Author: Merri Petrovits

Figuratively speaking

by //

There’s not a lot I don’t enjoy about teaching fourth-graders. While becoming certified to teach, I picked grades four through eight because that is the age when kids begin to discover who they really are. They learn what they’re really good at, talents bloom, personalities unfold. Year in and year out, it’s exciting to be a part of it.

There’s only one thing about them that makes me cringe. OK, two things, and here is the first–basically, they begin every sentence with the word “basically.”

“How was your weekend?” I ask. “Basically…” they begin, and then they launch into a detailed explanation beginning with what they ate for breakfast.

“Wow! There was nothing basic about that account,” I joke. But by then, they’ve forgotten that they said “basically,” and they have no idea what I’m talking about.

Cringe factor #2: Everything is described with the word “literally.”

Unfortunately, there isn’t much hope for the future. Based on my daily interactions with adults, I understand ninety percent of them will never break this habit. But it doesn’t mean I won’t die trying.

Every day I begin instruction with an example of figurative language. We look at an adage, idiom, or allusion, and we break down its meaning. We write descriptively using similes, metaphors, hyperbole, and personification. But try as I might, none of this instruction transcends into their day-to-day speaking.

Trevor, a feisty nine-year-old who’s already breezed through the math curriculum and whose IQ makes mine look like the calorie count on a box of Tic Tacs, is no exception.

“Sidney was just literally running down the hall,” he reported. (Trevor’s line behavior doesn’t leave much to be desired, and he likes to let me know when he’s not alone.)

It was time to hit ‘play’ on the explanation I’ve delivered so many times that it comes out robotically.

“Trevor, if you were to say that sentence without the word ‘literally,’ would there have been any confusion?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, if you were to simply say, ‘Sidney was running down the hall,’ would I have wondered if you were speaking figuratively?”

“I just meant she was running really fast,” he said.

“Ah….therein lies the confusion,” I explained. “The word ‘literally’ isn’t meant to emphasize. We don’t use it to add a punch to our description, and it’s not interchangeable with ‘Like seriously, I really, really mean it.’ We use it when someone might otherwise assume we’re speaking figuratively.

“For instance, let’s say Sidney was running really fast down the hallway, and you wanted to describe it. You might say something like, ‘Sidney was flying down the hallway!’ There would be no confusion on my part, because Sidney doesn’t have wings, and I would understand that you were speaking hyperbolically.

“Now, let’s say Sidney was zooming down the hallway on a flying saucer, and you wanted to alert me to that. You might then say, ‘Sidney is literally flying down the hallway!’ Then I’d understand that you are not speaking figuratively–that Sidney is indeed airborne…literally. ‘Literally’ means it happened just as it sounded, and ‘figuratively’ means you have to think outside the literal words. Do you understand the difference between ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively’?”

“I understand you literally just said ‘literally’ a half dozen times,” Trevor said.

Nailed it. Figuratively speaking, of course.

I hope this is a sign…but I doubt it.

by //

I should have felt rested on Wednesday following a long winter break. My district was merciful enough to grant us a day off the day before Christmas Eve, which is traditionally a half day. I had just had the luxury of eleven glorious days off, which was at least enough time to catch my breath. But when I woke up to find that I’d forgotten to set my alarm the night before, a wave of teacher-tired came flooding back to me.

Immediately when one oversleeps, in your mind you are already figuring out which parts of your morning routine you need to axe. I won’t make the bed today, I decided. No time to stretch. The dogs won’t get their walk. There was no time to see which students completed their online homework the night before. Coffee would need to be guzzled on the way to work.

As I fished through the sink looking for my Yeti coffee cup and the sponge, both of which were buried under a mound of dirty dishes, my brain immediately began to fill itself with the negativity that follows from skipping a morning routine. “Why is it that I’ve been back at work for two days, and already the entire house is falling apart?” I demanded as Doug stood by and waited out the clatter of the sink.

Doug knows not to try to communicate, reason or console while I’m having a tantrum. It was 7:51 a.m., I was late, and I had only nine more minutes before I was very late. So instead of his response, I heard the ding of a work email coming in.

It was from my school’s principal. The subject bar read: “Two-hour delay…more info to follow.”

I breathed. I leisurely finished my morning routine. And that day at school, five of my twenty-four students showed up. It was the easiest day at work I’d ever had.

The next day was Three Kings’ Day. Since it’s widely celebrated by the Hispanic population, my district takes it off while my own kids pile in to the Simsbury schools. Having the house to myself is a blessing, and it balances out the universe, since Simsbury takes off Rosh Hashanah.

Last night, more glad tidings popped into my inbox from my principal: “No school tomorrow, 1/7/2022”–sealing the deal on a four-day weekend after winter vacation. Not to mention, the best snow days are the ones you don’t have to set your alarm to find out about.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say 2022 was going to be my year.

Howdy, neighbor!

by //

I think we’d all agree that there are some people who regularly see us at our very best. Then there are those who see us at our worst. And in most cases, it’s our neighbors.

Every night, I put on a long, brown coat, wrap my entire upper half in a scarf, throw on a hat, lace up my duck shoes, and strap a headlamp to my forehead. Then I grab two plastic bags and two leashes, slip them around the dogs and venture out for our midnight stroll. (Actually, it’s only around 6:00, but by then, a December evening in Connecticut looks like midnight.)

At night, we do the first half of our walk. In the morning, we’re back on the road for the rest of it.

On weekends, we wait until it’s light. On the bright side, the neighborhood seems friendlier when it’s light out. On the down side, everyone can see my dorky getup.

This morning, even though it was in full light of day, I strapped my headlamp on my forehead–because putting it on has become part of my muscle memory, and I forgot I wouldn’t need it. I was wearing two different socks–because I own a hundred pairs of fuzzy socks, and one of them always has a hole in it. It was 45 degrees and there really wasn’t a need for a hat, but I didn’t feel like combing my hair.

I bumped into Judy, who lives three houses down.

“Good morning!” she called. It looked like she’d never been more happy to see anyone in her entire life.

Judy has a modest beach house where she often enjoys her retirement with her husband of fifty years. She invites my family down for the summer, but we never seem to have the time. When you’re talking to her, you feel like you’re the most important person in the universe.

With a bag of poop dangling from my elbow, we chatted about the state of the world as her dogs and mine fought their leashes to get a sniff. She told me she believes it will get worse before it gets better. We talked about our families, and how my children somehow transformed into teenagers overnight. And at the end of our conversation, she said, “You look beautiful, as always.”

I looked down at my duck shoes, embarrassed, because I’d forgotten what I looked like. But something told me she wasn’t humoring me. Judy is one to look for beauty all her around her, and I knew she actually meant it.

“God will keep us,” she added, and then she took her dogs back inside.

Funny how much you can learn from a brief exchange…and how it can change the entire course of a dreary winter day.

Now hear this…

by //

Next year, I pledge to listen with more than just my ears.

A friend that I admire taught me that lesson, although she didn’t mean to. My friend is smart, well-read, an amazing writer, bilingual, and one of the most gifted teachers I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing in action. Whenever I need guidance, I seek her opinion. I am honored that she calls me a friend. And in the span of two decades of friendship, she’s disappointed me only once.

It was fifteen years ago, and I’d just finished a book whose author I won’t mention because she’s controversial and conservative, and that alone is enough to shut down half the people reading this post. But I guess that’s why I’m writing this in the first place.

It was one of those books that made me think long after I’d finished reading it. And the first person I thought of to share it with was my friend–because it is in direct opposition to most everything she believes in.

When I loaned her the book, it wasn’t because I believed it was a superior way of thinking or because I wanted it to change her mind. Books are like movies–they’re more fun when you have someone to share them with. When you finish a book that made you think, you want to be able to talk about it with a friend. You want to dissect it, to debate it. She had loaned me books in the past that have shaped my thinking. And so I was delighted when she returned the book only days later.

“What did you think?” I asked, eager for our discussion.

“I didn’t even get through the first chapter,” she replied.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because that’s all it took for me to see where she was going,” she shrugged. “I didn’t need to read any more after that.”

That’s the one time I was disappointed in my amazing friend.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to read, watch, or listen to a viewpoint that opposes their own.  Oppositional viewpoints are the spice of life. But so often, we seek sources that merely validate and reaffirm what we already believe. When I’m finished listening to–and I mean really listening to–someone who contradicts my own beliefs, by the end of our conversation, even if I haven’t changed my mind, I’ve learned something.

Listening to the opposing viewpoint without interrupting, without thinking about what we’ll say next, without firing off a barrage of facts and evidence we’ve gained through our own research, broadens our perspective and makes it even stronger. When we listen, it makes us more intelligent, flexible, and empathetic. Who wouldn’t want these qualities?

If that’s not enough incentive to listen to the other side, and you can’t get past the feeling that every political or religious conversation is a battle of wits, you might consider a strategy of every good commander or general: Know your enemy. If anything, listening to the opposite end of our own political spectrum strengthens our own arguments, makes us more rational during a debate and in turn, gives us credibility.

Although I learned that lesson fifteen years ago, I’ve found myself abandoning it. When my children and husband talk to me, I often don’t stop typing or moving around the house. In the classroom, I find myself nodding at my students with half an ear while thinking about how to move my lesson forward. I’ve rolled my eyes and hit “unfollow” when friends’ posts made me angry and borderline nauseous (yup…we’ve all been there). When I’ve felt hurt or disrespected, particularly over the past two years, I’ve lashed out.

I propose next year we start listening to each other–particularly if we’ve heard the opposing viewpoint a thousand times. Because even when we’ve heard something, it doesn’t mean we’ve listened.