Another Great Adventure

 

This week, I began working an eight-week substitute teaching assignment in a second grade classroom, covering for a great friend and a wonderful educator who is taking maternity leave. This is the fifth time in my teaching career that I’ve had the privilege of working for friends/co-workers while they stayed home with their new babies.

Each time I am asked to take the reins for a teacher going on an extended leave, I am both surprised and honored by their request. Despite this being my ninth year in education, I still find it incredible that certified professionals who have dedicated their lives to their students and their craft would entrust their classrooms to me. Yet trust me they do. You may recall that I was even entrusted to teach music for an entire school year. Actually, trust may not be the right word. Perhaps desperation would be more accurate.  

At any rate, once again I find myself embarking upon another great adventure at the Primary School. The students in my class feel like old friends due to the fact that I’ve known most of them since they were in kindergarten. The teachers I’m working with are like family, with this being my third extended stint as a member of the second grade team. Indeed, the next two months will be a lot of fun. 

That being said, I must admit I’m a little jealous of those new parents staying home with their babies. My grandbaby Freya just turned four months old, and I absolutely love spending time withher. She is Pop’s best buddy, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to get her to smile. 

I worked full-time as the sales manager of an auto auction when Freya’s dad Alex was born, and I didn’t take any paternity leave at all. (Truman was two and Tiana was seven when we adopted them, so I missed out on their infancy entirely.) Although I loved Alex more than anything in the world, I didn’t always handle being a first-time parent as well as I would have liked. I wonder how differently things might have gone if I could have spent an extended amount of time bonding with him at home.

Freya and I have formed a close bond already, even though I have worked a lot since she was born. I spend as much time with her as I can when she stays at Mimi and Pop’s house, but it’s never enough. Sometimes I wish there was such a thing as maternity/paternity leave for grandparents, and then I remember there is—it’s called retirement.

Between the stress of being a teacher during a pandemic and the desire to spend every minute I can with Freya and the rest of my family, I confess that retirement has crossed my mind. I am only a substitute teacher, after all, and retiring would be as easy as not answering the phone. However, all it took to convince me to continue subbing this year was knowing that I could help out two dear friends/teachers who were becoming first-time parents. With a substitute teacher shortage exacerbated by the pandemic, I didn’t want them to worry about finding a sub they could trust their classes with while they were on leave. 

That’s not to say that there are no other reliable subs working in our district. In fact, there are several. And they are all working their tails off during this crazy school year. Until the days of incessant quarantining pass, it will continue to be all hands on deck for substitute teachers. In addition to the two maternity leaves this year, I’ve also worked three other assignments longer than five school days each as well as a few single day assignments here and there. 

Absences frequently go unfilled due to the scarcity of subs, so if you have ever considered subbing, or if you’ve been laid off during the pandemic, please contact Kelly Educational Staffing at 573-445-5907 (option 1) as soon as possible.

I don’t know what the future holds for me, but for now I will embrace the opportunity to warp—I mean shape—the minds of 16 second graders each day as it comes. And when I come home after school, I will take a long, hot shower, change into clean clothes, put on a fresh mask, use some hand sanitizer, and play with my beautiful grandbaby.

I might even make some time for my own children. (They all know who Pop’s favorite is.)  

Opinions, Oafs, and Oaths

 “The slow-rising central horror of ‘Watergate’ is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.” — Hunter S. Thompson

Almost fifty years after Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency in the wake of the lawlessness and cruelty that defined his time in office, Americans fulfilled Hunter S. Thompson’s prophecy of doom by electing Donald J. Trump, a vengeful thug of a president whose four years in office will forever be remembered for the countless cheap shots he took at anyone who dared to oppose him—including many longtime loyalists—and the treachery of perpetuating lies and conspiracy theories that incited his followers to descend upon the nation’s Capitol in a violent insurrection aimed at preventing the certification of his failed attempt to win a second term in office.

The godfather of Gonzo Journalism would be spinning in his grave right now, (were it not for the fact that he had his cremated remains fired out of a cannon in 2005), horrified by the realization that 74 million Americans voted to re-elect Trump despite having a front row seat to his cheap shots and treachery for four long and ugly years.

 

A few of those 74 million Trump supporters live right here in Southern Boone County. Many of them are friends of mine. Wait a minute! A liberal member of the media has conservative Trump-supporting friends? Impossible! Actually, it might even be true that the majority of my friends in SoBoCo are conservatives, yet friends we still are. But how is such a thing possible?

Mutual respect. While I am under no obligation to respect your opinion, I can still respect you and your right to voice your opinion. I can separate you from your opinion, even if your opinion is, in fact, completely wrong. 

Some people believe that opinions cannot be right or wrong. That assertion is absolutely false of course. If you are of the opinion that the Earth is flat, science can verify that your opinion is completely incorrect. I am in no way obligated to respect such a blatantly untrue opinion. However, if you work hard to provide for your family and you treat everyone you meet with compassion, then I will still respect you as a person—despite your misinformed opinions. 

If you believe that Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate developer from Manhattan, truly cares about dirt-poor people living in mid-Missouri trailer parks, then you have every right to voice that opinion. Just don’t be surprised when I call you out for clinging to such an erroneous belief. Please don’t confuse my condemnation of your opinion for a condemnation of you as a human being however. You may have voted for Donald Trump twice, but we can still be friends. If, on the other hand, you support the criminals and traitors who violently stormed our nation’s Capitol on January 6, then you will have lost my respect. Possibly forever.

On January 20th, the nation will have an opportunity to begin healing itself from the divisiveness and hatred that trickled down from the White House and spread out across the country over the last four years. I am not asking my conservative friends to suddenly become bleeding heart liberals. Instead, I am asking for you to question the opinions that you’ve held during Trump’s time in office and examine whether it might be more prudent to find some commonalities that can bring us closer together as a nation.

I am asking my friends, both conservative and liberal, to focus on those things that we have in common, instead of those things that have been driving us apart. Surely, we can all agree that making healthcare affordable for everyone is important. Surely,we can agree that we can do a better job of taking care of our veterans. Surely, we can agree that education funding is important. Surely, we can agree that social distancing and mask-wearing is still important until enough people are vaccinated against Covid. Surely, we can agree that love and compassion, rather than hate and mistrust, is the only way we can truly make America great again.

On January 20, Joe Biden will take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. On that day, each of us should make a solemn promise of our own—a citizen’s oath, if you will.

“I (state your name) do hereby promise to treat my fellow citizens with dignity and respect. I will listen to other points of view, and I will form my own opinions based on facts, not unfounded conspiracy theories. I promise to do what I can to help my fellow Americans by promoting and defending the freedoms described by our forefathers including Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And I would like to add one more promise we should all make; To read everything ever written by Hunter S. Thompson. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.  

 

An Important Civics Lesson

 “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – The First Amendment to the United States Constitution

In the wake of Donald Trump’s efforts to erode voter confidence in the presidential election by repeatedly spreading false and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud—despite the Secretaries of State of all 50 of the United States certifying the election following multiple audits, court cases, and recounts that proved beyond a shadow of doubt that no concerted widespread voter fraud occurred whatsoever—various social media platforms have suspended the president’s accounts.

 

The president incited his rabid followers to violence when he commanded them at the “Save America Rally” to march down to the Capitol to send a message to members of Congress not to certify the election. Trump said, “And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show your strength and be strong… Our country has had enough. We’re not going to take it anymore.” Moments earlier, the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called for “trial by combat” while Donald Trump, Jr. warned Congressional leaders, “We are coming for you.”

And come for them they did.

In the wake of the violent attack on the Capitol, where five people including a Capitol police officer died, Trump continued to baselessly and recklessly claim on Twitter that the election was stolen—further inciting his followers to refuse to accept the fact that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the most scrutinized election in history. Twitter followed Facebook’s lead and suspended Trump’s account due to the high likelihood that his continued lies would lead to more violence.

Trump followers cried “censorship” and accused Big Tech of stifling conservative voices. They claim that suspending the president’s accounts (and the accounts of others who have spread misinformation and/or called for violence) is a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Look again at the text of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” The First Amendment prohibits the government from passing laws to inhibit free speech. This prohibition simply does not apply to the private sector. Twitter is in no way obligated to provide a platform for people to spread blatant lies and calls to violence.

Neither is the Boone County Journal, Fox News, or any other media outlet. For example, it is ludicrous to believe that Gene Rhorer is obligated by the First Amendment to print every column I write. He and I both understand that my inclusion in this paper each week is solely at his discretion, and if I were to cross a line that offends his sensibilities as a publisher or as a citizen, Gene may choose not to print my column. I would probably be upset, but I would not be so ridiculous as to claim that my rights were being violated.

When the right-wing social media site Parler was shut down by Amazon’s web hosting service and suspended by Apple and Google for refusing to moderate posts that included explicit calls to violence, Trump followers again claimed their rights were being violated. To be clear, tech companies are not the government. They are not required to let every violent extremist use their services to spread their messages of hate. It is a business decision for these tech companies to suspend accounts and sites that promote violence, and no matter how upset it makes right-wing conspiracy theorists, it is not a violation of the First Amendment because it is not government-sponsored censorship.

I find it ironic and disappointing that many Constitution-loving “patriots” are so unfamiliar with the very first, and most important, amendment to that great document. Perhaps these people are getting ahead of themselves when they vociferously defend the Second Amendment without bothering to understand the First.

At any rate, despite Trump’s efforts to undermine the Constitutional process of certifying the presidential election by spreading lies and inciting a riot, the inescapable truth is that after winning by more than seven million popular votes and by a margin of 74 electoral votes, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next President of the United States on January 20.

How Did I Get Here?

While many people were nursing hangovers on January 1st, I was busy snuggling with my grandbaby, watching college football, and enjoying my fourth consecutive hangover-free New Year’s Day. It was the best New Year’s ever. 

In “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads, David Byrne sang, “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” when the song’s protagonist finds himself behind the wheel of a large automobile, living in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. As I begin my fifth year of sobriety, now seems like a good time to try to answer the question, “How did I get here?”

On December 31, 2016, I drank martinis from approximately 6:00pm until 3:00 the next morning. I was drunk, to be sure, but I was still able to carry a conversation and walk from my shop to my house, unaided and in the dark. The truth is that I probably could have kept drinking until the sun came up and still remained fairly functional. It would not have been the first time I had stayed up all night drinking. Not by a long shot.

I was a teenager when I first started pulling all-nighters, and incollege my friends and I would frequently drink all night and request songs on Mizzou’s student radio station. On one such occasion, we requested “Tequila Sunrise” by The Eagles and listened to the song while watching the sunrise and sipping Tequila Sunrises. At the time, we thought moments like that were about as good as it gets. The Travis Naughton that existed back then could have never envisioned a Travis Naughton who would one day celebrate four years of sobriety.

How DID I get here?

I was a pretty good kid before I started drinking. My friends and I enjoyed listening to music, watching Star Wars and Monty Python movies, trading Hot Wheels and baseball cards, and riding bikes together. After I started drinking, I turned my back on those “childish” things and stopped spending time with my childhood friends. (Trey and Ferg and the other Conrads—I am truly sorry.)

I won’t blame anyone other than myself for my decades of alcohol abuse, although one particular person was perhaps partly responsible for setting the wheels in motion. I could have said “No!” the first time Rick got me drunk, but I was weak and curious and rebellious (and his parents owned a bar, and wouldn’t you know that the liquor cabinet in their home was extremely well-stocked at all times). 

Looking back on it now, I can see that I was addicted to alcohol from the very beginning. It became a part of my identity. People knew me as a guy you could count on to have a drink (or twenty drinks) with. My beloved wife, who had endured years of my drunken antics, gave me a beer of the month club subscription and a VIP brewery tour as a Christmas present—one week before the date I had picked to quit drinking for good. 

I had decided that New Year’s Eve, 2016 would be my last hurrah. Why? For starters, I realized that I scheduled my entire life around drinking. On most weekdays, I would wait to start drinking until after dinner, thinking that it was okay to ignore my family every evening, as long as everyone had eaten first. I would become irritated if I had obligations or engagements come up that caused me to postpone the first drink of the day. I would silently begrudge my kids if they needed a ride somewhere because I would have to wait to start drinking until after I was done taxiing them around.

I couldn’t grill hamburgers without a beer in my hand. I couldn’t watch sporting events in person or on TV without alcohol. I couldn’t unwind after a long day of teaching without having at least three martinis. I had no idea how to interact with people socially unless drinking was involved. And I missed that innocent kid who liked watching Monty Python movies with his buddies.

I didn’t consume alcohol; it consumed me.

I could have continued drinking and existing, but I wanted to start living again instead. In an alcoholic haze, I had missed out on a lot of the joy that fatherhood and marriage offered. I became determined to not waste any more of my remaining days stumbling around in the fog. 

Four years later, I am as happy as I have ever been in my adult life. I have three incredible kids who make me proud to be their dad every single day. I have an extremely tolerant and patient wife who has supported me every step of the way for some 25 years. And now I have a granddaughter, a little more than three months old, who has become the center of my entire universe. How did I get here, indeed.

If you have been contemplating a difficult decision, one that will drastically improve who you are and how you live your life, I encourage you to take a leap of faith in yourself. Make those changes that you know deep down inside will help you find the peace and happiness you deserve. 

There’s no better time to start than right now.