Things I Learned Recently

1. I can throw one heck of a prom. I’ve always hated prom. I hated it back when I had to go to it in high school, and there was nothing I dreaded more this year as a sponsor than the thought of having to put one together and attend it as a chaperone.

Things didn’t start real well. I was skeptical about the theme: “City of Lights.” After all, we were throwing the prom in the Winters High School cafeteria with about nine-foot ceilings. What kind of city can you create in there? Moreover, there wasn’t much help. Some students and a couple of parents helped out on Friday night (the actual prom was Saturday evening), but on Saturday, it was only one other sponsor and myself, for the most part. I spent about twenty-eight hours in that cafeteria over the weekend.

As it turned out, though, I sort of enjoyed putting the prom together, especially since I did more than my fair share of the work, and it actually looked pretty cool, and I was proud of it in the end (much more-so than the prom I’d helped put together in high school). If you ever need to throw a prom, you could do worse than call me.

2. I’m getting better at handling my forgetfulness. Sort of.

My brother-in-law’s birthday was last week sometime. I’d thought of it well ahead of time and had bought a very fitting card for him. (On the outside: “I’m so looking forward to your birthday…” Inside: “I think I might fart.” Maybe not the most clever thing, but I’m pretty sure he’ll enjoy it.) I’d also planned what I was going to buy; I just needed to get to Abilene or somewhere to buy it.

Then, though, I lost the card, and I didn’t want to send the gift to be mailed off without that great card, but I had only gotten to Abilene once since buying the card and hadn’t remembered to buy the great gift anyway. So anyway, I searched for eleven days and finally found the card. I went to Abilene, especially for the gift, and bought it. Then, I just had to mail it.

Luckily, Mom and Dad came through town. I knew that I would probably lose it or forget to mail it or something, so I just gave the card to Mom to mail. You see, I’m getting better at managing this forgetfulness stuff.

3. Even though I am constantly made fun of for being the most liberal faculty member at the school (or the most openly liberal, I guess), I realized today that I am, in some ways, the most conservative person around.

I was standing around with some teachers, discussing the developing science and technology curriculum for the state and the school. It had been suggested, somewhat vaguely, that the technology and science teachers speak to the students about the ethics of certain recent scientific advances, including, evidently, the growth human body parts on mice.

Once the topic came up, though, somebody in the room yelled out, “Ethics!!! What are ethics? Everyone has their own ethics. Nobody should tell anyone anything about ethics around here. Everyone can make up their ethics for themselves.”

Several other people in the room echoed in with exactly the same sentiment. Ethics are abstract and nebulous, an indeterminate and impenetrable mystery. We should just let things go.

Now, I don’t know much about growing body parts on mice. I’m not real sure that that’s ever going to be a real issue in WHS science labs. Boy, I was bothered, though, that I was in a room packed with conservatives, and I was the only one trying to argue that ethics exist and matter and are somewhat knowable and that ethical inquiry, even if it’s abstract, is worthwhile and should be taught.

Yep, the world had turned upside down in there. I thought that we liberals were supposed to be the wishy-washy relativists, the cynics. Not always, at least.