Melanie and the unhelpful tag of the "gifted" student

Mel and me, circa 2004

Today is our daughter Melanie's 26th birthday, a joyous occasion to celebrate one of the smartest, funniest, most beautiful people I know.

It's also a day on which I wonder how helpful it is for our education system to brand some young kids as "gifted" and others not.

To explain...

When I was a student at Mapledale Elementary School back in the late 70s and early 80s, there was a point at which they separated some of us into an honors class. I don't know how they determined this, whether it was by test scores, subjective teacher evaluations, or a combination.

Whatever the criteria, those of us branded as "smart" were suddenly segregated from our classmates to experience a somewhat advanced curriculum designed for "gifted" students.

The "gifted" label stuck with us through the rest of our public schooling, for better or worse.

The better part of it, I suppose, was that thinking of myself as a smart kid gave me a confidence that was at times helpful and at other times wholly undeserved. Either way, I tried a lot of different things growing up because I figured that, as a gifted student, I would probably be good at them.

That was not usually the case. Not by a longshot.

The sobering part of being one of the smart kids is that, at some point later in life, you come to realize you're not necessarily any smarter than anyone else. Or at least I know I'm not.

I got to be in the honors classes not because of an elevated IQ or exceptional talent, but rather because of my chronic need to please and subsequent drive to study hard and meet expectations. I worked hard and got good grades, so they figured I must be smart. The jury is still out on that one.

So what does any of this have to do with Melanie?

Also Mel and me, also circa 2004

Mel did very well in school, but she was the only one of our kids who wasn't part of Wickliffe's "Above & Beyond" program for gifted students. Again, I don't know why her siblings got in and she didn't, and ultimately it probably doesn't matter.

One time, a friend of the family found out Mel was the one Tennant kid not in A&B and jokingly said to her, "Oh, so you're the dumb one?"

It was NOT helpful, and it was obviously untrue to anyone who knew our family at all.

Terry, especially, spent years working with Mel to boost her self-confidence. Mel is as smart and as capable as any of her brothers and sisters, "gifted" or not. Talk with her for 5 minutes and you'll realize how sharp she is.

All of which makes me wonder what "smart/gifted" really means for an 11-year-old, and whether we're doing more harm than good withholding that designation from kids who, over time, show themselves to be every bit the equal (or superior) of their supposedly advanced peers.

It all worked out in Melanie's case, and for that we're grateful. Happy birthday to my 26-year-old smart kid!

I haven't been a tall person in more than 40 years, but I still occasionally do tall person things

My son Jack making me look like a dwarf.

I was just down in our basement laundry room taking clothes out of the dryer when I stood up and nearly hit my head on the metal gas pipe running across the ceiling.

Actually, my head didn't come anywhere near the pipe, but I flinched as if it had. This is funny for a few reasons:

1. That pipe is probably 6 1/2 feet above the floor. I am not, have never been, nor ever will be 6 feet, 6 inches tall.
   
   
2. For that matter, I am not, have never been, nor ever will be even 6 feet tall.
   
   
3. The last time I was considered anything approaching "tall" was during Ronald Reagan's first term.

As I've chronicled here before, I spent a few early years of my life being tall. From about 5th grade through 8th grade, I was taller than most of my peers.

This was only because I hit puberty way before the majority of my classmates. I spent 6th grade literally looking down on them with my suddenly deep voice and hilariously wispy mustache.

I played two years of middle school basketball as a center, not because I was especially skilled but because I was still relatively tall and could grab rebounds.

I could also commit fouls, which I did with frequency. I fouled out of almost every game in which I played.

Genetics being what they are, I stopped growing and everyone eventually caught up to me. I have spent my adult life at a shade under 5-10, which mathematically makes me of slightly above-average height compared with the typical 5-9 American male, but in reality has meant I'm just another guy who isn't short but isn't tall.

Still, even three years of tall person-hood back in the early 80s ingrained in me certain tall person habits that surface from time to time. Like ducking under metal pipes that are nowhere close to my head and thinking I can reach things on the top shelf of the grocery store when in fact I can't.

My sons are fairly tall at 6-1 (Jared) and 6-2 (Jack), but that either comes from Terry's side of the family or a recessive gene linked to my Uncle Jim, the tallest of my dad's brothers.

I don't remember how short I really am until I stand next to one or both of my boys, at which point I feel like the mayor of Munchkinland.

But I will always remember the time when I was the Shaquille O'Neal of Mapledale Elementary School. It was glorious.

Hearkening back to when I was tall. Bob Holmes to my immediate right was the only boy who could challenge me for vertical endowment.

My interactions with recreational fireworks as a kid were nearly disastrous

I don't know if kids still do this, but when I was growing up, my friends and I would play with fireworks any and every chance we got.

By "fireworks," I mean not only things that make loud noises, but also relatively innocent stuff like black snakes, smoke bombs, pop-its, and jumping jacks. If you could light it or throw it, and it did something cool, we were all over it.

In general, we were all over anything involving fire. I don't know what drove us to be such little pyromaniacs, but we loved us some flames.

The problem was, at least as far as I was concerned, the potential for injury was real and frequent. I never actually got hurt playing with fireworks, but that was only by the grace of God.

I remember once being with my friend Matt, who had gotten his hands on an M-80. These little bombs were the kings of neighborhood fireworks simply because of the explosive power and noise they generated. We couldn't have been more than 10 years old, yet here we were playing with something that could have blown our fingers off.

We decided to wedge the M-80 into a little crack in a picnic table at the playground. Matt lit it and we backed up a few feet. When it went off, splinters of wood flew in almost every direction, with one whizzing within an inch or two of my head. It could easily have gone into my eye.

Then there was the time Matt and Kevin were shooting bottle rockets across the street. I opened the front door to our house to see what was going on, and they very smartly decided to shoot one straight at me. I didn't get hit, but it did enter our house before exploding just inside the storm door.

I almost got in big trouble for that one.

My worst near-miss, without a doubt, was the time I nearly burned down my school with a jumping jack.

I've told this story here on the blog before. Here's how I described the incident in a post 10 years ago:

I was playing with a pack of jumping jacks I'd, um, borrowed from my dad. I was with my nephew Mark, who had to have been only 6 or 7 years old at the time. We were by the old Mapledale Elementary School, and ringing the building was a two-foot-high pile of dry leaves. My genius idea was to light a jumping jack and throw it into these leaves, so that's what I did. The leaves, of course, immediately caught fire, and the flames started spreading rapidly around the perimeter of the building. Mark and I ran away as fast as we could. Someone who was there told the cops I had done it, and by the time I got home, there was a Wickliffe police cruiser waiting in the driveway for me. My mother was, to put it mildly, not happy.

You'll want to know what I was thinking there. Heck, I want to know what I was thinking, but I don't know. Not even an 11-year-old boy can fathom the thought processes of an 11-year-old boy.

The only positive outcome was that the school did not, in fact, burn down. But that's only because the good folks from the Wickliffe Fire Department came and put out the mini inferno I had started.

Anyway, it's Fourth of July here in America, which means recreational fireworks will be out in abundance. If you celebrate in this manner, please stay safe and use a little common sense.

Like, for instance, make sure that when an M-80 explodes, it doesn't create projectiles that could potentially kill you and your friends.

That would really put a damper on the holiday.

Having the "mean" teacher can sometimes be the best thing

 

The woman pictured above is Ruth Schwarzenberg, my teacher for both 2nd and 6th grades at Mapledale Elementary School.

Having a teacher twice in the elementary grades is probably not uncommon. But having the same teacher four years apart (especially after those highly transformative years between 2nd and 6th grade) likely is.

The first time I had Mrs. Schwarzenberg in 2nd grade was, quite frankly, a jarring experience. To that point, my school teachers had been easygoing women, both of whom were commonly described as "nice." Mrs. Janes (kindergarten) and Mrs. Lucci (1st grade) were big reasons why I had really grown to love school.

But then I got to 2nd grade with Mrs. Schwarzenberg, and let me tell you, the days of sunshine and roses ended in a hurry. Most kids described her as "mean," though in retrospect, she was really just strict.

And by that point (again, in retrospect), I needed a good dose of strict. I was used to getting top grades and being a high achiever, but somewhere along the way, you have to realize that you're not going to get rewarded and praised for absolutely everything.

And you have to be pushed to be even better.

Mrs. Schwarzenberg did that for me, but I didn't know how to deal with her at the time. I was honestly afraid of her, and it was a relief when I got sick and could stay home from school from time to time.

It was only later that I came to realize how much I learned in 2nd grade, and how much I gained in maturity that year. I would never have credited Mrs. Schwarzenberg with any of that, though now I do.

When I had her again in 6th grade, our relationship had changed. It felt like she wasn't as strict with us that year, but now I realize she probably was (maybe even more so). The difference was that I was older, at least a tad wiser, and much better positioned to engage with and learn from her.

For years I would tell people that Mrs. Schwarzenberg was better suited teaching older kids than younger ones, but now I think she was probably equally effective with both. I just hadn't encountered anything like her as a 7- and 8-year-old second-grader, and it took time to adjust.

You can only be the A+, never-get-in-trouble Golden Child for so long. Like I said, at some point, you need someone to push you to the next level.

And boy, did Mrs. Schwarzenberg push.

She passed away in 2012. The last time I talked with her was probably in 1988, my senior year of high school, when I performed with our jazz band for Wickliffe Elementary School students and she was still there teaching. I can't remember what I said to her, but I hope I thanked her for everything she had done for me.

Even at age 18 I realized the positive influence the "mean" teacher can have.

That time I was invited to the presidential inauguration and didn't go (though I WAS on the Channel 8 news)

This is what the set of the WJW Cleveland newscast looked like in 1977 when they aired a little segment about me.

(NOTE: This post originally ran on the blog on October 7, 2021. With today being presidential Inauguration Day here in the U.S., I thought it was a good time to bring it back.)

One day in 1976, I walked into the living room and announced that I was bored.

My dad, knowing the kinds of things that interested nearly-seven-year-old me, suggested I write a letter to a famous person like the president.

I was intrigued by this idea, but I did him one better (or thought I did): Rather than writing to President Ford, I would write to Gov. Jimmy Carter, who was running for the presidency against Ford.

I don't remember what I wrote, but whatever it was, I'm sure it was done in pencil on one of the yellow legal pads I kept in my room.

(You may wonder why a six-year-old had yellow legal pads. I do, too. It was a long time ago.)

Anyway, I remember getting some sort of form letter response a month later from Gov. Carter, who went on to win the election by a fairly narrow margin.

That was enough for me. I thought it was pretty cool.

But then, in early January of '77, a large envelope showed up at our house. I think it came via registered mail. It was an invitation to President-Elect Carter's inauguration in Washington, D.C.

At the time I don't think I understood the significance of it. All I knew is that we weren't going to attend.

I don't remember why this decision was made, but I think it had something to do with the fact that we would have had to supply our own transportation and would have been small faces in a crowd of many thousands.

There may also have been something to the fact that both of my parents were Republicans, and they wouldn't necessarily have been thrilled to go and celebrate the inauguration of a Democratic president.

Whatever the reason, I don't remember being too put out.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to mid-January. I'm in gym class at Mapledale Elementary School, where I'm a first-grader. A local TV news crew shows up and talks to my gym teacher. Then they start walking in my direction.

It turns out they're there to film me. I am incredibly confused by this, though the on-air reporter, legendary Cleveland television newsman Neil Zurcher (who just recently passed away), explains it's because I received a personal invitation to the presidential inauguration.

They get me on camera doing some rudimentary tumbling, as we were in the midst of a gymnastics unit. Then we go to our classroom, where I sit at my desk and they interview me. I don't remember any of the questions or any of my answers.

They tell me it's going to air as part of the 6 o'clock news on WJW Channel 8, which is exciting.

However, at some point that day it started snowing. And it kept on snowing. All day. Lots of snow. A real blizzard (almost exactly one year before the epic Cleveland Blizzard of 1978).

As a result, all planned stories for that 6 o'clock newscast are shunted aside in favor of weather-related coverage.

Somehow we find out that my piece will now probably air during the 11pm news later that evening. I think my sister Judi was the one who called the station to get this update (as I recall, she was also the one who called them about me in the first place).

At that time of my life, I went to bed every night at 9pm, almost without exception. I rarely stayed up until 11.

I remember laying down that evening on the couch, intending to stay awake until the news came on. But I don't think I even made it to 10:30.

The next thing I knew, my mom was shaking me awake. She pointed my attention to the TV, where I saw myself talking. I was still half-asleep and missed most of the segment.

This was, you will note, a few years before the VCR era began, so we had no way of capturing the moment. There is no existing record of this interview, which is too bad.

I would like to see myself doing that somersault in gym class.

A lifetime ago, I used to walk home from school to eat lunch and watch game shows

I logged countless episodes of "Card Sharks" growing up.

I am repeatedly reminded of the fact that I grew up in a very different time. I guess anyone above a certain age (say 30) can say the same.

When I was young, for example, game shows were a thing. All the networks had them, and they were particular staples of the daytime TV lineup.

I also attended a neighborhood elementary school where many of the kids walked home for lunch. I think there are still schools that allow this, but it felt far more prevalent when I was growing up.

It was many years before I understood how good I had it. When I arrived home, my mom would have lunch ready for me on a TV tray. It was usually a sandwich and canned fruit.

I would turn on the TV, find a game show to watch, and dig into Mom's delicious repast. The game shows varied over the years, though "Card Sharks" is the one that comes most readily to mind.

I would happily wolf down the food (that 10am elementary school snack never quite satisfied) while playing along with the contestants on TV. I knew exactly when I had to leave to make it back to school before the 1pm afternoon bell.

I was rarely, if ever, late, though I sat in our living room until the last possible minute. I wanted to fully enjoy my mid-day break at home before heading back to good old Mapledale Elementary.

In later years (5th and 6th grades), lunch times were more about playing football or baseball with my classmates. While I still came home to eat, those lunches were suddenly rushed affairs in which the goal was to eat as quickly as possible and dash back to school before the other guys had made it outside for recess.

None of my kids were ever able to come home from school for lunch, and the TV game show lineup of today pales in comparison to what it was in the 1970s and 80s. All of which is OK, but man, what I wouldn't do for a chance at one more baloney sandwich/fruit cocktail lunch and a rousing 30 minutes with host Jim Perry and those random, middle American contestants on "Card Sharks."

It was, as I often say, a simpler time.

What, me retire?

Not long ago, Terry and I had an overdue check-in with Dave, our Merrill Lynch financial guy (NOTE: That's not Dave above. That's Alfred E. Neuman. If you don't know who he is, you're probably too young to be interested in reading this post in the first place.)

Maybe the conversation wasn't "overdue," though. I'm not sure how often you're supposed to talk with your money person, but it felt like we hadn't taken a step back and discussed the big picture for quite a while.

While Dave stays in touch regularly, some time had passed since I had gathered all of our account information, sent it to him, and allowed him to run the numbers and gauge our financial health.

The results were encouraging.

Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we're right on track for me to retire in about 11 1/2 years. My goal is to work until the end of 2035 before calling it quits and enjoying whatever comes next.

I'll have just turned 66 at that point and will have been a member of the full-time workforce for two-thirds of my life (that's 44 years for those who didn't have Mrs. Schwarzenberg at Mapledale Elementary School and whose arithmetic skills may therefore be lacking).

That "feels" about right. I would rather not work full time into my 70s, if I can help it, but I also don't want to get out of the game too early, for reasons both personal and financial.

There are several factors that go into deciding how much money you need to sock away for retirement, including the lifestyle you want to lead once you get there. Terry and I want to be able to travel with some regularity, whether it's to visit kids/grandkids or just see the world.

I'm not talking about boarding a plane for some exotic location every two weeks. Maybe "several" trips a year, with most domestic and one overseas.

"Comfortable but nowhere near extravagant" is how I would describe our desired post-retirement lifestyle.

That's somewhat vague, I realize, but it was enough for Dave to decide we're ahead of the curve with our savings and investment plan, given the vagaries of the markets, my presumed ability to continue working for another decade-plus, and all of the other unpredictable realities that come with aging.

This was all somewhat of a revelation to me. I'm 54 years old. I don't think about retirement very often beyond how much I throw into my 401(k) and occasional dreams of touring World War I battlefields in France and Belgium once I have the time to do so (that's likely to be a solo trip sans Terry, if I had to guess).

For the first time, the conversation with Dave made retirement seem like a tangible thing and not just a far-off hope. I've still got a ways to go, and like I said, you never know what's going to come your way. But the fact is, it could happen, and that's fun to think about.

Again, though, as quickly as time passes these days, I still have several career-building years ahead of me, which is OK. We'll get there when we get there.

The closer it gets, the more real it will become, I'm sure.

I recently used an honest-to-goodness print dictionary

The other day I was reading an online article that described someone as "magisterial," one of many words for which I think I know the definition but am never quite sure.

I instinctively opened a new tab on my browser and was getting ready to Google "magisterial" when I happened to glance to my right. There, sitting on the bottom shelf of the small bookcase in my office, was the 2006 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

I'm talking about a bound, printed dictionary. Not some sort of electronic tool, but a hefty tome of more than 2,000 pages, the likes of which you could find in virtually every classroom when I was growing up.

Rather than consulting Mr. Google for the 20th time that day, I instead picked up the dictionary. And man, it was heavy. There were several pounds of words in there, everything from "a" (the logical first entry) to "zyzzyva" (which as you know is "any of the various tropical American weevils of the genus Zyzzyva, often destructive to plants").

I found "magisterial" on page 1051, just under "Maginot" and right above "magisterium."

The American Heritage people offered up three somewhat differing definitions, but only one made sense in context: "Sedately dignified in appearance or manner: 'She would appear on the porch and reign over the street in magisterial beauty.'"

Which is pretty much what I thought it meant, but it was good to get confirmation.

The last time I remember diving heavily into a print dictionary was in 6th grade (1981-82), when a vocabulary assignment from Mrs. Schwarzenberg forced us to crack open the musty old Webster's that sat on a small table in the Mapledale Elementary School library.

(Honestly, I think we used that dictionary as much to look up words like "penis" and "flatulence" than to decipher legitimate vocabulary words.)

Now, believe me when I say I am a champion of technology and progress. I embrace the new and innovative without so much as a backward glance when it comes to home entertainment devices, artificial intelligence, and all manner of electronic gizmos and gadgets.

But there was a nostalgic part of me that really enjoyed flipping through a print dictionary and finding the meaning of a word that had stumped me.

It was slower than Google, but in the end it had the same result and somehow felt...purer? Is that the word I want? More authentic?

It's a silly thought, I know. Who cares how I got the definition as long as I got there? What makes one method better than another?

Nothing, I suppose. I just didn't realize how much I missed 10-pound, 2,000-page dictionaries.

It made me happy that I've lugged this particular one with me from job to job and office to office for so many years.

The excitement of finding out who your teacher was going to be

When I attended Mapledale Elementary School back in the Bronze Age, we engaged in a particular early-September ritual that now brings back fond memories.

Mapledale was a K-6 school, and while in the later grades you started moving from room to room for different subjects, you still had one main teacher. Finding out who that teacher was going to be was exciting and even a little nerve-wracking.

The way this information was conveyed was that someone (I’m assuming the school secretary) would type up the class lists and literally tape them onto the windows at the front entrance. That would unleash a steady stream of kids on bikes who would pedal up to the school to find out to whom their education for the coming year had been entrusted.

I don’t remember doing this to learn that Mrs. Janes was my kindergarten teacher, but I vividly remember heading up to the school (it was just at the end of my street) to find out I had Mrs. Lucci for 1st grade, Mrs. Schwarzenberg for 2nd and 6th, Mr. Blauch for 3rd, and Mrs. Grabner for 4th and 5th.

Nowadays, at least here in Wickliffe, the process is a little different. You receive a packet of forms in the mail each August that includes a note from your teacher, and that's how you find out who she/he is. 

Even though we don’t have kids in elementary (or even middle) school anymore, I always enjoy reading the posts on the “We Love Wickliffe” Facebook page from parents asking “Who else’s child has Mrs. X?” It brings back great memories.

I don’t know that either the old or the new method is better, but I do miss that moment of excitement when you scanned those paper class lists and found your name. It meant school was right around the corner, and at least you knew something of what was in store for you.

An after-school basketball program in the early 80s expanded my worldview a little

Big bad Lincoln Elementary (now Wickliffe Elementary)

When I was in fifth and sixth grade at Mapledale Elementary School, we had an after-school basketball program for boys during the winter. Or at least I assume it was specifically for boys, because no girls ever participated, nor do I expect they were ever invited.

A few times a week, we would gather in the gym and Mr. Oravecz would teach us the fundamentals of the sport: dribbling, passing, shooting, etc. We tried to run a few very basic plays, though our early-adolescent brains often had trouble absorbing even those.

One day in the spring, we would travel across town to Lincoln Elementary School to play end-of-season games against boys from Lincoln and from Worden Elementary.

Both years we did this, the outcomes of the games were never in doubt. We would beat Worden and get beaten by Lincoln, and Lincoln would beat Worden.

Lincoln was, you see, by far the biggest of the three elementary schools in Wickliffe at the time. It had two floors. Two floors! Mapledale and Worden were single-story buildings with only a few wings each.

Lincoln also had a gym with bleachers. Bleachers! We had no such thing at Mapledale. It was intimidating, at 11 years old, to walk into a strange gym with bleachers overlooking the basketball floor and seeing those bleachers filled with kids rooting heartily against you.

Lincoln also had something else we didn't.

Lincoln had Black kids.

If that sounds pathetically sheltered and Caucasian, it's because it was.

We didn't have African-American kids at Mapledale, and I think Worden was in the same boat. (Actually I do remember one Black kid at Mapledale, Ricardo Davis, but he may have been the only one there during my time.)

African-Americans were actually a minority at Lincoln, too, but there were definitely far more of them there than at our two small schools.

So, in addition to coming to this seemingly large school with a gym twice the size of ours, we also had to find a way to play against Ralph Topps. Ralph was an African-American kid who, if he wasn't already 6 feet tall in fifth grade, was darn close to it. I was one of the taller Mapledale players, and I don't know if I was even 5-7 at the time.

I later played summer baseball with Ralph, and while he was a decent athlete, he was really just a regular kid like the rest of us.

Looking back on it now, that sort of "revelation" seems pretty funny, maybe even sad. A year or two later, we would all be brought together at the same middle school, and it turned out we had a lot more in common as Wickliffe kids than we were ever separated by race.

Or at least that's how it seemed to me at the time. It was only later I learned of some of the things the African-American kids had had to deal with because of the color of their skin. Things I never would have dreamed of, things that never in a million years would have happened to me, and things that made me sad.

In the end, that basketball program was the start of an education for this kid from Harding Drive that continues to this day.

They're tearing down my high school, but I was more sad when they got rid of my elementary school

 

Rendering of the new Wickliffe Schools campus

One of the biggest things going on right now in my little hometown of Wickliffe, Ohio, is the building of a new PK-12 school campus. It's a long, long, long overdue project, and it's going to bring our educational facilities out of the early to mid-20th century and into the 21st.

One result is that our three current school buildings will all be torn down. I attended two of those (the middle and high schools) and have plenty of memories wrapped up in both.

Still, I'm completely fine with it, given the expense of operating those ancient structures and the  opportunities afforded to our students at the new campus.

What I haven't gotten over, though, is the demolition of good old Mapledale Elementary, the school that stood at the end of my street where I attended kindergarten through sixth grade. That one hurt.

I spent more than half of my public school career there. I developed a love of reading, of sports, and of music there. In many ways I grew up at Mapledale.

And now it's gone, replaced by nice little houses for somewhat older folks without children, as I understand it.

Wickliffe students nowadays are dumbfounded when I tell them our city used to have three separate elementary schools. Those schools shaped so many lives, but they've faded into distant memory.

That's progress for you. On balance it's a good thing, but the older you get, the sadder it is when vestiges of your childhood fall victim to the bulldozer.

Having a private instructor makes me feel rich

Until recently, I had never had a private saxophone lesson in my life.

I learned to play as a fourth-grader at Mapledale Elementary School in a group setting with other beginning saxophonists (NOTE: The late Men at Work multi-instrumentalist Greg Ham used to pronounce that word, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, as sax-OPH-oh-nists, which I just love. I will never say it another way.)

We would squeak and squawk our way through 30-minute lessons with the wonderful Mr. Chuck Baker, a saint of a man who taught elementary and middle school music and band. He is/was a clarinetist by trade but, like most music educators, could work his way around just about any instrument.

That was the extent of my formal training. Whatever else I've learned on the sax over 40 years of playing came on the job during wind ensemble and jazz band rehearsals.

Until now. Now I pay an amazing professional saxophonist named Ed Michaels the criminally low fee of $15 a week to give me lessons every Monday at 5:30pm via Google Duo.

We just started a few weeks ago and already Ed is putting me through my paces. I'm playing scales and etudes, familiarizing myself with the Circle of Fourths (which I should have known about years ago), and even learning the right way to play certain notes on the horn.

Mr. Baker, for example, taught me to play B-flat the way I believe a clarinet player does, pressing down the first finger on each hand. This is at best an alternate way of playing it on sax, and Ed is pushing me to learn the right way, which means undoing years and years of doing it the wrong way.

This is not easy at any stage of life, but maybe particularly so at age 51. But I'm getting through it.

Anyway, the point is, I have Ed, a formally trained expert on the instrument, teaching me. There is something about that arrangement I find to be very cool.

Like I'm Louis XIV having the court musician teaching me the tricks of his trade. Except I lack the power to order Ed to the guillotine.

Not that I would want to. He is a wonderfully nice and patient man who loves the sax and clearly enjoys teaching it to others.

Which is good, because that B-flat thing is giving me troubles. When I get it right, I fully expect him to give me a smiley face sticker in recognition of my accomplishment.

A year without parenting milestones

As the 2017-18 academic year gets underway, my wife Terry and I find ourselves very much "in process" when it comes to being the parents of five children.

What I mean is, we've got kids going every which direction, but no one is graduating or necessarily reaching any sort of academic or vocational landmark in the coming year. Yes, one kid is starting college, but compared with graduation, that's a relatively tame thing, if only because we've been through it before at different levels.

We stand thusly in the Tennant household as summer 2017 wanes and the first signs of autumn make themselves evident:

Elissa

My 23-year-old eldest child has earned her bachelor's degree in marketing from Cleveland State University. She works for a great little strategic branding agency called Hey Now! Media as a digital strategist/social media manager. That's a very Millennial job title, and come to think of it, that exclamation point in the name of the agency is pretty darn Millennial, too. Elissa has officially moved out, though she lives only 5 minutes or so away in a rented house with one of her longtime friends.

She is, by almost any standard you care to name, an adult. I'm good with this, but I'm also not. She was ready to be on her own and all, but I miss having her around. I will always miss having her around. That's the way this game is played. (And hey, you can see my pretty little girl here and read her very professional sounding bio while you're at it.)

Chloe

Little Chloe is nearly 21 years old, which makes me think I probably shouldn't refer to her as "Little Chloe" so much anymore. She is a junior biomedical engineering major at the University of Akron who has designs on attending medical school and becoming some sort of doctor, possibly a pediatrician (though she also talks on occasion about becoming an eye doc...I think she would be good at either). She is at the point of her engineering studies where everything gets pretty intense and serious, and as a result she is no longer a member of the Akron marching band, which is sad but also necessary. Engineering students, I'm told, regularly drop out of band at Akron once they hit that third year. She is in the process of moving into a just-off-campus apartment as I type, and will be officially gone as of Sunday evening. She's a hard worker, that one is.

Jared

The Boy begins his college career next week as a freshman at THE Cleveland State University. OK, CSU doesn't use the "THE" like Ohio State does, but it just sounded good so I went with it. Anyway, I've only seen him for short stretches throughout this summer because he spends a lot of time working at the Cleveland Indians team shop. And hanging out with his girlfriend. This is what happens when you have an 18-year-old son. By all accounts, though, he's ready to start this college thing and plow ahead with his intended major in business administration. I have no idea what he's going to do with his life, and maybe he doesn't, either, which is just fine. I never understand why we push 18-year-old kids to make decisions that could affect the course of their professional lives for the next three or four decades. Jared will find his way. He always does. Let's give him a few years to sort things out.

Melanie

Mel grew up suddenly – jarringly even – in the last couple of years. She's a junior at Wickliffe High School, a class officer, a soccer player, and so far a straight-A student. This year she is spending half of each school day out at Mentor High School taking a few general classes and participating in Mentor's business/marketing program, then the second half of the day back at Wickliffe. I can't keep up with her. Next thing I know, she'll be graduating. I would rather not talk about it, but between you and me, I'm super impressed with this one.

Jack

Ah, Jackie. My Other Boy. My 11-year-old, thin-as-a-rail, cross country-running, class clown. Yes, apparently he's the class clown, at least according to his seventh-grade math teacher Danna Huested. I've known Danna since 1975, when we both started kindergarten at the old Mapledale Elementary School, and she is among the best teachers my kids have had. So I found it part amusing and part alarming when I attended middle school open house the other day, and with a smile she said to me, "So you saved the class clown for your last kid? He doesn't fit the (Tennant) mold!" A month or so earlier, Jack's cross country coach (another Wickliffe classmate, the awesome Todd Calic) said something similar: "Everyone on the team loves him. He cracks everybody up."

And it all makes sense to me. Jack is the youngest of five kids, which in itself means he has always had to work to carve out his own identity in the chaos of our house. But when you consider that he skipped a grade back in elementary school, it gets even tougher for him. He's an 11-year-old in a class full of 12- and soon-to-be-13-year-olds. This is a funny age to begin with, and being the youngest one in the class has to make it even trickier. So Jack copes by being the funny guy. I'm OK with that as long as he doesn't become disruptive in class or during team cross country activities. And I think he knows that. He's doing fine, but I'll admit I worry about him a lot.


So anyway, that's where things stand for us. We're just going about the business of living life and continuing to raise a family. With each passing year, thoughts of what happens once we reach The Other Side (i.e., the empty nest) creep into my head, but they're no more than thoughts. We still have a long way to go, with plenty of homework, school projects, sports practices and games, band concerts, and yes, graduations and big milestones to go.

For now, that's good enough. Exhausting, but good enough.

Four things I remember vividly about elementary school

(1) The Smell
It wasn't a bad smell. It was just a smell that you can only experience inside a school. And for whatever reason, it generally can only be found inside an elementary school. Whenever I happen to be inside a school and I get a whiff of that whatever-it-is smell, I am instantly transported back in time to Mapledale Elementary School in the late 70s.

(2) The Chairs
As near as I can tell, all three elementary schools in Wickliffe at that time were stocked with the same hard chairs for students. They were different colors, but it was the same basic, functional 70s design. The grown-ups, meanwhile, got different chairs that were all this pinkish color. And their chairs were bigger because, you know, the adults were bigger.

(3) The Layout
Mapledale no longer exists. The building became a senior center the year after I "graduated" from sixth grade, and a few years ago it was torn down entirely to make way for new houses (or maybe they're condos?) But I can remember every nook and cranny of that school, because I experienced them all at one point or another. Are you like that with your old schools? I spent seven years there from kindergarten through sixth grade, so I guess it stands to reason that I got to know the place pretty well.

(4) The Teachers
In elementary school, you are of course assigned to one teacher. In the early grades, you are with that teacher virtually the entire day, with the exception of special classes like art, gym, music, etc. That teacher becomes a major influence in your life, which is why I will always hold a special place in my heart for Mrs. Janes, Mrs. Lucci, Mrs. Schwarzenberg, Mr. Blough and Mrs. Grabner. Two of them (Schwarzenberg and Grabner) I had twice. They taught me more than they could possibly know, and they whipped me into shape when they needed to. What a great and awesome responsibility you teachers have.

Four things I miss

This is what old people do, you know: Talk about the way things used to be and how it was so much better back in their day.

I don't know how much "better" things were when I was younger, but I do know there are things I miss. For example:

Game Rooms

Or "video arcades." Whatever you want to call them. These were places where you could bring a couple of dollars, buy some tokens, and happily spend the next few hours playing Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Centipede, etc. And now they're mostly gone.

Well, there are still arcades around at malls and amusement parks and places like that. But there are a lot fewer of them, and the ones that do exist are filled with expensive games I don't want to play.

When I had a newspaper route, I would regularly stop by one of my customer's houses on my way to the game room and collect their biweekly bill. That amounted to $3.10 for those who received The News-Herald every day, which was more than enough to fund an afternoon at Galaxy Gardens, the game room that was a 5-minute bike ride from my house.

Now home video game systems have advanced to the point that there's no need for game rooms. Which is OK. I just miss putting on my painter's cap (adorned with buttons representing various early-80s bands) and heading to the game room so I can try and beat my high score on Defender.

Johnny Carson

Hey, I love Jimmy Fallon. And Letterman. And Craig Ferguson. They're all great, as far as I'm concerned. But Johnny was a staple. He showed up on your TV every night, walking onstage to the same music and, to some extent, telling the same jokes. And it was great. It was something you could count on.

But "The Tonight Show" has moved on (as it should) and Johnny himself is gone. Which is kind of sad.

My elementary school

They tore it down to build homes for old people, or something like that. It's not like I would return to Mapledale Elementary School every day if it was still there. It's the idea that I could if I wanted to. I'm old enough that none of my old teachers would still be there, but just having the chance to walk through the halls and smell that elementary school smell again would be a lot of fun. So it goes.

Not knowing (or caring) how most of the food we ate was terribly unhealthy

Part of this was simply because I was a kid at the time, but we ate all kinds of horrible things back in The Day that would kill a lab rat in hours. We didn't know it was bad for us, nor did we much care. And come to think of it, most of the adults I knew took pretty much the same attitude.

Well, I mean, we knew that McDonald's wasn't the most healthy food in the world, but the general feeling was that if you kept it to once a day or so, you would be fine. As it turns out, the only people who turned out to be "fine" in that arrangement are today's cardiologists.

Nowadays I conduct a quick nutritional analysis of everything I put into my mouth. It doesn't mean I won't eat it, just that I make sure to feel really guilty about it if it's anything other than spinach or blueberries or something.

I think I liked it better when I didn't know I was poisoning myself.

Things I'll miss about having a child in elementary school

Every year since 1999, we have had at least one kid attending Wickliffe Elementary School, a stately(?) old brick building that stands majestically on Lincoln Road and contains vomit residue from generations of students.

That's what I think of when I think of elementary schools: puke. I don't know why. It's not like there was a kid barfing every day when I was a student at the now-defunct Mapledale Elementary School in the 70s and early 80s. But it did happen occasionally.

The only time I upchucked in school wasn't actually in the school building. It was at our end-of-the-year second-grade class picnic at Twin Lakes Park (now Orlando Park...things change...so it goes). We had just eaten lunch, and a bunch of us had taken our gloves over to the dirt field for a quick game of softball.

It was hot, and as I said we had just eaten. And I'm sure I was wearing jeans because there's no way they would have let us wear shorts. And suddenly, well, as I stood in the dusty infield, my lunch (which I'm sure somehow involved a couple of slices of Fazio's Italian bread) decided to make a reappearance all over second base.

After I had expelled the contents of my stomach and felt much better, Vince Boyce very casually yelled, "Time out! Scott barfed." Just like that. I don't remember what happened then exactly, but I think we just covered it up with dirt and resumed our game. Little boys are like that.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Yeah, the things I'll miss about having a kid in elementary school. Our youngest, Jack, is in fourth grade, which means next year he'll move next door to Wickliffe Middle School, and the long line of Tennants at Wickliffe Elementary will come to an end.

By the way, speaking of Tennants in Wickliffe schools, our family has been in the system for a long time. It started in the spring of 1963 when my siblings moved from Euclid to Wickliffe and enrolled as students at Mapledale. There was then at least one Tennant in the school system without interruption until I graduated from high school 25 years later in 1988.

Then, after an 11-year absence, we were back again in 1999 when my oldest, Elissa, started kindergarten. So assuming Jack doesn't drop out of school to become a crime lord or something and graduates on schedule in June 2023, that means there will have been Tennants in the Wickliffe schools for 50 of 61 academic years spanning from 1962-63 to 2022-23. Did I do that right? I'll trust that my Wickliffe education was sufficient to ensure that the math is correct.

Anyway, the things I'll miss about having a kid in elementary school. There are three:

(1) THE INNOCENCE: Yeah, I know that kids are getting more and more street-wise at younger and younger ages.  But elementary school kids are still essentially innocent and fun. I've coached them enough in baseball and soccer, and had enough of them in my house over the years, to know this is still true. Then middle school comes and suddenly there are hormones and drama and the emergence of The Bad Kids and...I don't know, it's just not the same. I'll miss the innocence of elementary school.

(2) THE CHEESY SCHOOL PROGRAMS: Nothing beats a first-grade play for sheer unintentional comedy value. Nothing.

(3) THE TEACHERS: I can only speak from my experience as a parent at Wickliffe Elementary, but I am blown away at the extent to which the faculty there genuinely cares about my children. Not only professionally, but emotionally and socially, as well. They're great people, and they've obviously played a huge role in shaping my kids, and for that I'm eternally grateful. I'll miss every one of them.

25 things that make me happy

(1) Getting the mail
(2) Sitting down in my seat right before the start of a hockey game
(3) John Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things"
(4) Terry's laugh
(5) Thickly sliced Swiss cheese
(6) A clean car
(7) A clean kitchen
(8) A clean bathroom
(9) Pretty much a clean anything
(10) A Saturday with no appointments, kids activities or obligations
(11) Dennis Miller doing stand-up (before he got all political all the time)
(12) The sound of my kids' voices
(13) A well-played cello
(14) Any memory of Mapledale Elementary School, circa 1978
(15) Game shows
(16) Running
(17) World War I books
(18) Really, really dark chocolate
(19) Any given episode of "The Jeffersons"
(20) Libraries
(21) Spotting planets in the sky (not the stars so much, just the planets)
(22) Landing on Boardwalk AND Park Place early in the game, ensuring that eventually I will crush you
(23) The Guinness Book of World Records
(24) Virtually any comedy produced in the early 80s
(25) Maps