{"id":153,"date":"2026-04-07T22:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/?page_id=153"},"modified":"2026-05-01T18:28:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:28:16","slug":"tingle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/non-fiction\/tingle\/","title":{"rendered":"Tingle"},"content":{"rendered":"

James B. Nicola<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably felt it, too. As if you were an amputee, your nerve endings remembering the limb, convinced that you can move it, touch it, do something with it, years after it has been taken away. I suppose it is also a little like postpartum depression, since, after a new mother gives birth, a substantial portion of her physicality, the baby, is now outside of her body.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which might have been something like what I used to feel when a play I was directing finally opened. Those daily rehearsals filling my hours for anywhere from ten days to ten weeks were suddenly gone. I was no longer who I had been. When I was lucky, I went right on to another show immediately. But when there was a gap between shows, the gap in my daily schedule would feel like another sort of gap, as if something were missing. Like a limb.<\/span><\/p>\n

A change of any job can generate a similar effect, or change of school, or residence, or loss of a loved one. I never realized, for example, how many happy childhood memories were associated with my grandfather\u2019s house in New Canaan, Connecticut, until years after he passed away. I visited a friend in Norwalk for Thanksgiving. We took a drive and trod the very parking lot on Elm Street that replaced my grandfather\u2019s house. My friend was surprised how emotional I got, and so was I. Now I feel just a tingle. Like an amputee\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes the amputation is not even noticed because the invisible surgeon\u2019s non-existent scalpel moves so slowly as to take weeks, months, years. Recently, however, some parts of me, missing for decades, let themselves finally be felt. First with a sting. Which turned into a tingle. Until it became just about nothing. Nothing but a trace memory, that is, of who and what I used to be. Or a fainter, ghost-like remembrance of a hope\u2014of who, of what, I might have become.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

#<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I loved playing the clarinet. I can recall the day I acquired mine, and can pinpoint on a calendar the last day I played it as a member of my junior high school band.<\/span><\/p>\n

For most of fourth grade music class, we had been weaned on cheap, recorder-like plastic instruments called “tonettes.” At the end of the year, it was time for real instruments, which we could rent, borrow (if available), or buy. Back in second grade, a picture book I took out of the school library told me that the oboe was the hardest instrument to play. Showed me, rather: the Hirschfield-like ink cartoon of the oboist on that page featured his bright red cheeks puffing out big time. In other words, playing an oboe required a lot of lung power. And I was asthmatic. Ah, a challenge. That was for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

When my older brother started playing trombone in the junior high school band, though, I noticed that there was no oboe onstage. So I set my sights on the very cool and very snazzy saxophone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when my dad took me to Wahlerg and Auge music store to buy or rent my instrument one Saturday, a saxophone cost three times what a clarinet cost. An oboe, five times as much (plus I think you had to order one in advance). So I got a clarinet. But, quite unexpectedly, my dad sprang for it. (I had anticipated weeks or years of shoveling and raking at a buck a pop. Ours was a household with no allowance, but plenty of opportunities to work and earn.) I thanked my dad for the clarinet every time I saw him, mostly weekends, for the next few years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, I could already read music, and had performed one of my original piano compositions, called “Indian Hippies,” for the entire school when I was in third grade. Rice School was chock-full of supportive teachers and had, in particular, a very supportive principal in Miss Cawley who, when classmates of mine wanted to put on a show, called an assembly so they would have a ready-made audience. Eventually I provided improvised piano accompaniment to their improvised spoofs of TV shows like F-Troop<\/em> and The Honeymooners<\/em>. This was that sort of grammar school. In any event, clarinet would be my second instrument: a portable one I could take with me, or march with, as circumstance required.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the next year or two I performed duets all over the neighborhood with my neighborhood friend John Nicholson, a badass ice-hockey goalie (his dad worked for both the Patriots and the Bruins at various times) who had chosen the flute\u2014usually thought of as a girl’s instrument, but John was jock enough not to let that sort of nonsense bother him. We sounded out the hit song “Windy” by ourselves, but I had the actual sheet music to “The Sound of Music.” We just had to figure out the different keys, since his flute was a C instrument and my clarinet was a B-flat instrument. Somehow, even at age 9, we did. And also figured out how to play the descant, or countermelody, to “The hills are a-hills are a-live….” What I did not realize is that, since I was playing the clarinet a lot\u2014and performing, no less\u2014I was getting pretty good at it. As far as I was concerned, I was just having a great time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The year I was in sixth grade, sixth grade moved from the grammar school to the junior high and the Nicholsons moved a few towns away to be closer to Boston. Most of my clarinet playing would thenceforth take place in the school band, which rehearsed during activity period at the end of each Monday. Now, the junior high band had a much better reputation than the high school band. Everyone in town knew it\u2014and said so at the assorted concerts and parades my brother had played in, including the particularly well attended Memorial Day parade. Everyone also knew it was due to the conductor, Mr. N___, the same itinerant music teacher who had started us off in fourth grade with tonettes. So his reputation was gold. It is understandable, I suppose, that he wanted to keep it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a second junior high opened in town\u2014Baby Boom peak years. That\u2019s why there was room for the sixth grade. (This was still a few years before the term middle school<\/em> was coined.) That\u2019s also why I was playing in the junior high band a year earlier than I would have previously. I sat in the first seat of the first row of the woodwind section, closest to the conductor, on his left. Later I would realize what that meant. And I was only in sixth grade.<\/span><\/p>\n

That year, our town added, to its annual events, a Christmas parade, and the joint junior high band, combining both our school and the new one, was going to march in it. Which, at 7 or 8 degrees Fahrenheit that December of my sixth-grade year, we did. But cold weather never bothered my brothers or me. We were used to snow forts and snowball fights and ice skating and the like. My dad had grown up in Quebec and actually delivered newspapers on snowshoes when he was a kid, so he encouraged my brothers and me to get outside, even on the worst days of winter weather, and raise a ruckus. I was surprised, that first Christmas parade, that some kids wore woolen ski masks that covered your face. I thought that was a good idea. The brass and percussion sections\u2014what with valves, slides, or drumsticks\u2014could actually be played with gloves on, but the saxes, clarinets, and flutes had no such luck.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next year, however, as we rehearsed for the parade, Mr. N___ made the suggestion of finding an old pair of winter gloves and cutting holes in the fingertips. What a great idea, I thought, for woodwind players who were not used to seven degrees Fahrenheit, like me. But he also told us that he wanted 100% participation this year for the Christmas parade. No, not wanted.<\/em> Demanded. Insisted.<\/em> Or you would be kicked out of band. No absences, no excuses. Not even if you are sick.<\/span><\/p>\n

A parent\u2019s note, even a doctor\u2019s slip, would not suffice. No excuses<\/em> meant no excuses. You had to show up to band to be in band. Made sense. I figured a few too many members must have been absent the previous year (though I hadn\u2019t noticed at the time) when it was seven degrees Fahrenheit. When I did show up. And led the clarinet section of the combined, double-junior-high-school band. When I was only in sixth grade.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, our last rehearsal was the first Monday of December, and the parade would be that weekend, like the previous year. Well, I wasn\u2019t going to catch a cold in just four or five days. Nothing to worry about, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, guess what happened. You guessed. I got sick. By the day of the parade, my temperature ran so high that my mother even took it\u2014my temperature. And kept me home in bed. It was pretty high\u2014my temperature, not my bed. Oh how I tried to convince her to let me go even though I was at death’s door. But she would not be persuaded. And of course she was right.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were no more band rehearsals for the rest of December. But when the first Monday activity period of the new year arrived, I was, for the first time, sitting in home room instead of at band practice. Suddenly, a buzz: an intercom message was coming over the loudspeaker. The principal asked my homeroom teacher if I was there, and said for me to report to the cafeteria (which is where the band rehearsed). Off I went. There was the band, and Mr. N___. And me. He took me to an empty office in the hall and closed the door and asked me why I was not at band practice. I reminded him that I had missed the Christmas parade. I was not in tears but inside I was certainly (a) sad if not wretched, and (b) surprised that he needed me to remind him of the painful situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Only later did I realize that he was trying to get me to come back to band, but (a) I did not bring my clarinet to school that day, and (b) I had already been mourning, for the greater part of a month, the fact that I would no longer be able to play in the band according to what you, Mr. N, had actually said, and (c) At no time could I conceive of any scenario in which I could return to band without making (1) a total hypocrite out of you, Mr. N. and therefore (2) a thoroughly detestable teacher\u2019s pet (to whom the rules don\u2019t apply) out of me. I don\u2019t believe I was familiar with the word hypocrite<\/em> at the time, and I don\u2019t recall everything I said out loud, but I do remember him informing me at this time that I was his best clarinet player (hence my seat location at sit-down events). He had never said as much, out loud, before.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was I supposed to do with that? Your best clarinet player\u2014who wouldn\u2019t be playing in the band anymore because of your stupid rule, Mr. N?<\/em> No, I didn\u2019t say that, but I also never told him why I missed the Christmas parade. That I had been ill. Really ill. And he didn\u2019t ask why. Because it didn\u2019t matter. Right? He already knew I had shown up the previous December, and also for the previous Memorial Day parade and the annual concert. He had to know how much I loved playing the clarinet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, with all those kids in the band room waiting to practice, I didn\u2019t want to hold him up any longer, so one of us, quite awkwardly, finally brought our hopeless, hapless conversation to an end somehow. I think it was me.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if there is a moral to this story other than that great Stephen Sondheim lyric from Into the Woods:<\/em> “Careful the things you say \/ Children will listen.”<\/span><\/p>\n

When I think back, today\u2019s tingle seems to be telling me, simply, what my view of the world was, what my priorities and values were, at that time, January of seventh grade: Mr. N___ maintaining his integrity (which he seemed willing to forego) was more important to me than my love for playing the clarinet (which I had already foregone). That\u2019s just who I was. Back then. But sometimes, unexpectedly, for no apparent reason, I shiver a bit, as if haunted by a yearning for what was lost. And every so often, the yearning feels more like an ache, the tingle more like a sting, and I haven\u2019t the slightest idea of what<\/em> it is trying to tell me. Do you?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

#<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fortunately, I was interested in a lot of things when I was a kid. Just about everything, in fact, which is both a blessing and a curse. And since then I have been a happy camper for the most part. I did go into the arts, directing plays and whatnot. It has made each day interesting, challenging, and creative\u2014something to look forward to.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I am not complaining. I don’t usually write about myself in this way. Sure, I write poems, but poetry is fictive; an essay like this is not.<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose this piece is about how my world of lifetime possibility got reduced\u2014without my having made the choice, or even noticing that such a reduction had been effected. So, do I mean to imply\u2014Don\u2019t let that happen to you? Or: Try not to do it to anyone else, if you are in a position to do so?<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet so much of the world is struggling for the next meal, or to find a home. What do I have to say in the shadow of that reality?<\/span><\/p>\n

But I suppose that\u2019s just it. Looking back now, what I did end up choosing helped me<\/em> on a road to happiness. But was it what I was supposed to be doing on the planet? Has it been worthwhile? Or enough? Lately, I\u2019m not always sure.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any event, I told the following story to some friends awhile back, and even a week later they were still thinking about it. They reached out to me to say that I should write it down\u2014because it might help someone out there. I am not quite sure how that might work. But here goes.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

#<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There were a lot of new kids in my ninth grade honors biology class, because my high school was a big regional one encompassing four surrounding towns. Since a lot of my new friends hadn\u2019t known me before, I trusted their objectivity which, before long, I would be relying upon.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the first day, Mr. R___ told us we were the largest honors biology class ever, and he was going to be challenging us with very special, well, challenges. In other words, he was going to grade tougher than he had in previous years and hoped we would rise to the occasion. Well, my year was the very peak of the Baby Boom, so half of what he said made sense. My older brother, the trombone player, had loved Mr. R___ as a teacher, so I assumed he would at least be fair. And notwithstanding his suddenly raised standards, Nature was my grand passion. I had been looking forward to biology ever since I was little, and especially since my brother had laced the basement with petri dishes filled with nutrient agar for some science project\u2014which eventually made it all the way to the state science fair at M.I.T!<\/span><\/p>\n

I had already had a poem published in the newspaper which advocated the city of Worcester acquiring a zoo\u2014back when I was in second grade. My fifth grade class took a field trip to the Cape Cod National Seashore, after which I had an editorial published about saving our nation\u2019s wetlands. That same year I also won the Rice School science fair.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside of school, I grew a garden every summer with tomatoes, beans, peppers, and flowers, inspired by my New Canaan grandfather\u2019s own garden (now parking lot). Plus, my brothers and I constructed simple bird houses (from kits), mounted them high on our side-yard trellis so they\u2019d be safe from squirrels and such, and watched various small species building nests, bearing young, and giving flying lessons. After a few seasons of this, I started laying out plans for a purple martin house\u2014a multi-level affair with rooms for a few dozen nests. By the time I was ready to build it, purple martins had left central Massachusetts, along with the common bluebird, due to D.D.T. and the like. But I was already familiar with the words pollution, conservation<\/em>, and Rachel Carson\u2019s seminal book on ecology, The Silent Spring<\/em>\u2014and I was still in grammar school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the years we had cats and dogs and fish and guinea pigs as pets, plus a Gilbert\u00ae chemistry set with which we conducted all sorts of experiments. I think some kid must have eventually blown up a house or something because later chemistry sets would go off the market. But for the potentially scientific mind, it was a great time to be a boy, whether interested in botany, zoology, ornithology, agronomy, chemistry\u2014or all of the above, like me. I was a published naturalist years before I ever heard the name Henry David Thoreau. John James Audubon, on the other hand, felt like a family friend.<\/span><\/p>\n

And high school offered Science Seminar, mentored by real Worcester-area scientists, as an extracurricular activity. Not after school, but in the evening. Scientists had day jobs, after all. I signed up right at the start of my freshman year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, notwithstanding Mr. R___’s gauntlet-tossed-to-floor attitude, I was finally taking a course in the field that would become my vocation, just as it had been my avocation for just about my whole life. In other words, I thought I would, quite simply, meet his challenge. No problem. So that first day I brought unbridled, albeit tempered, enthusiasm to the table.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why “tempered?” Because years earlier, I had learned not to be the kid who had his hand up all the time. I started to learn this after an episode in third grade, but then really put it in practice in fourth and fifth, with teachers I was particularly crazy about. I did not want to leave a teacher hanging out to dry if nobody else raised their hand. When it was a question of a student\u2014me\u2014asking a question, that was something else. But when the teacher posed a question to the whole class, I invariably waited for someone else to raise their hand first. If no one did, only then would I raise mine. I even had a discussion with these teachers about this very issue. I wanted them to know that if my hand was not raised, and they wanted to call on me, I wouldn’t mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, an eighth grade teacher\u2014a favorite one, no less\u2014did have me stay after school once for being “obnoxious”\u2014yes, her word. I was aghast and deeply hurt by this. She did not explain what I had done that made her think that I myself was “obnoxious,” not just my particular behavior. Plus, she left the room promptly, that day after school, after calling me\u2014that word\u2014so I did not have the opportunity to ask her what I did so that I could refrain from doing it, unwittingly, again. (I was certainly not going to remind her of what she said the next day, was I?) So by the ninth grade I quite consciously tried to play it safe, particularly sensitive to not letting enthusiasm swell into some sort of action like interrupting, or talking too long, or laughing too loud, or bubbling over with the joy of learning. Only years later would I learn about things like hormones and puberty and such.<\/span><\/p>\n

God bless all middle school teachers, by the way: they are all potential saints if not martyrs, and if you don\u2019t know what I mean, then you must not be male. ‘Nuff said?<\/span><\/p>\n

In any event, one other thing Mr. R___ said that first day\u2014after he reassured some of the squeamish students that, yes, we would be dissecting frogs, it was in the curriculum: No one would be forced into anything they did not want to do or say. The ground rules for honors biology would be: One can always respond by saying “I pass.” Remember that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, for the first few weeks, when Mr. R___ asked the class a question, I would pause to see if anyone else raised a hand, and if no one else did, I would raise mine. If I knew the answer. Which, biology being my bailiwick, I invariably did. For some reason, however, he always responded to my response with some sort of derisive comment, like a “shot.” No one thought of “journaling” in those days, so unfortunately I can\u2019t give you an exact quote. Still, just as I had believed in Mr. N___\u2019s integrity as band leader, I basically trusted that Mr. R___, whom my brother had loved as a teacher, must have been a good guy. So something must have been wrong with me,<\/em> or what I said, or how I said it. But, for the life of me, I could not figure out what it was.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the next few weeks, I became friends with the cool kids from the other towns, whose objectivity, remember, I could trust. Objectivity about me, that is. One day, one of them said (and two others concurred), “What\u2019s Mr. R___\u2019s problem? He always has it in for you.” I got them to elaborate, and they clarified that as far as they could tell, Mr R___, for no seemingly justifiable reason, was nasty to me. Every time I tried to participate, without exception. In today\u2019s parlance, he was “trying to tear me out a new one.”<\/span><\/p>\n

So it wasn\u2019t my imagination, and I wasn\u2019t being particularly obnoxious after all! Phew. It was that he had it in for me. Still, this set of circumstances was as unbearable as it was inscrutable.<\/span><\/p>\n

So late that September, or maybe October, I stopped raising my hand in biology class. At all.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day in early November, when no one else in the room had raised their hand either, Mr. R___ called on me. Oh, I knew the answer, all right. But instead of giving it, I said the two words he had not as of yet heard back from anyone: “I pass.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Wait for it, wait for it, only a clich\u00e9 will work here, so here it is: You could hear a pin drop.<\/em> Listen. Hear it? No? Keep listening. No pin drop sound? OK, you can proceed with class now, Mr. R___. And he did.<\/span><\/p>\n

From November until June, those were the only two words I said in that class.<\/span><\/p>\n

I read the textbook as assigned, handed in homework on time, watched the blackboard, took notes, listened, learned, and did my best. I met his challenge, but with both hands unraised for six or seven months\u2014and he didn\u2019t call on me again. Then in June, something happened that made me realize another tactic I had enlisted without planning to, or even being aware of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

What happened was this. One of the last units of the year (we never did get around to dissecting those frogs, by the way) dealt with heredity and chromosomes and genes. Gregor Mendel and his pea plants, dominant and recessive genes, and so forth. So the problem had to do with five generations of pea plants, and Mr. R___ sketched out the ancestry tree on the blackboard, so by the fifth generation there would be thirty-two\u20142\u2075\u2014genes, each either dominant or recessive. We had to figure what were the chances a fifth generation organism would display a certain inherited trait. I forget what the trait was, but I noticed that, in the fifth row, one gene Mr. R___\u00a0 marked as dominant was supposed to be recessive, or vice versa. I thought he was doing it on purpose to trick the class, ask us to find the error, and stump us (par for the course for him). But after a while it became clear that his fifth row did not come out as he intended, with the right number of dominant versus recessive genes, and he was stuck. Looking over his blackboard scrawlings, he was unable to pull himself out of a debacle. And nobody was raising a hand. He was left out hanging, with no safety net. Was I the only one who noticed? It seemed so. So I did what I had not done in biology class since November. I raised my hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

I did not raise it high. Just so the tops of my fingertips were slightly higher than the top of my head, as would any low-maintenance fourteen-year-old. Some other kid said out loud, “Mr. R___, James has his hand up,” so that Mr. R___, razor-focused on the blackboard, would turn around. I certainly had no intention of speaking without being called on. And so I pointed out the error. Not his<\/em> error: the<\/em> error. Row five, seventh from the right, should be recessive instead of dominant. What\u2019s more, I did it to save time, to save him, and that biology class. To be helpful. Only afterwards did classmates remark on the fact that it was the first thing I had said in class since last November (which is why I recall this detail today). The ones who knew me from grammar school and junior high also noticed that in all those months, I never even raised my hand, not once, which, they remarked, was new for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several friends later reported the way he “glared” at me. Could have said “looked,” or “stared,” but I\u2019m pretty sure the word they used was glared<\/em>. And only when they said that word did I realize (1)\u00a0that I did not happen to see the way Mr. R___ glared at me, and it was because (2) I had not so much as glanced, not directly, at Mr. R___ in class, not once, since the fall. Never made eye contact, in other words. Not because I decided not to. But because I simply couldn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, that fourth quarter I finally stopped trying so hard, because it seemed I was not going to be a biologist, or naturalist, or scientist of any sort, after all. No, there was never a moment I sat myself down and decided this, or even realized I had started thinking like this. But someone else would have to save the marshes and the planet. And what did Mr. R___ do? He finally gave me an A.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I was shocked when my project actually came in second at the science fair! I thought it had no chance at all, because I devised a psychology experiment, not biology, not even science. But I guess my scientific method was OK, with hundreds of test cases. Plus it was original and interesting as heck.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sophomore and junior years, in honors chemistry and physics, I did incredibly well and got A’s that were so high that they must have made up for the three quarterly B’s Mr. R___ had bestowed upon me. Because one day, I was called into Mr. Mills\u2019s office (department chair). I feared I was in trouble for something, but couldn’t imagine what, because I wasn\u2019t even taking a science class, senior year. Anyway he handed me this impressive medal in a felt-lined palm-sized cardboard box and offered warm congratulations. No ceremony, just Mr. Mills and me in his office. Surprise, I had won the Bausch-Lomb\u00ae Science Award for having the highest average in the sciences for my class year. But I felt this weird sensation in my nerve endings. A tingle. A sting. Because, while I loved learning, science was no longer my field. Waste of a medal, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

My mom taught in the same high school, by the way. She was friendly with Mr. R___ as she was with all her colleagues. The summer freshman year was finally over, I knew I would never have to see him again. But I might have mentioned to her, just by way of conversation, something about the trials and tribulations, now insignificant, of that biology class. She told me that at the beginning of my freshman year, or perhaps in the summer just before, Mr. R___ had been diagnosed with MS. Multiple Sclerosis. For some reason, which baffles me today, I linked this bit of information with why he decided to impose such high standards on our class, why he would proceed to chomp off our heads, or dock us points, when we seemed to be performing at some sub-standard level, and whatnot. Of course it makes no sense why he would be particularly snarky to me more than to other kids, but I did not stop to think about that at the time. Not till just last year, when I was talking to my brother. Fifty years later.<\/span><\/p>\n

We were discussing how lucky we were to have had so many great teachers over the course of our public education (basically, all of them, in my case). And lucky to have parents who picked the town for its quality school system, knowing that education can mean so much to success, happiness, wisdom, purpose in life, almost everything. I had never put Mr. R___ on a list of not-great teachers of mine, but we did get to talking about him again, because one of my brother’s classmates, a serious science student who had gone on to M.I.T., had just passed away. The way my brother started talking about his classmates, something dawned on me, and I asked him if, his year, the rapport between students and Mr. R___ was one that involved the exchange of barbs and shots and the like, i.e., snarkiness as a mode of friendship and collegiality.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had been around the block a few times in the previous decades, so I knew that sometimes males in particular can behave this way. Think of the movie Stand By Me,<\/em> when those four buddies are twelve, with dialogue like Ah, you mother\u2019s vomit<\/em>\u2014prepubescent code for You know you are my friend because I talk this way to you and you can do likewise with me if you want.<\/em> Then add a couple years so those buddies are fourteen and fifteen now\u2014grade nine\u2014and that vulgar sort of persiflage morphs into a slightly more adult version, seemingly cooler, but just as sharp. I engaged in this kind of banter, briefly, with a few friends later in life, and particularly in the theater, with its own species of wit, humor, and, at times, yes, snark.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have also learned over the years that when going through a major transition, crisis, trauma, or private pain, one may rely on a public persona that, quite simply, has worked in the past, just to get through the day. Could this have been what Mr. R___, unbeknownst to himself, was doing?<\/span><\/p>\n

But in grade nine, in the aftermath of the o-word being used by a favorite eighth\u00ad-grade teacher of mine to refer to me, I was not open to any kind of behavior patterns, snarky or otherwise, that could remotely be considered obnoxious, either with classmates or teachers, no matter how much they might have been overtures of collegiality in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, though, I begin to wonder: Did Mr. R___ think I was like my brother? Did he somehow conflate my brother and his classmates\u2014with me and my classmates? In other words, that September of my freshman year, did Mr. R___ start chomping my head off not because he didn\u2019t like me, but because he actually did? Or was trying to? There\u2019s me, never giving him the time of day, never looking at him, not once, from November to June, and all the while, privately, he\u2019s grappling with MS. Did he even notice that I never raised my hand or looked at him? And if he did, would he have ever wondered why? Might he have possibly even thought that I was being\u2014wait for it\u2014mean<\/em> to him? And what’s mean<\/em> but a variation on\u2014wait for it, please, last time, I swear\u2014obnoxious? Oh no. No no no no no.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any event, I managed to get through a miserable situation and yet remain as cheerful as possible, on the outside, all year. Heaven forfend anyone knowing you are miserable inside, right? I am sure I overcompensated with good humor and cheeriness to classmates and teachers alike\u2014other teachers, that is\u2014and no one suspected a thing. No one else, at any rate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hm. While I can\u2019t say I did what I had to do, I did do what I couldn\u2019t help but do. Passive aggressive? You tell me. Maybe I was just thirteen and fourteen, not my brother, and totally out of my league.<\/span><\/p>\n

No particular Sondheim lyric comes to mind to provide a moral to this portion of my story. Perhaps it\u2019s just to remember that everyone\u2014maybe just about everyone on the planet, including those well fed, clothed, and housed\u2014is enduring some sort of pressure or pain, even if it is invisible. Which can lead to all sorts of varieties of social awkwardness: defense mechanisms; disguised appeals for help, attention, or friendship; and so on. So let\u2019s try our best to be kind to each other if we can possibly bear to be. Or at the very least, give each other a break. Hm. Maybe that\u2019s not too shabby a way to look at the world. To live in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any event. Not a scientist. Door closed. Road not to be taken, and not taken. Limb removed. If not half a heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tingle returns now every time I take a walk in the woods, or hike up a mountain, or stroll on a beach, or in Central Park, especially in spring. Or when I write a nature poem. Many of these poems are compiled in my latest collection, Natural Tendencies.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Cold comfort for a life not led?\u2014or is it just the way destiny works?<\/span><\/p>\n

Whichever, that tingle starts to sting when I hear discussions of endangered species, or climate change, or fracking, or sink holes, or a green new deal, or the like. Because it could have been me, and maybe it should have been, out there as champion for Mother Nature, for Earth, for the survival of the human race. Working in a lab, or on site. Helping to find solutions. Perhaps one that no one else has found yet, because I was supposed to find it. For you. For everybody.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, what do I do? I say hi to dog walkers and pet their puppies. Well, it\u2019s not nothing. Or is it?<\/span><\/p>\n

So yes, I do feel, from time to time, those parts of me no longer here. I live on as an amputee, my spirit, my soul, my very being, remembering limbs long gone, imagining I might move them, touch them, do something with them, years after they have been inscrutably removed. Well, maybe not so inscrutably anymore. And at least that\u2019s<\/em> not nothing. At least I hope so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks, by the way, for listening. Maybe that\u2019s all there really is, in the end, that\u2019s, well, not nothing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James B. Nicola You\u2019ve probably felt it, too. As if you were an amputee, your nerve endings remembering the limb, convinced that you can move it, touch it, do something with it, years after it has been taken away. I suppose it is also a little like postpartum depression, since, after a new mother gives… <\/p>\n

Read more Tingle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"parent":19,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-153","page","type-page","status-publish","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/153\/revisions\/387"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}