A Survival Guide to Slasher Films

DISCLAIMER: Before beginning this post, I'd like to point out that I do at times seek out quality programming. I enjoy documentaries on just about anything, Wes Anderson and John Sayles films, and watching Richard Wolff go to great lengths detailing the evils of capitalism on Link TV. Please, just keep this in mind.

A couple of months ago my friend Tim and I decided it might be fun to watch Friday the 13th. I should mention this is not the same Tim who writes such wonderfully reflective pieces on his blog about hope, kindness, and the human spirit. No, this is my other friend Tim who repeatedly buys liquor at the grocery store because he gets lured in by the pretty color only to remember, after taking one drink, he hates alcohol. I just thought I should make this distinction. In fairness to Tim O.

Anyway, what began as a joke soon turned into a scenario in which Tricia grabbed her blanket, stood up, and said "I'm going to bed!" It seems she does not find slasher movies funny. That's just as well because this meant neither Tim or I had to feel the least bit self-conscious for giggling endlessly or yelling at the screen "NO, DON'T GO CHECK THE CIRCUIT BREAKER!"

 After the first movie we decided we should really see the second. See, number two is the first movie featuring Jason. And then we had to see the third because this is the one where he gets the hockey mask. After that one we wanted to watch the fourth installment because not only was it 3D but it also had Corey Feldman. The only reason we watched number five was so we could get to number six which had an appearance by Horseshack from Welcome Back, Kotter. At this point we'd seen so many there was really nothing else we could do but commit ourselves to seeing the entire series.

So now we're up to Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan. Yeah, I know - but we're no quitters! Not too long from now we'll be watching one in which Jason travels into space to attack unsuspecting teens on a space station. Wait...how did teens get on a space station? And how will they go skinny dipping?

One thing you'll notice when watching these movies is that people in slasher movies are just stupid. I cannot imagine how they manage each time to single themselves off from the group to be killed. Or how they remain completely unaware that their friends are being picked off one-by-one all around them. But they do.

So, should you ever find yourself trapped inside a slasher movie I 'm going to offer you twenty suggestions to help survive.


20. Make sure your car's engine is in good working order and has plenty of gas.

19. Never say, "I'll be right back."

18. Don't walk around naked. On a related note, don't skinny dip alone.

17. Do not take drugs.

16. DEFINITELY do not have sex.

15. Do not show up in the credits as "Second Deputy" or "Hitchhiker".

14. Pay attention to news reports about psychopathic killers on the loose.

13. Do not be in a wheelchair.

12. Do not be overweight.

11. Never go check what that noise was.

10. Do not build houses on ancient burial grounds.

9. If you are being chased by the killer, never stop to rest against a wall, door, or window thinking you've escaped.

8. If you come across your prankster buddy who seems to be lying dead in a pool of his own blood he is just trying to fool you. However, when this happens a second time turn and run. You're about to get axed.

7. Don't get a bunch of your friends together to stay in a cabin at a lake where other groups of people have been brutally murdered each and every summer the past six years.

6. If you find a good hiding spot, for God's sakes...stay there!

5. ALWAYS finish the job when given the chance. Do not assume the killer is dead.

4. Absolutely do not try to lift off the mask of the seemingly dead killer.

3. Do not be named Tina. According to some sources, Tinas statistically die more often in slasher movies.

2. Be a cute, virginal girl who does not drink, smoke, or do drugs. It would help if you have some sort of sad backstory. However, it would not be wise to show up in the sequel. If you do chances are you'll be dead within the first ten minutes.

1. And the best way to survive a slasher movie: be the killer. Even if you die you'll be magically resurrected in the next film.

Time well spent, my friends. Time well spent.

Old Friends

A few days ago I was in line at the gas station when Harper and Ainsley's former kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Mattox, walked through the door.

"Hey there!" she said. "How are you?"

"Great," I replied. No master of small talk I quickly offered, "Hey, the girls are out in the car."

Without hesitation she turned on her heel and headed right back out the door. When I came out I found the girls filling her in on the past couple of years - new teachers, middle school, Christmas plans. Because both Harper and Ainsley switched schools to be with me they really haven't seen Mrs. Mattox all that much over the past few years. A few moments later Tricia made her way over to the van and we all exchanged pleasantries before the girls received one final hug from their old friend.

Seeing old students is always so wonderful. When I walk my third graders over to the middle school for lunch I often happen across someone I taught just a few years ago. I can always count on a big smile and, occasionally, even a warm hug.

I've been lucky in that I have had a few students over the years who've worked to keep in touch with me. I receive letters in the mail letting me know about family trips, e-mails from parents letting me know their children are keeping at some of things we used to do together in class, or phone calls breaking sad news about family tragedies. I doubt the kids or parents could ever know how important this correspondence is. It's not a "thank you" teachers want so much as an opportunity to see how it all turns out. Or, better yet, to keep up  or rekindle old friendships.

When I was in college I was told that under no circumstances what-so-ever should a teacher become friends with their students. "Friendly, yes. Friends, no." It's a faulty logic built unsteadily upon a simple truth - the teacher is the authority figure. I tend to remember that at the time I agreed with this notion of keeping our kids at arm's length. At least, I did until I actually became a teacher and found it near impossible to subscribe to such an outdated philosophy. How can we spend more than a thousand hours together each year and not swap stories, share laughs, and grow so close that the last day of school is as bitter as it is sweet?

My first couple of years teaching were spent in St. Louis. Each year I had sixteen new faces greet me on the first day of school and over the course of one hundred eighty days we read, talked, explored, played, wondered, and laughed together. While I was still trying to figure out how to be a teacher I learned quickly how important it was to get to know my kids as more than just readers or writers or mathematicians. I learned to get to know them as people. As a result of this, and  contrary to what I had been taught in those undergraduate classes, I can look back now and see that some of my favorite friendships in life took place in that second grade classroom. Friendships that, yes, were different from those with other adults - but friendships all the same.

A few days ago I had the  privilege to reconnect with one of the kids from those second grade years. Claudia, who greeted me on the first day by warning me "I'm Rose's sister but we're nothing alike!", was the type of kid you'd want your own children to be like - funny, thoughtful, curious, and quirky. She wasn't like any of the other kids and, getting to know her, you'd never want her to be. I completely fell in love with her. In the years since leaving St. Louis I've wondered many, many times what happened to her. So when out of nowhere last week I happened across her mother Lori (one of the nicest people you'd ever hope to meet) I was in a state of near-shock. We chatted for about twenty minutes and after exchanging contact information she said "Claudia's coming into town tomorrow. If you're free I know she'd love to see you." Our time in St. Louis this Christmas was so short and tightly scheduled but how could I possibly pass up this opportunity. The only time we had available was early Sunday morning but Lori assured me "Don't worry. For you she'll get up early!"

So on Sunday morning Tricia and I met Lori, Rose, and Claudia at the Bread Company and spent what was easily the best two hours of my entire trip. We shared a few old stories and caught up on the last ten years. Claudia is now twenty-one years old and working at Indiana University. Rose works in the cancer center at Barnes Jewish Hospital. And Lori has another little one making his way through New City School - currently in the same classroom where I was once Rose's student teacher. Go figure.

As random and unexpected as this was I can only hope it marks the beginning of friendships that are both old and new.

Bag of Goodies

Have you seen the series of ads that ask, "What's in your wallet?" It's an interesting question - if we pretend not to notice they're actually wanting to know what kind of credit card you carry. When I was a kid I had a  red St. Louis Cardinal wallet with a velcro strap, an ad for KHTR Hit Radio, and many, many pockets. When you're nine years old you don't really need all these pockets in your wallet. Just a place to keep a few dollar bills and maybe some change. I would fill the other spots with random stuff- baseball cards, bits of paper, and such.

My wallet today is quite different. No longer bright red, it's a boring black leather model that holds my drivers license as well as an assortment of credit cards and insurance cards. Rarely is there any real money in it. Or pictures. Or much of anything. If it were left as an artifact to help future generations better understand what life was like in 2012 I believe they would be unimpressed. Bored, even.

There's this really great book I like to use in my classroom called Material World. The authors of the book traveled the world asking people from various nations to pull everything out of their house to be photographed. It provides a great look into how cultures, subcultures really, go about accumulating stuff so differently - or not at all. There are those with lots and lots of things like this family...

And then there are those with almost nothing at all...

You can probably imagine what the photos of the American families looked like. Loads of things all over their yard, in the driveway, and spilling out into the road. We are a nation of consumers, collectors, and  - occasionally - hoarders.

I don't mean to pass judgment or sneer down my nose at anyone. How could I? You should see what I keep just in my backpack. Yesterday we left straight from school and drove twelve hours into St. Louis to visit family and friends. When we were loading up our things before school Tricia reached down to grab my school backpack for me and about fell over from its weight.

"What do you have in here?" she asked, making a second attempt to hoist it up onto her shoulder.

"Oh, just the regular stuff," I said. "Plus a few extras for the trip."

I didn't think much more about it until I woke up this morning and decided that maybe I should clean my bag out a bit - just in case there were any extra things in there I had forgotten about. Boy, were there!

I pulled everything out onto the bed and began trying to sort it into categories. It was alarming. First, there
were the  holiday cards I had collected from people at school - students, teachers, friends. In this same pile were gift cards for Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks, not to mention: the list of people I plan to give beer to when I make too much, a phone number on a random scrap of paper, a receipt from Panera, a Dum Dum sucker, a page from Parenting Magazine about math on the playground, a membership form for the Early Childhood Assembly of NCTE, breath strips, a makeshift ruler constructed from notebook paper, a form from USC I was supposed to fill out a month ago, two brass pipe nipples, and a brass coupling.

In another loosely organized pile were a video camera, Parts of Speech sticker, two CDs from my buddy Tim, an external hardrive, a piece of paper with the name Sean written on it, my glasses, some notes from class at USC, way more pencils and pens than anyone could ever need, a chord for the video camera, a nametag necklace from a conference I attended last month, four books (Clone Brews, The Education of Little Tree, Teachers as Intellectuals, and Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning), and two Time magazines.

The next pile held three digital camera USB chords, two charger chords for a cell phone, a wall charger for a camera battery, and a power chord for the laptop. Why I need three different USB chords for digital cameras would be a fair question - and one I'm not certain I could answer. At this point I was beginning to feel a bit like Data from the movie The Goonies. Data carried all sorts of things in his backpack so that whenever a moment of trouble arose he was able to reach into the depths of his bag and pull out exactly the right tool or gadget to save the day. I'm not certain what scenario would call for two phone chargers but I guess you never know.

Perhaps the most logical pile was the one that held school papers from my students - the ones that should have seen the light of day long ago but became lost in all this mess. There was also a folder Ainsley's teacher handed out on the first day of school to help us all understand his beliefs and practices. I held on to it because there was lots of stuff in there I imagined I might one day want to share with the parents in my own classroom - that is, if I can remember that the folder has been strategically "filed" among all this junk. This pile also held a post-it note and a piece of paper on which I had scribbled: POWER - Intellectual Power, Physical Power, Gender Power, Racial Power (books), Age Power, Financial Power, Religious Power, and Oral Language Power. I had created this list to help organize my thoughts around a photography project I've been envisioning for my students. When the time comes to begin planning this I'll know just where to find my notes!

The last pile held a pile of change, two cameras (one is missing from the photo), a draft of a paper Heidi Mills passed along to me, an excellent article that Rachael Carson wrote for Companion magazine in 1956, a packet of information on harassment and bulllying, and the draft of Tim's short story called Smoke and Coffee - which I read last spring. Just to the right of the items in this photograph are four small photo albums, a glue stick, my i-pod, three paperclips, twelve guitar picks, my teaching journal, and a small notebook a friend gave me a few years ago to capture the things I see.




Missing in all this is the laptop I'm using right now. That's a lot of stuff. Too much stuff. However, just think of the many scenarios for which I am prepared. Two digital cameras, a video camera, photo albums, a laptop, brass fittings, parts of speech, a ruler...

Just imagine the all the tight spots Mac Gyver could escape with such a bag of goodies!

For Tim

I recently read a short essay by Jeffrey Cramer, curator of collections at The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, called The Toad Not Taken. In part, it talks about our willingness, or more often our unwillingness, to help others without first weighing the consequences of what such actions would mean for ourselves. Often when we read something we really like we immediately think of others who would equally appreciate the experience of having read it - and, more importantly, thinking about it. When I read this essay I thought of my buddy Tim who has been away for a while - helping. Tim, this passage reminds me so much of you as a teacher, a parent, and a person. I'm going to share it in hopes that you will enjoy it too.

*****
There were no cries. There was no noise but the occasionally frantic fluttering of wings. Voiceless, so as not to attract predators, it struggled in the net. How long it had been there, I did no know, but by the way its right leg was completely immobilized by the twisting of the net and some of the netting had entrapped part of its left leg, its wing, and tail, it had to have been there a while.

Our neighbors were away for the weekend, and while Julia and I were outside playing with Kazia, we noticed a bird caught in their downed volleyball net. I went over to take a close look. By the time we found it, it would struggle only when it suspected danger. As I approached, it began a frantic attempt to escape, jumping, flapping one wing, with each useless push away from me only succeeding in further tightening the net's grip.

Slowly I wrapped my hand around it. In my hand it stopped struggling. With one finger Kazia stroked its head. It was one of those brief moments, rarely offered, when she might be able to make contact with, no touch, a free and natural creature. It was not domesticated, it was not caged, and it allowed her, by not struggling or showing fear, to touch it. She touched it, unknowing of the gift offered her, and I knew that it would soon be forgotten in the days to come.

We knew we couldn't untangle the net enough to free it. Do we dare cut our neighbors' net? Would the bird live if we did? Its right leg seemed immobile, perhaps broken. If it had to die, wouldn't it be better to leave it there for our neighbors to find, to teach them what carelessly leaving this net on the ground can do? And if we did leave the bird there to die, plainly in view of our dining room window, what kind of lesson were we teaching our children?

I began to tell her that no matter how hard we might try, we would not be able to get the bird out of the net, that sometimes we can't help no matter how much we want to, that things die. We walked away.

I knew I was calculating the cost of a new net against the life of this bird, the destruction of our neighbors' property, however small and replaceable, with the saving of another kind of neighbor, small and irreplaceable. It seemed hypocritical to give money to save a whale, save a rainforest, save the planet, and not be willing to do something in a more tangible way. I knew I was doing something incalculably wrong by walking away.

At home we called a local department store to find out the price of a new volleyball net. They quoted us $15. Would we pay $15 to save the life of one bird? We didn't even know what kind of bird it was.

We got out the guidebook. A juvenile European starling. A descendant of one, actually of two, of one hundred starlings - sixty one year, followed by another forty the year after - introduced in New York City a century ago. Very adaptive, these immigrants made a strong foothold in North America, increasing more than a millionfold. Considered  pests by some, these birds are here to stay.

I know of a woman who has done much for helping bluebirds, but she does this at the expense of other birds. She has no qualms about destroying a starling's nest because they are interlopers, nonnatives who have taken over the habitat of bluebirds and others. When I heard her calmly tell of destroying these nests to protect her chosen species, I was indignant. Who made her the savior of the bluebird, and what savior has the right to bless with one hand and smite with the other? It was easy for me to ask, "Who did she think she was who could say which species could live and which could die?" Now I had to ask, "Who did we think we were?"

It seems a fact, on that we as a species should be ashamed of, that helping is no longer an instinct, that it is something we must think out and plot the costs and the consequences of. We rarely reach out to help without considering the most far-reaching repercussions. We are unwilling to take responsibility for actions that may not, in the final analysis, bring about the beneficial solution we desired. We have become unwilling to be wrong, and so, in many cases, we have simply become unwilling to respond, period - to other creatures, to other people, to ourselves, to our children.

We went back, scissors in hand. We put twenty dollars in an envelope with an apologetic note and slipped it into our neighbors' mailbox. The starling struggled again as we approached but quickly calmed in my hand. I held it as my wife cut and unwrapped pieces of netting until, with a push of its legs, the starling leapt from my hand and flew away. I longed for some Disney-esque ending in which, free at last, the starling would look back, tilting its head in comprehension, before flying away - some anthropomorphic sense of gratitude. Instead, it disappeared quickly, with a no-nonsense, self-preserving efficiency that in itself was a joy to watch.