Hogwarts, Florida

A substitute teacher in the town of Land-O-Lakes, Florida (just east of Tampa on the west coast, and one of the shooting locations for Edward Scissorhands), is out of a job this week. He’s accused of teaching his students . . . wizardry.

Yup, wizardry.

According to the Tampa Tribune, teacher Jim Piculas

made a toothpick disappear and then re-appear in front of a classroom full of rapt fifth-graders.

About a week after that bit of legerdemain, Piculas was summoned to the phone. The call was from Pat Sinclair, who oversees substitute teachers in the Pasco County School District. She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School.

“I get a call the middle of the day. ‘Jim, we have a huge issue,’ she said. ‘You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away.’

“I said, ‘Well, Pat, can you explain this to me?’

“‘I really don’t know how to put this, Jim, except to say that you’ve been accused of wizardry.’

“‘Wizardry?’ I said. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.'” He thought the statement seemed bizarre, “like something out of Harry Potter.” When she clarified that it was the sleight-of-hand demonstration, he told her, “It’s not black magic. It’s a toothpick.”

Those wacky Muggles!

However, Assistant Superintendent Renalia DuBose denied the district ever used the word “wizardry” in its dealings with Piculas. DuBose also said “there was a lot more involved” than a simple magic trick demonstration.

She also noted that the trick was far down the list of reasons he is not being asked back. Things like not following lesson plans, allowing students to use computers despite being told not to by another teacher, and leaving a student in charge during his fifth-period class. Heinous stuff.

“Those other reasons are just window dressing,” Piculas replied. He said he finished the lesson plan, another teacher knew the students were on the computers, and he never put the student peer in charge.

Piculas said he thinks his troubles all come down to the disappearing toothpick trick and a student who may have interpreted the trick as wizardry.

The trick requires a toothpick and transparent tape. A sleight-of-hand maneuver causes the toothpick to disappear then reappear. At least, so it seems. In reality, the toothpick hides behind the performer’s thumb, held in place by the tape.

Here is stage magician Criss Angel explaining how to do the Disappearing Toothpick Trick:

“The whole thing lasted 45 seconds,” Piculas said.

He said the students liked the trick. He showed them how to do it so they could perform it at home.

One student in the Rushe Middle class apparently took the trick the wrong way, Piculas said. He said he was told the student became so traumatized that the student’s father complained.

Sinclair wrote Piculas a letter to say the district would “no longer be using your services.” The letter mentioned magic tricks at the end of the list of other classroom offenses he is accused of committing.

The word “wizardry” does not appear in the letter.

“I think she was trying to downplay it because it sounded so goofy,” Piculas said.

Piculas had worked as a substitute teacher for eight or nine months, spending time at fifteen schools. He said he also was working toward teacher certification with the dream of being hired full time.

That appears unlikely now. Piculas said he applied for a job as a GED instructor but wasn’t allowed to interview.

“My whole career is in limbo,” he said.

Eight Reasons Not to Take the Kids to the Zoo

Bowling

My parents were bowlers. I grew up in bowling alleys, both duckpin and tenpin lanes. League play, always.

And they were good, too. Lots and lots of trophies. Mom counted some of the biggest names in the sport as her friends.

Dad even managed a lane for a year or so, between “real” jobs, and put me to work spraying and sorting bowling shoes.

I myself bowled in a couple of kids’ leagues, and won two trophies of my own.

For a number of years in my youth, Dad had a troubled relationship with money. I suspect it came from growing up lower-middle class, in a tiny bungalow in the poor part of Takoma Park, Maryland, with an insular, intemperate, racist, dry alky of a father, and a sweet, longsuffering, and ineffectual mother.

Dad was an accountant, and a brilliant tax consultant. But for several years, he had trouble keeping a job, and we fell into debt. I remember lying to debt collectors on the phone for him, and all of us hiding from people who would come to our door and demand payment.

At one point our electricity was shut off. It was late autumn, as I recall, and quite chilly, so we burned what wood we had for warmth and light in the evening, and when the wood was gone, Dad went to the bowling alley and came back with boxes of bowling pins, old castoffs they were going to get rid of anyway. The plastic coating and the hardwood beneath made them superlative fireplace fodder.

One night I remember my mother and I sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (of course she couldn’t cook a real meal, since everything in the house ran on electricity). She took my face in her hand and turned it so that I looked deeply into her eyes.

“There’s just one thing to remember,” she said. “We are not poor.” When that sank in, she finished her thought: “We just don’t have any money. There’s a difference.”

I thought of the “poor people,” those folks in town who had old cars and junk in their yard, and let their children run around like banshees. We had pride. We kept a nice house, I always wore clean clothes, always held the door for others, always had respect for others. We were not poor. We were never poor.

Somehow it sank in that poverty was a state of mind, a way of looking at the world. I’m guessing wealth is, too, but that hasn’t sunk in yet. My father’s fears are an inheritance I wish I had never received.