I suppose that most of us have our own definitions for aging, and I’m not talking about fine wines. When we’re ten years old, we can’t wait to become teenagers who begin dating, partly because it means access to the family car with that jingle of keys in our pockets or purses and the joyful belief (or pretense) that we’ve reached a level of maturity that gives us carte blanche that funnels its way too often down to the freedom to imbibe in alcohol or appear grown up with cigarettes puffing up our frail egos in the pretense that we’re finally mature in that universal quest for independence.
Of course, as teens we don’t yet understand the burden of mortgages, utility bills, gas-guzzling vehicles or changing dirty diapers. That curtain doesn’t go up until most of us reach our twenties and the sometimes bleak landscape of aging faster every year until our hair begins its quest to turn silver or simply leave the premises completely.
I recall that as a teenager, I heard wonderful stories and memories from elderly relatives so that now I comprehend why such shared recollections become significant parts of who we are. I’ve reached the stage where I can’t always recall where I placed my keys or a book I was reading, but I can remember vividly events and conversations from the 1950’s. Seeing the humor and similar happenings in the lives of my aging friends makes it possible for me to see that I’m not alone and that the TV remote has to be SOMEWHERE. 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
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