IHT Ep 010 School
When I was a kid, the best thing about school was getting new notebooks. Man, I loved ‘em. All those crisp, blank pages just called out to be filled. Some kids like to draw, and yeah, I had a fair number of doodles in the lined leaves of my Steno 5-subject, but that wasn't the real reason I loved all that fresh paper. And, yeah, I also wrote the occasional story in the back pages of my math or my science notebooks, but that wasn’t really it either. The big reason I got so stoked every August for back to school shopping was … for actually taking notes.
I know, right? Nerd from the womb.
But it's true. I took notes on everything--my classes, of course, but not just them. I'd take notes on library books about the rise of the Roman Empire, on the birds I saw at the feeder. I took notes on what Garfield did in the Sunday comics, and schemes for the most efficient way to clean my room … and dinosaurs, of course, lots and lots of dinosaurs.
That might seem like a weird thing to love, I know, but it’s not that different from those fans of Mary Kondo or the self-help section of Barnes and Noble. There is something deeply satisfying, about everything having its place, something seductive about the thought that this wild and contradictory and complicated life could all somehow make sense if we could just get it organized. I just happen to have always been the guy who liked to organize ideas into instead of towels and linens into closets.
After buying fresh office supplies, my second favorite thing about school was getting textbooks, especially if they were new, and I was the first person to write my name on the little plate on the inside front cover. “Name Ben Lord, Condition: new.” I had barely gotten them covered with those trusty paper shopping bags before I’d start flipping through the pages, looking at the math symbols I didn't understand, or the diagrams of a cell or the timelines of world history. Now here were some programs you could sink your teeth into. You could learn everything there was to know, all you had to do was start at page one and work your way through step-by-step.
All of this is to say, I guess, that if anyone was ever set up to love school, it was me. Maybe it’s destiny or maybe it’s DNA but there is something in me that is uniquely and inherently built for school. What better place for a guy who loved programs and systems and step-by-step directions.
So why for most of my schooling was I so abjectly miserable?
This episode of “I Heart This,” like all of our episodes, is a love story--the story of my love affair with school. But this story is a troubled one. It’s not just the feel-good rom-com kind of tale; it's less Bridget Jones diary and more Charles and Camilla. It’s a story of youthful dreams and disappointment. Of being excluded and of finding my place. And it’s a story about what happens when one of your favorite things … is taking notes. It took me a long time to appreciate school for what it really was. Here’s how I got there. I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to “I Heart This.”
On my first day at Joseph A. DePaulo Junior High School, eleven-year-old me walked into an auditorium so full that I couldn't see an open place to sit. My last school had been a tiny affair. Its entire student body would have easily fit in the first few rows here. And, on top of that, it had been in another town. So … in all of that giant room’s hormonal pandemonium … in that crowd of hundreds and hundreds of teenagers, I saw not a single … familiar … face. I knew nobody. I’m sure I was standing there, frozen, wondering what to do, when a deep-voiced teacher bellowed over at me to hurry up and find a seat instead of clogging up the aisle.
Once the staff had finally...
