Back to School

 

Hayter for Aug 18, 2024

“Back to School, Again!”

 

          Well, school has started and there’s not a thing you can do about it. A hurricane could slow it down and another COVID strain could turn it into homeschooling again.

I’m assuming that even with no COVID scare, a lot of kiddos are still getting home-schooled. The Hayter kids might’ve been home schooled if there hadn’t been so many of us. Elsie Hayter had seven kids and refused to home-school any of us.

          Of course, she didn’t have a thing to worry about, because back then homeschooling was referred to as “Truancy”. If you were afraid of teachers and school kids messing up your child’s mind, you could send them to a church school or a licensed private school. The government allowed that. But, only licensed teachers were allowed to teach in schools or at home. That law is different in different states. States are actually more different than people.

Mom and Dad never considered sending us to a non-public school because of the cost. Dad’s taxes already paid for our education, so let ‘em ride a bus.

          I don’t know how many articles I have written about the first day of school. This is my 44th year as a columnist, so there must be several. In fact, my third article was titled “Thoughts on Back to School.” It was published on Friday, August 29, 1980. There was not a hint of humor in it. I’m not a fan of serious writing.  

I’m going to share the last paragraph of my August 29 piece: “Both parents and school officials can assure themselves that despite the lack of encouragement and low pay, area teachers will do everything in their power to bring the best year ever to this school district.”

          Teacher’s pay stunk on ice back then. I have every confidence that it’s much better now. I also have confidence that the value of the dollar is considerably lower today. In other words, for teachers today, “the sign of the times” is the same time it was 44 years ago. -- I hope I’m wrong about that.

          I started my teaching career at McCullough High School in the fall of ’76. I was 27 at the time. Had I started at the age of 21, I would never have made it 27. A little more experience in life helped me manage students so much better. That, plus I had great students.

          When I look back at all of the years I spent in public school, in college, and in teaching, the worst year I ever experienced was when I was in the first grade. If I had the time and the inclination, I’m sure I could find several articles I wrote about my time at Garden’s Elementary School back in 1956. I was the only student in the entire building who never caught on to what we were supposed to do.

In the olden days, school didn’t start until after Labor Day. That was scriptural. I don’t know which religious group was responsible for having school begin in mid-August, but it certainly ran afoul of truth, justice, and the American way.

In 1980, I began my third year of teaching at McCullough High School in The Woodlands. The Woodlands has changed a lot over the past 44 years. Back then, there weren’t nearly as many streets or traffic, largely because there was a dearth of businesses and homes. Today, The Woodlands is dearth-free. Too much traffic, too many businesses and homes. That can be said of most cities and towns located between Houston and Dallas.

Speaking of which, I wonder how many schools there are between Houston and Dallas. How many students are going to school in the 250-mile-long region? How many teachers, administrators, teachers-aides, cafeteria workers, janitors, bus drivers, and transportation workers are involved in education? I apologize to the bus mechanics and all of the other school district employees that I left out.

Speaking of which, the life of each person involved with public schools has changed drastically since last week. Some students are excited about the start of school. Some are stressed out of their minds. By the way, kindergarten hadn’t been invented when I started school. I was stressed beyond the limits of stressness. And, yes, I have milked that topic.

The topic I would now like to milk has to do with all of the people I mentioned above. Individuals who are a part of the educational process in Montgomery County. I don’t care if you’re a student, teacher, principal, nurse, bus driver, on down to the person who helps kids cross the street… the behavior of each person has an effect on others. You will contribute something positive or negative in the lives of others you deal with. Even if you do nothing, your lack of action may have caused something.  

I taught long enough to know that I disappointed a lot of kids while teaching. I prayed so many mornings that God would be with each of my students and make sure I didn’t mess anyone up. As mentioned, you can’t teach, go to school, or do anything while around people without having an influence of some kind.  

I listened to an award ceremony last night in which Denzel Washington gave a great speech. I considered his message that best applies to the beginning of school for 2024: “I think a role model is a mentor—someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.”

So many of you are mentors without even knowing it. In fact, that’s what helps a mentor to grow in mind and spirit.—With that thought, shall we each have a blessed school year!

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hayter.mark@gmail.com

Pondering Space

 

Hayter for Aug 11, 2024

“The Enjoyment of Wonder” 

          Today is the day we’re going to attempt something that Albert Einstein recommended we do daily. The exercise involves only our brains, so we won’t be working up much of a sweat. So, adhering to Einstein’s suggestion, we shall now “Ponder the Universe”.

I have done a bunch of universal pondering, which means that Albert and I are from similar gene pools. We both prefer mustard over mayonnaise and we both tend to ponder about the universe. With that in mind, I shall now share a few of my ponderings about the universe, after which you can start your first daily exercise of the same.

I recently read something by Carl Sagen where he mentioned that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all of the beaches of the earth. My thought is – “Of course there is!” The Universe is supposedly eternal in time and infinite in distance. Anything that is eternally infinite has more of everything there is or ever was.  Forever. The number of granules of sand on the planet are numbered. No one’s come up with the figure yet, but there is one.

Someone else said that there are more trees on earth than the number of stars in the Milky Way. It’s been estimated that there are three trillion trees in the world. Of course, in the last couple of seconds, we’ve lost 10,081 of them. Just a guess. At last count there were 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. It likely took at least eight people to count ‘em. When “AI” becomes even more effective, we’ll know how many grains of sand there are on the moons of Jupiter… for what it’s worth.

Ask yourself, what are the total number of planets circling the 100 billon stars that are in the Milky Way? Discounting the asteroid Pluto, there are eight planets circling the Sun. Were we to assume that each star has at least one planet circling it that supports life, that would make about 100,000,000,000 planets in our galaxy with some kind life form.

According to earth’s greatest space telescope, the David Webb, there are over 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. Since the size of the universe may have no ending, the estimated planets supporting some forms of life would be inestimable… say that three times fast.

I’ve made no mystery of the fact that I was practically born in a church building. Over the years, I have heard hundreds of sermons on hell. Of course, “hell” was never used as a word for “hell”. The preacher said that we were going to Hades or The Devil. By the time you got to hell, the devil would already be there. Point being, don’t say “hell!” I never heard a sermon on the making of hell, but I heard a bunch on how God created the heavens and the earth! And He did it in six days, taking the seventh day off to rest. And he did all of that, oh, about six thousand years ago.”

I once asked a Sunday School teacher, if the earth was no more than 6000 years old, how did all the fossils get here? His answer was, “God made the fossils.” It was another way of saying, “What do you care?” That is a comment I’ve heard several times while trying to ponder the universe with others. It’s the same as saying, “If God had wanted us to think about the universe, He would’ve given us more details about it.”

I can only assume that some believe that God never wanted us to think about other planets with other beings on them. In the movies, these beings don’t look nearly as good as we do, but that’s to be expected. The question is, in an infinite universe, and countless planets that may have different life forms, how many Jesus-experiences might there be? While that thought could trash a religion, it should do nothing to ruin one’s faith in God.

Let’s face it, every civilization since the dawn of mankind had a religion. While Moses was chiseling the Ten Commandments there were other people in Asia, South America, Australia, Africa, and the Middle East, each with their own religions. So many civilizations, so much history, so many religions. And we are here on one planet we’ve named Earth. Assuming there are a countless number of life forms in the universe, and assuming most of them have different religions, one must wonder where heaven is. Is there one heaven in a never-ending universe or are there countless heavens all across the universe? It’s a wonderment, but only to those who ponder.

A psychiatrist would answer the question of heaven or heavens, with, “Hmm. What do you think?” If I hadn’t been blessed with a desire to know more about the universe, I would never even consider the question. Why would I want to know impossible stuff like that? I am one of the eight billion+ people on the planet Earth who has too much to think about as it is. 

          Being one person among eight billion is humbling. Of course, being one among a few million earthlings who consider themselves as children of God, my goal is to get closer to Him. And, I would have so much more trouble doing that without the use of my God-given desire to wonder.

         

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hayter.mark@gmail.com

Almost an Olympian

 

Hayter article for August 4, 2024

"I coulda been a contender"

 

 

 

          There are so many things that keep coming back to haunt me. Considering the total of them I get the feeling that I do not belong on this planet.

 

          I’m blaming a small portion of this on Simeon Biles. That young lady can do things with her body, that I can’t even follow with my eyes. She runs to the middle of a mat and immediately jumps higher in the air than God intended for us to be capable of jumping. While in the air, she turns three flips, makes two body twirls, and three backward twists, finally landing on the mat, positioned like a model. It’s the kind of thing that was previously only capable in animation.

 

          Are you following me here? The moment Simone’s feet left the ground, her mind had already registered orders for her body to follow. Her mind already described her body maneuver left, a roll right, and then a body move upward, requiring the neck, elbows, and knees to help manage a perfect landing.

 

It was Simone Biles who made me think about my lifelong buddy, Johnny Sutton. I’ve mentioned that among other things, we were both in the same gymnastics class at SFA. One of the first things the coach told us was that during the last week of class, each of us would perform a routine that would count for half of our grade. That meant that Johnny and I had all of two and a half months not to worry about it.

          Each day we attended gym class, the coach showed us how to do certain maneuvers. A few of them, I already knew. I just never caught on to how to do them properly. During each session, we had to demonstrate the moves that we had learned the previous time. We did things on the high bar, the rings, the pummel horse, parallel bars, and the mats. I hated them all.

          I’ve gotta tell you, there are thousands of maneuvers that gymnasts can do on a mat. But two college sophomore forestry students mastered only the forward roll and the side-straddle hop. Forward rolls give me a headache. The side-straddle hop is just dumb. You jump up and let your legs go out and your arms go up. On your way down, your legs come in and your arms go down. Then you do it a couple hundred more times.

          Let us move forward to the last week in my gymnastics class. The day before gym class, I practiced a routine in my mind but refused to try it out in the dorm. On the next day, the first thing I tried was the kip on the high bar. I had only managed it once in class. This time, while hanging onto the bar, I swung my legs out and up.  This gave me enough momentum to kip up. That means nothing to you, but it’s one whale of a feat.

          On that particular maneuver, God was sure with me. During the rest of the routine, he just looked down and grinned. When I dismounted the high bar, I immediately headed for the parallel bars, where I really made a fool of myself. My pummel routine drew a laugh from each person in the gym. I couldn’t explain it to you without sobbing. My plan for the balance beam was to walk across the long, narrow beam without falling off. I managed it. It did nothing to improve my grade. Yet, it was something that would be impossible for me to do today.

My last move on the mat involved me first doing three forward rolls followed by a dizzy and nauseating spell, followed by, I don’t remember what. Fortunately, I was too sick to see and too dizzy to make sense of anyone’s comments. I got a “C” on my routine, but a “B” for the class.

          After my routine, my friend Johnny whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me we had to make up a routine?” That was the only time in his life that he came across as dumber than me.

Johnny started with the high bar and messed up his kip. After his dismount, he looked around at the other equipment, trying to figure out what he might do next. Each time he finished a routine he stopped to ponder his next move. There were several hesitations.

Except for my lucky kip, I was in no way superior to my friend. The only difference was, I didn’t stand there and look around to decide what to do next. Johnny and I both made a “B” in gymnastics. – I think this a good time to tell you that the next year, I took handball, and ended up finishing as the best, having beat every player in the gym. It didn’t impress my brothers, either. Too much competition. Hey, Mom and Dad are gone! Who could we possibly impress?

          But, Simone Biles? At the moment, she is where I left here, twirling in the air while nailing movements that no human body is capable of doing. Her team won the best all-around gymnasts, each team member receiving a gold medal. I don’t know how many Biles won overall, but I’m sure that her return-home baggage weight increased significantly.

          I feel confident that the U.S. men have a gymnastics team, but I’ve yet to see any men perform. I tried to watch them swim, but it took them too long to approach the diving platform.

          By the way, during our senior year, Johnny and I applied to get a lifeguard certificate. I quit on the second night. Johnny was a fish. I merely played the drowning victim that he saved. It was great. I knocked it outta the park.

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hayter.mark@gmail.com