The Hook
Once More to the Pond
By Jessica Flaxman to E. B. White
Townies agree that the best place to swim in Wellfleet, MA, is Dyer Pond.
The way in isn't a secret; the road is marked even on those cheaply printed maps given out at the town hall to tourists dutifully buying stickers to attend the National Seashore’s beaches and ponds. But despite the general population's knowledge of Dyer's whereabouts, the pond's slender but suitable pine-covered banks are not crowded.
Dyer is a swimmer's pond, and also the road in is a dirt path that can't be driven, and also, there are ticks and mosquitoes. However, a true swimmer will not choose the easier to access ponds -- the true swimmer understands that it is the way in that makes the swim.
When I was old enough to swim across Dyer Pond and back, I joined my mother on her daily summertime trek through the insect infested Cape Cod woods to that perfect place.
Our ritual had a few key steps. First, park the car at Long Pond and grab the necessities -- goggles, towels, a cover up. Shoes and bug spray were optional. There was no need for money and there were not yet cell phones. Pass Long Pond on the left; secretly scorn the lame-os swimming in crowded water, lounging on garish orange and pink rafts and reading supermarket romances; walk through a small clearing in the woods to a dirt road winding down and away from, well, civilization. Walk in relative silence for a quarter of a mile, past gnarled and knobby shrubs and dwarfed pines, silver dollar bushes and chokecherries, and down into the basin created long ago by a glacier that receded and melted into what is known as a kettle pond. Anxiously scope out a place on the shore to claim, even though we rarely sat for more than a few minutes before toeing into the water and heading straight across to the far bank; anxiously scan the surface for turtles, even though we knew it was only an urban legend, the one about the snapping turtle that surfaced and bit the arm off a swimmer; comment on the ruckus if there happened to be children swinging from a decrepit looking rope swing.
I don't mean to suggest that as a child I scorned children playing -- or that my mother did -- but Dyer is more library than amusement park, and wants to be quiet.
In the beginning, I followed my mother's lead in the water, keeping her always in sight as I strove to keep up. But when I was 12, I began to nose ahead. I never worried about the distance between us or whether she was ok without me. I knew that everything was just fine.
If I landed at the far shore a few minutes before her, I’d sit in the shallow water and wait happily, watching tadpoles swarm and disperse around my legs. As she approached, she always slowed to the breast stroke so that she could make eye contact with me before submerging herself and grabbing my two feet with her hands. Then we would both sit for a few minutes in the shallow water and look around us -- blue sky, sometimes grey; blue water, sometimes rippled; water bugs and dragonflies and once in a while, a box turtle. An English teacher, she usually said something poetic at this time before saying she didn't want to get cold and that we should stop for ice cream on the way home. At that, we’d eagerly push off toward the other shore.
It goes without saying that swimming across Dyer Pond each summer with my mother, like all of the deeply important things we do regularly, became a commonplace and an expectation, even something to take for granted, as I aged. I began to swim across Dyer with friends and boyfriends. One particular night I took my now husband to Dyer and we swam in moonlight. He, a baseball player and not much of a swimmer, nevertheless understood what this place was and is. Although it could have been a night of romance, we mostly sat on the bank of the pond, listening and watching the world around us.
Right now, as I am surrounded by papers and pages and words and people, I look forward to the day I will swim Dyer pond with both my mother and my daughter. I think that day may be imminent. Julia will be 12 this August. Inconceivably, I will be 40 in July, and Mom just turned 74. It’s comforting to know that there is a place where time has not really passed in an obvious way, where the same quiet beauty that was always there is just waiting to be rediscovered.
Why I Teach
By Darrell Bach
In the fall of 1970, I walked into Mrs. Faulk’s first grade class with fear and probably wet underwear. She was certainly well over 100 years old with bluish-gray hair and she wielded a yard stick that had blood stains on it from the countless first graders she had buried behind the gym for not knowing their alphabet. I was five years old and my older brother told me Mrs. Faulk really hated red-haired boys. I had doubts I would make it to my sixth birthday.I sat near the back of the class and did my very best to avoid her icy stares. Behind me was Paul Gibson, a scrawny six-year old with big feet, glasses, brown hair that would have made a great nest for any number of birds and a propensity to ask questions that would make Mrs. Faulk look in our direction. I had wanted to hide underneath my desk every time Paul put his hand up but I knew better. Danny Rothemel left his seat without permission and got two cracks across his rear with swings of her yard stick that would have made Hank Aaron proud. I kept my head down.After a couple of weeks of near invisibility, my life suddenly changed during one of our math periods. I could do our addition and subtraction facts faster than anyone in the class and was quite content to sit quietly and wait while everyone else finished. Mrs. Faulk must have noticed Paul struggling so she asked me to help him. I soon discovered I enjoyed helping him and he was learning. Paul and I became friends and Mrs. Faulk didn’t bury anyone that year. I also learned two very important things that year – I liked teaching and my older brother was a liar.
My life continued in much the same way through sixth grade. Paul moved to New Jersey after second grade but I found other classmates to help. Other teachers, most notably Ms. Haas, my second grade teacher, Mr. Hannon in fifth grade and Mrs. Anthony in sixth grade were excellent because they gave me lots of chances to ‘teach’. The idea of becoming a teacher, though, was ludicrous. Why would anyone want to become a teacher? I was just as happy as the next kid when school was out for the summer and the look of disgust that returned to my face the day after Labor Day would lead anyone to think I was being sentenced to a life in prison. I never seriously considered becoming a teacher as a child because I had my sights set on more exciting professions. I planned on playing major league baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates or at least being their radio announcer or team statistican. If that didn’t work, I would either work with Jacque Cousteau and help him film marine life or I would become a psychiatrist like my dad. That idea was quickly kicked to the curb after a couple of semesters of chemistry and biology in college and the thought of endless years in med school and training.
I took lots of math classes in college because I liked them and I was good at them. Answers were right or wrong with no ambiguity or interpretation. If I majored in mathematics, I could follow my dream and try to land a job with the Pirates or I could work a desk job for some corporation. The Pirates were lousy in the mid 1980’s and a desk job sounded really boring so what were my options? A small voice inside of me kept telling me to teach but I thought the money would be lousy so I tried to tune it out. God kept talking louder and louder and I finally gave in. I started teaching in 1987 in Savannah, Georgia at a private school very similar to CCDS. My first day of teaching was much like my first day of first grade. Plenty of fear and apprehension but minus the wet underwear. I learned much that year and loved it. I am happy to say I have almost completed 27 years of teaching.
What has kept me in teaching all of these years? Is it the desire to bury students behind the Bruton Smith gymnasium? No. It is the chance to build a relationship with each of my students. I couldn’t be happy crunching numbers for the Pirates or analyzing data for Bank of America because I would be surrounded by adults all day. Teenagers are much more interesting. My best days are ones where students and I share face-to-face conversations about math and life. I can’t remember many emails, snap chats or texts but I can remember lots of conversations and laughs in the classroom or on the playing fields.
That is why I teach.
Wishing Neverland Actually Existed
By Katrina S. ('15)
When I was little and my mum read Peter Pan to me before bedtime, I thought of Neverland as a rather silly concept. Why would anyone wish to avoid growing up? Imagine all that freedom and ability to watch any movie without anyone there to stop me. Not until recently, did I begin to appreciate J.M Barry’s yearning.
I was driving with a friend to meet a few other friends of ours arriving at the airport, when our conversation began to take a more solemn direction. After already getting lost twice on the way there, it took us another half an hour to comprehend the complex parking system at Charlotte Douglas Airport. We both realised that we really have no idea how to handle what could be considered as “adult” responsibility and it hit us that we can’t even imagine ourselves grown up. This daunting prospect left us momentarily stunned but then he turned to me and exclaimed the utter panic he feels at the thought of having to pay taxes, handle medical records or buy groceries other than Poptarts and Oreos.
Just a few years ago when I considered adulthood, it seemed like this alternate realm in a far off life that I would probably never actually reach. However, for the first time in my life I am actually beginning to feel old. Now, I know to any real adult, a seventeen year old saying these things must sound positively ridiculous, but I insist that I speak from my heart.
Sitting in my plastic chair on Convocation Day watching as the hundreds of students filed into the gym, was another reminder of my “increasing years.” The thought that I will be a thirty year old adult when those sweet kindergarten children graduate is a terrifying thought. A working adult, with a career and a family? The idea was almost laughable. Then again, I’ve been driving for a year, people have referred to me as ma’am, I’ve flown internationally by myself and I’m visiting colleges. I feel as if my life has flown before my eyes and I cannot even imagine what a disaster the supposed mid-life crisis is going to be like for me, if I already feel so nostalgic for past days.
My new South African passport arrived in the mail yesterday, and it’s the first one I can keep for 10 years as opposed to the usual 5 year ones for children. It occurred to me that the next time I need a new passport, I am going to have to submit the application all by 26 year old self. No mummy to make the process nice and easy for me, I will be stranded in the wilderness of complicated paperwork.
I feel like I am Wendy, sitting in my window looking across the beautiful rainy streets of London (Charlotte) and desperately awaiting the arrival of Peter Pan to whisk me away. I want to battle pirates, live in a tree with little lost boys, gather around a fire with Indians and play in the sea with mermaids. Instead, I am sitting at my computer writing this essay feeling more than a little morose and also a little bit pathetic that I wish my life was Disney movie.
In Front of the Mirror
Or, Kind of What TOK Is Like, Only Not Really
By Tim Waples
Be: See, look: your left is your right and your right is your left.
Bop: I don’t get it.
Be: Take your left hand and poke your right eye.
Bop (does it): Ow! Crap!!
Be: You see? Your left is your right and your right is your left!
Bop: I can’t see, you jerk! You made me poke my eye out!
Be: It’s a metaphor, dumbass. Settle down.
Bop: You could’ve told me!Be: I’m telling you now! This whole thing is a metaphor.
Bop: Why?
Be: Whaddaya mean “why?” Cause that’s how we talk!
Bop: We’re talking about mirrors, right?
Be: Right. Because what else can we say?
Bop: It’s a metaphor.
Be: Right! Because that’s all we got!
Bop (beat): I don’t get it.Be: Right.
Bop: What?
Be: Right! We can’t get it.
Bop: What?
Be (understands): You don’t get it.
Bop: Listen much?
Be: Geez, with the attitude!
Bop: So explain it again.Be (pauses; thinking): Okay, so who invented pointing?
Bop: What?
Be: No, really, who invented pointing? Who was the first person to point at something?
Bop: What the hell is the matter with you? This is the crap you come up with?
Be: Yeah...like yours is better?
Bop: Nobody knows who was the first to point. Whoever it was, it was somebody who was either pointing at food, or pointing at the thing coming their way that thought they were food.Be: No doubt! But THAT cat had faith!
Bop: Huh?
Be: That dude believed! He believed that with a gesture he could connect the Here with the Not-Here. He took a dump on the rules of Time and Space.
Bop: By pointing?
Be: Yeah! He closed the distance. I mean, not literally. As soon as he pointed, and the other guy figured it out, then they immediately had to haul ass, either towards it or away from it. But what’s most important is that they were running in the same direction!
Bop: Pointing is communicating.
Be: Yes… No... Kind of. Pointing is the illusion of communication.
Bop: What?
Be: When dude #1 pointed, maybe dude #2 understood it. Came to the same realization. Or maybe #2 was an idiot, like you, and didn’t get it. So that dude #2 only started running because #1 started running. Maybe pointing didn’t actually work the first time, or the first few times, but it flattered the first dude into thinking he had invented the new cool thing, so after that I bet he pointed his ass off, and eventually people got used to it.
Bop: So the first pointer was a smug loser like you.
Be: Sure! And if he was as smart as me, he realized that pointing wasn’t actually touching. It was just a gesture. A metaphor.
Bop: A metaphor. So we’re back to the mirror?
Be: Yeah! When we try to connect the Here and the Not-Here, we can’t really do it. Things get distorted. We misunderstand. We choose the wrong words. Or we choose the right words, but our metaphor doesn’t work. We point and the other dude doesn’t see it.
Bop: That’s it?
Be: Yeah. That’s it.
Bop: I don’t get it.
Be: Right.
Bad Religion
A personal piece based on Frank Ocean's Song, "Bad Religion" by Adelaide G. ('15)
I hate that I hurt when I cry; that I strain my throat, trying to stifle sobs. I hate that I squeeze my eyes shut, clench my jaw, and induce a headache in the process. I hate that I bite my bottom lip, a little too hard sometimes. But most of all, I hate that I can only cry alone. I hate that the only people to see me cry are my immediate family members, though I can’t look at them. I hate that when I cry, I let only walls watch, pillows feel, and the hand covering my mouth hear. I hate my eyes for turning their loveliest shade of green only while tinted red with tears. I hate that I don’t let anyone but the mirror see them. I hate that at a time when I need company most, I cry only without it. I hate the way my voice breaks and my lungs give. I hate that I can only be vulnerable in front of myself, which isn’t really being vulnerable at all. I hate that I welcome the pain, like an imaginary friend.
But my sobs subside, and I realize that it is not I who deserves hate. No – it is you. It is always you. It is your cowardliness and your cruelty alike. Perhaps it is also your ignorance; the choice you make to disregard your eyes as they make promises your mind has no intention of keeping. The alcohol I smell on your breath; what you do when I’m not around. It’s all the same to me. All of you that hurt me? You’re all the same to me. You each come to me, see me, conquer me, and leave me. I give myself to you, and you squander me like money spent. I suppose the worst of it, though, is that I let you. For that, I take responsibility. For that, I cry.
I may build my walls, but your broken promises, drunken calls, and self-seeking ways provide each and every brick. You hold me in your arms, wipe my tears, and scare my reluctance away. I, for the first time, feel worthy of love and belonging. I feel worthy of your love and belonging to you. But as quickly as your comfort comes, it abandons me when I am least prepared: when I really trust you. You’re gone, leaving only a note to explain the corruption of your promises. I let you so close to my heart that its guard surrenders to you a place in it, a place now excruciatingly cold. Never has someone hurt me so deeply until you do. You damage me until I prefer numbness. You push me to choose safety and security of what is certain, and live in fear of the pain involved with chance and gamble, with vulnerability.
Hating you makes this easier somehow. Blaming you does the same. I struggle to undo what you did to me so many different ways, so many different days. You impede on my relationships today. The choice I made long ago to isolate myself is how you hurt me now. I never loved you, and today I could see you and smile. But what you did to me – what you took away from me – brings me to my knees. Alone with an unrequited prayer for an escape from this hell of numbness. Alone with a bad religion.