Wow! Charlie, you done good! The only part I recognize is the alcove in the living room. Man, if that apartment looked that good back than I might never have left... NOT!

The reality is that I needed this change. Life is better here than it ever could have been back there. Everywhere I went back there I saw something that reopened my wounds. Here it's all new.

One of the things kids ask for from teachers is to see movies. Recently I relented and showed them The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. If you haven't seen it get over to a video rental place and get it. It's made for TV so don't expect a great cultural icon but it is a fun comedy along the line of Indiana Jones. You will recognize a lot of the Jones movies' influence but there are also some steps that the Jones movies don't take.

Anyway, I showed them the film. Many people seem to think the TV is supposed to be the backdrop for conversation and my kids are no different. I did explain to them they should pay attention but that means nothing coming from a teacher... until they hear the word 'QUIZ'!

They want to treat the movies we show them as free time. They don't like knowing that it is a learning experience. The quiz is 30 questions on the details in the movie and the elements of fiction I have been talking about (among many other things) since last year. Who is a dynamic character? What examples of man versus circumstance conflict are in the movie? Which scene is the climax of the film?

SIR! Why do we have to do this?

Because this is a school and everything should be taken as a learning opportunity. There is no such thing as free time in my classroom.

On another topic, my dad likes to send me newspaper clippings from the Bangor Daily and the Portland Sunday paper. One of them showed a man standing on a frozen lake with a huge togue (lake trout). Behind him a dog is sleeping on the seat of his snowmobile. The man is all bundled up against the cold. My father sent it to me because he thought the man looked like me.

I dutifully pinned it to the bulletin board and waited. Eventually, as in days later, one of the students noticed the picture and commented on how much the man looked like me. They even asked if it was me. I told them to read my father's handwritten note on the upper corner of the picture. They hadn't bothered. It read:

"I thought this was you standing on a coral reef but then I remembered you don't have a dog."

The kids didn't get the humor.