"What's a prikit?"

I experienced one of the saddest moments of realization thus far in my teaching career last week, when a student asked me a question during silent reading time.

"What's a prikit?" he asked.

Puzzled, I asked him to show me the word.

"Oh!" I said. "That's apricot. You know, like the fruit."

He stared at me blankly and shook his head. I explained, "It's sort of like a peach but it's smaller and it's not as sweet." He didn't respond.





This child had never seen or tasted an apricot. I thought about expanding into the whole tomayto-tomahto quality of the word but decided it was too much for someone who had never even cracked one open.

I was sad. If the book had the words "roach" or "prison" he wouldn't have had to ask what they meant. But an apricot? The closest thing he's probably tasted is a syrupy, mushy canned peach.

It's not just missing out on the whole concept of the apricot that bugs me. The apricot holds a special place in my childhood memories. Along with other foods like rhubarb, cherries and tomatoes in the summertime, apricots spark the goodness of youth to return to my thoughts.

Apricots remind me of my Grandma Welch, a petite, gentle but firm woman who has been gone for nearly a decade. She had two gnarled apricot trees in her yard at the old house in Fruita. Early summer brought the hard green fruits to the trees, sprouting from the fragrant, delicate blossoms.

I always trusted my mother to pick a good one for me. We both liked them slightly underripe. Grandma didn't quite understand that.

We'd crack the fruits open with our thumbs and stand in the backyard eating them. Mom would tell me about the time she caught a hummingbird in her bare hands in this same yard. And how she wished she hadn't afterward, because her hands were so bruised. We threw the apricot pits in an old coffee can and keep eating as many as we wanted to pick.

Grandma kept a flattened sandstone rock on a weathered wooden bench by her shed. It was similar to the flat rocks the Indians used to grind corn on. We'd take turns smashing the apricot pits after they had a chance to dry out, on this flat rock. The nuts were small, teardrop-shaped delights with a milky-white interior.

I can't tell you how many blood blisters Grandma soothed with tiny band-aids after we aimed badly and smashed fingers holding the wobbly pits in place on the rock.

The apricots were good. We ate them until we could eat no more. And we did the same with the nuts from the pits. And we took time to be with each other in the backyard under the apricot tree and enjoy life simply. We didn't know there was any other way to be.

But the kids in my classrom wouldn't know about these things - their lives are devoid of the habitus of savoring something they just picked from a tree.

Instead, they know a life I probably couldn't even imagine. I'm sure their apricots are things like tattoos that remind them of Mommy's boyfriend of the month, or cigarette burns on their arms or seeing a policeman and remembering when Daddy got hauled off to jail.

But they wouldn't know about apricots.

Goodbye, Sammy...

I don't like posting sad stuff. But this is something I'd like to share with all of you.

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/09/20/9_20_1a_ag_Safken_Obit.html

Sam was our next-door neighbor. We only knew him for a year. He found out he had cancer after his back started hurting and he lost 40 pounds.

He graduated from Fruita with my brother. He was only 21. He was the local football star.

He really did approach his battle with cancer like another match or the biggest game of his life. Throughout his treatment, I kept saying, "If anyone can beat this, it's Sam."

He was a genuinely nice guy who would do anything - move the weird neighbors' TV for them, give someone a ride, buy a hamburger for the homeless guy at McDonald's who looked hungry.

And now I don't really know what to say to his family next door. There are tons of cars over there and people were swarming the house yesterday. I guess I'm waiting for all the people to disperse to take over some food. I tell myself that part of it is - I would be overwhelmed at this point and I would want everyone to leave. But the other part is - I don't know what to say or do.

Making good on the promise...

Compliments of Philly tour guides Jeff and Meg (And their trusty, drooling mascot, James), we experienced the euphoria of a true Philly cheesesteak sandwich.




Now, it's not just like you go to a restaurant and sit down and order one. There's a distinct formula to ordering a cheesesteak.

And if you're not prepared to order at Jim's, you might as well leave now and save yourself the ridicule of the four ginormous spatula-weilding black guys behind the counter.

Luckily, we were properly trained and the line was long enough for us to practice before we got to the counter (it ran out the door and around the corner of the building. The place is THAT good). As we approached the guy chopping up all of the meat and onions, we quizzed ourselves on the right way to order a cheesesteak.

As Jeff and Meg said, you don't get up there and be like, "Uh, I'd like a sandwich. I mean a steak sandwich, and, uh, cheese. Um, what kind of cheese do you have again? Uh. ..."

These people mean business. And plus, their Eastern. That translates to: impatient, pushy, direct and fast-talking. They don't have time for us slow-talking, slow-walking Western people who are here for the joie de vivre.

"WHADDAYA WANT???!" Is the bottom line. And here's the way to order a Philly cheesesteak with Cheese Whiz and onions.

"I wanna steak wit' whiz an' onions," and you'd better not mumble because if they have to ask you twice, you're probably going to be laughed out the door. And yeah, they really say, "Wit." These people don't even have time for an "h" on their "with."

Yes, we ate at the cheesesteak Nazi's place. This place was so cool, there were celebrities' photos plastered all over the walls. Even John Denver wrote on his photograph, "I'd be a vegetarian if it wasn't for your cheesesteaks."

Now that's a testimonial.

Don't adjust your screen - we're BAAAACK!!!!

Don't check the address - this is McWiggins 2006 with a new-and-improved look.
(Which means our former look was old and inferior)

Nevermind that. In an attempt to start fresh and rid myself of my non-blogging habits, it's time for a change.

Not that this makes it any better, but I think we can attribute the non-blogging to a few factors.
1. Erin being swamped with homework all summer.
2. Third-graders sucking all the life out of Erin this fall
3. Erin attributing bad ju-ju to the computer because she only uses it for meaningless crap homework for the past four months. Begone, bad ju-ju!!!

(ignore the dead chickens in the corner and the Marie Leveau biography, please)...

Thanks to those who have been checking this site for months to no avail. I'm back, baby, I'm BAAAACK!