Day 11 & 12: Nuts and Grade

Hey people, today's topics are Nuts and Grade.

In Nuts, Natalie Goldberg starts in a very interesting (and different) direction, she asks you to think about the history of nuts in you life.

Not so much about how you feel about nuts or, "I ate a lot of nuts when I watched tv." As Goldberg puts it, "History demands dates, place, a more distant reflection."

The chapter goes on to give more examples of ways to bring small things that we encounter every day into a new realm of thinking. What are these examples you may ask?

I shall tell you:

• A Romance with Chocolate
• An incident with vanilla
• A journal page of your experiences with tapioca (or rice pudding)
• Donut Confessions
• The Public Record of your pie eating
• Chronicle of Croissants
• Pudding Diary
• My Sugar Archives
• Coffee Ice Cream Accounts
• The Narrative of My Sweet Life
• A Roster of Caramel Tarts I've Eaten

The end goal of all these things is to take a creative, "fresh" way of how we view things. How we record them in our everyday experiences and relate them into ways that are not just engaging to read, but also could change our perspective of, "the everyday things that are there to save our lives." ('Stranger than Fiction' anybody?)

How else can this look like?

• Report of my Bad Teeth
• Lousy Day Recital
• Episodes with Mice
• My Legendary Dog
• The Saga of my Ill Will

(Personally I think these would make great blog titles!)

And last but not least:

• My Belief in Paperclips (Personal Favorite)

Needless to say, this chapter has a large, red sharpie circle around it, as I try to come up with creative ways of seeing the objects that I encounter and use everyday (i.e. Oh, the Places my keys will go!)

This chapter I will have to come back too...

In Grade, Goldberg asks something that we very seldom think about, Kindergarten (at least I don't think about it that much).

I kind of came off the beaten path a little bit here. Since I could remember nothing about my kindergarten experiences or what memories, go where, in my early schooling (1st-6th grade is a bit muddled up in my memory). I decided that I would focus on the earliest memory that I could... the house we lived in, in Oklahoma.

Grade

Tell me everything you remember about Kindergarten. Go. Ten minutes.

What I remember about kindergarten?

I remember the church/school that I always went too... But that wasn't till about 3rd grade, I want to say...

My oldest memories, the one that I think is close to kindergarten (how old are you in kindergarten anyways?).

I was young, we lived in a small house in a busy town... there was a room in the back of the house that led to the backyard, but this room also contained the washer and dryer.

On stepping out to the back, it was a warm day, bright, sun-shining strongly down on the hard packed earth.

The most notable feature of this yard, besides the old, warn fence, that ran around it (and possibly a shed?) was a metal pole sticking up out of the yard.

From it branched several other poles that were hexagonally arranged and had a small rope running along the perimeter of these 'branches'.

There were several layers of rope too, about three if I remember right.

Now, jump forward a bit of time, I was still young, my Father & Mother were attending church at a place called 'Grace Family Fellowship.'

It was a summer night, still warm but the night giving it's edges a bit of coolness to it.

The church softball league was meeting.

My father playing with his friends, all of them sitting in the dug-out.

The lights giving, what seemed like day to the field. They were being swarmed by hundreds and hundreds of flying bugs.

A dizzying array of lighted specks dancing against a dark sky.

Times Up.

Now before you stop reading this chapter, Goldberg tells a short story about a time when she taught a workshop and has everyone write about 'third grade.'

At the end of the writing session, she had several people stand up and tell their stories. At one point, a gentleman raised his hand to share. He stood up and began his memory of third grade like this, "I did not go to third grade. At that age I was in Bergen-Belsen..."

This gentlemen went on to list everything that he had missed from not going to third grade because he was in a concentration camp.

Things like multiplication, conjunctions, apostrophes. These things that most of us take for granted he never learned.

Goldberg relates that after he got done sharing his memory, the entire audience was still. Not one person lifted their hand to share after he spoke. She states how they all felt the pain in a new way. Not in conditions of the camp, but "of how the horror of these camps... distill[ed] it down to a loss of third grade grammar and history had a startling effect."

So, there is another challenge to this chapter...

Grade II

What did not happen in your sixth grade? Be specific. You can also step out of the ordinary confines of the curriculum. You were eleven or twelve years old. What was missing?

Go. Ten minutes.

What was missing? A structured school curriculum.

This was the first year that my parents had decided to homeschool us.

Not knowing what steps to take, they bought these big workbooks from Sam's Club that were filled with different subjects; reading, writing, math, science...

They simply told us to do six pages out of this workbook and we were done for the day. This took all of a half hour to do and it was awesome!

For a boy that was used to three to four hours of homework each night from the private christian school that we attended, this was a dream come true.

What was I missing? My first kiss.

When I was about twelve years old, my interest in girls began to rise to the surface of my conscience. But ever since I was a young boy, my parents (namely my mother) had drilled in our heads, "You don't kiss girls till your married."

The fear of my mother would rise up within me and would overtake me, so much so, that I was wary of even holding another girls hand for several years down the road.

What was I missing? Athletic sports, middle and jr. high school socials, friends that I had made back at that christian private school, playing with army mirco-machines in the dirt during recess, recess, school lunches (not something that I missed terribly), learning how to broach a non-awkward conversation with my peers, learning how to talk to girls that I liked.

What did I miss in these years?

Some things that have proven inconsequential, but other things that took me several years to adjust too.

Well, that was actually, refreshing. You never know what you will come to mind until you face the questions that you would have never thought about on your own.

Tomorrow's topics: No Mush and Scratch

See you guys tomorrow!

-Eric Alan