letters to my class

Dear Humans,

Yesterday we watched a video about the long, complex process of making pencils. Who knew it entailed so much? The cutting, grooving, mixing, sanding, painting, and finishing. There’s even a specialized  machine that pinches the ferrule (the metal part) snug to the pink eraser.

And to think that some of you just shove such specially crafted items deep into the bowels of your desk.

If we let ourselves see all of the care, ingenuity, and resources that are poured into the simplest things in our world–such as the simple pencil–we feel more alive. So next time you hold a pencil in your hand, take a second to think about the guy who invented the machine that pinches the ferrule around the pink eraser.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

They’re building some homes down the street from my house, so I travel by a construction zone a lot. And a construction zone almost always has someone working on something and that someone is almost always listening to music. 

Usually the music is country or music with a lot of accordion. But the other day I heard the loudest music I’d ever heard and that house under construction was rocking out to the B-52’s “Love Shack.” And I’m pretty sure I heard singing along.

One of the best things in life is when people surprise us. When they show us they’re more than we thought they were.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Get yourself some friends who can tell you the truth. Because we all are a little full of it. Full of ourselves, full of nonsense, and blind to our biggest flaws. And we need trusted people who can give us some loving spoonfuls of truth.

And as hard as it is to swallow these loving spoonfuls of truth, it’s even more difficult to give out our own loving spoonfuls of truth. And it’s only possible if we have a strong foundation of friendship and trust.

Because no matter how gently we try to say a thing, it matters a whole lot less than all the other things we’ve said before.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

You’ve probably figured out that I love flags. I’ve got about 200 of them hanging from the ceiling over your head. 

I like flags because they seem like simple things (at least the good ones do). A couple of colors, maybe a few stripes, and that’s about it. But flags are not simple things at all. T

hey have a whole lot of history and culture and conflict woven into every fiber. Just like the countries and people they represent.

Turns out that the simple things usually are the most complex of all.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

What’s the first thing I tell you to do when you get a piece of paper? Put your name on it. And even though a startlingly high number of you forget to do this, I can still usually match students with their no-name papers.

Because in life our names are written on everything we do, whether we put them there or not. Every word we say, every action we do, every opportunity we pass up. Our name is on all of it.

So it’s important that everything we do is the best we can do. No matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, if it has our name on it, it represents us. And we should act like it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

A Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million last week. Seventy years ago that piece of cardboard sold with a few other other paper rectangles (and a piece of brittle, chalky gum) in a wax pack for five cents. 

But I’m not here to complain about a society that puts such value on valueless things. In fact, I think it’s pretty remarkable. Because in real life humans won’t pay the most for things that are the most useful. We value the things that make us feel alive more than the things that actually keep us alive. 

So if you figure out a way to make people feel alive, the world will beat a path to your door.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science yesterday and they have an exhibit about mazes. Mazes and labyrinths show up on cave walls, the sides of vases, and old stories throughout human history. 

Because we humans like to create problems for ourselves to solve. You’d think we have enough problems in this complex world without creating our own, but we just can’t help ourselves.

And it’s a good thing, too. Because the natural world is unpredictable and doesn’t always offer up problems with clear lessons. So we make up our own, put ourselves in the middle of them, and try to get out.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

I notice that the students who shush their classmates the loudest are almost always the ones who most often need shushing themselves. 

Because we see our own flaws most clearly in other people. (Just wait till you have children.) If we’re wise, we recognize those flaws as belonging to ourselves, and we take some steps to fix them. If not, those flaws grow. Because nothing feeds our flaws like a lack of self-awareness.

If you reflect on your own behavior and learn from it, then you’re starting to get it. If you learn something about yourself from the behavior of others, then you’re really living right.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

Because I’m finicky, I make my coffee on a digital scale. I measure the beans to the gram and every drop of water to the milliliter.

And there is a magical button on my scale called the “tare” button. No matter what’s already on the scale–in my case, 42 grams of perfectly ground coffee–when you hit the tare button, the number goes to zero. 

It doesn’t get rid of what’s on the scale. Because once something is there, it’s there. And you don’t really want to forget about something’s that happened in your life anyways. But it’s still nice to see that zero there, and to know that you’ve moved on, and you’re ready for the next step.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt

Dear Humans,

You know I like crossword puzzles. And I especially like the clues that end with a question mark. Because that means that the clue isn’t really asking for what it seems. So you have to think about the words in a different way.

A lot of what humans say to each other is like a crossword puzzle clue that ends in a question mark. We don’t really mean what we say, or we mean it in a slightly slanted way. And the only way to really understand what somebody means is to think about the words in a different way.

We can beg one another to be more clear with our words. But there’s only so much we can do. Language is a puzzle. But humans are born to solve it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt