Wednesday, September 11, 2024

The Things They Carried

My wife has a new role in the educational system. After more than a decade in the classroom as first a Teaching Assistant and then a middle-school Special Education teacher, she got hired this summer as an Educational Diagnostician. Basically, the diagnostician's role is to test kids who are referred for evaluation for eligibility for a number of different kinds of services, prepare reports based on the test results, and sit on the evaluation panel that makes a determination about the student's eligibility. 

We're about a month in to her new role, and I'd say it's going well. In fact, I got a text from her on Friday which read: "I. Love. My. Job." Instead of working in one school, she supports a cluster of three (one elementary, one middle, and one high school), all of which are within five minutes of our house. Her biggest concerns at the moment seem to be feeling weird that she has free time to get coffee, or leave for lunch, or go to the bathroom whenever she feels like it. Not wherever, like Dave. It makes me happy to see her happy.

There was a moment last week that, while a little bit related to her new role, completely and tangentially took me back nearly 45 years in a flash of memory and stuck with me as an example of how our wildly complex and lunatic brains process information and retain ephemera. 

She was reviewing one of the testing kits that she uses as part of the evaluation process. The battery in question is called the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA). It's a fairly standard instrument that's been in use for a long time. As she flipped through the pages, I had a flashback.

When I was 9 or 10, I was tested by the school in Alabama where I lived to see if I was eligible for the district's gifted and talented program. (I know what you're thinking, and I agree: wasn't it obvious, and why did they even bother with a test?) I don't remember very much about the test, save for one thing, and that memory is as vivid as if it were yesterday. The question in, um, question offered a logic question in the guise of a spatial relations question. I was presented with a square that represented a pasture, and told by the woman doing the testing that my ball was lost in the pasture. The task was to use my pencil to trace the path I would take to most efficiently and effectively find the ball.

Friends, I tell you verily that my pencil tip roamed all over that fucking pasture, to, fro, up, down, diagonally in no particular pattern with no particular rhyme or reason. The lady testing me did an excellent job of disguising her amusement at the little whackadoodle sitting in front of her. My answer looked something like this:

I have no idea whether I found my fucking ball. I remember nothing else about that test, which I passed with flying colors, according to my mother, who I recounted my recollection to over the weekend. But I remember walking out of the test berating myself internally for how badly I fucked up that answer. I knew immediately that my path was batshit dumb. I knew it while I was tracing it, as a matter of fact. And I know that I knew it because my dumb brain won't let me forget it.

For damn near five decades I've remembered that one question from that one battery I took and aced. The memory comes back on a regular basis, and it came flying back when I saw the testing kit my wife was working with. 

Ain't memory a bitch? And ain't it fascinating how we hold on to things that matter not a whit while we forget things of vastly greater import. Maybe it means I'm a creative thinker. Maybe it's a sign that my genius can't be constrained by the normies' notions of efficiency and order. Or maybe there's another explanation.

The lesson, as always, is that I'm an idiot. Turns out I've been on for a long time. At least my wife is happy.

19 comments:

  1. Lots to discuss here, but I’ll start with the takeaway that it gives me great joy when someone loves their job; more so when it’s someone as awesome as S; and even more so when it’s the kind of meaningful stuff she’s doing. Love it.

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  2. "The question in, um, question offered a logic question in the guise of a spatial relations question." is a thing i wrote. it's such a gloriously bad sentence that i'm going to keep it in this post as a monument to my dumb brain. in my defense, bourbon was involved.

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  3. The best thing is that you were likely proud of that sentence at the time of drafting.

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  4. also in my defense, i was involved in multiple active text threads about the sox and mets as well as the debate. and also, bourbon.

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  5. I knew Robbie was a gifted student when I watched him dominate at Jeopardy night in and night out in the suite on the freshman hall. Annoyingly good.

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  6. i wish jeopardy skill translated to being a good student. in my case, perhaps the inverse was true.

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  7. “Mets gotta beat the Jays
    Mets are hitting .119 over the past couple of games. Let’s maybe put more bat to ball, eh, boys?”


    Or… OR… maybe let’s get zero hits through the first five innings without much hope to break out in the next four! Egads!! Come on!!

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  8. Well, the Mets waited until the 9th to record a single hit. Lindor led off with a homer to right. Upon request.

    And then the Mets put up 5 more runs. Won, 6-2. These guys like to make it interesting. Phew.

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  9. My kind of team, Charlie. My kind of team.

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  10. Seeing the band Goose tonight at an outdoor venue whilst here in Chicago. Saw them in Hampton in December for Goosemas. They’re pretty damn good.

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  11. Now roaming the city solo, seeking only perfect dive bars and a Bear-quality Italian beef sandwich. Landed at Rossi’s for drinks. It’s wonderfully trashy since 1974.

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  12. One of my favorite things in life is to assume control of the TouchTunes jukebox that many bars replaced their Wurlitzers with. Now I get to jump in front of trash tunes with my eclectic tastes. It either riles or doesn’t. Right now I see some cocked heads and raised brows, but nothing hostile. Althea, Straight to Hell, Impossible Germany (hometown pick). Here we go.

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  13. Not too late to get some CFB picks rolling for the weekend… gheorghies?

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  14. well, i'm 0-4 on the young season, so perhaps you'll not want my input. but i do like florida state -6.5 at home against memphis. noles suck, but mike norvell isn't going to lose to his former employer and there's a lot of pent up frustration in tally.

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  15. will endeavor to get a pick or two in...heading to gator/a&m game on saturday mark, fyi....in the event you'll be in attendance.

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  16. i was gonna do a post on the historic putridity of the chicago white sox, but the dan le batard show just did a segment on it, so i'm beat to the punch. but in case you don't hear that, here are a few nuggets to blow your fucking minds:

    since july 12, the bears and white sox have the same amount of home victories (only including regular season games).

    the white sox are 6-44 in their last 50 games.

    the white sox' team slugging percentage is the exact same as zack greinke's career slugging percentage. zack greinke is a pitcher.

    the white sox need to win 7 of their final 15 games to avoid the lowest win total in history. using a binomial probability formula, we find that the white sox have a 5.5% chance of winning at least 7 of those games.

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  17. every team in the al central, save the white sox, has a winning record. the division as a whole is 44 games below .500.

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  18. just took our car to the insurance adjuster to have it looked at for hail damage from a recent storm. we knew there were a good number of dents. i did not expect that number to exceed 250, but it did. zoinks.

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  19. I was planning on penning some picks but I've been swamped since my return from four days in St. Louis for my cousins wedding. And on top of that, it seems I contract covid whilst out of town. My brother in law got sick while we were up there and now me, my parents, my aunt, possiby my sister (hasn't been tested yet) and god knows who else all have covid.

    I lasted 4.5 years without it so I shouldn't complain too much but I'm still pretty annoyed.

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