Carie Juettner

The Thought That Counts

Some say that the gift of teaching is the chance to touch lives, to inspire young minds, to see creativity grow right before your eyes. That stuff is all very good, but I also liked the actual gifts.

I don’t mean to sound greedy, but teaching is a hard job with few tangible perks, and I appreciated those Starbucks cards and candles and store-bought sweets. (Homemade sweets were either much more appreciated than store-bought ones or much less, depending on the gift-giver. For instance, I did not eat the zip-lock bag of fudge given to me by the boy who had previously been caught selling drugs in the bathroom. I’m thinking that was a good call. And I never once accepted pocket candy, no matter who was offering it.)

More than free food and coffee money, though, I enjoyed the surprises.

Top Right Corner: During my last year of teaching a boy gave me this beautiful tile of The Salt Lick. His mom works for the company who makes them, and he chose this one especially for me because he knew I got married there. He probably didn't say more than ten non-school-related words to me all year. Then this. — Top Right Corner: During my last year of teaching a boy gave me this beautiful tile of The Salt Lick. His mom works for the company who makes them, and he chose this one especially for me because he knew I got married there. He probably didn’t say more than ten non-school-related words to me all year. Then this.

Having spent a few minutes thinking about it, I would say that the top ten most common gifts given to me by students during my career would be the following (in no particular order because I don’t have that kind of time):

Homemade cards and drawings
Sweets (chocolate, cookies, breads, candy)
Starbucks gift cards
Candles and candle holders
Cat-related items (stuffed animals, magnets, posters)
Objects inscribed with teacher-related quotes (paperweights, ornaments)
Picture frames
Mugs
Bubble bath or lotion
Books or Barnes & Noble gift cards (because I taught Language Arts)

This book was a gift. I tried not to take it personally.

It was always exciting (and sometimes a little confusing) when a student stepped outside of these norms and gave me something different, like… bubble-gum-scented bars of soap. Or earrings, which would be a nice gift if I had my ears pierced, but I don’t.

I once received a very pretty silver necklace from a boy. And a girl once gave me a $30 gift card to Nordstrom, which bought me almost one whole shirt from the clearance rack. When I got married, some girls went together to buy me a cookie cake. It had their names on it, written in icing, rather than mine.

Bottom Left Corner: During my second year of teaching, a girl gave me this large witch doll for my birthday, which is on Halloween. I let her class name it. My last name was Kinder back then, and they christened the doll "Kinderella". Kinderella lived in my classroom for rest of my career and now resides in my home. She is currently looking at me. — **Bottom Left Corner:** During my second year of teaching, a girl gave me this large witch doll for my Halloween birthday. My last name was Kinder then, and her class christened the doll “Kinderella”. Kinderella lived in my classroom for rest of my career and now resides in my home. She is currently looking at me.

I’m certainly not the only teacher to receive strange gifts from students. One year, the father of a particularly troublesome boy bought all of the principals at my school alcohol-related tokens of appreciation—a flask, a wine decanter, a game of shot glass checkers. And a unique boy in my friend’s class gave all of his teachers (male and female alike) a gift certificate for a shoulder massage—to be performed by him, of course. He was quite sincere in his offer.

Of all the gifts I received during my thirteen years of teaching seventh grade, there are three that stand out from the rest…

[While you’re waiting for this story to be continued, I’d love to hear about the strangest gifts you’ve ever received. Share in the comments!]

Review: Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ready Player One entertained me from start button to game over.

Ernest Cline’s novel is set thirty years in the future. Like many of the futuristic stories these days, Cline’s version of our world in 2044 is distinctly negative. Poverty, crime, famine– the one bright spot in this bleak future, the one escape from the hopelessness of reality, is the OASIS, the enormous virtual world accessible by all. In Ready Player One, some people live most of their lives as their avatars, their “real” selves strapped into haptic chairs and logged into the system for hours at a time. Kids even go to school in the OASIS, including Wade, a.k.a. Parzival, an orphan whose only friendships are found online.

When James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS and an eccentric multibillionaire hermit obsessed with 80’s pop culture, dies, every OASIS user receives a video with the first clue to a hidden “Easter egg” located somewhere in the vast virtual world. The person who finds this prize will inherit Halliday’s fortune.

The story begins five years after the release of Halliday’s video when Parzival becomes the unlikely person to obtain the first of three “keys” to finding the egg. His discovery propels him into the limelight– fame, glory, and very real danger. Now he and the rest of the “gunters” (egg hunters) are racing for the prize against each other and the “sixers”, employees of an evil coproration that wants to turn the OASIS into an elite money-making machine.

The book is full of great twists and lots of action. It’s also full of detailed gaming lingo and a plethora of 80’s pop culture references packed into every page. I’m no novice of 80’s lore, but Ernest Cline is way out of my league. There were several allusions that went right over my head. But then again, what do you expect from a guy who owns one of the DeLoreans from Back to the Future? While you don’t need to be a gaming genius or a child of the 80’s to enjoy this book, some knowledge does help. Picking up on the subtle references and inside jokes is half the fun. I appreciate the fact that Cline does not stick only to the most mainstream media. It’s the attention to detail that makes the book great.

Flaws? Well, I was a little disappointed with Art3mis’s big reveal at the end. It didn’t live up to the hype. I actually found the whole ending to be a bit cheesy, and there was definitely a little “hand-waving” in the middle during some of Parzival’s more complicated and impressive capers, but these things can be forgiven. After all, what 80’s movie didn’t contain a little cheese?

Ready Player One is a great book. Check it out. In the meantime, I’m going to catch up on some of the 80’s movies I’ve missed. Believe it or not, I’ve never seen Blade Runner. It’s time to remedy that.

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Puzzling It Out

I love working jigsaw puzzles. Mostly, I love running my fingers through the box of puzzle pieces. There’s no sorting them into colored piles or turning each one right side up for this girl. Second only to the satisfying snick of two cardboard shapes locking together is the low rumble of a thousand unique pieces tumbling over each other, the dusty coolness against my skin.

This week, I took time out from my writing to complete a Ravensburger puzzle that has been sitting in my closet for a few months. Five nights in a row, I sat down at the table and slowly brought the picture together while my husband sat on the couch nearby, working his way through Uncharted 2 on his PS3. Each of us respected the other’s hobby from a distance and called out the occasional encouragement when necessary.

The first night of puzzling, I felt a little guilty that I wasn’t working on my book, but I quickly realized that I actually was working on it—in my head. The amount of brain power necessary to locate and connect interlocking shapes is rather low. With my hands and eyes focused on a task, my mind was free to wander, and it journeyed all over my novel while I worked.

Though I didn’t write anything down during those puzzle sessions, I didn’t feel like the time was wasted. When I sat back down at the keyboard in the mornings, the words were ready for me.

Maybe it’s because working a puzzle and writing a novel are so similar.

The beginning is exciting. You start with a big box of pieces. You pull out the flat-edged ones and form your structure, ignoring the strange shapes that you know must fit somewhere but, at first, don’t seem to belong at all.

Once the outline is done, you start to work on various sections, making progress little by little, feeling that rush of excitement when you finally see where a scene fits into the bigger picture. Occasionally you take a break or change seats to shift your perspective of the whole. It never fails to help you see something new, locate the piece you were looking for.

The middle is the most difficult—all the easy portions are done and you’re left only with those strangely shaped creatures you’ve been avoiding. But you power through piece by piece until the box empties and the holes fill in. Soon… or maybe not soon but eventually… you are putting those last few pieces into place—snick, snick, snick—until the whole thing is complete. The picture looks just like the one on the box, and at the same time, it doesn’t. It is larger, glossier, more majestic.

I haven’t arrived at the glossy completion of my novel yet. I’m still muddling through the middle, trying to get all those pesky pieces to fit. But the box is getting lighter, and the holes are starting to fill in, and I am anxious for that last, satisfying snick.