​Recent studies show that kids giving up their phones while in school is a good thing. Really? That is so dang surprising!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Sarcasm aside, I’m not sure where I read about the study, but I seem to remember they said that turning the phones off and handing them to the teachers or placing them in a container before class were two options. In some schools, it might have been by choice that they released their technology lifeline, if I remember correctly.
 
Whether by choice or mandated, it’s been DISCOVERED that the kids seem to learn more without their phone connection. Focus is up. Creativity rises. Engagement increases.

It all sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Why didn’t this happen sooner? And, why doesn’t every school apply this principle (FYI, for the sake of humor I just used my phone to determine whether to use “principle” or “principal” in this sentence; I was 98 percent sure, but just wanted to be grammatically correct)?
 
When you don’t have the phone, it eliminates some (not all) distractions. That doesn’t mean students won’t look at someone they are attracted to. It doesn’t mean they won’t marvel at the snowstorm billowing outside and hoping classes will be cancelled so they can go home and head to the local hill for some sledding. It doesn’t mean students won’t look outside on a nice spring day and see the birds whizzing by, the trees budding and grass growing greener and want to running around playing tag or some other warm day inspired activity.
 
No, kids will be kids, whether they are 11- or 17-years-old. They will find ways to not pay attention. Sometimes even choose to disrupt the class because they can. Some will just plain be jerks.
 
Eliminating phones in the classroom is a big step in a positive direction. It also sets a tone: there is a right time and wrong time to be on the phone. “Right now you need to think on your own, work with your classmates, interact, listen to each other, and figure out a solution to the problem I just posted,” the teacher says.
 
Real life will have those mandated interactions in their future. Much is loaded, saved and available on our phones, but the individual must still figure out what to do with it. So many answers to so many of our questions. That is all well and good, and not about to go away any time soon.

So, what’s the challenge for educators? What’s the challenge in the classroom?
 
Quite frankly, it’s to learn all those other skills that bode well for a student’s future. They must learn how to think critically, how to discern truth from fiction, how to determine the facts of a situation and come up with workable options to solve problems. And do this by bouncing ideas off others, arguing, debating, listening, choosing.
 
One of the cell carriers currently advertises putting your phone away for one hour, one day, one week. I like it. It also sends a strong message to step away and get back into real life.
 
If more schools and other influencers begin to hold solid sway over our massive cell phone use, there is hope us human creatures will improve our relations with each other. Keep pushing.

​If you are like me, you probably have some nostalgia for certain clothing items. For whatever reason, you attach emotional significance to a jacket, pair of shoes, shorts, sweatshirt, hat, whatever. You don’t want to let go.
 
There’s an element of hoarding in all of us. You squirrel away your kids’ clothes in the hope that if grandchildren arrive you can hand over tiny sweaters and caps to be worn once or twice by that next generation.
 
Perhaps you save books, because you feel at some point in your life you’re going to reread them. You want to see if the plot and characters remain relevant 27 years later.
 
One item, for me, that I love is my Adidas winter jacket. The base color is black and it has those Adidas stripes (green) on the shoulders. It’s got a hood. The outside is your basic winterproof material and the inside is sweatshirt-lined. It’s warm, comfortable and serves its purpose.
 
It’s also a piece of my wardrobe that I want to keep indefinitely. I’m not completely sure why.
 
I purchased the jacket around the turn of the century, so it’s 25-or-more-years-old. Due to its age, I have a bit of desire to see how long I can hang onto it. It hasn’t fallen apart, so it should keep serving me.
 
Recently, I was faced with a dilemma. The zipper broke. What to do?
 
I discussed this with my wife, going over the pros and cons of getting rid of the jacket. It was old enough where in good conscious I could see purchasing a new winter jacket. But, at the same time, I was attached to it because I’d had it for so long and it truly was a perfect fitting piece of apparel. I also liked the colors, the stripes and that it came from a period of time when we lived in Columbus, NE. Not sure why that made any difference to me, but for some odd reason I attached good memories to that. That can be a big reason we don’t want to give things up.
 
After batting the broken zipper decision around with my wife, I came down on the side of getting the zipper replaced. Let’s do it.
 
She took it to our local cleaners, where they farm out those types of simple repairs. Two weeks later, I got the jacket back, and we were $100 poorer.
 
When I heard the cost, I was stunned. “We could have gotten a new jacket,” I said with extreme irritation. I had figured fixing the zipper would cost about 40 bucks. That I could deal with. The $100 price tag made me think deeply about the possession. What is it worth?
 
We keep or discard things in our lives after doing those mental machinations. Despite an inherent longing for an article of clothing, at some point in time you’re going to give it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, or throw it in trash. It’s worn out, beat up, no longer fits, or you don’t care anymore.
 
Cleaning out our closets releases memories and cleanses the soul a bit. We retain emotional attachments for many items we wear, but sometimes you have to say goodbye. That’s the last zipper I’m going to buy for my winter Adidas jacket, you can bet on that.

​What do you pay attention to? What do you ignore? What do you no longer care about that you used to find intriguing? All good questions.
 
They came to me recently when I realized how my sports viewing habits changed over the past 10-15 years. The seeds were planted and watered way earlier than that, probably during the early years of baseball free agency in the early-1980s.
 
At that time, I still knew the lineups of many major league teams. I could tell you who the all-stars were. I grew up as a New York Yankee fan, endured many bad seasons and then they’d come back to the top of the league and I was invigorated to pay close attention, watching several playoff and World Series contests that charged me up.
 
That joy (and caring) went away slowly as free agency made it more difficult to root for the players (who are what we invest ourselves in as fans). When I stopped connecting with them either because the Yanks were paying monumental bucks to bring in free agents or they were losing players for the same reason, that was when my level of disinterest accelerated. You didn’t know the names of the players on the rosters anymore. Why care?
 
 I remember analyzing this in my head those 40-some-odd years ago. Pre-free agency, the MLB roster of 25 players would typically be 20 or 21 from the year before. After free agency, that number started to drop and you might only know 17 the next year or 15, or 13. It was harder to recognize the names and get to know the players because they shifted so quickly.
 
That process, in general in professional sports, has only accelerated since then. And, now, it has become ubiquitous in Division I college sports, particularly football and basketball.
 
The NIL (name, image, likeness) system in college sports is a good and fair thing to me, but a result has been college free agency for athletes. They go to another program to get more money, and you no longer follow the roster of your favorite team as closely.
 
Another factor weakening my support as a fan at the college level is the additional year of eligibility. Many players now stay for a fifth year and transfer out of their long-term program to a better NIL deal with another school for their last year. You lose your connection to the athletes you wedded yourself to.
 
These variables hurt the fan and the sport. It’s hard to root for a player if they don’t stay at your school for very long. In they leave after one year (increasingly common), you’ll quickly forget they ever went to your school.

This is sad and has changed my sports viewing and cheering habits dramatically. I just plain don’t watch nearly as much sports as I did 15 years ago. I was a college basketball junkie for 30 years, easily. Now, if I watch one or two full games a week, that would be unusual.
 
As humans, we focus on what we like. We root for teams and players because of local ties or the types of players/teams that stand out to us in some way. They’re fun. They compete loose and fast. They have some pudgy, slow left-handed guy who can’t miss a three-point shot or masters a shovel pass threaded to his teammates repeatably for layups and you go, “YEAH! DO IT, BIG MAN!”
 
All that has changed. We aren’t going back. I’m hoping for some sanity in the accelerating transition of players at the collegiate level. I’m hopeful we are in a small period where everyone is figuring out how to adjust, then things will settle down and I can become more of a fan again.

​Do we lose a sense of wonder with the world as we age? I’m not sure. I think I can go either way on that question depending on how you choose to look at life.
This week got me pondering: Tuesday, I went to the supermarket. It was cold, the wind blowing. A woman had her young son (probably a year-and-a-half old in my guesstimate) in the cart, getting ready to open the rear door to her SUV.
 
She hit the “open” button on her key fob, and you heard the telltale latch release and then the backdoor pop and start to rise. Suddenly, the child released a loud spontaneous mirthful howl, his eyes lighting up and pointing with his finger at the door raising itself seemingly by magic. He stared, his eyes sparkling. I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Wouldn’t it be great to have that sense of wonder with the world?,” I asked the mother. She smiled and nodded.
I headed off to my car, smiling myself, a look that didn’t leave my face for the five minute drive home. The child’s reaction got me headed down the “what if” path.
 
What if we all continued to view the world through the years of a young child as we passed through older stages of life? Would we be happier? Would the world be a better place? Would our creativity surge?
 
The cliché is to not become childish, but remain childlike. See the world through the lens of a youngster, staying fresh, learning, absorbing, being open to all those possibilities.

We wall off (most of us) as the years add up, going into our cocoons, hibernating, sticking to routines that have proven acceptable, foods we like, vacation sites we know we’ll enjoy, friends who are tried and true. All that is good.
 
It’s also good to open your childlike eyes and see what’s new, what you can explore that might activate your senses. Smells, sites, tastes are all critical to how we experience our daily existence. I think the case of this child “seeing” something unique/unusual in the rear door popping open was a case of him seeing something unexpected. Maybe he’d seen it before, we’ll never know. But, because it was odd or new and even if he remembered it, the action provided him with a charge that he belted out to the world.
 
We’re probably not going to do that as adults. But we can bring a more receptive mentality to our daily lives in how we perceive events, other humans, animals (there’s a huge category), countries, scenery, technology.
 
One of my all-time favorite scenes in a movie is when Will Ferrell as Buddy in the movie “Elf” guzzles a two-liter jug of Coca Cola, then burps for 23 seconds, his eyes lighting up, as he says, “DID YOU HEAR THAT?” Oh, yah, we did. Buddy’s wonder with the burp made the scene hysterical
 
I love the word “spellbound.” That’s the word I applied to the child in this story. Something ignited him. He was mesmerized, spellbound.
 
Keep chirping happily. Keep your mirth alive. Stay spellbound. See the humor. Pop that car door. Watch the magic.