A roller coaster weekend

Anytime your Friday night starts with a bottle of champagne, you know you're onto something good. Ali had a babysitter and practically kicked Jeff out the door Friday after school. We went off to celebrate Lisa Sirkin's upcoming 40th birthday.

I've been less than sympathetic to her occasional complaints of hitting the milestone. Partly because I have climbed that particular hill and partly because she's the size of a twig and looks like she just graduated from college.

We met up with John, Lisa, Lynn (Lisa's Mom) and two new (but way cool) friends -- Kierstin and Ken Cincinnati. (I don't remember their last names, so I'm pulling out a Margaret Burlingame trick and naming them after their city of residence.) After the champagne at the Conrad, we went to Fogo de Chao -- aka Adkins Diet Heaven.

It's a Brazilian steakhouse where the waiters walk around with skewers of roasted meat looking for what look like red paper coasters on the tables. You start out with a green coaster, which you keep green as long as you're grazing on the salad bar. When your internal carnivore kicks in, you flip it over to red. And the meat doesn't stop until you go back to green. Or fall over dead in your chair.

I think Jeff may have eaten an entire calf, and Ken finished off its mother. I don't know about the rest of the crew: I was too mesmerized by the "bring it on!" comments from across the table. It was amazing. It's an experience you should try, but don't eat for a couple of days before you go. And don't even hint of your plans to any of your vegetarian friends. I'm surprised there's not a standing PETA picket outside this place.

When the boys couldn't choke down another bite, we said goodby to the gauchoes and headed back to the hotel for more drinking and a visit by night owls Tina Noel and Megan Garver, fresh from a bash we'd had to skip: a Democratic gathering hosted by Judy O'Bannon. It was partly in honor of Jonathan Swain's great work helping Barak Obama turn Indiana blue for the first time since I was born (literally) and partly just an excuse to get good friends together. That party turned out to be a hit, too, and we were sorry we missed it. But Lisa's only turning 40 once, and we hope Indiana will be blue for many years to come.

***

Saturday I spent most of the with my sisters and niece in Brazil, IN. We met up to show our respects to Richard Monday, whose mother passed away. Mr. Monday (why is it that 20 years later you still think of teacher by their title?) teaches biology and chemistry at Shakamak High School. He was in his third year there when my sister Donna came into his class. He taught all of us, and now he's teaching my nieces and nephews. He's always lived in Terre Haute and commuted down to teach three counties away. It added to his mystique. We all considered him a big city sophisticate.

I remember one year thinking I'd take psychology instead of geometry. My first day of class, Mr. Monday and Mr. Weir, my algebra teacher came to the door to chat with the phsycology teacher. Funny, I can't remember her name but I do remember that you could sometimes see through her dresses. Anyway, they dragged me out of there and sent me off to geometry, having decided I shouldn't waste my time outside math and science. The next year, I chose newspaper over chem II. While it ticked Mr. Monday off, I didn't give in, and it sort of worked out for me.

I've thought for years that he'd harbored a grudge about me dumping his class after spending three years with him. I don't see him often, but he never, ever recognizes me. He always knows everyone else in my family -- of course, he sees them or their kids every day.

When I saw him a few weeks ago when I went back to Shakamak to give a speech (I think I mentioned this earlier) it was as if time stood still. The kids still loved him and called out to get his attention, and he always gave it. I introduced myself and after a while, he agreed that yeah, I was me.

I had this passage in my speech about how success means different things to different people at different times in their life and how definitions change over time. After seeing him there, I meant to add a line something like success doesn't have to mean you leave your home town. It might mean you're a science teacher in a small town who finds a way to push kids to work hard and do their best. But of course I got nervous and forgot my impromptu tribute.

At the funeral home, we were among the early arrivals, and you could tell that the line of visitors would be long. Mr. Monday was trying his best to be stoic, but he was really shaken. I was last in line, and watched as he spent time with Nancy (who's teaching at the school and sees him often,) Annie (who graduated just last year) Donna, (one of his all-timefavorite students.) He was very emotional, and you could tell that he was happy to see them.

And then he got to me, and in the midst of his tears and the day he had ahead of me, he said, "Cheryl! I just saw you just a few days ago. You did great that night."

I'm 44 years old. I haven't sat in his class for 27 years. But he's still got the ability to pump me up. And he's still such a great teacher than in the midst of what has to be among the worst days of his life, he takes the time to make a positive point to a student.

That's a great teacher. Shakamak is going to lose a great asset when he packs up his chalk.

***

Today, we just hung around the house. It was really cold, and after our walk to the newspaper stand, Ali and I decided we'd break open a coconut I'd bought a while back. I'd forgotten exactly how to crack open the thing. Alison suggested a chainsaw.

I told her I didn't think we needed to go that far, but we got distracted, and left the coconut on the counter. Jeff came upon it and decided to take charge. He thought he needed an ice-pick, but we don't have one.

A screwdriver seemed the next best thing. Now if you know Jeff at all, you know he should be no where near screwdrivers. Unless they're drinkable.

But he insists on being handy, so we have all kinds of screwdrivers and drills and other manly items. So he gets out the screwdriver, planning to poke through one of two little holes that had to be the inspiration for the first bowling balls.

I was in the living room, minding my own business reading when I hear the commotion. Rather than pushing through the coconut, the screwdriver had managed to find itself in the webbing between Jeff's pointer finger and thumb. Made a pretty big hole, tool.

Now Jeff has hearing issues. He talks loudly anyway, but his hearing loss sometimes makes him lose all sense of volume control. When he's in pain -- or sees it approaching -- he tends to "go to eleven" if you know what I mean. With Ali in the room, he managed not to curse but the decibel level was pretty extreme.

I think he's OK now. There wasn't much blood. He declined to visit the E.R. And he eventually wandered back to the coconut and got it open.

I'm going to hide the screwdrivers and never buy coconut in its natural state again.

***

Alison helped do laundry and switch out summer clothes for winter. In the midst of it, she decided that one of our laundry baskets could have a dual purpose. She spent most of the afternoon in it and wanted to sleep there, too. Somehow her better judgment took over.