I’ve finally found my target audience: second graders

The second grade classroom wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I had imagined.

As regular readers of this column (both of you) may recall, I was invited a few weeks back to speak at Collins Elementary School. They are, apparently, hard up for speakers there.

I hemmed and hawed and tried vigorously to get out of it, even though the teacher who did the inviting promised me free chocolate and introductions to some of the school’s attractive, single teachers. She came through with the chocolate, but I’m still waiting for those introductions.

At any rate, the kids were wonderful. The teacher, principal and other staffers all made me feel very welcome; so much so, in fact, that they eventually had to ask me to leave so they could work on math.

But the best part came a few days later, when the envelope containing the kids’ thank you notes arrived in the mail. I’ve never had such uniformly positive reviews. If their parents would give ‘em up, I’d personally adopt the entire class, assuming the parents would take them back when they hit their teens. Once was enough for that.

“Dear Mike Taylor,” wrote Alise. “No newspaper writer is better than you! I really like your articles. Sometimes, I wish they would never end.” (I’m going to get Alise to accompany me to the boss’ office next time I go begging for a raise. Unlike Alise, my boss seems to think there are better writers than me and that if he threw a stone into a crowd of chimpanzees, he’d probably hit one of them. Alise, bless her, knows better. It would take at least two stones.)

“Thanks for coming to our classroom!” wrote Gabriela. “You are awesome!” Maybe I should take both Alise and Gabriela when I talk with the boss.

Then there’s Gavan. Gavan is a really cool kid, but for some reason, he can’t stop talking about spinach. He even gave me a lecture about the dangers of eating all the chocolate the teacher gave me. Someday, Gavan will own a gym, I’m sure of it. Gavan says I’m a “nice author, for a grownup.” He’s not as big a fan as is Alise. Maybe if I ate more spinach.

Willis, on the other hand, hinted in his letter that if I didn’t like chocolate, he would be happy to take some of it off my hands. Sorry Willis; that chocolate was gone twenty minutes after I got back to the car! (Yes, even the big box of fancy chocolates that I was supposed to give to a girlfriend.)

Sam’s letter I’m not so sure about: “Thank you for visiting our class,” Sam writes. “I really wanted to meet a real author … before you came.” I guess meeting me cured him of that desire.

Bill and Gracie were concerned about my kid-o-phobia. “Are you really afraid of second graders?” they wrote. Well, Bill, Gracie, I was, but not so much any more, thanks to you guys.

Some of the other kids sent pictures; Marisa, for one, is as brilliant with a crayon as she is with a pencil. I’m sure she’s going to have my job someday, but that’s cool; I’ll be done with it by then. Regan also sent me a lovely drawing. And Brody sent a portrait (of me) that looks far better than I do in real life. I’m thinking of swapping Brody’s drawing with the mug shot that usually runs with this column.

At any rate, I’d like to publicly thank the kids for helping me get over my fear of second graders. Also, I should mention their teacher, Ms. TenCate. She is one of those rare educators that seems born to the job. She deserves a raise and I’m not just saying that because she gave me chocolate.

I’m saying it because I’m still hoping she’ll introduce me to those cute, single teachers.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

It isn’t easy being green, even on Halloween

As I write this, Halloween is still a couple weeks away. I don’t know where you stand on the whole Halloween issue; it seems these days there’s almost nothing you can say about anything that won’t offend somebody. I could write that I like blue skies and some nitwit would claim I’m promoting melanoma and that statistics show gray skies are “safer.”

The same holds true for Halloween. Yes, I know there are folks who consider it an open gateway to Satanism, Paganism, Diabolism and probably a couple other isms I haven’t even heard of. I like to think it’s a chance for kids to have fun and eat too much chocolate.

If you think otherwise, feel free to move on to the sports section now. Larry, our sports editor, is good at his job and there’s a lot of great local coverage there. Read how lousy your local team did Friday night and get mad at Larry instead of me. He’s a sports guy. He can take it. I’m a writer/artist type and therefore too sissified and delicate for that sort of conflict.

Don’t make me hit you to prove it.

At any rate, I’m not trying to promote the Trick or Treat ethos. In fact, this week’s column is a cautionary tale, a warning to youngsters who may become too intensely focused on developing the perfect costume.

My experience in this arena reached its zenith in October of 1964. It was a time when the United States was working overtime to get somebody—anybody—into space, into orbit, and on the moon before the Ruskies did. I was too young to know just why this was important, but I was definitely caught up in the excitement of it all.

Every week I thrilled to the campy thrills of The Outer Limits. My long term goal in life was to be abducted by space aliens. It still is. That may explain the current state of my 401k.

Anyway, I was a space geek. It’s only natural my Halloween costume would reflect this fact.

Now, you have to remember, this was a far-off, primitive age, when kids (at least in my neighborhood) still had to make their own costumes! Kids from good families got their mothers to make ‘em; kids from bad families cut two holes in a pillow case and called it good.

I came from a good family, so mom pitched in.

When I told her I wanted to trick or treat as a Martian, she immediately set about designing a costume that would make Rod Serling proud. She sewed shiny, silver fabric into a Martian-esque tunic, located some pre-cursor to “moon boots,” and even fashioned a pair of antennae from coat hangers and aluminum foil. (Everyone knows Martians have antennae, right?)

I slicked my hair back in a menacing fashion and voila, a Martian was born.

Only problem? Martians, as everyone also knows, are green. I was not, at least by nature.

I lobbied for green spray paint, preferably with metal flake, like I used on my model cars. My mother, no doubt picturing long afternoons removing it with a bucket of turpentine soaked rags, vetoed that idea.

In the end we opted for food coloring. Several bottles of it turned the water in the bathtub the appropriate shade of green. I soaked my skinny body—making sure to submerge my head until my lungs gave out—for about a half-hour. When I finally climbed, dripping wet and pruny, from that tub, I could have passed as a Martian in any club the Jetsons frequented.

At school, my costume won first prize. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

Less proud was the day after Halloween, when I tried to wash off the green. I tried soap. I tried cold cream. My mother tried kerosene, baby oil and several products designed, I think, for removing rust from mailbox posts.

Nothing worked. I was still a little green on Thanksgiving. By Christmas, I was an Earthling again.

I was glad to be pink, I guess. But a part of me, to this day, still misses being a Martian.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

When it comes to gas masks, sometimes bigger is better

We live is a scary world, there’s no doubt about it. Or maybe there is. Maybe it just seems scary because the media (um, which I’m part of, I guess) takes great delight in portraying things like shower mold and day-old bread as harbingers of doom on a par with nuclear war and universal Armageddon.

Every time an angry hillbilly sends some congressman a threatening letter laced with baby powder, TV anchors across the country blow a blood vessel trying to be the first to inform viewers that the letter could have been laced with anthrax! Every summer squall is a “narrowly averted disaster” that might have decimated entire cities! Each piece of space debris drifting within ten million miles of Earth could be a planet-killing asteroid. Eek!

It’s a wonder we’re not all wearing football helmets and hiding beneath our beds.

The media folks (me again!) are just trying to glean viewers, of course, in an effort to generate more advertising revenue. It’s hard to blame ‘em. Times are tough and that industrial strength hairspray news anchors use doesn’t come cheap.

On the plus side, all this fear-mongering has created a whole new economic market; anti-Armageddon preparedness merchandise. Items on the “be ready or perish” list include nose filters that wouldn’t stop an anemic cold virus, black plastic film to put over your windows in case of a nearby nuclear blast (it won’t stop the blast, but at least you won’t see it coming), and 50-gallon-drum-sized tanks of tap water that are somehow going to be more palatable post-doomsday than the stuff in the Evian bottles down at the supermarket.

Since people are for the most part nuts, all of this stuff actually sells. Usually for big bucks.

The market is so good, in fact, that merchandisers have been forced to get a little creative just to stand out in an overly-saturated market. One of the best examples of this is an item “invented” by Elena Bodnar, Raphael Lee, and Sandra Marijan, who recently applied for a patent for their “Garment device convertible to one or more facemasks.”

Which garment, exactly? A bra. Yup. I couldn’t make this stuff up, folks.

Their terror-battling brassiere consists of a filter device, a valve device, and two, um, face masks. The face masks, when not being used to fight terrorists, double as, well, you know what they double as.

I have to admit, I love this idea. But it does present a few problems.

First off, women with ample, um, “face mask holders” already seem to get more dates. With potential terrorists lurking around every corner, what guy is going to want to spend time with a more modestly-endowed woman? The Pamela Anderson’s of the world already see more than their share of romance. Once the “gas mask bra” hits the market, girls who look like Calista Flockhart are going to start having a lot of lonely Friday nights.

Also, some unscrupulous men (not me) might take advantage of the situation. I can see it now. Date night at the movies and all of a sudden a 16-year-old boy in the front row leaps from his seat and yells, “Oh no, I smell Sarin gas!”

Ten seconds later, 200 women have their faces covered and, ahem, other parts exposed. Things could get ugly fast. Or not, depending on your point of view.

The point is, the terror-bra just scratches the surface of what I see as a new, lucrative market – underwear that defends truth, justice, and the American way!

Jock straps that can, in an emergency, double as emergency grenade launchers! Boxer shorts for fat men that also serve as emergency shelters! Socks that – when stuffed with C4 and coated with axle grease – become “sticky bombs.” (And yeah, I know Tom Hanks did this in Saving Private Ryan, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t yet applied for a patent. I intend to.)

The sky’s the limit! And speaking of the sky, keep an eye out – anything could fall from there!

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Accept the compliments and you may wind up with your head on a stick

I’m a sucker for a compliment. Tell me I’m wonderful and I’ll hand over my wallet, credit cards and banking information. Maybe I’m insecure, maybe I’m just a big, dumb male. Whatever the case, I pant like a happy dachshund whenever someone tells me they like my work. If I had a tail, I’d wag it.

So when the letter from Collins Elementary School teacher Marnie TenCate arrived last week in my electronic in-box, I was immediately taken with her altogether accurate, 100 percent spot-on review of this column.

I have been using you for the past few years and you haven’t even known it! writes Ms TenCate. I teach second grade and clip your article just about every single week because you always have such fabulous writing with voice! I especially enjoy the lead, and so do my second graders.

Ms. TenCate goes on to say she uses my column as an example of good writing. My column! I know, I couldn’t believe it either. But she certainly had my attention.

Ms. TenCate adds she spends an hour each day writing with her students; a teacher after my own heart. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they come up with … or maybe you would, she writes.

I would indeed. Some of the most honest writing I’ve read has been penned by elementary school students. It’s only in later years we learn to water down our thoughts; to “soften,” to “spin.” We build little walls around our feelings and lose our ability to use words in an unashamedly truthful manner.

If Ms. TenCate and teachers like her can help stem that sad tide, I’m behind ‘em all the way.

But I try to stay waaaaaaaaay behind them. Away from the students.

Why? Because kids scare me. Don’t get me wrong, I love children … as individuals. Sometimes even in groups of two or three. But a whole classroom full of apple-cheeked, toe-headed, sneaker-footed second-graders? Yikes!

I’m not afraid they’re going to hurt me, exactly, like some angry Transylvanian mob storming Castle Frankenstein. I just don’t understand them. Looking out over a group of second-grade kids, I can’t tell if they’re thinking about the corn dogs they had for lunch, marbles, Barbie, Play Station II, or the possibility of reenacting a scene from “Lord of the Flies” with me playing the role of the decapitated pig.

So I snapped back to reality in a hurry when Ms. TenCate asked if I would visit the school and speak to her second-graders.

I was wondering if you would come in some day so they can meet you; a real published author! Ms. TenCate writes.

She then mentions – by way of sweetening the deal – that her husband works for Hershey and could probably set me up with some free chocolate. Ms. TenCate knows all my weaknesses, apparently, for she goes on to relate the fact that there are several cute, single teachers plying their trade at Collins Elementary School. I like teachers, and cute, single ones rank especially high on my “things of interest” list.

It has been a week now and I still haven’t responded to Ms. TenCate’s letter. I hate to disappoint a reader (since I have so few of them), but I’m chicken as all get-out about appearing before those kids.

What would I say? What if they ask me questions I can’t answer? What if they suddenly light torches and rush me, yelling, “Kill the pig! Kill the pig!” I’m not sure I can handle that kind of pressure.

But I’ll probably do it anyway. After all, Ms. TenCate called my writing “fabulous.” That doesn’t happen often.

Maybe I could just send her my credit cards and banking information.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.