John Oliver Smith
Bio
Baby, son, brother, child, student, collector, farmer, photographer, player, uncle, coach, husband, student, writer, teacher, father, science guy, fan, coach, grandfather, comedian, traveler, chef, story-teller, driver, regular guy!!
Achievements (1)
Stories (117/0)
You Win the Goblets, I'll Steal the Merlot
Mom and Dad were no sooner out the door, when I began fumbling with the bobby pin in the lock on the liquor cabinet. I had managed only once in my lack-luster liquor-lifting career to successfully bypass the security on the cabinet door. Unfortunately, that instance was a time when neither experience nor wisdom were on my side, and my parents were only as far away as the basement. I ended up having to flee the scene of the crime before taking so much as a mental picture of what booze lay hidden away. The telephone had rung and my father had bolted up the stairs, through the dining room and into the kitchen to answer it. “Why didn’t you get that?”, he inquired as he hurried past. I didn’t think I should tell him the truth – you know, like, “Well Dad, you see it’s like this – I was in the middle of making off with your Jack Daniels and some twenty-year-old Scotch, and I was pouring it into this little mason jar when the phone rang and I didn’t really have time to put everything away and get the call so I thought I would just wait for you to get it, since it was probably for you anyway.” Instead, I answered that I was looking for some wrapping paper to put on a birthday present for grandma. “Grandma’s birthday isn’t for another six months, and besides there’s no wrapping paper in there . . . get outta there and don’t go into that cabinet – that’s not yours.” Anyway, that was the only other time that I defeated the non-high-tech system safeguarding the liquor storage. This time, I was more savvy – smart enough to make sure that Mom and Dad were not on the premises and to make sure that I would have ample time to examine my choices carefully and select the spirits best suited for my upcoming weekend adventure.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Humans
Beats me . . . what do YOU want to watch?
PREAMBLE In 1965, Shirley Ellis released a hit single on the pop music charts, called “The Name Game”. I was in Grade Six at the time. I loved the song. In fact, everyone I knew, loved the song. I recall huddling together in classroom nooks and around water fountains in the hallway or on benches in the school playground to sing with my classmates, using the names that Shirley Ellis herself, used in that magical little number. Names like ‘Lincoln’, ‘Marsha’ and ‘Nick’ and ‘Tony’ – a person was fortunate to have one of those names – so as to simply imitate what she had done with it in the song. Most of us though, were not included in her list so, we had to listen closely to the ‘formula’ she espoused, and then substitute our names into it. As much as I enjoyed her catchy melody, even more so, I was enamored with that formula. I was also intrigued by her pedagogical approach in casually manipulating the formula, which qualified her to boast in the lyrics that she could, "make a rhyme out of anybody’s name!” Years later, while teaching cooking and high-school mathematics in China, I sometimes called on her song to enhance English usage in my classroom. On occasion, when the technical language seemed to be getting the better of my students, we would take a break from graphing periodic functions or decorating cheesecakes and sing a round or two of “The Name Game” . The effectiveness of Shirley’s jingle held up well even for Chinese names like Yuting and Peipei and Xiayan. Analogous to Stephen Hawking’s quest for a single formula that explains everything in the universe, that musical algorithm stood the test of time in a similar, but no less significant quest for, and explanation of, the rhyming of names.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Geeks
Teaching Methods and Strategies
Trevor was a likeable enough fellow. He was of good farm-boy stock and he had average intelligence I suppose. However, he also had several character flaws, one of which was his unrealistically high opinion of the male gender as opposed to the fairer, but not weaker sex. Trevor was enrolled in one of my Grade 10 Science courses way back in one of the early years that I taught High School in a small prairie town.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Humans
Building a Backyard Ice Rink
A crisp, clear winter morning heralded by the hollow squawk of skate blades on new ice and the clackity-clatter of hockey sticks and the boom of pucks punctuating their caroms from a border of new boards. The season of ice and snow has arrived, celebrated through construction and use of a backyard skating rink. If you are interested in building your own ice rink, the fabrication of a simple one should commence sooner than you might think.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Lifehack
At Your Place
Dear Loved One, I wish I could see you at your place. I wish I could sit at your kitchen table and talk to you while you do things at the counter. I know I would probably watch you when you weren’t looking. But I wouldn’t be rude about it. I wouldn’t be disrespectful when I watched you. I would just think how wonderful you were, because you are wonderful. I can’t lie to you – I’ve watched you before so I know you are wonderful.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Families
Being Willie Mays
In those two months between the end of grade seven and the beginning of the eighth grade, I was agreeably resigned to spending my summer vacation on the family farm, as I had done every summer in my life to that point. There was no wiggle room for negotiation on the matter anyway. My family had no money for travel and there were so many things to manage, including hogs to look after and plenty of summer field work to be done. So, there always had to be at least one adult around and, one adult realistically meant two and, two meant the kids would be staying put as well. For me there were plenty of house and garden chores to go around and, neither did I mind doing barn chores, like feeding the pigs. I actually looked forward to helping as much as I could with the barn-cleaning each morning – carrying straw-bales and pushing wheel-barrows full of manure. You see, my passion was playing baseball and I believed that all this work would provide me a much-needed opportunity to improve and strengthen my skinny little frame, for the game I loved.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Unbalanced
Cash on the Kitchen Counter
“Shopping list!” he celebrated. No sooner had my grandfather dropped his pen beside the book when a dozen eggs and a container of milk appeared on the kitchen counter. I was five years old at the time so I hadn’t yet experienced anything in my life that would dissuade me from the presumed normality of this event. Indeed, grandpa’s behavior seemed to attract weirdness wherever he went. I made no connection between his oftentimes strange life and the little black book he kept in his denim smock pocket. After he died, however, and I discovered the book on a shelf in his workshop, I got a clearer picture of his magical life.
By John Oliver Smith3 years ago in Futurism