The Unexpected Joy of Being Forgetful

Surprise!

A place to explore: The Triple Door in Seattle

My husband and I always spend our anniversary in whatever city the Seattle Mariners are playing baseball on the day. Last year, we got to fly to Toronto.¹ The year before that, Minneapolis. This year the Mariners were home so we had a little staycation.

A few months ago I bought tickets for the Mariners. Since it was a day game, we decided to catch a show that night. After checking around to see who was playing at The Moore, Jazz Alley, and the like, we settled on The Triple Door, a dinner-and-a-show venue downtown. I bought the tickets and promptly forgot who we would be seeing.

Several months passed. Last Wednesday, we got to the place early, and I was happily finishing my ahi tuna when the band came on. I sipped my wine in mild content, expecting a random jazz band.

The band started playing “It’s All Been Done,” at which point I had five thoughts in rapid succession:

1. Hey! I know this song!

2. This is a Barenaked Ladies Song!

3. Are we seeing a Barenaked Ladies cover band?

4. This guy sounds EXACTLY like the Barenaked Ladies singer.

5. Oh yeah! We’re seeing the Barenaked Ladies vocalist! This is so exciting!

I’d forgotten we’d gotten tickets to see Steven Page, co-founder, vocalist, and songwriter for Barenaked Ladies. Before he left the band in 2009 for a solo career, he sang and wrote classics like “Brian Wilson,” “If I Had A Million Dollars,” and “It’s All Been Done.”

Not a cover band. This and all pictures by Jenna Vandenberg.

It was a great show.

A book to read: Paper Towns, by John Green

I’ve read this book before.

I’ve read everything John Green has ever published, from LOOKING FOR ALASKA in 2005 to EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS, which I’m currently reading. PAPER TOWNS came out in 2008. That’s probably the last time I read it.

Until last week, when my daughter and I started listening to the book.

You see, I have the enviable problem of having two daughters who love books. Despite having bookshelves stuffed with children’s literature and having the entire Sno-Isle Library system at their disposal, they are always whining about how they don’t have enough things to read.

My 10-year-old tears through YA (young adult) novels. In a quest to keep her from reading about sex, I keep handing her historical fiction which she discards in favor of fantasy worlds crafted by Suzanne Collins and Kendare Blake or murder mysteries that give her nightmares.

I’m such a classic stupid American, worried that my kid will read about sex, but fine with her reading A GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER.

My 12-year-old however, has regressed. She’s sunk back into old childhood favorites, reading about Wimpy Kids and Baby-Sitters Clubs. Whenever I hand her a slightly more challenging text that I know she would love, she waves me off.

Here she is! Age four, “reading” Cheryl Strayed

Trickery is needed.

She likes funny, contemporary books, so I checked out the audio version of John Green’s PAPER TOWNS from the library. I didn’t remember much of the book, but I did recall that it opens with an epic one-night mission as the main character and his neighbor go on a revenge tour of Orlando, shaving off the eyebrows of their enemies.

My plan: Hook my daughter into the story with the audio and then halfway through, whisk away the audio and leave the paperback in its place, forcing her to actually read something above a 4th-grade reading level if she ever wants to find out what happens to Margo Roth Spiegelman.

My plan is sort of failing. She loves the story and asks that I turn on the audio whenever we are in the car. However, when I handed her the book while we were stuck in an hour-long wait at the passport office, she was uninterested. She doesn’t have a cell phone or anything. She just sat there doing nothing for an hour.

Last night, both girls were reading in their rooms.

• The 12-year-old: Was reading an illustrated Dork Diaries book

• The 10-year-old: Was reading PAPER TOWNS

Now, I really want to listen to the end of PAPER TOWNS on audio. I don’t remember how the book ends and I’m loving listening to it with my kid. Turns out I don’t have the parenting backbone to actually deny her the auditory ending to a novel after all.

A lesson to teach: Visual Timelines for Forgetful Students

Just like I forget what shows I buy tickets for and the endings of books I’ve already read, my students forget things too. They forget deadlines, my name, entire units I’ve taught, and chargers for their laptops.

A good way to combat some of this forgetfulness is to keep a visual reminder of what you teach on the classroom wall.

Because I teach World History linearly, I start the year with a blank timeline. Every week or two I write a sentence about what we’ve been learning on colored paper and stick it on the timeline along with a visual we’ve used in class. This helps students remember what they’ve learned AND it helps them contextualize historical moments.

For example, when I introduce The Holocaust, I point to the BCE section at the beginning of the timeline where I have a map of the Jewish Diaspora. I remind students about the Romans kicking Jews out of Israel. Then I point to a picture of a Plague Doctor from the 1300s and remind students about how Jews were blamed for the Black Death. Then I point to the 1500s and remind students about the Spanish Inquisition. Hopefully, this drives home the point that Hitler didn’t invent Anti-Semitism, but was pulling from 2000 years of hatred and prejudice. It’s an important thing to know.

Confession: This is a teacher thing I used to be really good at keeping up with but this year, I dutifully put up pictures and captions of what I taught in September and October and then I tapered off and then I stopped completely. I haven’t put anything up in months :(

In keeping with our newsletter theme here, you could say I am forgetting to add to the classroom timeline, but in all honesty…it’s just laziness.

Happy teaching, traveling, and reading! See y’all next Sunday.

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1. When linking this post from last year I accidentally sent a copy of it to my subscribers. Sorry about that folks!