That's me and Hanni at Reavis School in Chicago.

Hanni and I have visited 4 schools in the past couple of weeks. Five, if you count a side trip to my alma mater, York High School in Elmhurst IL. But I’ll get to that later. First, the elementary schools. Reavis Elementary in Chicago, Jefferson Elementary in Milwaukee, Kipling and Wilmot Elementary Schools in Deerfield, IL all had us come as part of “disability awareness week.” Our presentations were geared to first graders, who were learning the five senses, and third graders, who were studying Helen Keller. “Have you ever heard of her?” a third grader asked. I told her I had. “Helen Keller was a writer, just like me! “I said. “Except she wrote a lot about politics.” The crowd grew silent. These 6 and 8-year-olds had no idea what I was talking about. Note to self: save discussion of Helen Keller’s socialist and feminist leanings for some other time. We moved on.

A student who had already read Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound said he noticed that the woman in the book used a white cane before she got a dog. “Did you use a white cane, too, before you got your dog?” I had to explain that, hey, I am the woman in the book! “Do Hanni and I look like the pictures?” They chorused a “Yes!” Hanni turned 10 last week. People tell me she’s turning white around the muzzle. It was a relief to hear the kids say she still resembles the young energetic pup Anthony LeTourneau painted for the illustrations in Safe & Sound.

A first grader wanted to know what Hanni dressed like for Halloween. She didn’t dress up this year, but I was tempted to dress as a baseball umpire and go trick-or-treating with Hanni at my side — you might recall the umps were in a little hot water during the playoffs last season?

And at Wilmot School, in Deerfield, IL.

And now for our high school visit. Hanni and I didn’t go to York to perform; we went to see a performance. Remember my great niece Anita, the one I mentioned in my blog post about Obama’s election night party? She is a star on Willowbrook High School’s freshman basketball team, and Willowbrook and York are rivals. My sister Bev came in from Michigan to see Anita play, and Flo was going, too. Anita’s family and her grandma and grandpa (my sister Cheryl and brother-in-law Rich) always go to Anita’s games, and Hanni and I decided to take the train to Elmhurst and join the fun.

So there we were on the second row of the bleachers: Anita’s 93-year-old great-grandmother who uses a walking cane, seated next to Anita’s great aunt Beth, who uses a Seeing Eye dog.

We were right at the center line. Basketball shoes thumped back and forth. When I heard action at our right, I knew to cheer: Willowbrook might score. When the action was at our left, I could yell, “Defense!” Flo was a natural at play-by-play. She’d groan every time the ball went in-and-out of Willowbrook’s basket, so I knew when they missed. And she ever-so quietly repeated “Miss it, miss it, miss it” at every York free throw. A groan after that told me Flo’s voodoo didn’t work, York made the shot.

That's me and Flo and my sister Bev cheering Anita on--between gabbing.

Anita played well, and The game was very exciting. I know it’s old news by now but I just gotta say: it is oh so cool that girls are encouraged to play sports now. Helen Keller would be pleased.

Anita, the budding star.

After the game, 14-year-old Anita was promoted to the varsity team – she’ll be playing in the regionals this week. Not sure Flo and I will make it to any of those games, though. After we successfully climbed down from the bleachers, Flo pulled me close. “I don’t know about you, Beth,” she whispered. “But my butt is sore!”

The Super Bowl Shuffle commercial I blogged about last week got edited at the last minute. They cut out Joette’s part! She e-mailed me when the game was over, her subject heading was “boohoo”:

They cut half of the commercial (my half). However you can see the whole thing on the Boost Mobile website.

Those advertisers know exactly what they’re doing, doncha think? They knew all those football fans would be watching the Super Bowl just to see my superstar senior citizen writing student Joette, so they cut her out of the commercial. You know, in order to get everyone to link to the Boost Mobile site. If you can put up with all the cell phone promotion stuff on that site, you’ll be rewarded by seeing the entire shuffle the way it was intended: with Joette included.

I’ll say this: Joette’s commercial appearance (not!) got me paying attention to the Super Bowl from start to finish, something I haven’t done since 1986, when the original Super Bowl Shuffle was all the rage. If you read this blog, you know how much I love New Orleans so with apologies to my nieces Marsha and Susan and their families who live in Indianapolis, I gotta admit: I loved, loved, loved, loved the way that game ended yesterday. Congratulations, New Orleans Saints!

One of the seniors in the memoir–writing class I teach will appear on the Super Bowl this Sunday! No, not in the game. In a commercial! With the 1985 Chicago Bears!

From the WGN Radio website:

During the first quarter of the Feb. 7 game, an updated version of the classic “Super Bowl Shuffle” will light up TVs in bars and living rooms across the country in the form of a cell phone commercial. Some key elements, however, will be different this time around. Most noticeably, the now-middle aged players will be wearing No. 50 jerseys and singing refashioned lyrics to promote Boost’s new $50 plan in front of a cast of aged actors.

One of those “aged actors” is…Joette Waters, from our “Me, Myself and I” memoir-writing class. Joette did a fair bit of acting when she was younger and decided to get back into it now, in her prime. She was thrilled to get the part and said the former Bears players were all nice, nice guys who were easy to work with. Describing her role to me, she simply said, “They shuffle, and I’m the referee!”

Look for Joette during the Super Bowl.

At class last Wednesday, we all agreed that Joette will be the *star* of the commercial on Sunday. Former quarterback Jim McMahon, defensive end Richard Dent, wide receiver Willie Gault, and linebackers Otis Wilson and Mike Singletary? They’ll just be there to back Joette up. Look for the Sprint Boost Mobile commercial during the first quarter of the game Sunday night to see our superstar in the Super Bowl.

And wait. There’s more! Another student in our class, Hanna Bratman, was on TV recently, too. Hanna was featured in a Someone You Should Know segment on CBS television here in Chicago in January. You might remember Hanna from a previous blog post. Hanna grew up in Germany. Her family was Jewish, and Hanna escaped on her own before World War II. She was only 20 years old when she arrived, alone, in the United States. Others in her family didn’t make it out in time. “I’ll tell you this,” she often says to me. “I’ve always been very, very lucky.”

On January 7, Hanna celebrated her 90th birthday and the 70th anniversary of her escape from Germany to America. The CBS interview focuses on how Hanna has embraced technology to write her memoirs–she has macular degeneration and uses special software that enlarges the print on the screen for her. From the CBS web site:

What do you want to be doing when you’re 90? Hannah Bratman of Chicago is going high-tech to make memories. As CBS 2’s Harry Porterfield reports, she’s someone you should know.

I am a very lucky woman. Thanks to that memoir-writing class, Hanna is someone I do know. So is Joette. I am surrounded by superstars.

Me and class stars.

I can bake a mean loaf of bread. Just don't ask me to make dinner.

I was a bad cook when I could see. That didn’t change when I lost my sight. I still can’t cook, but now, I have an excuse.

Or at least I did have an excuse, until that story about Laura Martinez came out in the Chicago Tribune last month. Martinez is 25 years old and attending the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary program at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. And, oh yeah, she just happens to be blind.

“I’d never worked with a blind student before,” said Karine Bravais-Slyman, who heads the institute’s general education department, “but Laura did incredibly well in the kitchen. She showed many students that even with this type of impairment, she could still do better than students who have their sight.”

Okay. I admit it. It’s not lack of sight that keeps me from being a good cook. It’s lack of talent.

I usually champion blind people who use resourcefulness to do things average people do with their eyes, but I kept this story quiet. I didn’t brag about this chef to my friends, I didn’t blog about her here. I was hoping to keep the “blind people can’t cook” myth alive. But then the talented chef turned up in yet another news story this week, and my “in box” overflowed with messages from friends forwarding it my way. Seems renowned Chicago chef Charlie Trotter heard about Laura Martinez, and he was so intrigued that he visited her at the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, where she works in the cafeteria kitchen.

“I was watching her work and saw how she handled things with her hands, touching for temperature and doneness, and I ate her food and it was quite delicious. We got to talking and she told me about her dreams and I said, ‘What would you think about working at Charlie Trotter’s?'”

You read that right. Charlie Trotter asked her to work for him. He’s also offered to help with her tuition. Laura Martinez will go to Charlie Trotter’s soon for a trial date to make sure she’s comfortable in the restaurant’s kitchen.

“He asked if I’d like to come work for him. I said, ‘Yes, that would be an honor for me,'” Martinez said. “I didn’t expect it at all. He’s very nice, he’s very human.

“And,” she said, sheepishly, “he said he liked my cooking.”

I. Am. So. Busted.

The woman sitting behind me on the train tapped my shoulder. “You dropped your coat,” she said.

Funny. I was pretty sure I had my coat on, but I reached for the big buttons along the front just to make sure. Taking this as a sign we were near our stop, Hanni started shuffling at my feet, trying to stand up. The woman behind me shrieked. The coat on the floor was moving.

Thus began our trip last Friday to Kipling Elementary School in Deerfield, a suburb of Chicago. During my speech to the Kipling kids, I explained the three rules to keep in mind if you happen to see a guide dog with a harness on: don’t pet the dog, don’t feed the dog, and don’t call out the dog’s name. One reason you shouldn’t feed Hanni is that she only eats dog food. Eating snacks from the table or any sort of people food makes her sick. “Do any of you ever go to Taste of Chicago?” I asked, and received a chorus of “Yes!” Our neighborhood in Chicago is very close to that festival, and sometimes people drop their food on their way home and don’t pick up after themselves. Hanni and I will be walking, I feel the harness go down all of a sudden, and before I know it she’s snarfed a fried turkey leg or a slice of pizza. “She always, always gets sick after that,” I told the kids. “She’s such a nice dog, it’s sad if she gets sick. Plus, if she’s sick, I can’t go anywhere. I need her to get me around!”

During the Q&A part of the presentation, students asked if Hanni likes other dogs, does she ever slip on the ice, what does she do if she comes across a whole in the sidewalk. One second-grader must have thought long and hard before raising her hand. “If Hanni can’t work when she gets sick, how do you get her to the vet?” This was a very good question. I can’t ask Hanni to work when she doesn’t feel good, and I wouldn’t expect her to judge traffic or know her rights from her lefts when she’s sick.

I told them that I’d take Hanni’s harness off and find someone to walk her to the vet with me. If I couldn’t find anyone to help me, we could always call a cab. “But that could be a problem, you know, because when Hanni gets sick like that, she usually throws up or poops all over the place, and I don’t think the cab driver would like that!”

Ooooo! Gross! Ewe! Yuck!

I have a feeling the kids at Kipling will remember our visit for quite a while. I’m guessing they’ll pick up after themselves if they drop food on the sidewalk. And I’m pretty sure none of them will ever, ever feed a Seeing Eye dog people food.