What’s Important?

Priorities

Yesterday I saw something appalling on the news. An 85-year-old woman drove her car through the window of a shop, knocking over a younger lady in the process. All of this was caught on a security camera, but the worst part was that several people gathered, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, around the car, not to see if the driver was all right or to check on the fallen young lady, but rather to take pictures with their cell phones. As it turned out, no one was seriously hurt, but at the time, the cell phone gawkers didn’t know that. My question was immediately about where their humanity had gone. The sideshow aspects of the scene were of more interest to them than the safety of those directly involved in the accident. It was like something from a future shock piece of science fiction in which people have become automatons, devoid of compassion. Scary stuff.  JB

About John

About John John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes. Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018 View all posts by John →
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2 Responses to What’s Important?

  1. Tammy Barnett says:

    Wow, I totally agree. Noticed that also. I’m very dismayed at our society’s need to catalog every moment of our lives and display to everyone. My hope is that we will remember how to be in the moment and enjoy it and not be so caught up in documenting our lives for others.

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