Benny Jay: Parent-Teacher Conference

I'd been on the phone for a half hour non-stop -- lost track of time -- when I looked up and noticed it was three. Had to hurry -- didn't want to be late for the parent-teacher conference.

Funny thing about parent-teacher conferences -- when my kids were young, they were mighty big deals. My Wife and I listened to every word the teachers said, as if they were special views into the souls of our children.

You learn as time passes -- they're just snap shots. Nothing more, nothing less. Glimpses of where a kid is at particular moments in life.

Still I gotta go. My wife's working so it's up to me. I zip up to the school and promise myself I'll be in and out -- just grab my Younger Daughter's report card, let `em see my face, and skedaddle.

But, you know how it goes. I walk in to the school and first thing I see is my daughter's friend Allory. She tells me she got an academic four-year full ride to Wash U in St. Louis.

"You mean full ride as in -- for free?" I ask.

"Yes...."

"Dang, girl -- when did you get so smart?"

She smiles and shrugs, as if to say: What can I tell you, Mr. Jay....

I turn the corner and bump into Jackie. Give her a big hug. Haven't seen her in ages. Her daughter, LaQuita, and my daughter played on the same basketball team. LaQuita had a deceptively quick first step. Freeze the defender with a short head fake and be half way to the basket before the defender knew what's up. Her father, Leonard, and I used to sit together at the games. Damn, he was good company. Cheered the team, teased the referees and laughed at my jokes. I loved watching basketball games with Leonard and Jackie.

"`Quita's captain of the team," Jackie tells me.

"You're kidding me," I say. "That's sensational. You tell `Quita congratulations...."

By now its over a half an hour and I still haven't met with one teacher. Got to pick up the pace. But Ms. Garcia, the physics teacher, has a little time on her hands and she's a good story teller. Starts telling me about the time she was teaching at Gage Park, this tough-as-hell high school on the city's Southwest Side, and some kid hit her in the face. Didn't mean to. Took a swing at someone else and caught her by accident. "It didn't hurt as much as it surprised me," she says. "I couldn't believe it."

I head over to see Mr. Loucks, the English teacher. It's hard to call him Mr. Loucks. I've known him since he was a 15-year-old high-school sophomore who refereed the itty-bitty basketball league my daughters played in at Welles Park. I take a seat at his desk and we start talking baseball. The man loves baseball. He plays it, coaches it, watches it -- even sells beer at Wrigley Field. We could talk baseball all day, except there's a line of parents waiting at the door.

Off I go to Ms. Reist-Jones, who teaches African-American History. The woman's a trip. Reminds me of me. Starts talking about A and winds up talking about B. Not really sure how she gets there, just sort of stringing stuff together.

She's telling me they're studying African rhythm and she mentions Bernard Purdie. I cut her off: "You mean, the Bernard Purdie?"

"Is there another one?"

"As in the Purdie-shuffle drum beat?"

"You've heard of him?"

"Have I heard of him?" I go into this whole thing about how I read this article in the New York Times about how Purdie played with everyone -- from James Brown to Frank Sinatra. How he used the Purdie shuffle on "Home At Last" by Steely Dan. One of my favorite songs. I start singing it: "Well, the danger on the rocks is surely past...."

She shows me a video of Purdie on the New York Times website. I tell her there's a better video on youtube. But we can't get to YouTube cause the Board of Education's got it blocked from the school computers. I tell her we should be able to figure out someway to get beyond the block. We bend over the computer. Then I notice parents waiting at the door. Maybe another time.

By the time I get out, it's been more than an hour. I go to my car and turn on the radio. I'll be damn -- they're playing "Deacon Blues." My favorite Steely Dan song of all time. From Aja, the same album with "Home at Last." Probably got Bernard Purdie playing drums. I turn it loud and sing along: "I cried when I wrote this song, sue me if I play too long...."

For some reason, it makes me think about a parent-teacher conference for my Older Daughter back in 2004, when she was a sophomore in high school. She was screwing up big time back then, making life miserable for her chemistry teacher. He let me have it when I came to talk to him. Told me she talks too much, is rude and a distraction. I just about dropped to my knees seeking forgiveness. I said she was going through a particularly difficult stretch of adolescence and I predicted that one day she would grow out of it. It was just a shame that he -- of all people -- had to bear the brunt of it. I profusely apologized for that.

I don't think I got through to him. He didn't smile. I understood. She was making his life miserable -- why should he care about what might happen down the road?

The thing is my older daughter did turn it around the very next year. She got her act together and never looked back. Found her way to politics of all things. Went to work for the Democrats and got hundreds and hundreds of white Iowans to vote for Barack Obama. Helped elect the country's first black president. How `bout that?

But that's the thing about parent-teacher conferences. They're just snapshots. They don't tell you what kids got in them.

I turn down the radio and put the car into drive. Man, I wish that chemistry teacher could see my older daughter now....

Letter From Milo: Kingdom of Damaged Men

I was sitting in the admitting office of the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, waiting to set up an appointment for a physical. I had made the mistake of coming down on a Monday, which is the busiest day at the hospital. Thursdays and Fridays are best. There are generally no lines at the end of the week and you can be in and out in 20 minutes.

The reason I was at the VA was that I had given up my health insurance a while earlier. My wife and I are both self-employed and our incomes have taken a serious hit over the past year and a half. Along with the rest of America, we are feeling the effects of The Great Meltdown. We had to cut expenses somewhere and decided this was a good option. As a combat veteran, who was exposed to Agent Orange, I'm entitled to VA health care. After all, I risked my life, limbs and sanity in Vietnam (where, I believe, the USA won the Silver Medal,) why not take advantage of any perks the government might offer?

A veterans' hospital is a strange place. Like the late, great James Brown sang, This is a man's world. The only women in sight were nurses, doctors, and clerical workers. The patients are almost completely male, which makes sense when you consider that the armed forces, especially the combat forces, are predominantly male, too.

If a VA hospital is a man's world, it is a damaged man's world.

It is where soldiers who were injured in the service of their country come for treatment. One of the reasons they come to the VA is that most health insurance plans have a devilish stricture known as "a pre-existing condition." I'm sure I don't have to explain this asinine clause to any of my readers, but a pre-existing condition is enough to exclude most wounded veterans from traditional health care insurance. Many of them have no choice but to turn to the VA.

As I mentioned, the hospital was crowded that Monday. I couldn't help but notice that a surprising number of people waiting for treatment were maimed. I'm talking about amputees, double amputees, men with limps, men with walkers and canes, blind men, disfigured men, and a few who appeared to be insane: men who talked to themselves, made wild gestures, or drooled.

As I was sitting in the waiting area, a man in a wheelchair rolled up next to me. He was an elderly black man with a blanket covering his legs.

"How you doing, brother?" he asked me.

It was a question that veterans understand on many levels. It wasn't simply a conversational ploy. It was an existential question about the state of your universe - your mental, physical, and social well being. The old man was asking if I was eating well, getting enough sleep, making ends meet, having nightmares, or suffering from any of the horrors associated with war.

"I'm doing fine," I answered.

"Where was you at?"

"Vietnam."

"I was in Korea."

"That must have been tough."

"It was, brother. I never been so cold in my life. Lost all the toes on my right foot. Had a hole in my boot."

"Damn."

"I understand 'Nam was hot."

"Yeah, real hot. Rained a lot, too."

"I'd take hot over cold anytime."

"I would, too."

"You can hide from hot but you can't hide from cold."

"You've got a good point there."

"I live with my daughter. She always keep the thermostat too low. I tell her, 'Turn up the heat,' but she say it's gonna raise our electric bill. I tell her, 'Fuck the damn electric bill, it's too cold in here.' Man, I hate the cold."

A few moments later they called the old man's name and he rolled away to meet his appointment.

As I looked around the spacious waiting room, I noticed that it was a truly diverse place, blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, young men, old men, middle-aged men, all in the same boat. I saw a white man pushing a black man in a wheelchair. I saw black men drinking coffee and chatting amiably with white men. I saw young men, probably Iraq veterans, companiably exchanging war stories with men three times their age. I heard raucous laughter, saw handshakes and high fives. I saw men comparing old wounds and scars. I saw a mixed race group rush over to help an elderly man who had fallen.

I saw joy, humor, and dignity among men, who by all rights, should have been in states of regret, sorrow and despair. I reflected on the fact that if it's true that the military is the least segregated institution in America, then a VA hospital proves that shared experience and shared adversity can often trump hatred and intolerance. That was the good thing about a veteran. It made you part of something that seemed pure, somehow divorced from much of the ugliness that pervades out society.

Despite the bitter cold of that March morning, I had a warm feeling when I left the VA hospital. I felt that I had somehow reconnected to the great and generous soul of humankind. But it was a long walk to my car and the cold started getting to me. I buttoned up my coat and put on my hat. Damn, I hate the cold.