Tashacee

When my mom was in college, she just wouldn’t have been capable of predicting what college would be like for me. I took a full semester of college from 5 hours away because I can virtually attend class through a pocket sized device that projects my image and voice into a shared virtual classroom where I can interact with my professor and other students. I wrote research papers without physical access to a library because I could read my college library’s books on my computer.

Except they didn’t. His father before him didn’t do this, and your son will not live like you. This is not enshrined in tradition. This is not life. This is not how things are, or have been, or how they ever been. Look at it. This beautiful, ageless world of saving for your kids’ college and paying off mortgages and nuclear families. There is no way of life to pass down to your children, no tradition, nothing your father gave you that you can give to your son! You were born into a world that is unintelligible and inaccessible to the children you wanted to inherit it, and you and your children will both die in a world that is as foreign to you both!

I don’t envy the Boomer generation, nor do I have some kind of conceited disdain for them for not being able to adapt to now. So, so much of what defines our lives happened for the first time in their lifetime, and the absence of those things cannot be explained to us. Do you remember what it was like before television? Well…what is “it?”

I taught this midrash last week to a class of about ten 3rd-8th graders whom I have been teaching since September and have never met in person. I asked them to continue the midrash: if Moses made a second stop in 2021, what would confuse him, and what would reassure him?

The youngest kids had a fantastic time imagining Moses trying to use an iPad, trying to understand that he was in a classroom, that we were doing remotely what he had seen Akiva do in person. The older kids wondered if he would be astonished at our level of literacy, or our coed learning.

When I asked what would reassure him they were momentarily stumped: it wasn’t the first time this group has struggled to identify positives about their lives and experiences, except in a guilty “some people have it worse” kind of way. I reminded them of what reassured Moses in the schoolhouse of Akiva: knowing that what he taught had evolved from rather than superseded the traditions of our ancestors. “Who are we learning about right this very minute?” I prompted.

Captions cover the spot on the screen you put the information I need

The dialogue is captioned but not the song you have playing that the dialogue is responding to

You only captioned the person on the screen, not the person off screen who is also talking

No captioning of critical sound effects (alarms, bells, dogs barking, etc)

Speakers are not labelled at moments where it is not clear on the screen who is talking.

Captions cover the spot on the screen that you put the information I need!

Other d/Deaf people welcome to add.

Call me Ravio because my sticker store is now open for business!

Chapter Twenty Five

Their time at Time and Malon's ranch was painfully short. It only lasted a scant few days — barely enough to really settle — but it was still bliss while they lasted. The Chain, allergic to any kind of prolonged inactivity, had made themselves as useful as they could, scrubbing floors, tending animals, preparing food; anything they could think of to be of use.

They were all immediately fond of Malon. She was warm and cheerful, and her softness had a firm, solid core. After everything, it was nice to have someone solid and no-nonsense beside them, to reassure them that everything was okay. She put them all at ease and she treated them like anyone else. As if they weren't Heroes from across the distant reaches of time, but instead were family, people for whom it was perfectly natural to drop by and visit for a few days.

And even at that, had she not been so wonderfully and immediately likable, they all thought that they would probably have loved her anyway. It would have been hard not to, what with the way that Time looked at her. With the love in his eyes and that soft, goofy smile on his face.

The two of them were so in love it was nauseating.

Auroras glow above Jupiter and moon, 1981