memorize raze i was always failing history and geography tests. i loved to read, but this was different. it didn't matter how many times i made my eyes walk over the dates and facts and strange shapes i was supposed to remember. i couldn't make anything stick. it didn't help that i spent most of my study time hiding in my bedroom and breaking out in hives. i wrote a note on the back of one test telling my teacher i knew i was going to fail. i told her i was terrified of the people i was living with and i couldn't concentrate, couldn't even jerk off while i was going through puberty because one of them might walk in on me without knocking whenever they felt like it, couldn't talk to anyone on the phone without them standing on the other side of the door and listening to make sure i didn't say anything about them i wasn't supposed to, and if i said the wrong thing they would take my phone away from me so i couldn't talk to anyone anymore. when i got my test back the teacher wouldn't look at me. i turned the stapled pages over and saw she'd crossed out my note with a big red x like it was one long wrong answer. i couldn't remember anything. my dad was the one who cracked the code. let's say it out loud, he said. i'll say it to you and then you say it to me. we'll keep doing it until it starts to sound familiar. it'll be like learning lines for a play. we turned the boring dates and facts and shapes into something i loved. we made it music. we sang it out loud until i knew the words well enough to sing them inside my head. and when i got my next history test back, the teacher who didn't want to know anything about me looked like she was going to faint. 211114 ... tender_square (can your dad help me out with this? history and geography were always my worst subjects, i can't recall shit, even today. at my eighth grade graduation, i was really hoping to get the language arts award and i was shocked when they called my name for geography; it was clear they wanted to give me something for being a good student and tossed that one my way when it was all that was left.) 211114 ... raze i'm sure he'd be happy to help. but i think you're a great student of the geography that matters most — the kind that doesn't involve a map anyone can see. 211114 ... nr i never liked or was good at history and geography either. the classes were just about memorizing names and dates, and never really went into depth about historical events or important places. i still remember learning the terms "communism" and "mccarthyism" through a sweet valley twins book i read as a kid, which piqued my curiosity. that series also had. a creepy book about the holocaust, where a guest teacher came in and got the students to play a "game" that wasn't that meaningful in itself, as far as i can recall, but it ended up going too far and showcasing the lengths at which certain kids would go to follow a leader. i remember these stories in this books better than anything i ever learned in history class. 211114 ... nr without her editor hat on two typos, noooooo! 211114 ... raze fret not, brave nr! a month or two ago i spent an absurd amount of time polishing a long blathe until i thought i had it just right. i proofread the bejesus out of it. i used a few tricks i've learned to try and weed out any sneaky typos that were hiding between the cracks. i was really proud of what i'd written. i hit the "blather" button, read the finished blathe ... and there was a big stinkin' typo screaming at me right in the middle of the thing. i think the f bomb that flew out of my mouth was one of the loudest i've ever managed in all my years of swearing. but i'm with you. i couldn't get into those classes at all. they were so dry and boring to me. i finally lucked into having a history teacher in grade nine who kind of threw away the textbook and made the class about the history of *people*. now that was something i could get into. he had people from all walks of life come in and talk to the class. two i'll never forget: there was a native american man who belonged to a biker gang. he was living proof that a person didn't need to define themselves based on what anyone else thought they were supposed to be. and he was happy. he talked about being out in public with his young daughter. "when she wants to run and play," he said, "i don't tell her to stop. i run and play with her. i want her to be free to enjoy being a child. i want her to know she can be anything, she can do anything, and no one can dampen her spirit." and then there was a jewish man who lived through the holocaust. he talked about hiding in a bucket in a well as a young boy so the nazis wouldn't find him and kill him. i can still see his lined face. i think i got a mark of ninety-five percent in that class. after failing or almost failing every history class i ever had in grade school, that was pretty surreal. (i also started mimicking that history teacher's handwriting because i thought it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen, but that's another story.) 211114 ... epitome of incomprehensibility My dad helped me memorize Tennyson's "The Eagle" by acting it out, a swooping hand accompanying "And like a THUNDERBOLT he falls!" ... A bit later, I decided to learn the exponents of 2 up to 65,536. It came in handy one day in fifth-grade gym class. I was sitting behind someone with band tour dates on their shirt. Another kid asked, "Hey, what's sixteen times sixteen?" "Two hundred and fifty six," I answered. Quick. Nonchalant. Momentary by satisfying impressed-ness from those who didn't usually notice me. ... In the Christian school, there was the dreaded "pink series" of seventh-grade Canadian geography workbooks. Small curiosities poked out from under its umbrella of dullness. Three or four types of fishing nets. The idea of piecework - being paid for how much fish you packed, say, rather than for your time. (I imagined this was fairer. Now, I have doubts.) "The Fraser and Skeena Rivers" was an answer - I forget the question. ... Adam memorized all of Psalm 119 - piece by piece - to get the third privilege level. There were three - A, C, and E - to go with A.C.E., Accelerated Christian Education. I don't think I ever got past the first level. But I memorized Psalm 19, which is the one where the sun moves across the sky like a bridegroom emerging from his pavilion. Sexy AND about the sun. Maybe that's why, when I got to CEGEP and there was an extra-credit option for memorizing a passage from Antony and Cleopatra, I chose the speech starting, "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne..." I'd been fascinated by the Dior J'adore ad, with the women's skin tinged gold. ... Wordsworth's "Daffodils" I still remember: I_wandered_lonely_as_a_cloud which floats on high... "The Road Less Traveled" less so, but clouds don't need roads. 211114 ... e_o_i corrects *Momentary but satisfying, I mean 211114 ... raze (and here i thought you were so satisfied you became a transient being. let mick jagger chew on *that* sort of satisfaction and tell me he still can't get any!) 211115 ... unhinged the crinkles of your eyes and mouth from your smile the grey in your beard 211115 ... e_o_i Mick Jagger's immortal, so by definition he can't get THAT satisfaction :) 211115 ... kerry we need a blathe just for history teachers (someone else do it! ha.) somehow i was able to retain enough from those classes to make A's, through rote repetition and memorization i suppose. but i forgot so much of it when i graduated. my world history teacher was a sadist, i think. he was recently fired for molesting a student and used to have a tradition called "beat a student day." he was into historical reenactment and had a whole trove of medieval weapons and chainmail suits and one chump every year would volunteer to "battle" him. the students always lost. 211116 what's it to you? who go blather from