May 26, 2011
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The Daily News
1 The Sharks' loss last night was just about the best loss they could have had.
2 With 14 seconds left, a poor icing call resulted in a tie game that they clearly should have won. It was icing, but puck placement should have been at center ice. Shoulda, woulda, coulda...they still lost. And it wasn't that alone that did it.
3 Nobody walking around expected them to play as well as they did. It was the best of losses; it was the worst of losses.
4 It will be one for the ages. The team came out against all odds and played hard, and played to win. And forever after, the icing call that was not waived off will be a sore spot in a series that could have turned around dramatically.
5 Sad, sad, sad.
6 But the Sharks didn't go down without an enormous fight, and did go down with dignity, and an amazing run that just hesitated a moment, and then a freaky goal. And as painful as this loss was, they stood tall in the end. It just wasn't their time. It seems it never is, but many of us thought we might be watching a possible miracle on ice unfolding with thirteen seconds left in regulation.
7 Ah, sports' fans, I could list a history of these sorts of disappointments, perhaps the bitterest being the 1993 Giants' winning 103 games and going nowhere in the end, or the '57 Niners' loss to Detroit.
8 Perhaps these things happen for a reason. Perhaps it will one day make the Sharks' ultimate destiny that much better.
9 If you really analyze it, most sports' teams DON'T get the prize, year after year. The odds are tremendously against nearly anyone making it to the very top. That's what makes following sports fun, in a strange sort of way. Two teams who combine both talent and luck eventually battle it out for the prize, and one team eventually wins it all.
10 So to the San Jose Sharks, I thank you for playing hard, and for going down fighting as hard as you could in the end. That game, and that series, could have gone either way, despite what people might be saying. It just wasn't the time.
11 But I'd rather they lost that way than not to have shown up. All the talk of players not giving it their all may have some merit, but really, they fought a team that somehow fought them off successfully. Stand tall for your team, and applaud the excitement that could very well have been happening this very morning were it not for an act of fate.
12 Once the game hits overtime, anything can happen. Once the game hits double-overtime, a hiccup either way could change everything.
13 So Sharks' fans, as tough a loss as this one was, applaud your team for being one of the finest teams in hockey. It's nothing new to Bay Area sports. They fought to the very end, and that's all you can ask.
14 Moving on, Part the First: How does one compete with a story like that? I guess one doesn't. The last day of the school year pales in comparison. At least I think it does. It's just another last day of the school year, like any other.
15 The toughest part about the last day of school is all the boushit you have to jump through to get out. It's a bit like trying to move, only having a billion other things being demanded of you. I timed the grading of papers and subsequent calculating of final grades almost to perfection this entire semester, knowing when to back off, and when to work twelve hours at a stretch.
16 My primary focus was making sure the classes had the best I could dish out every single day, and I walk in this morning feeling that I gave it everything I had, and then some.
17 The trouble is, we are given a series of multi-tasks that are seemingly endless. First, we have to get "signed out" with this annoying sheet in which we must go to the book room, the library, the chief of police, and the Kingdom of Jesus to get signatures saying we have no books out, no library books out, no felonies, and no venial sins before we taxi out of there.
18 We also have to calculate every grade, make sure all papers are returned to the students, put together a "gradebook" with every explanation as to how we reached our grades, and turn in about six billion sheets of paper confirming that every single day of taking roll is accurate.
19 There are many other common tasks that take forever to complete, but those are just a few. Yesterday I took my sign-out sheet around. The book room signed instantly, but the librarian was nowhere to be found. The attendance office signed a lot of things, but notified me that I was missing about seven weeks of attendance sign-offs, which completely caught me off guard. We get these sheets once a week, and sometimes I forget to sign them, so I put them where I won't lose them.
20 My own fault, to be sure, but seven seemed a pretty high number. Sometimes I fall behind by two weeks, and when a billion students' papers are being graded, I put those sheets somewhere where I won't lose them.
21 The trouble is, I travel with my papers. I grade them at home; I grade them at school, I grade them when I visit my Dad; I grade them when I visit family during the holidays. So the papers all travel with me, and wind up in various satchels, backpacks, suitcases, etc. Every once in a while they send us a memo telling us to get them in, but a lot of times there are too many seemingly more important things to do, like write vocabulary lists, plan incredible lessons, talk with students about real issues, etc.
22 So I wasn't surprised that I needed to turn in three or four of those, because I knew right where they were. But I absolutely couldn't round up three or four others.
23 I was off at 10:30 in the morning, had intended to go home and finish up grading all my papers and doing a billion other tasks, when the attendance people told me of the missing docs.
24 I had to tear my entire room apart looking for them. One or two had fallen into the stacks of papers I am constantly grading, and others were in three or four of the satchels and binders I have. The trouble was, I KNEW where several were, but had no idea of the last three or four. I spent almost two hours hunting those things down, which turned my classroom upside down. I found a stack of papers that hadn't yet been graded, so in the end, I got home last night at 6 p.m. having not completed my grades, and with no hope of getting "signed out" by the end of today.
25 In addition, I had brought my laptop to ensure that any students who had made power-point presentations would have a state-of-the art computer with which to project their presentations. Unfortunately, I left it at school when I grabbed the wrong satchel on the way home.
26 Ah, it's a long, boring story. The bottom line is that I normally have a nice end-of-the year piece in the DN, one in which I reflect on the year, and on life, and all the rest, before I write the words, "The rest is silence" on my board. Those are Hamlet's last words. Each year it is the last thing I do before jetting off for the summer. I completely erase my board, and then write this:
The rest is silence.
---Hamlet
27 The rest is silence. It works on a number of cheap levels, and I always assumed it was deeper than I could comprehend. Still, it says a lot about the sudden end of the year and immediate onslaught of summer.
28 So I really think I owe it to the DN readers to give one more DN tomorrow, because of the Sharks, and because of all the stress of signing out, or whatever the school calls it.
29 Last night when I left, I took a picture of the parking lot. It had two cars in it: The T000000NDRA and one other car. I can't get the picture on the DN because the computer I'm working on won't recognize the iPhone, no matter what I do to make it do it. I'm sure it's simple, but the iPhone doesn't always cooperate with all computers and I've been too busy to take the time to find out why.
30 So a disappointing ending to the Sharks' season dovetails perfectly with my own vain efforts to ditch out of school for the summer. I wanted it all to be done and over by 6 p.m. tonight, and as of now, I don't see that in the stars.
31 Because of the frantic hunt for those absence docs, my classroom is torn upside down to the point that I have to go in early just to make it look like an organized mess. It's like looking at a closet you haven't checked in six years right now. I need to close the door long enough so that the students don't notice, and then I'll begin with the tennis racket, and move to the board games and loose socks.
32 Come on down tonight at midnight, maybe we could enjoy a cuppa Joe.
33 Meanwhile, it's almost 2:30 a.m. as I tack away at this. I need to slide under a comforter and get me some sleep.
34 You guys have a great day; I'll be sending you one final DN tomorrow morning.
35 Meanwhile, give a smile to the Sharks; they could use it.
36 And then give a smile to everyone who works their asses off to help educate kids. Most of us work long, hard hours, more than anyone can even begin to imagine, oftentimes twelve to fifteen hours. This includes anyone who works in a school, classified and certificated. They are some of the most dedicated, professional people on the planet, despite all the bad press. A lot of them work two jobs just to make ends meet. So salute education and salute the people who help educate young people. They are our hope for tomorrow. And the people who support them are some of the most wonderful people you will ever meet.
37 We'll see you again.
38 The rest if far from silence.
39 And thank you Sharks, and Sharks' fans. Rest you.
40 Peace.
~H~
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