Sort of Like High School

I went to a large undergraduate institution.  Some of my first year classes, like introductory physics had more than 400 students in the lecture hall.  The professors were giants in their fields, but not always the best teachers.  Frequently they were foreign and hard to understand.  Unlike high school, where there was an emphasis on how you kept your notebook, whether you did your homework etc., college was refreshing in that all that mattered was whether you grasped the material.  You were free to show up to class or not, no one cared how you took notes, it was all about quizzes and exams. 

Upper level classes had fewer people, but the emphasis remained the same.  There was more interaction with the professors, but there was no such thing as a grade for class participation.  I thought this was normal for higher education.  Then I went to law school.

Law school, particularly the first year, is like high school.  In the first year you are divided into sections, of roughly 70 people each.  You have all your classes with your section, never really interacting with the other sections.  Indeed, our first year Torts class was further subdivided into two mini-sections of 35 each. 

At the beginning of the 1st year of law school, everyone starts on the same page.  However, it is a rough learning experience.  Generally speaking, the grades that you get at the end of your first year determine much of your job prospects.  My school was ranked around #60 of 200+ schools, so not terrible but not terrific.  The higher your school was ranked, the less your individual class rank mattered.  For instance Yale, usually regarded as the top law school in the country, doesn't even give grades the first year.  Firms are so eager to get Yale students that it doesn't matter how you do.  To be fair, it is extremely difficult to get admitted to Yale, so even those at the bottom are very impressive.  Sort of like being the worst player on an All-Star team. 

Conversely, at my school everyone was shooting to be in at least the top 10% of students, hopefully the top 5%.  Over the course of the first year you would take 6 exams, that largely made up your GPA.  You were graded in Legal Writing, but it wasn't worth as many credits, so it was more important to get a high grade in the doctrinal classes.  The two biggest, worth 5 credits a piece, were Torts and Civil Procedure.  Civil Procedure came second semester, so that first year, first semester, everyone had their eye on Torts.  Even more nerve wracking, your entire grade is based on the final exam.  You have no idea about whether your study habits are working until it is too late. 

Our Torts professor was affectionately named the "velvet hammer."  The problem was that he was an exceptionally good teacher.  Not only was he exceptionally smart, he was some sort of expert on first amendment issues, particularly issues like hate speech.  He had a unique knack for conveying the information.  So much so, that almost everyone in the class grasped the material pretty easily.  Torts is probably one of the easiest subjects in the first year curriculum as well.  There is nothing too complicated.  Most classes spend the first 20% of the semester on intentional torts, like battery, false imprisonment etc.  The last 80% is spent on unintentional torts and the theory of negligence.  Even though the analysis of unintentional torts is more difficult than intentional torts, it is still pretty straight forward.  At my school, professors had to follow a strict curve, typically only 5% could get an "A", 10-15% an A- and so on with the majority of the class receiving a "B" or below.  Therefore, grasping the material was not good enough.  If you wanted the "A" you had to know the material better than the majority of the class.  Inevitably, someone had to be crushed under the velvet hammer.  Fortunately, it would at least appear to be gentle. 

Professor H, ran the torts class in the most friendly manner he knew.  He was so concerned with protecting people's feelings and encouraging participation that he went a little over the top.  For instance, if he asked a straightforward "Yes/No" question and the answer was "Yes", he would try to let someone who answered "No" down as easily as possible.  Instead of giving a gruff "wrong", he would say something like "well that's really close, and you seem like you were on the right track, but in fact in this case the answer happens to be 'yes'"  But it worked.  It was probably a combination of his easy going personality and the small class size, but there was far more participation in that class than any of my others. 

One interesting aside, Professor H was pretty intolerant of people showing up to class late.  Particularly if you made a habit of it.  We had one young lady who did make a habit of it.  She appeared to be in law school almost as a lark.  She seemed to have no end of discretionary income, always wearing the latest fashions and never the same outfit twice.  She was always late.  I think what infuriated Professor H the most was that she always came in with a fresh Starbucks.  So this was a person who realizes that they are late, but nevertheless makes sure to stop for a drink.  Perhaps if she skipped the drink she would have been on time, or at least less late.  So after about the 10th time of this happening, Professor H has had enough.   But of course, he is too nice of a guy to actually blow up.  Rather he goes the passive aggressive route of waiting for her to take her seat, and then addressing the entire class and giving this long winded speech of how it is important to value everyone's time and what showing up late represents.  I would have gone the more direct route myself, but that wasn't how Professor H rolled.  I was surprised we didn't join hands and sing Kumbayah.  The worst part was that she was either too stupid to grasp that this was about her, or was too self involved to care, she continued to stroll in late, perfectly coiffed with steaming beverage in hand, for the remainder of the semester. 

Typically, right around Thanksgiving, is when panic sets in.  Classes are mostly winding down, with exams typically scheduled for the middle of December and wrapped up before Christmas.  All of a sudden, you realize how close it is.  You have this nagging fear that there is always more to learn, more nuances to perfect.  Professor H gave us a thorough review session and encouraged people to drop by his office for further questions and answers, but it was never enough.  There was always doubt.

I think Torts was the final exam that we took that semester.  I know Criminal Law was first because people were losing their damn minds in the exam room prior to it starting.  The issue was that we took all of our exams on laptops and used this special program that locks you out of the rest of your computer.  Prior to the exam starting, all of the tech people are in the room making sure people can log on.  It was going smoothly until people noticed that the clock had started counting down.  Almost all exams are timed, typically 3-4 hours per exam and you want every second.  Since everyone was new, we all assumed that once the clock reached the prescribed time our exam would automatically submit.  This was not the case, as the poor tech guy explained again and again.  The problem was everyone was so amped up and nervous, that he had to keep explaining it over and over. 

By the time Torts rolled around, it was like the end of a marathon, the last thing left to do to end the first semester.  Most exams consist of a long fact pattern where you have to figure out the relevant legal analysis.  Professor H mixed it up a bit with some multiple choice first.  It is hard to write a good multiple choice question for Torts, because typically the answer is "it depends."  But, for a well written multiple choice there can only be one best answer.  The trick is to exploit a little loophole that leads people to select the trick answer.  I think that was worth only 10% of the exam though. 

The bulk of the exam focused on a fact pattern involving a young kid taking an assault rifle from his dad's unlocked gun closet and going to a mall and shooting it up.  It was more complicated, there were issues of the security guards having an idea that he had a weapon and the kid making threatening comments at school.  Over the course of three hours you had to identify and analyze different theories of liability.  I thought I did a pretty good job (turns out I got an A in the class). 

After grades had come out and we had started the next semester, Professor H offered to do a review of the exam.  This was great because you could see where you could improve.  Most professors grade based on a score sheet, looking to see whether you identified an issue and your analysis, with most issues worth anywhere between 3-5 points.  He gave us the score sheet and that is when I immediately noticed the velvet hammer.  There was a section worth about 16 points, a significant number of points, where he expected a policy argument on the whether the legislature should ban assault rifles.  To be fair, throughout the semester and indeed even in the instructions for the exam, he had instructed us to consider policy arguments.  Most of us missed it entirely or only touched upon it in a cursory manner.  That was the flip side of the curve though, you were only measured against the person at the top.  If they missed an issue it actually helped you.  So fortunately, the velvet hammer swung hard and hit uniformly.

Bachelor Party

Like most people, I had my Bachelor Party in Las Vegas Atlantic City.  Atlantic City has everything Vegas has, as long as you don't count what Vegas has too carefully.  For a little while, it thrived, or at least survived, because it was the only game in town that did not involve flying across the country. 

It was a blast.  In addition to the usual camp contingent of the Weebs, Wiggs, and the Load, my brother from another mother, and my brother from the same mother both came along.  This was a time when the Load did not have his financial house entirely in order.  To that end, he had applied for a credit card, which he intended to treat as a gift card, to finance the trip.  Unfortunately, the credit card didn't come true.  I don't know if you can have a negative credit rating, but if anyone could, it would be the Load.  Regardless, he was my best man and was not going to let this obstacle stand in his way.

I don't remember all the details, but there are a number of incidences that standout:

1. We had a great time at this Irish themed bar.  It was a beautiful day, sitting out on a comfy porch and the beer and food was flowing freely.  There was the usual making fun of each other and making ridiculous jokes that were only funny to us.  For instance, one of the trips that we used to guide out of camp involved a portion of the Raquette river.  There is one section of the river called "the Oxbow" which is an area where if you take a wrong turn you end up going in circles endlessly.  Ken Smith, wrote descriptions of each trek, and for this section he wrote in bold letters avoid the oxbow. So of course, when on my way to the bathroom, which involved going around a corner I passed the  load going around the exact same corner and admonished him to avoid the oxbow. 

2.  We had a friendly game of Texas Hold-Em poker.  I think we each threw in 20 bucks and it was elimination with the winner taking all (~$100).  Normally, for most card games, the Wiggs always wins.  However, he had not played much poker, and poker is a game of luck and bluffing in addition to skill.  The Load had the most experience playing poker and had set this up.  We only found out later that the Load had assumed he would win and had factored the hundred bucks into his financing.  As luck would have it, I ended up winning.  The Load, as always, took it in stride though.

3. The NJ Ballet.  Once you leave the main boardwalk area of Atlantic City, you quickly find yourself in some less than desirable neighborhoods.  Fortunately we were travelling as a pack and we were all pretty good sized guys.  As we were taking in a show, all was merry and bright.  However, the Weebs indicated that at one point both he and the Wiggs had been minding their own business when they felt their eyes begin to burn and their noses run.  What we surmised/guessed, is that someone had sprayed pepper spray in the area in an attempt to perhaps steal their wallets while they were incapacitated.  Fortunately, it never came to that.  Perhaps they escaped the full blast. 

4. You really can't smoke in an elevator.  Over the course of the weekend, many a cigar was smoked.  You are allowed to smoke most places in Atlantic City.  You are not allowed to smoke in an elevator.  However, my brother was never one to let a placard deter him.  We all entered an elevator, and I think my brother was the only one smoking.  Even if he was not the only one smoking, he was producing an incredible quantity of smoke.  His cigar was like the machine beekeepers use to keep their bees calm.  Not only was he spewing smoke at an alarming rate, but it was a relatively small elevator and a smoky haze quickly enveloped us.  It would have been OK if we had made it all the way down.  But, a few floors down a couple stepped on the elevator.  Right away, the woman, who was probably in her mid forties informed my brother that it was not legal to smoke in the elevator.  Perhaps if my brother had said something rude or ignored her, she would not have gotten that mad.  Instead, he sincerely acknowledged her and responded back with, "Yes, it is illegal to smoke in an elevator."  This seemed to set her off and she told him that he should be ashamed of himself, to which he responded that she was right and he should be ashamed of himself.  The more he agreed with her, the angrier she got.  Also, he kept that stogie stoked and produced just as much, if not more, smoke.  Fortunately, it was not that long of a ride.

5.  There is a restaurant on the boardwalk that is entirely covered in dollar bills.  The walls, the ceilings, picture frames etc.  In addition to the dollar bills, there are foreign currencies from all over the world.  Most people who visit the restaurant, sign a dollar bill and the owner finds some place to stick it.  He probably has thousands of dollars worth of dollar bills in there.  For some reason, society works here.  I talked to the owner and he said he had very few instances of people taking the money.  It is like a diner in the choice of food, a place where you can get breakfast any time of the day.  However, it also sports a full bar, so if the mood strikes you, you can order a stack of pancakes and a mint julep!  I really enjoy visiting this place any time I am in Atlantic City and I am sure we had at least one breakfast there. 

All in all, it was a great trip. 

Some Thoughts on Serial

I've been listening to the Serial podcast.  It is an interesting idea, a couple of reporters that investigate a murder from 1999.  It is very in-depth reporting, with lots of interviews, court recordings etc.  The part that got me though was when some of the jurors were interviewed.  The jurors tended to believe that the accused should have testified.  They reasoned that no innocent person would not cooperate in their own defense.  The prosecutor cannot mention it at all in his closing argument, arguably it would be grounds for a mistrial and an ethical breach.  Even though the Judge is required to read jurors an instruction that specifically provides that the jurors are absolutely forbidden from drawing that inference, it nonetheless tends to happen.  I understand the reaction.  I think people interpret it as the accused must have something to hide if he is unwilling to take the stand.  After all, this is probably one of the most important days of his life, and he is just going to sit there.  What the jurors don't know is that the accused has likely spoken with his defense attorney, at length, on this topic.

I have yet to try a case where the accused has testified, either as a prosecutor or defense.  As a defense counsel, I always left the choice to the accused.  But, I would inform him/her of the potential pros and cons of testifying.  On the pro side, it is a chance to tell your side of the story.  And, importantly the jurors really want to hear that side.  The list of cons is much longer, in my opinion. First, the accused is going to be nervous and scared and that will likely come through in his testimony.  However, the jurors may well interpret that as evasiveness or not telling the truth.  Second, on cross examination, the accused will feel attacked.  This will not be the first time. For the entire time leading up to the trial the accused will likely have been felt like they were attacked by the State.  From interrogations by police officers, plea negotiations and the entire process the accused will feel like it is a "me vs them" situation.  Indeed it is.  The case will be captioned in some form to resemble "the government" vs "the accused"

The other issue is that many accused do not invoke their right to remain silent from the outset.  In many cases the accused will have waived their Miranda rights and often will talk to law enforcement at the outset.  I think prior to becoming an attorney, I would likely have done the same thing.  Particularly if I was innocent.  If someone accused you of something you didn't do, the natural reaction is to explain that they don't have the correct version of events.  Or, their version is incomplete.  The problem is, in most cases what you tell law enforcement can only hurt you, not help you.  Once you are suspected of committing a crime, regardless of how believable your version of events, it is highly unlikely that law enforcement will simply drop the case based on your story.  The danger is that you accidentally remember a detail incorrectly, or your version conflicts with that of a witness (even if your version is indeed the correct one).  People have a tendency to believe a witness, at least at the outset, particularly if the witness has no discernible bias or motive to lie.  The accused has to start from the other end of the pendulum.  Most jurors tend to distrust the accused until his credibility can be bolsters by other witnesses or evidence.

Further, a conversation with law enforcement is not a level playing field.  You have no idea what they know, who they have spoken to or whether they are being truthful.  It is like a novice playing a poker game against an expert and they get to see your cards.  Also, at the end of the game you either break even or lose everything.

Finally, the danger of the accused speaking to anyone prior to the trial is the hearsay exception for admissions by a party opponent.  Generally speaking, a witness cannot testify in court as to what another person said out of court.  There are a lot of exceptions, too many to go into here.  But the big exception is that the prosecution can generally bring in any statement that the accused made.  But only the government.  The defense cannot introduce out of court statements from the accused that are helpful to the case, because at that point those are not admissions by a party opponent.

So if an accused does elect to testify, all of his prior statements that prejudice him will come in.  There will be inconsistencies.  Memories fade, interrogations are stressful.  Law enforcement is permitted to use leading questions.  The ideal case would be an accused that elects only to speak at his trial.  Of course, that rarely happens.

Consider This

In the first year of law school, with few exceptions, everyone takes the same classes.  The idea is that all law involves at least some aspects of either criminal law, torts, contracts and property.  In addition you take federal rules of civil procedure, even though most people don't practice in federal court.  But, states rules are usually pretty close.

My contracts professor was a nut.  He had a Ph.D in philosophy and while he had a law degree I don't think he ever took the bar or intended to practice law.  That's the funny thing about law school, and perhaps to an extent academia in general.  They value the rank of the law school, not whether the professor is actually competent to practice law.  Great thing about this guy is he didn't even go to a particularly good law school. 

He was all about technology.  Because of this, his classes were extremely different than any others.  In the standard class, particularly the first year, the school likes to use something called the Socratic Method.  The idea is that the professor calls on one person, and that person is supposed to recite the facts of the case, and then what the "holding" was.  The holding is the general rule that the case stands for.  Most of these are pretty old cases, but they still get cited.  For instance, in torts, we had a case about some kids in school fooling around in class.  This one kid was kicking this other kid in the shin and unbeknownst to the kicker, the kickee had some weird disease that made his bones brittle and generally very susceptible to injury.  So he develops this pretty complicated injury and the family sues.  The kicker's family argues that he should only be liable to the extent a normal person would be injured.  The judge disagreed and held that you generally take the victim as you find him.  Or, the eggshell skull rule. 

So in a typical class, you would flush out the ruling through a series of questions, then there would be the inevitable back and forth about whether you agreed with the holding or not and whether it was good policy. In a big class, you may only get called on once in the entire semester, but it could be for 20 minutes.  Our contracts professor made us purchase these "clickers" for his class.  The way it worked is he would ask the entire class a multiple choice question and you could key in your answer through the clicker.  He would then get an instant distribution of how the class voted, sort of like asking the audience in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."  I happened to think this was the better way to go, not only for assessing your own knowledge, but for the professor to understand what concepts people were grasping or not.

He still felt like he had to do the Socratic method though.  But you could tell his heart wasn't in it.  The problem with the Socratic method is that it takes a long time because the student has to think through the answers, may not be super familiar with the facts etc.  So our boy would ask a student to lay out the facts of the case, let them get out approximately seven words, and then take over, regardless of how well the person was doing.  He also had this habit of calling on people who were on the exact opposite side of the direction he was facing (class was arranged like 3 sides of a rectangle with the podium at the other side, but he never taught from the podium).  It would be so random because sometimes he wouldn't even switch topics, but he loved switching up people.  He also had a hard time with pronouncing even basic names.  For whatever reason he tended to believe that people in his class had adopted non-standard pronunciations of their names.  So if your name was Maria he might pronounce it like Mary-A with a big emphasis on the "A". 

His other love of technology was carrying around the smallest laptop possible.  This thing must have had a 7 inch screen max! He would wander in with this thing, and then have the hardest time reading the screen or finding the right keys to hit.  So a good portion of the class was spent with him bent over the laptop, squinting and awkwardly using one finger to type. 

I learned the reason for his small computer when I visited his office.  It was something out of hoarders.  There was crap everywhere, the bookshelves were filled to the bursting point, there were books all over the floor, some still in their original wrappers.  He must have had 6-8 old computers just scattered around in there.  Some were super old too, like the giant cube monitors that used to let you type only in green font.  There was random stuff too, like a samurai sword.  Not mounted on the wall - just lying around just in case he needed to fend off an attacker.  When you came to visit with him, he would motion for you to sit on a chair that was overflowing with papers.  You would try to take this stack and put it on the stacks covering the floor.  Every time you came back, there would be a fresh stack there.  Random shipping boxes were strewn about, some had been broken down, others not.  The only area that was free was the one chair he used.  There was just enough space on that tiny desk of his to put the computer.  It wasn't enough to put the whole computer on, just enough to put more than 50% of it so that it didn't fall off. 

Like most classes, the entire grade depended on how you did on the final exam. His exams were always entertaining because he would use the exam to make fun of other professors and the administration.  Most exams are attempts to model what it would be like to get a client with an issue.  So it is a long narrative with various legal events happening.  He had a review before the class and essentially gave the entire fact pattern at the review session.  It didn't really matter, you are graded on a curve, but he was of course the only one to do this. 

The next year, when I was on Law Review, I chose him to be my adviser.  I chose him because I wasn't actually at all interested in Law Review.  Law Review is the biggest scam there is, but it looks good on your resume.  So even though I had zero interest and was working full time at this point, I did it.  It is a pass/fail class that I cam dangerously close to failing.  You have to write a paper over the course of the year and at certain points you have to meet with your advisor.  Luckily, my contracts professor thought that the term "meet to confer" on your paper was satisfied by sending me a "read receipt" over e-mail after I sent him the draft.  Other people were having these super long meetings and writing multiple drafts, but I knew I had chosen correctly.

I would sometimes drop by his office in future years, but he was never there.  Fortunately it seemed to only get more cluttered!

More Fun with Erin

Every first Friday of the month, Bella's school does a walk to school event.  Supposedly it is supposed to show our support of the environment.  However, the event does not involve walking from your house to school, rather, everyone meets up at this park and walks the 1/2 mile or so to school.  I am pretty sure, far more fossil fuels are used than if all the kids just took the bus.  Almost everyone, myself included, drives to the park.  Also, the buses still run, because they can't make it mandatory.  It is still quite a fun thing.  They set up a little table where the kids all sign their names and there is hot chocolate for the kids and coffee for the adults.  I think they get sponsored by Starbucks and Einstein Bagels, because there is a large collection.  Erin always gets a bagel, takes one bite and then makes Tuyen carry it around for her. 

Behind closed doors, Erin is pretty friendly towards me.  She likes me to swing her by her arms so high that her feet almost hit the ceiling, she enjoys making up words and songs and is generally a nut.  In public though, it is a different story.  I may as well be a stranger.  She only wants to hang out with her Mommy.  She won't let me pick her up, she won't really even talk to me.  It is kind of the reverse of a domestic violence relationship where the abuser treats the victim well in public but not well behind closed doors. 

Fortunately, Bella is nice to me both in public and private.  Today, while we were waiting for the walk to start, we continued the heated game of duck duck goose (DDG) we started at the house.  For a little while, it was me, Bella and Erin playing, but Erin ducked out and it was heads up DDG from that point on.  I really love that Bella was up for one on one DDG.  There is not a whole lot of surprise in the game, except for how many times Bella will pat you on the head before she finally calls you a goose.  Usually a good 15 times of being called a duck first.  Bella also refers to the person that picks the goose as the "ducker".  After this, we engaged in a series of races.  They started out as simple foot races, but once Erin and Tuyen got involved we transitioned to hopping races, lunge races, skipping races and walking backward races.  Erin always won the walking backwards race, because her interpretation of walking backwards is sprinting forwards! 

The thing with Erin, as I may have mentioned before, is that if she gets the slightest bit of moisture on any of her clothing, she will immediately attempt to remove that article, regardless of whether she is wearing anything underneath.  She has zero tolerance for dampness.  Unfortunately, she took a spill this morning and got a bit of mud on one of her knees.  She was very upset about that and demanded to be changed immediately.  We didn't have any extra clothes, and luckily she decided to keep her pants on! 

When the walk finally did start, Erin of course refused to walk with me at all.  Bella and I walked along though.  When Erin walks, unless she is super excited about the destination, she really takes it easy, just a super slow pace.  In fact, when she holds your hand she kind of leans back into her walk, just to make it even a bit slower.  However, it is a large group of people all walking, so you don't really notice how slow Erin is going. It only took a little time to get to school and Bella was very excited to be there, so it was a good excursion.

On the way back, it looked like it would start to rain pretty soon.  Surprisingly, Erin doesn't mind the rain.  I think she is ok with her entire body getting wet, but does not appreciate when only a portion of it does.  So she was in no hurry and continued her leisurely stroll back to the vehicle. 
We weighed the girls this morning, Bella was 44 pounds and Erin was 30, starting to bulk up!  Of course, anytime I asked Erin if she wanted me to carry her, I was quickly rebuffed in no uncertain terms, we were in public after all!  She had no problem with Tuyen carrying her, but it is tough for Tuyen to carry her long distances.  Finally, I just walked ahead a bit and brought the truck to Erin rather than Erin to the truck!

An Officer and a Gentleman - Part 2

Every OCS Class is assigned a class officer, a class Chief Petty Officer and a class Drill Instructor.  Most of the class officers are put there to rot, they don't do much and it is not a good assignment in terms of advancement.  Our class Officer, a Lieutenant, was no exception.  I really have no idea what he did.  We only sporadically saw him.  He threatened to not let me graduate because I needed my wisdom teeth removed.  Luckily, someone intervened.  He also called me Wilson throughout the entire 13 weeks I was there.  I didn't even look like the guy named Wilson in our class.  Even at graduation, when I rendered my final salute to him, he saluted back and said something along the lines of "Well you made it, Wilson"  I fired back "Smith, Sir"  and walked off.

The class Chief Petty Officer was Senior Chief Lucas.  I loved that hard charging Filipino.  He had a really heavy accent but was super squared away.  He was responsible for all the administration, with a 50+ class it was a huge job, but he never missed a beat.  I like to think he was the one who talked some sense into the Class Officer and let me graduate on time.

Finally, the man we would see the most, and genuinely come to love and admire was our class drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Lewis.  Unlike the class officers, they only picked the best Marines to come to OCS and most of them made rank.  Most of the other drill instructors were Gunnery Sergeants, but Staff Sergeant Lewis was one paygrade lower.  However, I am sure he picked up the next rank quite quickly.  I think he was Haitian, he did not have an accent and he was a very fit man.  He was slightly on the shorter and stockier side, but definitely a force to be reckoned with.

One of my first memories of SSgt Lewis was when he was teaching our entire class how to iron.  There were almost 60 of us, crammed into this small room sitting indian style.  Here is this ripped up guy, showing us how to iron, and doing it in the manliest way possible.  Every move he made was, to quote the man, "quick and vicious"!  I didn't know you could be quick and vicious while ironing, but he somehow made it so.  I half expected him to put the iron out on his tongue!  Then something very awkward happened.  One of the girls in the class had been raising her hand for awhile and finally SSgt Lewis had enough.  Just like with everything else, there is a specific procedure for asking a question.  Something along the lines of "This Officer Candidate requests to ask the Class Drill Instructor, Staff Sergeant Lewis a question."  The Drill Instructor would typically reply with a succinct "What" or "Spit it out"  Pronouns were strictly forbidden, there was no I or me,  but the best part was if you called SSgt Lewis "you" by accident.  He would then say "what the hell do I look like, a female sheep"? I thought this was a clever retort.  This girl is having all sorts of trouble getting her question out, each time that she has to restart she would get even more flustered and fumble some more.  Finally, on the verge of tears, she simply shouts out "This Officer Candidate needs to go to the head to change her tampon"   I don't think any of us were expecting anything like this!  Certainly not SSgt Lewis, who is still wielding the iron.  He just turned away and motioned for her to leave the room!

Mail call was always an interesting experience.  We would all gather in the hallway (passageway) in the dorm area, and SSGT Lewis would have this enormous stack of mail.  He would call your name, and hand your piece of mail to the "mail body"  You would run up as fast as you possibly could, then clap both your hands onto the mail, quickly and viciously!  If it was an envelope you could open it up at your leisure.  However, if it was a package it had to be opened up in front of everyone to ensure there was no contraband.  If you received candy, you had 30 seconds to eat it all, regardless of the quantity.  One guy's mom sent enough full size Snickers bars so that we could all have one.  By this time SSgt Lewis was starting to go a little easier on us, so he let us all have one, but it was done with orders as to when we could unwrap, take the first bite, swallow etc.  Another guy had a bit of a prankster for a girlfriend.  She sent him what appeared to be a big bag of Starburst.  In fact, it was a large ziploc bag filled mostly with gravel and a few Starburst.  So,  SSgt Lewis instructed him to eat the starburst, and indeed he tried.  Finally, SSgt Lewis noted that he wasn't swallowing.  He barked at him and asked why he wasn't swallowing, the guy through a mouthful of gravel remarked that "Its gravel, Sir"  This was one of the few times we saw SSgt Lewis chuckle as he told him to spit it out!

An Officer and a Gentleman - Part 1 The First Week

I first saw this movie when I was pretty young. My favorite part was when Richard Gere fights his drill instructor. I didn't see it again until after I had gone through OCS, and realized that they had taken quite a bit of poetic license with it. The other thing I did not remember was the very graphic sex scenes. I had just started seeing a young lady and it was quite awkward choosing this as a movie to watch together. Lots of awkward silence.

Officer Candidate School was an interesting experience. I would never want to do it again, but I am glad I went through the experience. Here is what I can remember:

The school is 13 weeks long and used to be in Pensacola, FL. They have moved it to Newport RI now. The first day is admin day, but they make it as stressful as possible. I made the mistake of checking in quite early. The first thing that happens is you get yelled at by upperclassmen. The only difference between them and you is that they have been there for about 10 weeks longer, but they are wearing uniforms and yelling at you. I think they were going extra loud on me because I was there first one to check in so they had plenty of rage. They made me take off my shoes and pull the laces out. They then had me relace them and constantly yelled "Inboard over outboard" which I eventually understood as how to lace up the shoes with a specific lace going over another one. Of course, they don't tell you this, they simply make you do it over and over until you finally get it right. Everytime they yell at you, you have to yell back. Either "Yes Sir/Ma'am" if it is a question of "Aye Sir/Ma'am" if it is a command. No matter how loudly you yell, you are told to yell louder. You have to acknowledge each time they say "louder" with an "Aye Sir" Of course it is not called yelling, it called "being ballistic" I have no idea where this came from, but for the next 13 weeks we were constantly told to be more ballistic.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur, the two things I remember the most was the chow hall and uniform issue. You don't get your official uniforms until near the end of the week, for the entire first week you wear what are referred to as poopy greens. You are issued a pair of pants and a WWII style helmet painted bright silver. The helmet is referred to as a chrome dome. You also have to march around with a canteen everywhere you go. The funniest part about the poopy green pants is that there is no effort to try to give you a pair that fits. Indeed the upperclass men seemed to delight in giving you the wrong size. The entire process takes about 15 seconds, you march over to this giant closet and they just pull whatever they feel like off the shelf and give it to you. I was fortunate though. I was issued a pair that must have been a 46 inch waist, they looked extremely comical but I could just adjust my belt to stop them falling off. Many of my classmates got issued pairs that were far too tight.

The chow hall procedure was something else. For the next 11 weeks every meal was the same way. Your entire class of about 50 people marches to the chow hall four abreast. You halt outside the building. Your class leader then gives the following instruction "Class 28-01" (We were the 28th class of year 2001), upon receiving the command march, you will halfstep up the ladder-well execute an immediate column left and form up outside the door" Everyone then yells back "Aye Section Leader" If the section leader messes up any of the command, you get to yell back "As you were Section Leader". The Section Leader then shouts, "Ready" at which point everyone inhales very sharply and as balistically as you can inhale. This is then followed by "March" at which time everyone yells "Kill" and marches up the stairs. You are then ordered to "adjust" which means making sure your uniform is squared away. The Section leader then yells "Door Body off the rear". Since we marched in descending height order, the door body is usually the smallest person. Our door body was this small lesbian, before you were allowed to be a lesbian. Once we were allowed off base on weekends, her "aunt" would come visit her. The door body's job is to cup there hand around their head and peer into the chow hall to see if there is another class already waiting in line. If there is, the section leader would yell for the "knowledge body" This person stays in line, but has to recite key Navy knowledge to the group while waiting. Things like general orders of a sentry or code of conduct. Think of someone shouting "I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist." and so on. After a few minutes of this, the Section Leader will order the door body to report the status of the chow hall deck. If the deck is clear, you enter.

You enter the chow hall, one at a time, following the person immediately in front of you. As you cross the threshhold, you stomp your foot on the metal plate at the bottom of the doorway and shout out what number you are. So the first person shouts "zero-one" followed by "zero-two" and so on. Also, you don't get to use regular numbers like thirteen or twenty-five. Rather you would say "one-three" for 13. Inevitably someone screws it up and you have to go outside as an entire class and start all over. Once you enter you form two lines and stand as close as you possibly can to the person in front of you, affectionately designated as "nut to butt". One at a time, you walk forward to a giant stack of trays, you then slam your hands down as hard as you possibly can on the trays and grab one. After the first week you get regular cutlery, but for the first week you only get an oversized spoon, referred to as your "war spoon" You then get whatever they happen to be serving, and hopefully it is something that lends itself to an oversized spoon. Once you have your food, you proceed to your table. You then put your tray on the table, and stand at attention while reading from this pocket sized notebook that you are issued. You have to hold the notebook at arms length with your arm straight out and parralel to the deck (floor). Once the last person has their meal, the class is ordered to sit all at the same time. The worst part was if you sat near one of the legs for the table, because you were not allowed to straddle it. You had to have both feet on the same side of the table leg. There is no talking. The section leader will then order people to pray at will and then you begin your meal.

Even this is extremely regulated. Your two glasses of water must be touching each other and touching the top right corner of your tray. On occasion, the drill instructors would march right down the center of the table and if your glasses were not properly "grounded" he would proceed to kick your drink onto your shipmate. Sometimes entire trays of food would be sent flying. When you were eating, you would snap your head down to look at the food, take your war spoon and try to get a reasonable bite. Once you had the bite, you had to snap your head up and stare straight ahead. It was only then that you were allowed to chew. This procedure was repeated for every bite. The best part was that you were on a strict 20 minute schedule, the Section Leader is the only individual authorized to wear a watch. Every five minutes the section leader would raise his hand. At that point you swallowed whatever food you had in your mouth. The Section Leader would insure everyone was looking at him and then would proceed to slam his hand down onto the table three times as loundly as he could. He would then follow up, ballistically, shouting "Class 28-01, this is your one-five minute warning" And we would all shout out "Aye Section Leader." There are multiple classes all eating at the same time, so every minute or so, someone is pounding on the table and calling out warnings. You get a warning at 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes and 1 minute. The 1 minute warning is stated as "This is your immediate warning"

Clearing your tray is regimented as well, the entire class is given the following instructions. "Prepare to ground glasses on tray" at which point you put your glasses on the tray. Then everyone is ordered to stand. Finally, you grab your tray, as a class, and march to the scullery to turn in your tray. Meals were always scary because lots of drill instructors were present and you never knew who might mess with you. Sometimes, if the class screwed up enough, you were taken outside and ordered to exercise.

You don't actually meet your drill instructor for the first few days. You only interact with upperclassmen. While they can yell at you, they can't order you to exercise. Also, the first week you live in this big open bay. After week 1, you move into 4 person dorm rooms. The first time we met our drill instructor was another great time. We had checked in on Sunday, and I think it was Wednesday morning when our drill instructor showed up. Except it wasn't just him. It was every single drill instructor, probably 8 or 10 of them. They all came running and yelling into our squad bay at 5 am like a pack of wild dogs. At any given time you might have 4 or 5 of them screaming at you, ordering you around. One of them climbed up on these large metal lockers we had to store our clothes, probably 6 feet high or so. The Drill instructors order you to get dressed, but you have to follow their exact sequence, which might mean putting on your left sock, then your shirt, then perhaps your pants, followed by your left shoe and finally your right sock and shoe. They are also tearing around the place pulling sheets off the racks and causing mayhem. From that point on, your drill instructor is never far away and you are in constant danger of screwing up and doing calithenics whereever you happen to be. Their favorite is to take you out to the sandpits to exercise. We affectionately called these the SUYA for Sand Up Your A$$. My favorite time was we had to march around with our mattresses, then proceed to the SUYA, do a ton of calithenics, fill our pockets with sand, bring the sand into our living spaces and dump the sand out, and of course clean it up.

At the end of the week, on Friday, you transition from "Indoctrination Candidate" to "Officer Candidate". They call that day "Black Friday" It all starts off with an inspection. They bring in a bunch of senior officers to inspect your bed (rack) and locker. Inspection is a loose term, really they just come in and throw your stuff everywhere. They then ask you a bunch of questions, whatever you answer is wrong, and they tell you that you will never make it. Once that is done, you have to jam all your stuff into a big green bag called a "sea bag". Though the bag is equipped with straps you are not allowed to use them. Rather, you must bear hug your bag, as you march to the new living spaces. It takes forever because you are constantly doing exercises and standing around with this bag in a very uncomfortable position.

Once you get to the new dorms there is an epic PT Session. The drill instructor marches you all over the two floors of the dorms, doing countless push-ups, leg-lifts, straddle hops (jumping jacks) and so on. What happens next is awesome though. Just when you think you can't do anything else, the drill instructor orders you out of the dorm to presumably do more exercises in the sand pit. However, all of the senior classes are there. They are applauding and handing out water bottles. Then they welcome you to the regiment and even put on a skit for you. You instantly feel like you belong, it is quite touching. More importantly, the drill instructors are gone, it is the first time in a week when you are allowed to laugh and smile. It is only a small break, but it couldn't come at a better time.

The Return of the Load

The Load just put up some quality posts, so it motivated me to write one. November seems to have flown by, I can't believe this is my first post for the month. A couple of weeks ago, on Veteran's day, I went to my daughter's school for career day. I was speaking to 5th and 6th graders. It was an interesting time. The whole thing kicked off with a player from the Redskins. He kind of rambled all over the place about how tough it is to make it, how he nearly failed out of high school and his plan to open a high end lounge in NYC. The kids seemed to enjoy it though. After his speech, we rotated from classroom to classroom. We had a 15 minute block in each classroom to talk about what we did. Some of the highlights:

1. Every kid who had a familiy member or friend that was in the military asked me if I knew the person. Often they would just give me the first name too, so on a couple of occasions if they asked me if I knew "Joe" or "John" I could honestly say I did. However, I am pretty sure it was not the same person. Sometimes they would even ask if I knew someone that had served in the Vietnam war and had left the military 30 years ago.

2. I should have planned out what I was going to say a bit more. Most of the time, they started in with questions almost immediately. They all wanted to know about my time in Afghanistan and whether I had shot anyone. Unfortunately, my time over there wasn't that glamorous. They also wanted to know if I had been shot at. Technically, I had been, but the story is not that exciting. During our first couple of days we had a car bomb go off near the main gate and later that day we were ordered into the bunkers. We found out that we were ordered into the bunkers because two landowners near the base were having a dispute and firing rounds at each other. Some of these rounds were landing inside the base. The funniest part about all of this is that we hadn't been issued ammunition yet. So there were a bunch of us, in the military, who were outgunned by the local poplace! I had been in the gym when the car bomb went off. I was there with some Army guys that were part of the quick reaction force or QRF. These are the guys who are on call to respond to immediate threats. The bomb goes off and these guys gear up and start running to the front gate. I ran with them, not really thinking, for a few steps, until I realized that I didn't have my body armor on or any ammunition. So I went back to the gym.

I did get two injuries while over there, both minor, both sort of funny. The first one (I have previously written about) was when I was running the fence line at a base near the Pakistani border. Some local kids were running with me and we were having a great time. At least I thought we were. One of them decided it would be fun to throw a rock at me. It was a hell of a throw because he cleared the fence and hit me square on the dome while I was running. They all scattered after that. The special forces medic who checked me out afterwards told me that I should have shot the kids. I am pretty sure I would be in the brig if I had. The second injury happened during a heated volleball game. We weren't outside, Top Gun style. Rather, it was inside a gym. The court wasn't exactly regulation, and just beyond the out-line was a wall. I was going for a hot, did not keep my bearings and ran right into the wall. My glasses cut into my face and there was a fair amount of blood.

3. It was interesting what the kids focused on. In one class, I mentioned briefly that one of the things we do is prepare wills for people. The entire rest of the class was lots of questions about how specific you can be in your will (like can you specify what music is played at your funeral and what dance people have to do). I liked this question because it assumed that there would be dancing at the funeral. I then talked to them about assets that pass outside of probate and the ability for the surviving spouse to renounce the will if he/she is not happy with the share left to him or her. Personally, I find drafting wills to be one of the more boring things that we do, but these kids couldn't get enough of it.

4. I got to meet Silvio's older brother! Some interesting things about this guy, he too was the biggest kid in class and had even more hair than Silvio. It must have been shoulder length, pretty unkempt as well. It was a relatively cold day and he was wearing shorts and a vest, not as outlandishly colored as Silvio's but still pretty good. My favorite part was that I began my little speech and he immediately interrupted me and told me to write my name on the board. I was hoping he would have some bizarre questions, but he never followed up. He was just there to enforce the rules.

5. I couldn't be 100% honest, or at least I didn't feel it was appropriate. When they asked about what kind of cases I worked on, I left out the ones that we do the most - child pornography and sexual assault. I can only imagine the flak the school would get into if I had opened that can of worms. They did have a ton of questions about espionage and treason, but we don't get too many of those cases, fortunately. I wouldn't mind trying a case like that, although it would likely be a lot of work because of classified materials. I only worked one case where classified information was an issue, and it was a rather minor one. What I found interesting about it is that the individual that owns the document can refuse to disclose it. Of course the charges would likely be dismissed, but it is interesting that the owner of the document can derail the whole proceeding.

6. One of the girls in the class is our next door neighbor and when I pointed that out to the class she apparently became a bit of a celebrity. She told us about it the next week. I felt like a bit of a celebrity because a bunch of kids wanted my autograph. First time that has ever happened. It was interesting because some had sheets of paper to collect all the signatures of the various presenters, others just tried to find any random bit of paper. I signed post-it notes, backs of receipts, old tests, you name it.

7. Most of the teachers didn't really pay much attention, I think they were trying to take care of some work. However, this one teacher was great. I had met him briefly when I went to School with Bella, he was the gym teacher. He ran the gym class pretty strictly. He did not run the career day very strictly though, he wanted to spend the whole time talking about the movie "A few good men" and doing the famous "You can't handle the truth" line. I don't think any of the kids had seen it though.

All in all, a pretty fun time. As I was leaving the school I walked by the cafeteria and good old Silvio was there and motioned for me to come in and talk to him. Unfortunately Bella wasn't there, but still always fun to see Silvio. He wasn't wearing a vest, but he did have his hair in a crazy mohawk with what looked like a ton of hair gel holding it all together!

Don't Mess With KW!

KW is one of the smartest people I know.   Not academically smart - I'm sure school was not the best time of his life - but still super smart.  He was pretty much better than me at a lot of things I thought were really important: chess, ping-pong, mountain biking, rock climbing, building things (he laughed heartily the first time he saw me swing a hammer), fixing things with engines, backgammon, etc.  In modern education parlance we would say that he had high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.  And his spatial reasoning kicked ass. 

I think that because I thought of myself as smart, I tended to want to compete with KW a lot.  Well that and we were in our 20s and teens while working at camp and drank a lot.  Mix in testosterone and you have male egos clashing.  KW and I were good friends, he introduced me to climbing and was the first of many mentors n that field to me.  Though his bedside manner was often lacking (he liked to yell at partners to motivate them), he taught me a lot in my first few years at the Gunks. 

Our competitions usually ended up with KW winning.  I beat him at chess, once.  Out of perhaps a hundred games.  I never out-climbed him, then or now.  I beat him at Ping-Pong, once, though he was quite drunk.  Out of hundreds of card games of Hearts, I might have been victorious once.  If I tried to shoot the moon, I ended up missing by one card, if he tried, he usually got it.  Yet like the young buck I was, I kept at it.

The one place I had a fair shot was at the arcade.  On Wednesday nights or on the weekends, the staff used to drive down to Lake George and wander around aimlessly.  There's not much to do there except drink and play video games - so we usually spent a large deal of time in the arcade.  KW and I would engage in marathon Tetris games, games in which I had a slight edge sometimes.  I chalk this up to having skipped all my Sociology 101 lectures in college to go play Tetris.  Right next to the Tetris machine was a classic air hockey table.  It was here that the story I originally intended to write in this post took place.

KW and I were locked in a legendary battle.  We were sending the puck back and forth at blinding speeds.  Often spilling over the sides.  We garnered quite a few sideways glances from patrons who thought we were taking our game a little too seriously. 

At some point that summer we had discovered that we had a slight advantage placing our hands in the scooped out part of the paddles rather than holding the knob on top.  This left our knuckles exposed to repeated bashings from the puck which we sent whizzing back and forth.  There was very little strategy to these games, it was fake this way, fake that way, SHOOT, and repeat.

The battle had gone on for at least 20 minutes (which was quite long for an arcade air hockey battle) and we were all tied, next goal wins.  Back and forth, ouch and ouch, it went.  It was at this point that the impossible occurred.  I sent a shot whizzing at KW so hard that when he intercepted it, the puck flew up in the air, over his shoulder, hit the Tetris machine behind him, bounced higher and hit a blade on the overhead fan which, though the cheap plastic cracked, used its momentum to send the puck back down to the table in front of Keith, where he promptly shot it past my paddle and scored the winning goal.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

There was MasterCam training, surfing, visiting family, NYC, a cruise to Bermuda, and lots of gardening.  But in between it all my sister took my son and I to one of the coolest places I've ever been:

Pa may not look like much, as a matter of fact it looks like a run down house with aluminum siding sitting on the edge of a shopping plaza in downtown Portland, Maine.  That's because it is.  But the proverbial look can be deceiving and though the quality of the physical structure doesn't change as you enter and walk up the worn carpeting on the stairs, what's waiting for you inside has to be experienced to be believed.  Visiting the Portland arcade was one of the most awesome times I've had, ever.

As you walk up the stairs and reach the second floor you come to a desk/counter manned by an older gentleman who was probably a teenager in the 70's at the birth of the video game - but still has a sparkle in his eye and a feeling of pride as newcomers start to look around.  He explains that for $5 you get too choose a soda, a bag of chips and a record to play.  Yes, a record.  In a set of bookcases on the wall was a collection of a few hundred vinyl albums, mainly classic rock but with a good bit of punk, disco, new-wave and others thrown in.  I chose the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack and as he placed it on the turntable I entered the arcade.

I'm 43, which means I was 10 when the above date occurred.  Pong pre-dated me but otherwise I grew up with video games.  Saw them get fancier, switch from massive machines to  home consoles to PCs back to consoles; I witnessed them go from tapes to cartridges to CDs to online purchases; I was there when you were able to play with people not in the same room and then not in the same country; I saw controllers go from (pornographically named) joysticks to paddles to containing more buttons than you could shake a stick at, first with short wires then long wires then no wires; and I watched games migrate to tablets and phones and everything in between.  As I walked from room to room and sat in the many comfy chairs, I was transported back, waaaaay back.

The original Play Station

Can you identify the controller my son is using?

Yes, Bally had a home console.

And of course the original Nintendo controller.

The Commodore 64, need I say more?

Pong on a 13" black and white television.

Can you imagine purchasing a console you could play only one game on?

Nintendo Entertainment System

And my favorite.  In 5th grade, everyone had one of these.  My dad was a computer programmer so we had an Atari 800, one of their early PCs.  We had a few games played on a cassette tape (seriously) but I longed for my friends' houses and the hundreds of games....

I'm not sure if they had every game ever made for the 2600, but this pic is about half of what they had.

They even had ET, which was actually as bad as everyone had said it was.  This game was so bad that thousands of copies were buried and recently dug up.

Click here to read the whole story.

I spent hours moving from couch to couch, playing games, journeying back to a more funner time in my life and introducing my kids (7 and 4) to games that weren't on a phone.  I can't think of a better way to spend $5.  But there was more, much more....

Got my name up there!

So I really wanted to end this post with an embedded playlist of videos from the visit to Portland Arcade, but blogger is not playing nice with my youtube channel, so here's the link if you want to see the intensity of my son playing Mario Kart, a classic Pong battle, my younger son totally baffled by what he's seeing, and several videos of my getting very intense with Space Invaders.

Cheese, Clocks and Chocolate

The Summer of 2001 was the first summer I did not go back to camp. At this point, I had finished my Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering and I was to report to Officer Candidate School sometime in the middle of June. I had a few weeks with not much to do, and decided that it would be time for an adventure.

Initially, I was planning to return to my motherland, England, but there was an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease so much of the countryside was off-limits. So, like the way I make most important decisions in my life, I winged it and decided that I would head to Switzerland. I had a full three weeks and figured I would just go from Hostel to Hostel and take each day as it came. Perhaps memory makes everything better with age, but I cannot remember a single thing that went wrong the entire journey.

My first week started off in Interlaken. I snagged a train from the airport in Zermatt and was on my way. The train was clean, punctual to the second and it was a smooth ride. Switzerland is an interesting country, most of the inhabitants speak French, German, Italian and English. This is because the various regions tend to adopt the language of the country that borders them.

As I was nearing Interlaken, a young lady struck up a conversation with me. I quickly learned that if you ask a Swiss person whether they speak English, if they say "a little" it means they are fluent, and if you say "yes" it means that they speak it better than you do! She informed me that I could use the rest of my train ticket to travel via Ferry to Interlaken. It happened to be a beautiful sunny day, just a slight breeze, a perfect day for boating. I had two travel guidebooks with me, and it was easy to find the hostel. It was nothing fancy, but it was very clean and professionally run. A large number of the guests were American, but there were a host of other countries represented as well. Most of the Hostels had little bars attached to them as well, so it made for a very comfortable experience. One thing that I never figured out at this particular hostel were the showers. I think they may have been defective, but without warning your nice steamy shower would alternate to very cold water for a few seconds and then go back to normal. Maybe that is just how they roll in Interlaken, living life on the edge, never wanting to get complacent, not even in the shower.

Switzerland is built for walking. Most of the towns, particularly the touristy ones, have beautiful town centers that are cut off to automobiles. My days were simple, most days I would simply go for a hike. I had a great book about hiking in Switzerland with all sorts of good suggestions and detailed directions on how to reach the trailhead. Almost all the trailheads were accessible by train. Some hiking highlights:

1. Almost every hike could have been right out the Sound of Music in terms of stunning scenery;

2. Most of the time, a hike would cross a town and there was always a nice restaurant to get some good food and beer;

3. Many times, hikes would pass through farmer's fields. Often these fields were full of the farmer's cows. This would never work in the States because people would deliberately try to let the animals escape, but in Switzerland it did work. You opened the gate to enter and closed it behind you. You follow the same procedure to exit.

4. There are lots of natural springs where it is perfectly safe to drink the water without treating it.

After a week or so in Interlaken, I made my way to Zermatt, home of the Matterhorn. I was only intending to stay a week, but stayed closer to 10 days. Zermatt bans cars entirely. All the fancy hotels have souped up golf carts to pick up the wealthy from the train station, but the hostels do not.

When I checked into the Hostel in Zermatt, I used my military ID for identification. For some reason, this impressed the guy running the hostel and he gave me my own room. It had twelve bunks in it, but he never assigned anyone else to the room the entire time I was there. I still ran into plenty of people, so it wasn't lonely, and it was nice not to be disturbed at night.

Zermatt is dominated by the Matterhorn, no matter where you are, you can see it. Like a big tooth rearing upwards from the meadows below. Almost everyday I did hikes right in Zermatt, in the Matterhorn's shadow. I had considered trying to hire a guide to see if I could summit, but was told that it was still too early in the summer for that. But, it was fun hiking up onto the Matterhorn's shoulder, still quite high, but no technical climbing required.

At some point, I paid to go on a day trip of ice-climbing. There were about 5 of us in the group, 4 already knew each other. But they welcomed me into the fold. We met the other half of our party at the site. I think they were polish or czech, but they were starting off the day with some incredibly strong Scnapps or something similar. They were quick to share, and I figured, why the hell not! They did not speak much English though and our guide did not speak their language. They kind of settled on French, which worked well enough for the guide and the group. Our guide was quite a character, he was a professional guide so this was a walk in the park for him. He had a great sense of humor, but made sure we knew when it was time to listen. We did our ice-climbing on a vast glacier. To reach the spot, we all roped up, so that if one of us fell into a crevasses, the others could arrest the fall. As we were hiking across the glacier, you would hear these low rumbles every so often. Our guide pointed to the mountains surrounding the glacier and indicated that those were avalanches. We were nowhere near close enough to be in any danger, but this was the first time I have been in an area where avalanches are going on all around you.

I had gone ice climbing a few times before. Generally, ice-climbing is a bit of an exercise in misery. It is very cold, you have a ton of gear on and belaying is the worst. At least when you are climbing, you are working and staying warm. The belayer, stands at the bottom of the ice climb, freezing and dodging chunks of ice that the climber has dislodged.

Climbing on the glacier was nothing like this. For one, it was probably in the 50s, and the sun reflected off the glacier, so it was extremely pleasant. Also, the belayer stayed on the glacier and lowered the climber into the crevasse. Any ice that was dislodged simply fell to the bottom of the crevasse. I had a blast.

Towards the end of my stay in Zermatt, I was at one of the local bars and recognized a girl from the hostel. We got to chatting and headed back to the hostel. On the way to the hostel you cross over a pedestrian bridge over a river that runs through the town. This bridge is perfectly framed by the Matterhorn. What followed was an awkward exchange. I started talking about how beautiful the spot was and said something along lines of "can I kiss you" to which she responded "I don't think I can say no". I only heard the no. I chalked it up to a classic case of me reading the situation with the ladies wrong. Still it seemed a bit harsh and I didn't know what to do but walk away. Fortunately, she quickly realized that I was an idiot, and clarified her response.

Due to my extended stay in Zermatt, I only had a few days in Lucerne, and one of those was a travel day. Still, it was beautiful and I encountered the Swiss Army! Despite being very peaceful, the Swiss are ready to go to war. My understanding is that all the members of the military keep their weapons at home and are ready to mobilize at a moment's notice. Further, the swiss have placed charges at key border crossings ready to destroy bridges to halt an invasion. My favorite part is that despite being landlocked, the Swiss even have a Navy.

Back to School (Featuring Silvio)

My daughter's school had a Dad's day today.  Dads can come in and observe the classes and do menial work like making copies!  It was an exciting day.

It started off with reading and math problems.  Nothing too exciting, although the technology is pretty cool.  There are no more chalkboards, everything is done on a Smart Board.  The teachers can project anything up there and then even mark it up with an electronic pen, John Madden style!

Bella had a pretty good mix of girls and boys in the class, a nice number of different ethnicities mixed in too!  By far my favorite, next to Bella of course, was her classmate Silvio.  He was easily the biggest kid in the class, probably by about a foot.  He had a mop of blonde hair, that was only marginally kempt.   He was also slightly portly, which added to his character . He looked very much like what I imagine Chris Farley looked like at his age.  By far my favorite thing though was that he was wearing this really awesome down vest.  First, you don't see a lot of people rocking vests, but I think they are a great invention.  Keeps your core warm and leaves your arms free.  His vest was awesome though because it was a mix of camouflage patterns but the bulk of the camo was in tye-dye colors!  Similar to this

  

  This is the best approximation I could find. I hope he continues to rock the stylish outerwear for a long time.  I also really liked that his name was "Silvio"  The only other Silvio I have encountered was in the Sopranos.  He didn't seem to mind me calling him Sil.  I wish I could have convinced him to call me Tony.

The morning was pretty routine.  The class rotated between different stations.  I was running the number bingo station and doing a hell of a job.  The kids had to count by tens and find the matching number on the electronic bingo card.  I quickly realized that I probably should not be a 1st grade teacher.  It seems that you need to rule with an iron fist, but I love the chaos and kind of encouraged them to be a bit crazy.  Time seemed to fly by, we were headed to lunch.  Lunch was pretty similar to what I remember.  The big difference it seems is that almost all the kids brought their lunch and hardly any bought it.  This is the exact opposite of what I remember growing up, almost noone brought in a lunch from home.  I sat across from Bella and next to my good buddy Sil.  For such a big kid he didn't eat much at lunch.  Lunch seemed to take way longer than needed.  All the kids were done eating and we still had another 20 minutes it seemed.  After lunch was recess.

Recess was largely confined to a playground, an area to play basketball and not much else.  There is a much bigger play area in the back, but I think the older kids play there.  Most of the kids formed into groups of 5 or 6 and chased each other around.  Not Silvio though.  This guy loved climbing to the top of the playground and launching himself off the top and hitting the ground.  It was probably 10 feet or so and he just loved it.  He would tuck and roll and the ground was woodchips so he didn't get hurt.  I don't think the other kids had any problems with him, he chose to do his own thing.  Another thing I really respected about him.

After recess, we went to Music class.  This was pretty chaotic.  The kids were still pretty wound up from recess.  They were learning about different notes and how to keep a rhythm.  The idea was that when a song played they were supposed to walk on their tippie toes for the fast notes and squat down for the longer notes.  Most of the kids followed it to some degree, there was a good deal of running on tippie toes, but good old Silvio had other ideas.  His idea was that he would run around at full tilt and then do these headfirst slides across the floor.  He could tell that I was loving it and cracking up, so I think I egged him on a bit.  While they were sitting on the carpet learning the next activity, he was wrestling with this other kid, just a madman.  At the end of class, we got rhythm sticks, essentially drum sticks.  Silvio and I were goofing off, he put his on the top of his head like antenna, I put them in my mouth like walrus tusks etc.  Only Silvio got caught though, he had to go to a brief time out.  I felt a little bad that I had gotten him in trouble, but he didn't hold it against me.   We were supposed to keep tapping the rhythm sticks to the song.  Silvio alternated between tapping his sticks as hard and loud as he possible could, to pretending they were num-chucks, to breaking into an air guitar session.

Gym followed Music Class.  We immediately started off with two laps around the school.  Silvio, true to form, started out at a full sprint.  Unfortunately, he was unable to keep up the pace and fell to a walk pretty early on into the first lap.  I ran with Bella and we convinced him to come along with us.  He seemed pretty winded, but he obviously has the heart of a damn lion and kept up with us.  In gym, they were learning about different ways of moving and different paths.  They were broken up into 6 groups and played follow the leader.  One group would skip in a curve line, the next would gallop in a zig zag etc.  Silvio was initially number 3 in his group, but wanted to be number 2.  The only rule was that you couldn't pass people.  That was one too many for Silvio.  He just bowled over the kid in front of him, while skipping, to ensure that he would be number 2.

The last part of the day consisted of learning about continents, countries and states.  Poor Silvio was having trouble sitting still, and had to leave the group a few times.  It didn't seem to phase him.  I noticed that he was sitting next to another adult at one point.  I guessed that it was his Dad, but he seemed like a totally normal guy.  I was hoping for a similar outrageous fashion and hair choice.

As we were leaving class at the end of the day, I saw Silvio in the hall.  I asked him if he had been sitting next to his Dad.  He explained that he had been.  He then said something that I don't think I will forget.  He explained that the guy used to be his Cousin's dad.  Without skipping a beat he explained that his Dad died.  And he was rock solid about it.  I still have trouble coming to terms with my Dad's death even now.  Silvio seemed to take it all in stride.  I wouldn't expect anything less from him.