(So, I apologize for this. I have a few hundred things I want to say, but it is currently all coming out as alphabet soup. So, in an effort to not have y’all feel like I have forgotten you, I dipped into some previously shared spewings that I felt were worth sharing in the past, so maybe are still relevent today. I think this one is. I hope you enjoy it. Jeff)

The first day of class, I walked in to what we all remember. Clean and orderly desks and a clean blackboard. I don’t know why, but I was always struck by the deep blackness of the surface of the blackboard. 

All that was on the blackboard was, “Welcome to Bio II – Mr. Cross”.

Through the course of the year, my rather small class learned that Mr. Cross, while a very knowledgeable man, could be a bit disjointed in his lectures. But he put a lot of good, important, and frankly interesting information on the blackboard. 

I never cared for copying things from a blackboard, preferring to put lecture notes into my own words. But after the first test, I learned that I needed to glean as much info as I could from the notes he scrawled on the board. I adapted, and I did just fine.

Over the course of the year, I noticed that unlike other teachers, he never cleaned the blackboard. He would erase it, but he never used that spray stuff that REALLY cleans all of the chalk off. And as the year progressed, it became lighter and lighter in color, sometimes to the point of being difficult to read the new information he wrote there.

One day, not to be of service to my fellow man, but purely because it was getting hard to read the board, I asked if I could clean the blackboard. He said, “No”.

He told me that all of the embedded chalk dust represented all of the information he had presented over the year, and just like everything else, more and more information can make it difficult to store the newer information. “Intentional Information Overload”, he called it.

He went on to tell me that when you realize something is harder to learn, you will work harder to learn it if it is truly important to you. 

On the last day of actual class for the year, I looked at the board. It looked more white than black. And it held the dust of everything I had learned that year of school. The thought struck me, even then. But I filed it away as I got ready for what would be my final summer vacation as a high school student. And I didn’t think of it again until recently, forty years later.

I remember at Christmas-time, 1991. I was in a place called Hurghada, Egypt. We got some much needed liberty time. They flew us cheap beer, which we drank like … Well, like drunken sailors.

Many of us got rooms at a nice hotel, the Arabian Beach Hotel. It was like a palace with beautiful marble floors.

The hotel offered activities, most of which were water sports such as snorkeling, fishing charters, etc. I was excited because they said they had sailboats for the guests. And I wanted to go sailing on the Red Sea because the water was so clear and blue.

I went to the water-sports area, and was told that I couldn’t sail because the boats were in bad condition, and they didn’t have anyone who knew how to properly rig them to sail safely. 

I offered to help fix their problem if I could have unlimited use of a boat during my stay. The guy in charge agreed, and I set to taking parts from a half dozen boats to see how many usable boats I could end up with.

I managed to put together two boats that I felt an experienced sailor could use to putz around on the water safely. Two pretty nice 18 foot sailboats of unknown manufacture, cobbled together from the skeletons of other boats. Macguyver ain’t got anything on me.

So, a couple of my buddies and I scarfed a couple cases of beer, and as much ice as we could carry to go on a sailing expedition on the Red Sea. I was stoked. My friends had no experience sailing, and trusted my skills. What fools, lol.

Once underway, we cracked the first round of brews, and they were so damned good! It was hot, and we were downing some beer at an impressive rate. 

I looked behind us, and saw a trail of empty cans behind us like bread crumbs showing the way home. I was instantly embarrassed. A good sailor doesn’t leave the water a mess, and we looked like asshole Americans.

I told my shipmates to do me a favor, and fill the cans with water so they would sink. Yeah, it was still littering, but they would sink to the bottom, and eventually become habitat for sea creatures. I still think that was a reasonable, if not optimal postulation.

Later in the day, after a really great day of sailing, laughing, drinking, and forgetting about being involved in a war, we stopped for the traditional “Buying of the Drinks” for the crew by the “Captain”, which was my responsibility.

I don’t remember if it was me or who it was, but one of us remarked that in a few thousand years, there would likely be discovered an unusual deposit of Bauxite (aluminum ore) in a narrow strip of the Red Sea that we had sailed back and forth, all the while leaving empty beer cans under the surface in our wake. 

It would literally be a record of our day; it was a day sorely needed to forget the stresses of our duties for a day. Our trail of laughing and forgetting, for one day, the realities of being at war. I’ll bet I could find that very strip of water, and go diving to find some of those beer cans, those records of a day enjoying life.

Now I see similar things everywhere. A worn floor mat of the car reminding me of every trip I ever made driving that car. The handle of my favorite and well used kitchen whisk and the surface of my knife sharpening steel. Each worn from aiding in producing countless meals. Each holding its own secrets that aren’t really secrets to me. I was there.

The way you can look at a carpet and tell the path people take walking over it, even though it isn’t really worn. The way some letters on your computer keyboard are worn from being used more than other. A sort of forensic record of everything you have typed, and to whom.

Our memories are like the chalk on the blackboard. It is cumulative. It is what you have learned and experienced. And it can cloud your perception of the present if you aren’t diligent.

Our actions are like beer cans at the bottom of the sea. They are a trail telling the tail of where we were and what we were doing. Our actions leave very tangible trails and evidence. Be mindful of the trails you leave. 

These things are neither good nor bad. They simply are. But having read this, it is now a part of the chalk on your blackboard. What will you do with it?