My New Shadow

 

 

In Super Hec, which is on sale on Amazon right now, nerdy middle schooler Hector Anderson convinces his mother that the family would be in better shape if they had a dog to walk. The family goes to a shelter and gets a new friend who - - well, I"ll let you read for yourself what happens when the Andersons adopt a dog.

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Life imitated life recently, and I got a dog. His name is Panzer, and he is a Rottweiler. My husband and I drove 200 miles to pick him up from a woman in Farmington, New Mexico who specializes in rescuing Rottweilers and other pure breeds. 

Panzer is between 1 1/2 and 2 years old, and he acts like a goofy teenager most of the time. He has become my shadow and follows me from room to room. For as big as he is, he is surprisingly gentle and loves little things, including our 15 year old cat (who does not return the love) and our 7 year old granddaughter.

One little thing I'm not so sure Panzer loves is Kamikaze the squirrel. We have lots of squirrels up here in the mountains. We have Antelope Squirrels, which look like very small chipmunks. We have Alberts Squirrels, which are dark gray and have lovely, tufted ears. And we have Rock Squirrels, one of which we've named Kamikaze. This particular squirrel acquired his name because he seems to have no fear. He come up to the glass door in the study, stands on his hind legs and looks Panzer directly in the eye. He runs across the road when Panzer and I are out for a walk. Maybe he wants to be another of Panzer's little friends.

Sports in a Time of Quarantine

 

 

Spring is here, and my husband is very unhappy. What is spring without baseball? 

A lot of people are feeling frustrated over the cancellation of sports due to COVID-19 restrictions. Races cancelled. Little League and kid's soccer put on hold. I am mourning the fact that this spring has seen warm, balmy weather, little wind, and I am NOT out on the track with my runners and throwers. It's been a tough spring. 

But if you can't participate in organized sports, at least you can read about them in Super Hec, book 3 of the Anderson Chronicles.

When Mom decides that the Anderson family needs to do a little spring training, she tells everyone that they have to get in shape. Little brother Stevie decides he wants to be a triangle, but signs up for T-ball. Big sister Chloe becomes a yoga enthusiast. Hector has no idea what he should do, but when his friend Eddie loans him an old Superman t-shirt and the guys in the locker room call him Super Geek, Hec decides to become faster than a speeding bully. Can he dig deep and pull up the super powers he needs to run a 5K and win the heart of the girl of his dreams?

If you’ve read Tweet Sarts and Jingle Night, you’ll love seeing what Hec and his wacky family are up to in Super Hec. This is reading the whole family can enjoy - and maybe be inspired to do a little spring training of their own. 

Super Hec will be on sale on Amazon from May 2-9. Download a copy and enjoy!

Running with the Little Dogs

 

 

Middle School boys running at a recent meet in Penasco, New Mexico. One of the author's runners, in blue, is in the far left.

This fall, after a two year hiatus, I have returned to coaching a middle school cross country team. It is an interesting job, to say the least. Middle schoolers, who are in 6th-8th grade, come in all sizes and shapes, and have varying temperaments, from upbeat, silly and optimistic to gothic and depressed. Some middle schoolers run that emotional gamut in a single day. They are raging bundles of adolescent hormones and angst, teetering on the brink of adulthood, then falling backwards into toddler tantrums when they least expect it. If anyone needs the physical release of a good, long run, it's a middle schooler.

My first experience with middle school cross country was in 2007. That was the fall when I returned to teaching after a 22 year stint as a stay-at-home mom. The only job I could find was as a substitute, and I thought that volunteering to help with afterschool activities would help my job prospects. I didn't know that I would find the experience so satisfying that I would continue to coach long after I'd secured a full time teaching position.

When I first began coaching, I was a competent runner who participated in road races of 5K to marathon length, and I could run in the middle of the middle school pack. By the end of that first season, however, I was running in the back. My middle schoolers improved in the course of the season, and I didn't. Each season after that I began a little farther back in the pack and finished a little slower. Students who I'd encouraged to "finish strong" were now doing the same for me. 

I'm now in my third year teaching in a rural school east of Albuquerque, and for the first time, I've rejoined the team. I am slower than ever, which qualifies me to run sweep. I run at the back, helping those who have side stitches, have had encounters with cacti, or just forgot to eat anything but Doritos for lunch and have nothing left to fuel their bodies. Some students only run with me once before they find their mojo and return to the middle and front of the pack. Others run in the back with me every day. They are the little dogs, and the whiners and wheezers.

While the whiners run in the back with me every day, their excuses seem to be new each run. They can be highly entertaining. A couple of weeks ago, one runner couldn't run, he said, because he had a mosquito bite. I asked him where it was. He searched both arms, his legs, and then the back of his neck before admitting that he couldn't remember. Another day, he claimed he had a lung cramp. On a hot afternoon, he asked me to tell his mother than he loved her if he didn't live to see the end of the two mile course.

He is not my only frequent companion. One girl stops to pick wildflowers. Another stops to gawk every time a hawk appears in the sky. Some days I do more walking - and nagging - than running.

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Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches and coaches at a middle school in rural New Mexico. Her most recent book, Super Hec, is about a middle school boy who trains to run a 5K. You can read more about all of her books here. 

Super Shirt

 

 

Ever wonder where authors get their ideas? Sometimes they percolate for a very long time before they find a place in a story. A good example is this super shirt.

​My latest book, Super Hec, came out this week. It is the third book in the Anderson Chronicles, and it tell the story of what happens to geeky middle schooler Hector Anderson when he decides to take up running. The faded, old t shirt that figures throughout the story has a story of its own.

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Super shirt first shows up at the very beginning of the story, when Eddie, Hec's best friend, pulls it out of his backpack. The forever disorganized Hec has realized that he's forgotten the t shirt he uses for P.E., and his grade will suffer if he can't dress out. Fortunately for Hec, Eddie carries this old t shirt as a spare, saving Hec's grade but making him the butt of jokes in the locker room.

When Sandy, the girl of Hec's dreams, comments on the shirt, it becomes a talisman for him. He is convinced his "lucky" shirt is helping him train for a 5K road race. Eddie's father, the original owner of the shirt, shares training tips with Hec as he remembers his glory days on the Stanford track team. As Hec's legs strengthen and his runs become easier, he can't bear to be parted from Super shirt. It becomes so stinky that his mother begs him to let her wash it. 

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Super shirt made its first appearance in my life when I was a young bride back in 1980. My husband and I were moving across country, and I was packing the content of a desk drawer when I came upon an unexposed roll of film. I took it to the store to have it developed. When I returned a week later to pick the pictures up, I flipped through the snapshots, then told the man behind the counter that he had made a mistake. I didn't recognize any of the people in the pictures, nor any of the Italianate, stucco buildings. Clearly, he had given me someone else's pictures. 

The man smiled. He explained that the faded colors indicated that the film had been exposed a long time ago, and had lingered, undeveloped, in the can for a long time, perhaps years. He suggested I take them home and show them to my husband. Perhaps he would recognize the people and places that I didn't. After an argument, I agreed to take the pictures home, but I was sure I would return the next day, vindicated by my husband's inability to recognize those people and places. I was wrong. 

The pictures, it turned out, were five years old. The Italianate building were on the Stanford University campus, where my husband had attended, and the pictures were of him and his classmates. I had never been to Stanford. I had never met most of the people in the pictures. But the humiliating part was that I hadn't even recognized my own husband, even in the picture in which he was wearing a shirt I had seen many times.

In that picture, my husband is standing triumphantly at the top of Mount Whitney, California's highest peak. He was a young man at the top of his game and on top of the world. His horizon seemed limitless, the future unclouded. By the time I married him, the t shirt was faded and had some holes, but he still loved it and the memories it brought back to him.  

A lot has changed in the nearly 40 years since I developed that picture, but I am happy to say that my husband and I both aged better than the t shirt.

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author who still runs with middle school students at the school where she teaches English and coaches the cross country team. Her latest book, Super Hec, is available in both paperback and ebook from Amazon.