kids track in all kinds of allergens from recess. 

 

Also, they bring me dandelions All. Day. Long. 

 

“My grandmother has one of those,” one of my second graders said, pointing to my air purifier, and then he placed a bunch of dandelions on my desk.

 

My students don't always compare me to their grandmothers. Sometimes they sound like the grandparents.

 

When I jog with the kids’ running club, they complain constantly. 

 

It’s like, "I’m 48 years old, and I’m kicking your ass right now." (I don't phrase it that way exactly.)

"My back hurts," a third grader whined in class one afternoon.
 

"You sound like you're 65," I told him.

 

"You’re not 65," another boy said, winning me over completely. "You’re like 35."

 
"Well, thank you."

"You’re not tall enough to be 65." 
 

At one point during the school year, we had posted childhood pictures on a bulletin board, and the students were supposed to match the teacher to the picture.

 

One of my sixth graders saw my picture and guessed who I was right away. Apparently, I'm still somewhat recognizable in my old age.

 

"You still have the same hair," he said. 

In all honesty, I have aged quite a bit since COVID. 

 

But, man, I've earned these wrinkles!

 

And nobody, not even Botox, is going to take that away from me.

 

 

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

Yet Another Birthday Goes By

I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago. It seems like I have one every year now, and it seems like my birthdays are closer together than they used to be.

 

 

This year, I turned forty-eight, which means I can't get away with calling myself mid-forties anymore. That ship sailed at forty-seven. 

 

I spent my actual birthday at the theater (of course), running projections for MTI's production of The Prince of Egypt.

 

 

 

That morning, I went on my first summer break trail run. 

 

On a side note, a woman in her sixties was running (not walking) the trails, and I thought, "Oh good! I have a few years left in me."

 

Then I stopped at Starbucks for a free birthday drink. 

  

 

 

After I returned from the theater that evening, my husband, Dan, surprised me with a strawberry cake. 

 

I had been telling him for several years about my Aunt Alice's strawberry cake recipe, and how my mother would often make it, at my request, for my birthday. 

 

Dan's version was a from a box. Honestly, if I baked one for myself it would be from a box too. 

 

As far as gifts go, I received a mini greenhouse for my house plants. Now I don't have to use the kitchen table for all of my plants. (I can't guarantee that the kitchen table is completely cleared though. I have A LOT of house plants.)

 

 

 

I also got a new Weezer shirt. For those of you who don't know me at all, I'm a ride-or-die Weezer fan! 

 

 

Another fun fact, I have been working on my Sally O'Malley impression since I turned forty.

 

"Are you going to do this for the next ten years?" Dan asked, as I "kicked and stretched" through the first year of my forties. 

 

"Um, yeah. It's the reason I'm looking forward to my fifties!"

 

Guess what? Only two more years . . .  

 

 

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

Can I Get a Booster?

I can’t see over the piano in my classroom. It's a studio upright. The fact that I can't see over the piano also means I can't see kids messing around. Until last year, I solved this issue by sitting on textbooks. 

(Don't tell anyone, but I have also been known to stand on these textbooks, on a chair, to reach my top shelves. I should probably just ask for a ladder.)

 

 

 

By my calculations, my school piano is around forty years old, but it's in pretty good shape, considering it's only eight years younger than I am. 

 

The piano tuner did tell me once that he had found dried up liquid dumped inside the top. 

 

"It looked like blood," he said. "It could have been coffee." 

 

"Weird. That must have been before my time," I said. 

 

I have no recollection of spilling blood or coffee inside the piano. 

 

This year, with ten years left until retirement, I decided to forgo the textbooks and buy a booster seat. 

 

My booster seat is similar to those cushions they have available at Broadway touring performances since auditorium seats are not made the five-foot-two and under crowd.

 

 

 

After using my cushion for a couple of days, realizing the kids couldn't fully see my death glare, I decided I could use a higher booster, and I bought a second one. 

 

"You bought a second booster seat?" my husband, Dan, asked.

 

"Shut up." 

 

When the kids figured out I sat on cushions, they asked to see what I look like behind piano without them.

 

I showed them.

 

"WHOA!" they exclaimed in unison.

 

Mrs. Duggan, sitting on two booster seats, looking over her classroom piano

One afternoon, my supervisor told me they are looking into replacing the school district pianos. It's a five-year plan, so it may be a while. 

 

"Will I be able to see over it?" 

 

I sat on the booster-less piano bench to demonstrate what I meant. He laughed as my head disappeared behind the upper panel.

 

"That sounds like a you problem!"

 

I guess the answer is "no."  

 

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

That Time I Found Out I Needed Reading Glasses

 

I have terrible eyesight. I don't see anything but blobs beyond six inches in front of my face. I have been wearing glasses since I was seven and contacts since I was about twelve. 

 

When I order new contacts or glasses, the eye center clerks always warn me it may take longer than most orders because of my "unusual prescription." That's fine with me. I have nothing to compare it to. I have no idea how long it takes the normal world to receive their corrective lens orders. 

 

My eye doctor always reassured me that my up-close vision is perfect, in fact, better than perfect, and that someone with severe myopia, (me), often has good reading vision.

Until now . . . 

 

I turned forty-seven, and suddenly, my body started doing ALL the middle-aged things.

 

During my most recent eye doctor visit, after failing the near-sighted (far away) eye exams miserably, I was presented with my far-sighted test. I typically ace this test, down to the tiniest print.

 

For the first time in my life, I stared at the exam and said nothing.

 

"Can you read the bottom line?" my eye doctor asked.

 

I just stared and sighed.

"What about the second-to-last line?" he asked, with a note of sympathy.

I sighed again.

He handed me my first ever readers prescription.

 

"It's very slight," he said. "You can always throw on a pair just to read the smaller fonts."

 

He went on to explain that since he had to increase my contact prescription this time around, my reading vision will also be worse while wearing corrective lenses. 

 

 

So . . . I wear reading glasses now. And the results are in.

 

Dan says I look like a librarian, and then he winks and wiggles his eyebrows, leading me to believe this might be compliment.

 

If you know anything about elementary age students, you know that, in their world, getting glasses, braces, or a haircut are equal to Clark Kent turning into Superman.  

 

When I pull out my glasses to read the class roster, it is a big deal. 

 

"These are my old people glasses," I tell them as they gasp in astonishment at my transformation in appearance.

 

When I forget to put my glasses on, I've noticed I need a selfie stick to read anything these days.

 

One night at a rehearsal, I forgot to pull my glasses out of my purse, and I was holding my script as far away from my face as I could manage. 

 

One of the younger guys in the cast leaned over and whispered, "Do you want me to just tell you the words?"

I was tuning my guitar one day without my glasses, and I couldn't figure out why it sounded so wrong. I was using a guitar tuner, and the light was lining up right in the center like it was supposed to, but the G string did not sound like a G at all. 

 

It turned out I couldn't see the tiny sharp sign next to the G on my tuner. I was playing a perfect G-sharp.

 

Fun fact: I have been leaving my reading glasses everywhere. They have been turned into the front office twice now. If that doesn't signify my progression into old age, I don't know what does.

 

 

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

Reading Challenge 2024 Or How I Reached My Goal By Lowering It

 

For a few years, I tried to be clever when setting my reading challenge goal. In those days, I matched the goal to the year. For instance, I read 20 books in 2020 and 21 books in 2021 and 22 books in 2022, until last year, when I #epicfailed to meet my complete my challenge, 23 books in 2023. 

I did, however, read 20 books in 2023, and that seemed like a nice round number, and it's a multiple of 5 (I like round numbers and multiples of 5), so I stuck with that for my 2024 reading challenge. 

 

I know a 20-book-challenge doesn't seem like a lot to the more voracious readers out there. I totally intend to read more books after I retire in a decade or so. 

But for my busy musician, performer, and/or music teacher friends with full-time jobs that require you to direct or participate in performances, concerts, and programs outside of your regular workday (ALL. YEAR. LONG.), this goal is for you! 

 

 

Becky's 20 Books of 2024 

 

JANUARY

1. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Notes and Favorites: Everything Whitehead writes is a little different from the last, and I have loved every one of them. I’ll be interested to see what Ray Carney is up to in the next installment.
 

2. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Notes and Favorites: What a ride! At one point, I said out loud, while sitting by my husband on the couch, “What the hell just happened?!”

 

FEBRUARY
3. We Are All the Same In the Dark by Julia Heaberlin
Notes and Favorites: I might be turning into my grandmother in my middle-age, reading and loving quick, twisty mysteries. 

MARCH
4. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit
Notes and Favorites: I recently watched the musical adaptation of this story and decided to read (and finish this time, having started it a few times in my preteen days) the book. It's a well-written story, but I felt like the conclusion in the live theater version is truer to the theme of the cyclical nature of life. 

 

 

APRIL
5. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Notes and Favorites: Although a little chick-lit-y for me in places, I did enjoy this read in the end. The characters and plot points were a little derivative, their dialogue anachronistic at times, but the book started piquing my interest once it got into the history of the Dust Bowl, the migrant camps in the California, and the politics of the time. She's no Steinbeck, but I ended up enjoying it and really invested in the characters.

 
MAY
6. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.
Notes and Favorites: Oh boy! Did I pick up on the tension between Margaret's parents and the in-laws on both sides this time! It went completely over my head when I was a kid. No wonder my parents related to this book as much as I did back in the day LOL. Also, I remember doing ALL of these things with my friends when I was a preteen (and moving to a new school/state during at about the same age as Margaret).
 

JUNE
7. Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Notes and Favorites: After a road trip this summer that included touring the Laura Ingalls Wilder historic places in De Smet, South Dakota, I decided to go back and attempt to get through the entire “Little House” series. I started with this one because I read the first book fairly recently, during my last challenge.
 

8. Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese
Notes and Favorites: This book speculates that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne might have been more than just a fictional character. It's also a survival story about women in young America. 

9. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Notes and Favorites: This third book is an interesting (notice I didn’t say accurate or positive) depiction of relations between America’s indigenous population and its early pioneer settlers. It’s definitely written through the lens of a product of that era, white westward expansion settlers. “Pa,” surprisingly, has a more sympathetic take on the Native Americans, acknowledging they have been pushed off their land over and over again by the government. However, it’s obvious that the Ingalls and their neighbors are illegally squatting in Native American territory in an attempt to grab the best land plot before the government opened it to homesteading.
 

10. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
Notes and Favorites: I can't really say much about this one for fear of giving something away, but I'll just say it's a quick, twisty ride, perfect for summer. 

 

 

JULY
11. On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Notes and Favorites: I enjoyed rereading this one in the Little House series. Some of the characters from the TV show are introduced (the notorious Nellie Olson, for one). 

12. All's Well by Mona Awad
Notes and Favorites: Part Macbeth, part All's Well That Ends Well, throw in some magic realism, witchcraft, and “what did I just read?” . . . This book was a fantastic ride. I loved Bunny, but I think I loved this one even more. 

AUGUST
13. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Notes and Favorites: We don't read about this “Reign of Terror” in our history books, but we should. As Americans, we need to understand the values that truly saturate our country. “The blood cries out from the ground” (p. 316). 

SEPTEMBER
14. By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Notes and Favorites: These next few books are set in the area we visited this summer, which was the reason I started rereading these stories. This is the book where baby Grace suddenly appears and where Pa plants the five Cottonwood trees. We saw those very trees on their South Dakota homestead. 

 

 

OCTOBER
15. Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Notes and Favorites: It's that time of year again, time for some spooky short stories to end October. This one was especially interesting after recently having read about Hawthorne's family connection to the Salem Witch Trials.
 

16. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
Notes and Favorites: I kept thinking I had read this one in high school, but, actually, I might be remembering it from The Twilight Zone episode. 

NOVEMBER
17. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
Notes and Favorites: If you like the current trend of Greek myths being retold through a fresh lens, this book is an entertaining read. But don't expect it to be as well-written or moving as Circe or Song of Achilles. 

18. The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Notes and Favorites: While rereading this book in the series, I was reminded that I wrote my own version of this story in 3rd grade about a pioneer family getting pounded by blizzards. In my story, Pa was upset that he didn't have any sons, just plucky daughters who could do anything boys could do. This was possibly my first foray into exploring feminism as an 8-year-old. 

DECEMBER
19. The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden
Notes and Favorites: Again, just like The Housemaid, it's so fun and twisty. And I'm pretty attached to Millie now. 

20. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Notes and Favorites: Christmas Day seemed like the perfect time to reread this one. I listened to the Tim Curry audiobook version after it was recommended on a podcast, and, yes, I would second that recommendation. 

 

Also, Republicans would benefit from reading this story . . . "Are there no prisons? . . . And the Union workhouses? . . . Are they still in operation?" 

 

Just sayin' . . .

 

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

All of the Wintery Fun Things at the End of 2024

Dan and Becky on Christmas Eve between making music at multiple services

We didn't get around to sending out Christmas cards this year. In fact, at the rate my holiday season has been going these last few years, I'm not sure I will send out Christmas cards or put up a tree ever again. #MusicianAtChristmasTime

 

However, I did have a fun and eventful holiday season. I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from the last couple of months. Enjoy!

The weather cooperated, and we made it to Twin Falls for Thanksgiving and the Turkey Trot 5K this year.

 

 

What a joy I had, performing the role of Betty Haynes (portrayed in the movie by the iconic Rosemary Clooney) with this lovely cast in White Christmas. And, guys! I'm not going be performing roles like this much longer because I'm gettin' OLD!

 

 

After White Christmas, I returned to my day job . . . also a pleasure at this time of the year . . . 

Fun run with the school!

Choir Concert and Holiday Breakfast Caroling

Cute 1st and 2nd graders always make the best winter program!

 

Winter break began, and I celebrated my anniversary (21 years, baby!), cast our school's spring musical, and hung out in Sun Valley, where we found snow!

 

 

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