I have been a nerd since at least age 12, possibly longer, but that’s all I can swear to for certain. I was that annoying kid with the spring-loaded arm who always knew the answer to everything any teacher ever asked, ever thought about asking, or ever heard asked by someone else. I made the other nerds in my honors classes feel ashamed of their inferior brand of nerdliness, except occasionally in Calculus, when I did get out-nerded a few times. It only made me study harder.
I’ve worn glasses since I was 10 years old, and I wish I had had them sooner. Finding out that trees had leaves from a distance, too, instead of being fuzzy green blobs, made the whole world brand new (!) in an especially doofy and nerdly way. And, as the universe knows no humor bounds, I am pretty uncoordinated when it comes to gross motor skills, and I consequently suck at sports. I especially suck at projectile sports, which also has to do with being a glasses-wearer back when kids got one pair, and no matter how broken they got, you wore them and the surgical or electrical tape that was holding them together to school (and church, and shopping, and playing with friends) until the optometrist said you needed new lenses.
I liked learning the way shipwrecked castaways like hot baths, cooked food, cold drinks, and fluffy beds. There was never enough; I could never learn enough about anything; I always had more questions; there was always something new to learn, read about, study up on, do exercises or problems on, and experts in the topic to be contacted and consulted. I had, and still have, a bottomless cup of curiosity, a voracious appetite for learning, reading, studying, collecting information.
I didn’t realize how peculiar this made me in the world at large until I was in about 7th grade. Prior to that, back in the haze of my childhood, I had the luxury of having mostly outstanding teachers. Yes, I had a few duds, and I remember them, but even the duds didn’t make me feel like a weirdo, they just made me dislike them.
Anyway, it wasn’t until I was in junior high school that I realized most other kids were not like me. They were just warming seats and learning the least they had to to keep their parents and their teachers off their backs. They didn’t show up with a sense of excitement and anticipation to school, they showed up to bitch and moan with other like types about how “boring” it all was (like they were going to be rock stars at age 13 if they weren’t forced to be in school or something) and how much of a waste of their time it was.
It happened when I was interrogating a teacher ruthlessly about a book where the class was reading chapter by chapter, and I had, as was my habit, already read the book twice and written pencil answers (as opposed to the all-important PEN answers for handing in!) to all the accompanying questions. She got fed up and said, with force and irritation, “WE’RE NOT THERE YET, and you’re going to have to WAIT for the rest of the class to catch up.” From the far side of the classroom came an anonymous voice, “Yeah, do you have to be such a total dork?” which made the rest of the class laugh.
And, suddenly, I was all alone; and for the first time in my public school life, I knew it, really knew it, and I felt under attack, desolated, shamed, demeaned, and abandoned. I had, by the force of my enthusiasm, vast curiosity, and personal drive, made myself a laughingstock, an outsider. I had been rejected by my society and my treasured authority figures on a deeply personal level. Publicly. I was marooned a thousand miles away from everyone else in that classroom, and they were glad I was gone.
It was very hard not to cry. But I didn’t. I just shut down. I closed my book, I put away my papers quietly, and I did as I had been told to do. I waited for the rest of them to catch up. In the rest of my classes that day, I waited for the rest of them to catch up; silently, in shame and embarrassment, I waited for them to catch up.
I waited for someone else to answer questions in science class, my favorite class, and I kept my hands on my desk and my head down and tried not to cry. When the teacher finally got fed up with waiting for someone to answer her question, she called on me, and I whispered out the answer. I made it as short as possible, so as not to give the other students any ammunition to shoot me with again. That was so out of character that my science teacher asked me if I was OK, I nodded and looked down at my desk again and kept my eyes on my desktop. Before the end of class, she came over and asked me if anything was wrong. I just peeked at her quickly and shook my head. She was not convinced.
I don’t know how many days I stayed silent and withdrawn in school, or how many nights I quietly cried while I did my homework. It had stopped being fun, it had stopped being interesting, and instead of being somewhere I liked to go, school became somewhere I tried to not get insulted and beat up on. And I waited for everyone else to catch up, hour after hour, day after day, over and over and over and over and over. I could have slept until I got called on and still have gotten the right answer. I could have written the test answers with my pen in my mouth and one eye glued shut and still have smoked the rest of the class. Sometimes, it wasn’t worth getting out of bed for, and I didn’t.
The only teachers who worried were my math and science teachers. To all the rest of them, I had stopped being a problem with my questions and my curiosity and my hyper-accelerated performance, and everything was “just fine” as I sat there dying inside, wishing with all my heart that there was somewhere in the world for kids like me – kids who worked hard because they liked it, who learned and studied and found it rewarding and fun and endlessly exciting… Somewhere where being like me was normal.
I didn’t go to school for 2 weeks at one point, and a truant officer showed up at my house. When my mom got home from work, I had to tell her about it because she had to sign a paper. She just looked at me, signed the paper, and asked me what was going on. I told her the kids had made fun of me for being smart. She was speechless, literally speechless. I went up to my room and stared out the window, wishing I were dead, or missing, or living in Algeria, or a frog, or anything other than myself. Mom made dinner.
I knew she’d want to talk to me after dinner, and she did. I knew what her first question would be, and I was right. She asked, “Didn’t the teacher do anything?” I told her that the teacher was the one who started it, and repeated the events to her. I saw the shock waves go through her, I saw the rage go ballistic within her, and for the first time in our mutual history, I was not afraid of her rage because I could tell it was not directed at me. She became very terse and brisk. “Go to bed,” she said, “and get your clothes ready to go back to school tomorrow.”
My mom and I have always had and always will have a difficult history together. The dynamics changed shortly after my twelfth birthday, and, maybe someday I’ll talk about it here. In the year and a half between then and our discussion, we had spent most of our time staying out of each other’s way. But, for once, my mother came through for me.
The next morning, I got dressed, waited for the bus and went to school. I got the usual pointless and inapplicable warnings about having fallen “very far behind” in my first class, looked over the assignment list and realized I could do it in an evening and resigned myself to an endless series of days of waiting for everyone else to catch up.
As I headed to my second class, I saw every teacher I had hustling down the hallway towards the office like there was a fire drill without the bell. That got my attention for a moment. It took a while for a teacher to show up for my second class, and it wound up being a regular teacher who was going between our room and her own room, just to keep order. It was the same way during my third class. Something was up, and even my classmates were wondering aloud what it might be. I didn’t care that much. I figured there was going to be a teacher strike or something political was happening. Then it was lunchtime, and I got to see some of my friends, who had been worried about me, and I cheered up a little.
Fourth class was Home Ec. Our regular teacher was there, and she had an announcement. She fixed the worst slackers in the class in the eye and said, “I want each and every one of you to know that there will be no more picking on smart kids. There is nothing wrong with being smart, there is nothing wrong with asking questions, there is nothing wrong with working ahead, and the first one of you who pulls that kind of a stunt in MY class room is going to go right past suspension and be expelled. Is that clear?”
My head shot up, and my mouth fell open. I looked at my Home Ec. teacher in astonishment, and while the other students were complaining and sneaking glances at me, she and I made definite eye contact. I quirked an eyebrow, and she gave a tiny nod and an even tinier quick smile. Then she brought the class to order and we did whatever we were supposed to be doing. I don’t remember; I was in shock. I thanked her as I left class at the end of the period. She patted me on the shoulder and said, “don’t worry anymore.”
For each of my remaining classes, every teacher made the same or a similar announcement. Some of them were pretty fired up and emotional themselves, some were clearly resentful at having been called on the carpet, and some of them were mad as hell on my behalf, and, presumably on behalf of all the other kids who were living in silent desperation as well. Some of them openly looked at me and told me to tell them if I had so much as a single complaint about being picked on; that they weren’t going to stand for bullying for a minute.
My science teacher just about boiled the paint right off the walls, she was so mad. She really let loose at the bullies and the slackers and told them they needed to emulate smart kids, not bully them, that they were going to be raking leaves and washing the cars of the smart kids if they didn’t get their heads in gear and get in the game, and so on. It was a rant of quite magnificent scope and duration, at the end of which she said to me, “don’t ever stop asking questions, don’t ever stop wanting to know more, don’t let anyone make you ashamed of being smart ever again!” I burst into grateful tears, and so did a tiny little, wispy blond girl with coke-bottle glasses, buckteeth and braces who sat two seats behind me. She and I looked at each other and smiled through our tears. We both said, very loudly, “Thank you!” (We eventually became best friends.)
It continued the next day with the first three teachers, too. One of them was the teacher who had told me I’d have to “wait”, and she was red-eyed and pissed off at me, but she made the same announcement. She quit teaching at my school at the end of that year.
By the end of the week, I wasn’t the only nerd feeling safe and protected and appreciated in the school. There were quite a few of us meeting, talking, and getting to know each other in the lunch room, in the front seats of classrooms, in the library, dragging our enormous loads of books from class to class. Instead of drooping along in the hallways, trying our best to be invisible, we took over the main pathways and acted like we finally belonged.
My mother hadn’t said a thing until Friday night after dinner. She asked me how things were going at school. I said, with a very big smile, that they were very different now, and I told her what had happened. She looked at me, nodded, and said, “good.” I thanked her.
I’d like to tell you that my junior high school became a renowned nerd haven, but it didn’t. It did become a lot more conducive to academic competitiveness and good-natured, high-speed learning, which is more than most schools do. My nerd friends and I were excited by the change, happy to feel safe, and able to enjoy being ourselves again. It was a good thing.
There is more to my nerd tale, but this seems like enough for today.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Oddball Word of the Day
indurate (IN-dou-rate): v. to harden; to make stubborn
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Complimentary Stimulation
I got kind of a surprise the other day. So did my kids. I had ordered some stuff online, drugstore type stuff, that our local, small-town drugstore doesn’t carry – toner for my middle-aged skin, cotton pads that I know I like, some girly liquid soap, and a back scrubber. I got some perfume, too.
I was a little worried about what condition it would show up in, since for the last week, we’ve had single digit temperatures, with frequent ventures into sub-zero temps. Most of the stuff I order online comes via UPS, so it’s exposed to the elements for the entire time it’s in transit.
Anyway, yesterday I had a full day – appointments in the morning, tutoring in the afternoon, and the package showed up just as I was leaving to go tutor, so I didn’t have a chance to open it before I left. When I got home, the kids were all home from school, just barely, and seated around the dining room table. We drank water and juice, and the kids were eating sandwiches and snack foods and telling me about their days.
I realized my package was still sitting there, unopened, so while my daughter was telling us about her Home Ec. class, I sliced open the tape and pulled out the packing list. Everything I had ordered was on it, so I started checking the items, one by one. The perfume was there – no damage, same with the cotton pads, the back scrubber, and the toner. The girly soap had frozen a little, and when I opened the bottle, it kind of squirted a half an inch or so of really cold soap on my hand, so I closed it up and went and washed my hands. They smelled really nice afterwards, too!
So, I was pretty happy with my purchases, and as I started putting them away, I noticed there was something extra in the box, at the very bottom. I reached in and pulled it out, as my kids were sitting there, chewing and talking and laughing, and, because I have no restraint whatsoever, I gave a surprised shout when I saw what it was and said, quite loudly and clearly, “Oh, my God, they’ve sent me a VIBRATOR!”
There was a second of silence around the table, and then every last one of us burst into hysterical laughter. I, embarrassed, shoved the vibrator back into the box and checked the packing slip again, wondering if I had accidentally clicked on a button while ordering and inadvertently purchased myself a sex toy. Nope, no vibrator was listed.
I stuck my head into the box, I suppose out of curiosity, and noticed that they had not sent me just any old vibrator, nosireebob! They sent me a complimentary Mr. Chubby, G-Spot Intensive, Waterproof Vibrator in screaming neon pink! (Batteries not included.) I was still snorting with laughter and embarrassment, and I checked the packing slip again – still no vibrator listed.
My daughter was pounding the table, howling and crying with laughter as she looked at my astonished face. She grew redder and redder, and I started laughing again and managed to whisper to her the name of the vibrator, which sent both of us into huge peals of laughter all over again. The boys, a little baffled, but still amused, had wandered off by now, and I looked at my daughter, and my packing slip, and my actual purchases, and I said, “I wonder if some clerk in the packing department looked at my stuff and decided that I must be a middle-aged lady in need of more excitement than just a good, long bath, so they added some Spice to my box??? Damn!”
We laughed and laughed, and finally calmed down enough to watch Dr. Phil together. During the commercials, I silently pondered what to do about Mr. Chubby. I would be hard pressed to send him back with no backup packing slip documentation, and I didn’t order it, I really didn’t want to splurge on postage, so I decided to think about it tomorrow.
Over coffee, after dinner, I did tell my husband that a new someone had come into my life unexpectedly. He gave me a disgruntled look until I whispered Mr. Chubby’s name into his ear and told him the, er, provenance thereof. Then he chuckled for a bit and squinted his eye at me and said, “HA! I’m holding the batteries hostage from now on!”
I have to admit to a little carnal curiosity. I also have to admit that I’m a little embarrassed that I know so little about Mr. Chubby’s ilk. I thought I was reasonably up-to-date – I have been to sex toy parties, and I thought I comported myself like an adult, even though the thought of something named “Santa and the Bear” still gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the most I ever bought was some fruit-flavored nipple cream (not all that tasty, even if the packaging was pretty good).
But yesterday proved that a little bit of the nervous teenage girl still lurks within this middle-aged body. So, maybe I’ll just put my new Mister away for a rainy day. With batteries.
I was a little worried about what condition it would show up in, since for the last week, we’ve had single digit temperatures, with frequent ventures into sub-zero temps. Most of the stuff I order online comes via UPS, so it’s exposed to the elements for the entire time it’s in transit.
Anyway, yesterday I had a full day – appointments in the morning, tutoring in the afternoon, and the package showed up just as I was leaving to go tutor, so I didn’t have a chance to open it before I left. When I got home, the kids were all home from school, just barely, and seated around the dining room table. We drank water and juice, and the kids were eating sandwiches and snack foods and telling me about their days.
I realized my package was still sitting there, unopened, so while my daughter was telling us about her Home Ec. class, I sliced open the tape and pulled out the packing list. Everything I had ordered was on it, so I started checking the items, one by one. The perfume was there – no damage, same with the cotton pads, the back scrubber, and the toner. The girly soap had frozen a little, and when I opened the bottle, it kind of squirted a half an inch or so of really cold soap on my hand, so I closed it up and went and washed my hands. They smelled really nice afterwards, too!
So, I was pretty happy with my purchases, and as I started putting them away, I noticed there was something extra in the box, at the very bottom. I reached in and pulled it out, as my kids were sitting there, chewing and talking and laughing, and, because I have no restraint whatsoever, I gave a surprised shout when I saw what it was and said, quite loudly and clearly, “Oh, my God, they’ve sent me a VIBRATOR!”
There was a second of silence around the table, and then every last one of us burst into hysterical laughter. I, embarrassed, shoved the vibrator back into the box and checked the packing slip again, wondering if I had accidentally clicked on a button while ordering and inadvertently purchased myself a sex toy. Nope, no vibrator was listed.
I stuck my head into the box, I suppose out of curiosity, and noticed that they had not sent me just any old vibrator, nosireebob! They sent me a complimentary Mr. Chubby, G-Spot Intensive, Waterproof Vibrator in screaming neon pink! (Batteries not included.) I was still snorting with laughter and embarrassment, and I checked the packing slip again – still no vibrator listed.
My daughter was pounding the table, howling and crying with laughter as she looked at my astonished face. She grew redder and redder, and I started laughing again and managed to whisper to her the name of the vibrator, which sent both of us into huge peals of laughter all over again. The boys, a little baffled, but still amused, had wandered off by now, and I looked at my daughter, and my packing slip, and my actual purchases, and I said, “I wonder if some clerk in the packing department looked at my stuff and decided that I must be a middle-aged lady in need of more excitement than just a good, long bath, so they added some Spice to my box??? Damn!”
We laughed and laughed, and finally calmed down enough to watch Dr. Phil together. During the commercials, I silently pondered what to do about Mr. Chubby. I would be hard pressed to send him back with no backup packing slip documentation, and I didn’t order it, I really didn’t want to splurge on postage, so I decided to think about it tomorrow.
Over coffee, after dinner, I did tell my husband that a new someone had come into my life unexpectedly. He gave me a disgruntled look until I whispered Mr. Chubby’s name into his ear and told him the, er, provenance thereof. Then he chuckled for a bit and squinted his eye at me and said, “HA! I’m holding the batteries hostage from now on!”
I have to admit to a little carnal curiosity. I also have to admit that I’m a little embarrassed that I know so little about Mr. Chubby’s ilk. I thought I was reasonably up-to-date – I have been to sex toy parties, and I thought I comported myself like an adult, even though the thought of something named “Santa and the Bear” still gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the most I ever bought was some fruit-flavored nipple cream (not all that tasty, even if the packaging was pretty good).
But yesterday proved that a little bit of the nervous teenage girl still lurks within this middle-aged body. So, maybe I’ll just put my new Mister away for a rainy day. With batteries.
Oddball Word of the Day
soubrette (sooo-BRET) n. a vivacious, pert, or coquettish young woman
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
Monday, February 05, 2007
Potpourri
I apologize for not having posted for the last several days. I’ve just been beat to death with the physical therapy and then stomach flu and decided to play it calm and not strain myself more than I had to to get by. I’ve graduated from PT now (hurray!) and am doing much better on that front. Also, the icky flu is definitely gone.
A week ago Sunday, we took the Doodle up to IMSA (the Illinois Math and Science Academy) for a preview day. IMSA serves 10th-12th graders who are talented in math and science and who have gone through a fairly rigorous screening process. They only take about 250 new sophomores per year, they have an excellent retention rate, and 99% of the graduates go on to college, most with significant scholarship money, and many to Ivy League schools. They’ve been operating for 20 years now, have an excellent reputation, and lots of their graduates have gone on to do some wonderful, sometimes extremely profitable things.
We were there about 5 hours, and I have to say I was not bored hardly at all. Lots of shark-like predatory parents with cowed and compliant, over-achieving children, but also plenty of parents like me and kids like Doodle. He has had the idea and a vague wish to go there for a couple of years now, and for the last year, I’ve been providing him with more and more information. I want to see if he’s serious enough about going to put more dedication into his endeavors, and to bring them up to a standard that is closer to being commensurate with his abilities. There is no question about his possessing the intellectual hardware to qualify.
I figured that taking him there for a preview a year in advance of when we’d be submitting his application would give him something more tangible and concrete to hang on to and solidify the goal for him. There’s certainly no guarantee that he’d be accepted anyway, but I’m not going to deny him a chance to chase his dream; I just want to make sure it really is his dream, and not just something he thought about once and forgot. He hasn’t forgotten.
I could go on and on about it, but it’s probably better if you visit the website for IMSA and check out the virtual tour. And, if you’re unemployed, they are looking for a new president.
A week ago Sunday, we took the Doodle up to IMSA (the Illinois Math and Science Academy) for a preview day. IMSA serves 10th-12th graders who are talented in math and science and who have gone through a fairly rigorous screening process. They only take about 250 new sophomores per year, they have an excellent retention rate, and 99% of the graduates go on to college, most with significant scholarship money, and many to Ivy League schools. They’ve been operating for 20 years now, have an excellent reputation, and lots of their graduates have gone on to do some wonderful, sometimes extremely profitable things.
We were there about 5 hours, and I have to say I was not bored hardly at all. Lots of shark-like predatory parents with cowed and compliant, over-achieving children, but also plenty of parents like me and kids like Doodle. He has had the idea and a vague wish to go there for a couple of years now, and for the last year, I’ve been providing him with more and more information. I want to see if he’s serious enough about going to put more dedication into his endeavors, and to bring them up to a standard that is closer to being commensurate with his abilities. There is no question about his possessing the intellectual hardware to qualify.
I figured that taking him there for a preview a year in advance of when we’d be submitting his application would give him something more tangible and concrete to hang on to and solidify the goal for him. There’s certainly no guarantee that he’d be accepted anyway, but I’m not going to deny him a chance to chase his dream; I just want to make sure it really is his dream, and not just something he thought about once and forgot. He hasn’t forgotten.
I could go on and on about it, but it’s probably better if you visit the website for IMSA and check out the virtual tour. And, if you’re unemployed, they are looking for a new president.
Oddball Word of the Day
weal (WEEL) n. well-being, welfare, as the public weal
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Beware the Undertow
When I was a kid, we vacationed at the sea, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and basking on the beach. We usually went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, long before it became whatever kind of expensive Mecca it is today. We camped. Early on, we camped in a family sized tent, and we had all the camping accoutrement that were probably stereotypical for a family in the ‘60’s – camp stove, inflatable mattresses that were really swim floats, heavy sleeping bags padded with cotton batting, a cooler, and a station wagon. Later, we tried a camper of the type where it’s like a folded up trailer, and the top pops up and presumably provides room for four people to sleep. My sister pushed me onto the floor in the middle of the night most of the time, so I can’t say as it really slept four. The tent was better.
In comparison with today’s parents, our parents were criminally negligent; so were everyone else’s. My sister spent most of the time doing whatever tweens do when they’re not being watched, and I was told to, basically, go stand in the ocean. Every so often, one of our parents would remember us, and we’d have to go sit on a towel near them, sticky and sandy and thirsty. I generally wound up, over the years, trolling for sharks’ teeth, which were everywhere, digging up little sand creatures, getting wet sand in my butt, and with half of my one-piece swimsuit twisted around somehow. In good years, I’d have a floatie of some sort, and I’d pots around in the near surf. I did learn to swim and got more courageous, which is when I first started hearing about the Undertow.
The Atlantic has a ferocious undertow, and it has a terrible reputation for being sneaky. It doesn’t matter if you’re close to shore or further out, if it wants you, like a great, soulless Kraken, it comes after you, slurps you up, eats what it wants of you, and spits out a token reminder of you. Maybe. Every summer, we’d hear tales, some were perhaps vacation myths designed to keep kids from being reckless, of kids snorked out to sea and never seen again, by the Dangerous Undertow.
One year, the Dangerous Undertow struck for real. I didn’t realize it right off, and I think my parents tried to keep the information from us at first. The mom and dad from another family, camped only a few spaces away from us, had gotten to be friendly with my folks in that campground way adults do. They had a couple of teenagers, a son and a daughter, who were older than my sister and I. Their kids would hang out with my sister sometimes, but I was too little and none of the teenagers had any time for me, so I barely knew them.
One day, as I was digging up seashells and peeing in the surf, or whatever, I heard screaming down the beach. I sat in the sand and looked around. The adults were beginning to stand up to look for trouble, too. I looked out at the water, there were very few lifeguards then, and noticed that the swimmers and rafters were heading in, except for the lifeguards, who were heading out. A big bell started ringing somewhere, and mothers and fathers ran like hell, grabbing their kids out of the water and counting noses. My sister came tearing down the beach, too, and we four huddled on our beach blankets, watching what had become the center of attention – the distraught parents who were friendly with my folks.
The mom was screaming, the father was shouting, and both of them looked like they were going to explode or collapse. I sat there, digging in the dry sand with my green plastic shovel, not having a clue as to what had happened. Except for the sound of the waves, the occasional clang from the bell, and the screaming of the mother, the beach was silent. Eerily silent. It stayed silent for a long time. A very long time. The bell stopped clanging.
Parents hustled their children back to camp to wash up, change and go do something distracting. My Dad took my sister and I back to our tent, but my Mom stayed on the beach, which I thought was weird. My sister was crying, and my Dad looked grim. I wanted to go back and dig up more seashells, but Dad said that no one could go back to the beach that day. He and I went looking for somewhere to go fishing instead, after we had cleaned up. My sister decided to stay behind.
We couldn’t find anywhere to fish, oddly, but I don’t think my Dad was looking all that hard. We potsed, we piddled, and we stopped in one of those ubiquitous, all-purpose general stores that dotted the South in the ‘60’s. My Dad conversed in quiet tones with the clerk while I lusted after a Moon Pie and a Mountain Dew. I got the Dew, but the Moon Pie got vetoed. We drove around some more, and finally picked up, glory be, a pizza to take back to camp, since it was nearing dinnertime, and the sun was setting.
The camp was quiet when we drove back in. Mom was back at the campsite, my sister was still in the tent, red-faced and blowing her nose, and we ate our pizza in silence for the most part. I wanted to ask what was going on, but my kid antennae advised me to shut up and sit down and wait for further information. I colored. We all waited.
An hour or so after dark, an ambulance screamed by, a commotion started down by the beach, and it moved towards the center of camp, where our tent was. There was wailing and angry, tormented shouting and the sound of many feet on packed sand. We looked at each other, then towards the commotion. It was the parents, being led back to their campsite after all those hours on the beach. Every other parent or official who’d been waiting was with them.
I got sent to bed, like that ever does any good, and I lay there, listening, wondering what had happened in my world. Eventually, news filtered back – the son and daughter had been rafting, and the son’s body had been recovered, but there was no sign of the daughter. The Undertow had gotten them.
Over the next couple of days, about a third of the people in the camp left. We didn’t. It took a while for the lingering miasma of despair and loss to clear, but the sunshine and the waves, and the seashells, and the crabs, and the shark’s teeth, and the salt-scented summer breeze remained. As did the Undertow. Parents were more vigilant, for a while, and there were plenty of official-looking adults traipsing up and down the beach, but eventually vacation became vacation again, only different.
The next summer a spring-loaded tent peg busted out my sister’s front two teeth, and she had to get emergency dental work and suck baby food through a straw for a while, which is, I think, what prompted the acquisition of the crummy pop-up camper for the following year. She got older, I got older, my parents got closer to divorce, and vacations went by the wayside.
I’ve since vacationed in Virginia Beach, Atlantic City, Kauai, on the Lido, beachside at lakes, Great Lakes, inland seas, near streams, and puddles, and rivers, and duck ponds, and I’m still here. Somehow, deep down in my psyche, I’m probably still holding on to my plastic shovel with vigor and determination, and I probably still have plenty of sand in my emotional pants. But I try to keep a weather eye open for the Dangerous Undertow, whatever form it may take.
In comparison with today’s parents, our parents were criminally negligent; so were everyone else’s. My sister spent most of the time doing whatever tweens do when they’re not being watched, and I was told to, basically, go stand in the ocean. Every so often, one of our parents would remember us, and we’d have to go sit on a towel near them, sticky and sandy and thirsty. I generally wound up, over the years, trolling for sharks’ teeth, which were everywhere, digging up little sand creatures, getting wet sand in my butt, and with half of my one-piece swimsuit twisted around somehow. In good years, I’d have a floatie of some sort, and I’d pots around in the near surf. I did learn to swim and got more courageous, which is when I first started hearing about the Undertow.
The Atlantic has a ferocious undertow, and it has a terrible reputation for being sneaky. It doesn’t matter if you’re close to shore or further out, if it wants you, like a great, soulless Kraken, it comes after you, slurps you up, eats what it wants of you, and spits out a token reminder of you. Maybe. Every summer, we’d hear tales, some were perhaps vacation myths designed to keep kids from being reckless, of kids snorked out to sea and never seen again, by the Dangerous Undertow.
One year, the Dangerous Undertow struck for real. I didn’t realize it right off, and I think my parents tried to keep the information from us at first. The mom and dad from another family, camped only a few spaces away from us, had gotten to be friendly with my folks in that campground way adults do. They had a couple of teenagers, a son and a daughter, who were older than my sister and I. Their kids would hang out with my sister sometimes, but I was too little and none of the teenagers had any time for me, so I barely knew them.
One day, as I was digging up seashells and peeing in the surf, or whatever, I heard screaming down the beach. I sat in the sand and looked around. The adults were beginning to stand up to look for trouble, too. I looked out at the water, there were very few lifeguards then, and noticed that the swimmers and rafters were heading in, except for the lifeguards, who were heading out. A big bell started ringing somewhere, and mothers and fathers ran like hell, grabbing their kids out of the water and counting noses. My sister came tearing down the beach, too, and we four huddled on our beach blankets, watching what had become the center of attention – the distraught parents who were friendly with my folks.
The mom was screaming, the father was shouting, and both of them looked like they were going to explode or collapse. I sat there, digging in the dry sand with my green plastic shovel, not having a clue as to what had happened. Except for the sound of the waves, the occasional clang from the bell, and the screaming of the mother, the beach was silent. Eerily silent. It stayed silent for a long time. A very long time. The bell stopped clanging.
Parents hustled their children back to camp to wash up, change and go do something distracting. My Dad took my sister and I back to our tent, but my Mom stayed on the beach, which I thought was weird. My sister was crying, and my Dad looked grim. I wanted to go back and dig up more seashells, but Dad said that no one could go back to the beach that day. He and I went looking for somewhere to go fishing instead, after we had cleaned up. My sister decided to stay behind.
We couldn’t find anywhere to fish, oddly, but I don’t think my Dad was looking all that hard. We potsed, we piddled, and we stopped in one of those ubiquitous, all-purpose general stores that dotted the South in the ‘60’s. My Dad conversed in quiet tones with the clerk while I lusted after a Moon Pie and a Mountain Dew. I got the Dew, but the Moon Pie got vetoed. We drove around some more, and finally picked up, glory be, a pizza to take back to camp, since it was nearing dinnertime, and the sun was setting.
The camp was quiet when we drove back in. Mom was back at the campsite, my sister was still in the tent, red-faced and blowing her nose, and we ate our pizza in silence for the most part. I wanted to ask what was going on, but my kid antennae advised me to shut up and sit down and wait for further information. I colored. We all waited.
An hour or so after dark, an ambulance screamed by, a commotion started down by the beach, and it moved towards the center of camp, where our tent was. There was wailing and angry, tormented shouting and the sound of many feet on packed sand. We looked at each other, then towards the commotion. It was the parents, being led back to their campsite after all those hours on the beach. Every other parent or official who’d been waiting was with them.
I got sent to bed, like that ever does any good, and I lay there, listening, wondering what had happened in my world. Eventually, news filtered back – the son and daughter had been rafting, and the son’s body had been recovered, but there was no sign of the daughter. The Undertow had gotten them.
Over the next couple of days, about a third of the people in the camp left. We didn’t. It took a while for the lingering miasma of despair and loss to clear, but the sunshine and the waves, and the seashells, and the crabs, and the shark’s teeth, and the salt-scented summer breeze remained. As did the Undertow. Parents were more vigilant, for a while, and there were plenty of official-looking adults traipsing up and down the beach, but eventually vacation became vacation again, only different.
The next summer a spring-loaded tent peg busted out my sister’s front two teeth, and she had to get emergency dental work and suck baby food through a straw for a while, which is, I think, what prompted the acquisition of the crummy pop-up camper for the following year. She got older, I got older, my parents got closer to divorce, and vacations went by the wayside.
I’ve since vacationed in Virginia Beach, Atlantic City, Kauai, on the Lido, beachside at lakes, Great Lakes, inland seas, near streams, and puddles, and rivers, and duck ponds, and I’m still here. Somehow, deep down in my psyche, I’m probably still holding on to my plastic shovel with vigor and determination, and I probably still have plenty of sand in my emotional pants. But I try to keep a weather eye open for the Dangerous Undertow, whatever form it may take.
Oddball Word of the Day
vox barbara (VOKS BAR-ber-uh) a questionable word formation or usage, esp. of pseudo-classical elements, as a Neo-Latin scientific term
(from the guide to MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the guide to MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
Friday, January 19, 2007
Five Things I Did Yesterday
I’m busier now, in a wider variety of ways, than I ever was when I had a paying job. Most folks don’t really believe that housewives and stay-at-home moms are all that busy. I think they have, as I did, an idealized view of how smoothly things run around the house, with errands, and with kids. It’s been my experience that people who haven’t been SAHMS think we have all the free time in the world for leisure activities (or for things THEY want us to do). I don’t know why we set ourselves up with unrealities to envy, but I think it’s pretty common. Anyway,
1. Physical Therapy: I’ve gone into detail already about this earlier this week, so there’s not much to add, other than the recuperation time is down to about 45 minutes afterwards, and then I can go do other stuff. Which I did, including an early lunch date with my spouse, a weekly thing we do instead of dinner out. I’d prefer dinner out, but then he gets all squinty and unpleasant about the expense, so we compromised.
2. Tutoring/Counseling: Straight from lunch, I tutor at the middle school. I’ve had one student in particular for over a year now. Yesterday after discussing and doing superlatives and comparatives, then mathematical functions with fractions, the student opened up to me about problems in the home. We talked quite a bit, the student seemed relieved and more relaxed, and I recommended talking to the teachers and the social worker, in confidentiality if necessary, and perhaps coming in and staying late to be able to study more effectively. I then followed up by cluing the social worker in, insisting on confidentiality, and toddled home to meet my own kids as they returned from school. They decompress at me, which I also consider bonding/mom time, and then I get an hour with my daughter, watching Dr. Phil before more stuff happens.
3. Knitting Group: I handed off parenting to my husband when he got home, and headed off for my once/week knitting group, noticed I had no gas, and filled the tank on the way there. It was a lively group, with 6 people, two of whom are newbies and needed instruction and reassurance, swapped numbers with another new member (but not new knitter).
4. Making Dinner: Thursdays are supposed to be “eat leftovers” nights, since I’m off at knitting during the usual dinner hour. I can usually count on the hubby to feed himself leftovers, and the kids are capable of it, but sometimes they forget, don’t want to, or get focused on their games and time slides by without them eating. Last night was such a night. I could only talk two of them into leftovers, so I heated those up, cooked burgers for my daughter and myself, and added leftover warmed up veg.
5. Tutoring, again: Got a phone call from a newbie knitter from earlier at knitting group, who needed to talk about needle size and gauge swatching, handled that, then while eating dinner, helped my youngest with his polynomials and word problems, then showed my daughter the ways of writing a compare/contrast essay on The Great Gatsby vs. a movie of same, and helped her with her outline, including looking up all the right terms (since kids can never find last year’s handy reference papers, and I can never remember the stuff) for a proper, detailed literary analysis. We discussed themes, methods of choosing what to include (need evidence!) and proper argument techniques.
Which left me with 15 minutes to spend with hubs before Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, which we all watch, hubs headed off to bed, and I chased around after the kids, getting them to bed, too. It was a pretty good day, all told, no appliances quit or spewed anything, no one got in fights or cried, my back is feeling better every day, the pets are healthy, all the homework got done with little or no stress, I got to do something for myself that was fun, and I got a decent night’s sleep.
I think about how much more physically demanding it was when the kids were small. All that running around and worrying about them whacking each other with Tonka trucks or sticking things in electrical sockets (because eventually they DO figure out how to bypass the safety measures) was exhausting. And it was intellectually stultifying, too, small words, careful consideration of what’s appropriate discussion around small kids and their very big ears. They get sick less often now, which means I get sick less often, too.
This is easier physically, but more demanding intellectually and emotionally. It never dawned on me, when I was holding their tiny, newborn little bodies, that I would someday be trying to dredge up decades old experience with quadratic equations and English papers and hints on cellular respiration or saponification, but that’s just as much of parenting as changing a diaper or cubing cheese or turning Barney off and going to the park.
I suppose I can paraphrase JFK here and say, “Ask not what your SAHM can do for you, but what you can do for your SAHM.” And, in case you’re wondering, cleaning the living room would be a great idea!
1. Physical Therapy: I’ve gone into detail already about this earlier this week, so there’s not much to add, other than the recuperation time is down to about 45 minutes afterwards, and then I can go do other stuff. Which I did, including an early lunch date with my spouse, a weekly thing we do instead of dinner out. I’d prefer dinner out, but then he gets all squinty and unpleasant about the expense, so we compromised.
2. Tutoring/Counseling: Straight from lunch, I tutor at the middle school. I’ve had one student in particular for over a year now. Yesterday after discussing and doing superlatives and comparatives, then mathematical functions with fractions, the student opened up to me about problems in the home. We talked quite a bit, the student seemed relieved and more relaxed, and I recommended talking to the teachers and the social worker, in confidentiality if necessary, and perhaps coming in and staying late to be able to study more effectively. I then followed up by cluing the social worker in, insisting on confidentiality, and toddled home to meet my own kids as they returned from school. They decompress at me, which I also consider bonding/mom time, and then I get an hour with my daughter, watching Dr. Phil before more stuff happens.
3. Knitting Group: I handed off parenting to my husband when he got home, and headed off for my once/week knitting group, noticed I had no gas, and filled the tank on the way there. It was a lively group, with 6 people, two of whom are newbies and needed instruction and reassurance, swapped numbers with another new member (but not new knitter).
4. Making Dinner: Thursdays are supposed to be “eat leftovers” nights, since I’m off at knitting during the usual dinner hour. I can usually count on the hubby to feed himself leftovers, and the kids are capable of it, but sometimes they forget, don’t want to, or get focused on their games and time slides by without them eating. Last night was such a night. I could only talk two of them into leftovers, so I heated those up, cooked burgers for my daughter and myself, and added leftover warmed up veg.
5. Tutoring, again: Got a phone call from a newbie knitter from earlier at knitting group, who needed to talk about needle size and gauge swatching, handled that, then while eating dinner, helped my youngest with his polynomials and word problems, then showed my daughter the ways of writing a compare/contrast essay on The Great Gatsby vs. a movie of same, and helped her with her outline, including looking up all the right terms (since kids can never find last year’s handy reference papers, and I can never remember the stuff) for a proper, detailed literary analysis. We discussed themes, methods of choosing what to include (need evidence!) and proper argument techniques.
Which left me with 15 minutes to spend with hubs before Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, which we all watch, hubs headed off to bed, and I chased around after the kids, getting them to bed, too. It was a pretty good day, all told, no appliances quit or spewed anything, no one got in fights or cried, my back is feeling better every day, the pets are healthy, all the homework got done with little or no stress, I got to do something for myself that was fun, and I got a decent night’s sleep.
I think about how much more physically demanding it was when the kids were small. All that running around and worrying about them whacking each other with Tonka trucks or sticking things in electrical sockets (because eventually they DO figure out how to bypass the safety measures) was exhausting. And it was intellectually stultifying, too, small words, careful consideration of what’s appropriate discussion around small kids and their very big ears. They get sick less often now, which means I get sick less often, too.
This is easier physically, but more demanding intellectually and emotionally. It never dawned on me, when I was holding their tiny, newborn little bodies, that I would someday be trying to dredge up decades old experience with quadratic equations and English papers and hints on cellular respiration or saponification, but that’s just as much of parenting as changing a diaper or cubing cheese or turning Barney off and going to the park.
I suppose I can paraphrase JFK here and say, “Ask not what your SAHM can do for you, but what you can do for your SAHM.” And, in case you’re wondering, cleaning the living room would be a great idea!
Oddball Word of the Day
anchorite (ANG_kuhr-ite) n. a hermit; recluse
(from the guide to MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the guide to MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
German Idiom for Friday
Er weiss ein Lied davon zu singen. - He can tell you a thing or two about it.
zB: Mit unartigen Schuelern ins Ausland zu fahren, ist wirklich keine Freude. Frag mal den Franzoesischlehrer - er weiss ein Lied davon zu singen.
auf Englisch: It's no joy at all going abroad with badly behaved pupils. Ask the French teacher - he can tell you a thing or two about it.
Origin: Old German folk songs usually had an unhappy ending. Hence idioms containing the word "Lied" are associated with an unhappy outcome.
(from the Guide to German Idioms by JP Lupson)
zB: Mit unartigen Schuelern ins Ausland zu fahren, ist wirklich keine Freude. Frag mal den Franzoesischlehrer - er weiss ein Lied davon zu singen.
auf Englisch: It's no joy at all going abroad with badly behaved pupils. Ask the French teacher - he can tell you a thing or two about it.
Origin: Old German folk songs usually had an unhappy ending. Hence idioms containing the word "Lied" are associated with an unhappy outcome.
(from the Guide to German Idioms by JP Lupson)
Thursday, January 18, 2007
The Devil Wears Koigu
Well, I’ve gotten a good start on the Koigu pattern for “Charlotte’s Web Shawl”. It was a little confusing at first, until I got someone to read the pattern to me as I knit it, then I had to get used to the lace pattern, which is not at all complicated.
Here’s my progress so far…
Because I am ornery and obstreperous, I am not using Koigu. I like Koigu yarn just fine, it’s pricey, but it gives good yardage, feels fantastic while knitting, and seems like one of the best quality yarns around. The dying is expert and appealing. The pattern calls for like six different colorways of Koigu, and it shows a couple of really lovely, multi-colored shawls. And, that’s the problem. I like to wear bright colors, and I already have plenty. I like to wear patterns in bright colors, and I already have plenty. If I fling a widely multi-colored shawl on top of that, I’ll either look like a bag lady with expensive tastes or a gypsy matriarch. While it really is one of my goals in life to routinely embarrass my children, that might be too much for even me, so I decided against the blaze of variegations.
I thought about my wardrobe and what I usually wear – which is pretty casual and wash and wear. It also tends towards purple/lilac for the time being. I don’t know why, I just find myself wearing the purple family more often than any other specific color family. I also knew I wanted a shawl I’d wear, so it needed to be soft, useful colors, and I wanted to keep some variations in the colorway because that’s a part of the pattern or overall shawl character. I opted for Artyarns Supermerino, which is also a superwash yarn. Their yarn is nice quality, although they sometimes make some interesting choices in colors for dying. I picked a variegated purples yarn and ordered it through DiscountYarnSale in bulk.
The Artyarns Supermerino is also a worsted weight, heavier than the Koigu line, so I went up two needle sizes as well. I think it looks pretty good so far, and the Artyarns is certainly smooth, soft, and easy to work with.
I’ve heard a lot of people doing the online equivalent of squealing and hooting with glee over this pattern, which did influence me a little. I also looked into it and realized it would be an easy beginner lace pattern, with a chart, and despite my years of experience, I have not had great experiences with charted patterns. I figured I could build my confidence so that I can do the Peacock Feathers shawl later this year with less trepidation.
This pattern is working out for all those purposes. I would not personally hoot or squeal over it; I think the stitching actually looks a little rough and scrambled, and I know I’m doing it right. It’ll no doubt even out more after blocking, but that’s not going to change certain PSSOs and the like, the orientations of which are the tiny points of disagreement I have with the design.
I will give the pattern two thumbs up, though, for HAVING NO MISTAKES in the printing. Anywhere. That’s rare and wonderful, and I want to give kudos where they are due and deserved. I would recommend this pattern to anyone who is thinking of beginning lace knitting, too, which is also praise I’m pretty stingy with.
So, I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the shawl – until I hit that phase that’s like the 8th month of pregnancy where you just wish it would be over, finally. I’ll post a picture of the finished shawl for sure.
Here’s my progress so far…
Because I am ornery and obstreperous, I am not using Koigu. I like Koigu yarn just fine, it’s pricey, but it gives good yardage, feels fantastic while knitting, and seems like one of the best quality yarns around. The dying is expert and appealing. The pattern calls for like six different colorways of Koigu, and it shows a couple of really lovely, multi-colored shawls. And, that’s the problem. I like to wear bright colors, and I already have plenty. I like to wear patterns in bright colors, and I already have plenty. If I fling a widely multi-colored shawl on top of that, I’ll either look like a bag lady with expensive tastes or a gypsy matriarch. While it really is one of my goals in life to routinely embarrass my children, that might be too much for even me, so I decided against the blaze of variegations.
I thought about my wardrobe and what I usually wear – which is pretty casual and wash and wear. It also tends towards purple/lilac for the time being. I don’t know why, I just find myself wearing the purple family more often than any other specific color family. I also knew I wanted a shawl I’d wear, so it needed to be soft, useful colors, and I wanted to keep some variations in the colorway because that’s a part of the pattern or overall shawl character. I opted for Artyarns Supermerino, which is also a superwash yarn. Their yarn is nice quality, although they sometimes make some interesting choices in colors for dying. I picked a variegated purples yarn and ordered it through DiscountYarnSale in bulk.
The Artyarns Supermerino is also a worsted weight, heavier than the Koigu line, so I went up two needle sizes as well. I think it looks pretty good so far, and the Artyarns is certainly smooth, soft, and easy to work with.
I’ve heard a lot of people doing the online equivalent of squealing and hooting with glee over this pattern, which did influence me a little. I also looked into it and realized it would be an easy beginner lace pattern, with a chart, and despite my years of experience, I have not had great experiences with charted patterns. I figured I could build my confidence so that I can do the Peacock Feathers shawl later this year with less trepidation.
This pattern is working out for all those purposes. I would not personally hoot or squeal over it; I think the stitching actually looks a little rough and scrambled, and I know I’m doing it right. It’ll no doubt even out more after blocking, but that’s not going to change certain PSSOs and the like, the orientations of which are the tiny points of disagreement I have with the design.
I will give the pattern two thumbs up, though, for HAVING NO MISTAKES in the printing. Anywhere. That’s rare and wonderful, and I want to give kudos where they are due and deserved. I would recommend this pattern to anyone who is thinking of beginning lace knitting, too, which is also praise I’m pretty stingy with.
So, I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the shawl – until I hit that phase that’s like the 8th month of pregnancy where you just wish it would be over, finally. I’ll post a picture of the finished shawl for sure.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
It’s Another Tequila Sunrise…
Actually, it’s not. When I think of that song, which is all mellow and relaxed, or even when someone says “Tequila Sunrise,” I think of waking up so supremely hung over that barfing would be a welcome change; that the just-awoken hung over person is confused, cranky, headachy, queasy, squinty-eyed and mean, and probably slept in the clothes they passed out in, so they’re no fresh spring daisy by anyone’s yardstick. The song probably refers to the mixed drink by that name, but I wouldn’t know since I get all caught up in my imagination and stop listening after the first four words.
However, excepting the hung over bits, I’ve had a few nearly “tequila sunrise” mornings myself ever since I started physical therapy. I never would have believed how exhausting it is – I mean, it looks, from the observer standpoint, like either a lot of very gentle exercise or isometrics. Ha, ha! How tough can that be? Ha, ha! I should have known better from the funny/grim stories my cousin, the physical therapist, has let slip from time to time. She and her cohorts think it’s funny when rehab patients call them the “Spanish Inquisition”. I used to think so, too.
I’m in week 5 of a six week prescription for PT for my over-flexible lower back and soggy lower abs, which have led to bad posture, back pain, and a lack of stamina overall. There are medical reasons for why I got here, but it would bore me to discuss them; I can only imagine how dull that would be for a reader. So, let me tell you about my Sadistic Drill Sergeants, aka Physical Therapists, and their evil schemes.
SDS #1 weighs 8 lbs and is perky. This would normally be enough for me to want to slap her and lock her in a closet, but I told myself I was there for her professional skills. She evaluated me. When a doctor evaluates you, he looks at you, notes observations, does some non-invasive stuff, maybe whacks you on the knee or orders some blood tests and other lab work. When a PT evaluates you, it’s like being in a caffeinated cartoon – stand up, sit down, sit down again, stand up again, wave your arms around, wave your legs around, stand on one leg, lean against the wall while the PT shoves you, push back with your arms, legs, neck, feet, don’t push back, bend over, squat, do half a sit up and stay there for a week or two, balance on your left pinkie toe, bounce on what looks like a giant playground ball, and march, waving your arms around without falling off. And, don’t let’s forget range of motion – hamstrings? Just wrap your leg around your neck and hold it there; bend over to one side, then the other, then forward and backward, rotate your head like an owl, but don’t hark up any pellets, and have you ever thought about orthotics? AAAAAAARGH!
I actually came through the evaluation OK, with lots of exclamations of “good!” from perky SDS#1, with my needs confirmed. She gave me a modest list of small, targeted exercises to do twice daily until the next appointment, two days later. I thought I was feeling moderately spry until I started walking down the hallway to leave and realized I was leaning to the left and lurching along, bent cockeyed, looking like Quasimodo with a purse. I blamed it on the purse, and cleaned all the loose change out of the bottom of it when I got to my car. There was a lot of loose change. Sitting there in my cushy seat, not exercising much more than my arms for turning the wheel, I thought to myself, “well, that wasn’t so bad.” All I can say is that being snockered on endorphins doesn’t last nearly long enough.
When I got home and went up the three shallow steps into the kitchen from the garage, it hit me. I buckled over and ground out a few choice words as one of my eyeballs began protruding unnaturally from its socket due to a tsunami of pain rocketing up from my lumbar region, and I wheezed and stumbled my way to the nearest Aleve bottle. Four hours, one nap, and a well-used heating pad later, I could sit up again without clenching anything or moaning involuntarily. I felt like a complete disaster as a human being. And I still needed to do my second set of exercises.
I stalled. I dallied. I made charming dinner table conversation, attempting to keep my family there until I felt up to exercising again. Then, I knew I had to do it, so I tapped into my inner marathon runner for endurance (I don’t have an outer marathon runner; if I did, I might not need PT), and did my exercises. Slowly, carefully, and with great focus and attention. If there had been an observer, he or she might have wondered what on earth was causing me to lie on my back, feebly waving the occasional limb around like a dying beetle, grunting and squinting up one eye. I dare anyone my age who isn’t a personal trainer to do them without making at least one involuntary noise and one tiny squint.
And when I got up, I felt different. I ached, sure, but my spine felt looser in a good way. I could actually find a lower ab muscle. I couldn’t do much with it, other than wonder where the hell it had been for so long and why was it twitching frenetically, but I could find it. I was encouraged. I went into the living room, cranked the heating pad back up to “broil” and lay down to watch TV with my husband. I woke up at about 3 am, feeling like I’d had drunk way too much tequila, so I went back to sleep. In my clothes.
It’s been pretty much like that ever since. SDS#1 has given way to SDS#’s 2 (short and not so perky) and 3 (a regular sized person with a sense of the ridiculous as outrageous as mine), all of whom have the same evil sense of humor and matter-of-fact way of assigning new, brutally difficult, painful exercises as if they were doing nothing more challenging than sharing a low-fat banana bread recipe with me.
I have progressed, and I can tell I’ve made strides. It’s hard every time, and it needs to be. I’m so tired at night that if I don’t make sure to go straight up to bed after my second set of exercises, I’ll wind up sleeping where I next perch, which has to date included the couch, a chair with no arms, a chair with arms, and the floor, where I was still lying, resting after finishing a new set of exercises. I haven’t broken or strained or sprained anything.
I can walk easier, stand easier, last longer without pain, and that makes me happy because it’s why I wanted PT in the first place. I can put up with quite a few tequila sunrises as a trade-off.
However, excepting the hung over bits, I’ve had a few nearly “tequila sunrise” mornings myself ever since I started physical therapy. I never would have believed how exhausting it is – I mean, it looks, from the observer standpoint, like either a lot of very gentle exercise or isometrics. Ha, ha! How tough can that be? Ha, ha! I should have known better from the funny/grim stories my cousin, the physical therapist, has let slip from time to time. She and her cohorts think it’s funny when rehab patients call them the “Spanish Inquisition”. I used to think so, too.
I’m in week 5 of a six week prescription for PT for my over-flexible lower back and soggy lower abs, which have led to bad posture, back pain, and a lack of stamina overall. There are medical reasons for why I got here, but it would bore me to discuss them; I can only imagine how dull that would be for a reader. So, let me tell you about my Sadistic Drill Sergeants, aka Physical Therapists, and their evil schemes.
SDS #1 weighs 8 lbs and is perky. This would normally be enough for me to want to slap her and lock her in a closet, but I told myself I was there for her professional skills. She evaluated me. When a doctor evaluates you, he looks at you, notes observations, does some non-invasive stuff, maybe whacks you on the knee or orders some blood tests and other lab work. When a PT evaluates you, it’s like being in a caffeinated cartoon – stand up, sit down, sit down again, stand up again, wave your arms around, wave your legs around, stand on one leg, lean against the wall while the PT shoves you, push back with your arms, legs, neck, feet, don’t push back, bend over, squat, do half a sit up and stay there for a week or two, balance on your left pinkie toe, bounce on what looks like a giant playground ball, and march, waving your arms around without falling off. And, don’t let’s forget range of motion – hamstrings? Just wrap your leg around your neck and hold it there; bend over to one side, then the other, then forward and backward, rotate your head like an owl, but don’t hark up any pellets, and have you ever thought about orthotics? AAAAAAARGH!
I actually came through the evaluation OK, with lots of exclamations of “good!” from perky SDS#1, with my needs confirmed. She gave me a modest list of small, targeted exercises to do twice daily until the next appointment, two days later. I thought I was feeling moderately spry until I started walking down the hallway to leave and realized I was leaning to the left and lurching along, bent cockeyed, looking like Quasimodo with a purse. I blamed it on the purse, and cleaned all the loose change out of the bottom of it when I got to my car. There was a lot of loose change. Sitting there in my cushy seat, not exercising much more than my arms for turning the wheel, I thought to myself, “well, that wasn’t so bad.” All I can say is that being snockered on endorphins doesn’t last nearly long enough.
When I got home and went up the three shallow steps into the kitchen from the garage, it hit me. I buckled over and ground out a few choice words as one of my eyeballs began protruding unnaturally from its socket due to a tsunami of pain rocketing up from my lumbar region, and I wheezed and stumbled my way to the nearest Aleve bottle. Four hours, one nap, and a well-used heating pad later, I could sit up again without clenching anything or moaning involuntarily. I felt like a complete disaster as a human being. And I still needed to do my second set of exercises.
I stalled. I dallied. I made charming dinner table conversation, attempting to keep my family there until I felt up to exercising again. Then, I knew I had to do it, so I tapped into my inner marathon runner for endurance (I don’t have an outer marathon runner; if I did, I might not need PT), and did my exercises. Slowly, carefully, and with great focus and attention. If there had been an observer, he or she might have wondered what on earth was causing me to lie on my back, feebly waving the occasional limb around like a dying beetle, grunting and squinting up one eye. I dare anyone my age who isn’t a personal trainer to do them without making at least one involuntary noise and one tiny squint.
And when I got up, I felt different. I ached, sure, but my spine felt looser in a good way. I could actually find a lower ab muscle. I couldn’t do much with it, other than wonder where the hell it had been for so long and why was it twitching frenetically, but I could find it. I was encouraged. I went into the living room, cranked the heating pad back up to “broil” and lay down to watch TV with my husband. I woke up at about 3 am, feeling like I’d had drunk way too much tequila, so I went back to sleep. In my clothes.
It’s been pretty much like that ever since. SDS#1 has given way to SDS#’s 2 (short and not so perky) and 3 (a regular sized person with a sense of the ridiculous as outrageous as mine), all of whom have the same evil sense of humor and matter-of-fact way of assigning new, brutally difficult, painful exercises as if they were doing nothing more challenging than sharing a low-fat banana bread recipe with me.
I have progressed, and I can tell I’ve made strides. It’s hard every time, and it needs to be. I’m so tired at night that if I don’t make sure to go straight up to bed after my second set of exercises, I’ll wind up sleeping where I next perch, which has to date included the couch, a chair with no arms, a chair with arms, and the floor, where I was still lying, resting after finishing a new set of exercises. I haven’t broken or strained or sprained anything.
I can walk easier, stand easier, last longer without pain, and that makes me happy because it’s why I wanted PT in the first place. I can put up with quite a few tequila sunrises as a trade-off.
Oddball Word of the Day
canticle (KAN-ti-kul) n. a hymn or song of praise
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
Friday, January 12, 2007
Five Spam Types That Irk Me
I should first admit that I sometimes read real life junk mail. I’m curious, I’m a compulsive reader, and I like to know what’s being touted from time to time. I also sometimes look at spam to see what’s cooking. Sadly, spam often lacks the tacky charm, the emotional thrill (“You may have already won!”) of paper junk mail.
1. Stocks to buy: If I were interested in buying stocks, the last thing I’d do would be buy those on advice from some wanker with a fraudulent return email address. Which is just one step below buying swampland in Florida, because at least the swampland might offer me a picture of a ‘gator as a consolation for being monumentally stupid.
2. Penis Spam: I don’t personally own one, and if I were to forward the p.spam to the possessor of same in my life, he might get so insulted that he’d consider not bringing it home for my entertainment anymore. And, life’s too short to play with your….. well, you know what I mean.
3. Lose weight now: Thank you. I’m sure I want to take advice and buy products on weight loss while sitting idly in front of my computer from someone who is doing the exact same thing. I’m pretty sure my Grandmother was right when she said, “go do something, dammit” although she might have just wanted me to get off the couch so she could sit down. If she were around annoying me today, I’d have Buns of Whole Wheat or something, instead.
4. Unintentional Spam: Sometimes neophytes, or even experienced computer users, will want to send their new email address, a particularly spicy anecdote, some wonderful pictures, a prayer for the troops, or a joke to everyone in their email address book. Unfortunately, we may have quit corresponding 5 years ago, I may be in your address book as a result of someone else’s galumphingly inept emailing, or I just don’t know you at all, and what really concerns me is how you got hold of my damned address. Second in this category are emails that have been repeatedly forwarded until I have to click more than twice to excavate the message you wanted me to see. Please, peeps, cut and paste and save time for those you wish to enlighten, entertain, or harass.
5. Credit card/paycheck loan Spam. No, just no. No today, no tomorrow, and no for everyday after that in perpetuity. Are they insane? Where’s the trackability? The accountability? Just thinking about it makes my eyeballs spin in opposite directions.
Fortunately my ISP traps most of the spam, so I don’t spend too much time choking and whacking the keyboard with my fist. What it doesn’t get, my home spam filter gets. I even have to check them periodically to make sure they haven’t inadvertently snagged a worthy message due to some phrase or trigger word. But it’s worth the small annoyance to get rid of the much bigger one. I hope someone comes up with a fix-all for the spam soon. In the meantime:
“EnLarga your penus NOW and youf boss will advance you aLoan, so you can buy my EFEDRA – garanteed wt. Loss products – and some !!!Penny Stocks!!! While I tell you this one about a farmer…”
1. Stocks to buy: If I were interested in buying stocks, the last thing I’d do would be buy those on advice from some wanker with a fraudulent return email address. Which is just one step below buying swampland in Florida, because at least the swampland might offer me a picture of a ‘gator as a consolation for being monumentally stupid.
2. Penis Spam: I don’t personally own one, and if I were to forward the p.spam to the possessor of same in my life, he might get so insulted that he’d consider not bringing it home for my entertainment anymore. And, life’s too short to play with your….. well, you know what I mean.
3. Lose weight now: Thank you. I’m sure I want to take advice and buy products on weight loss while sitting idly in front of my computer from someone who is doing the exact same thing. I’m pretty sure my Grandmother was right when she said, “go do something, dammit” although she might have just wanted me to get off the couch so she could sit down. If she were around annoying me today, I’d have Buns of Whole Wheat or something, instead.
4. Unintentional Spam: Sometimes neophytes, or even experienced computer users, will want to send their new email address, a particularly spicy anecdote, some wonderful pictures, a prayer for the troops, or a joke to everyone in their email address book. Unfortunately, we may have quit corresponding 5 years ago, I may be in your address book as a result of someone else’s galumphingly inept emailing, or I just don’t know you at all, and what really concerns me is how you got hold of my damned address. Second in this category are emails that have been repeatedly forwarded until I have to click more than twice to excavate the message you wanted me to see. Please, peeps, cut and paste and save time for those you wish to enlighten, entertain, or harass.
5. Credit card/paycheck loan Spam. No, just no. No today, no tomorrow, and no for everyday after that in perpetuity. Are they insane? Where’s the trackability? The accountability? Just thinking about it makes my eyeballs spin in opposite directions.
Fortunately my ISP traps most of the spam, so I don’t spend too much time choking and whacking the keyboard with my fist. What it doesn’t get, my home spam filter gets. I even have to check them periodically to make sure they haven’t inadvertently snagged a worthy message due to some phrase or trigger word. But it’s worth the small annoyance to get rid of the much bigger one. I hope someone comes up with a fix-all for the spam soon. In the meantime:
“EnLarga your penus NOW and youf boss will advance you aLoan, so you can buy my EFEDRA – garanteed wt. Loss products – and some !!!Penny Stocks!!! While I tell you this one about a farmer…”
Oddball Word of the Day
usury: (YOOO-zhuh-ree) n. 1. an extortionate, especially illegally high, rate of interest, 2. the practice of lending mooney at such a high rate of interest.
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
German Idiom for Friday
aus einer Muecke einen Elefanten machen: to make a mountain out of a molehill
zB: Sein Benehmen war gar nicht so anstoessig, wie du behaupten willst. Mach doch aus einer Muecke keinen Elefanten.
auf Englisch: His behavior was nowhere near as offensive as you make out. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
(from the Guide to German Idioms by JP Lupson)
zB: Sein Benehmen war gar nicht so anstoessig, wie du behaupten willst. Mach doch aus einer Muecke keinen Elefanten.
auf Englisch: His behavior was nowhere near as offensive as you make out. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
(from the Guide to German Idioms by JP Lupson)
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Inversion Hat
I got bored with the beige and brown stocking cap, so I made it an inversion hat. An inversion hat is one where the ribbing is at the end, or top, of the hat instead of at the brim or beginning. Once you get used to shaping in ribbing, it’s pretty easy to do, but I still like to plan it out. Here’s the worksheet I did prior to beginning the “inversion”. If you can see it, there’s a little rosette at the lower left, which shows what the top of the hat should look like.
Then here’s a picture of the finished hat, with the top looking like the sketch (if you can tell, despite my crummy photography).
There are a couple of key points to decreasing in ribbing to get straight lines, rather than ribbing that skews off, sometimes very attractively, to one side or the other.
1. Since the knit stitches protrude and the purl stitches recede, to make the decreases less visible, decrease by knitting the last knit stitch over the first purl in a K2tog manner. To keep it even, on the other side of the purl “field” you then slip the last purl and the first knit stitches in a knitwise manner, and knit them together, making sure the knit stitch is the one on top. By doing this, you get straight lines of knit arrowing in towards the center top of the hat. If your knitting style, which is probably different from my ECU self-taught manner, has you scratching your head over this, reverse them – maybe doing the SSK first and the k2tog second makes more sense.
2. This also causes decreases to occur in a big hurry, so it’s necessary to think about how many rows of knitting you’ll need to do between decrease rows so that your hat does not decrease too rapidly and then not fit.
3. Some people think it’s OK to decrease in the purl field, and sometimes it can be. I’ve always thought that left a bit of a visible lump in the middle of the purling, which I don’t particularly care for.
…and a bonus hint – I could have done the top in all garter stitch for a little interest. I’ve found that if I decrease on the knit stitches on the RIGHT side, they are less visible. The reason they do is because in garter rounds, it’s the purl row that protrudes and the knit row recedes; there fore, the knit row hides the decrease.
So, for the sake of specificity, here’s my little inversion hat pattern:
Sock weight yarn oddballs (no idea how many ounces)
Size 2 US circs, 16”, 1 set size 2 dpns
1 crochet hook, size F US for finishing.
Gauge, mine was 10r and 6 sts/inch. It is pretty flexible, just as long as the hat fits and the top decrease area works out to be about 4” in diameter/2” radius. (Don’t let the geometry terms stress you out)
Cast on 102 sts, knit in rounds for 7-8 inches. Check back down to CO edge and insert marker at approximate spot for beginning of round on current round.
Switch to K2P4 and knit 10 rounds in ribbing.
Decreases:
1st Dec. Round: K1, (K2tog, P2, SSK,) repeat pattern between parentheses around to next to last purl stitch. Slip one stitch, remove marker, put stitch back on original needle, insert marker (now one stitch before where it used to be) and do final SSK (now AFTER the marker). 68 sts, or close enough for horseshoes.
K 10 rounds in K2P2, as established.
2nd Dec. Round: K1, (K2, SSK) repeat around as above, switching to dpns. You will now have all knit stitches on your dpns, 34 of them (or close enough for horseshoes).
K 1 round even.
3rd Dec. Round: K1, (K2tog, SSK), repeat pattern in parentheses around to last stitch and just knit it. Should be about 19 sts.
Snip a long tail and pull yarn through and pull tight. Weave in ends.
Oddball Word of the Day
desuetude (DES-wit-oood) n. a state of disuse
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Phrase Migration
I think each step of my parenting journey has led to a different catchphrase for me. That’s probably because different things have been demanded of me, based on what the kids’ needs were at the time.
When they were babies, my phrase was “Dare to be calm.” I posted it on the refrigerator, on an index card on the windowsill over the sink, and had it as part of my daily affirmations. Babies, when not sleeping, were in a constant state of urgent or immediate needs, it seemed to me at the time. They were hungry; they were wet; they were poopy; they were bored; they had a rash, an itch, a fever, diarrhea; they were teething; they needed an immunization; they were hungry, wet and bored again. Sigh. It just went on and on, 24 hours a day.
Sleep deprivation played a big part in my choice of phrase. As I became less resilient, less patient, more stressed, it was easy to freak out, to feel overwhelmed, to want to shove my head down the garbage disposal just for a few more inches away from the latest wail. None of that was doing any good, so I re-read my Dr. Spock book. I watched humor shows on PBS, while holding babies. Finally, it dawned on me. Very rarely, in fact, almost never, do babies die of wailing. It is possible to go and stand in the garage for one full minute and curse like hell where no one can hear you, bang a hammer on a workbench to take out your frustration, and then return, with greater patience and less stress, to take care of the screamer. When there is more than one screamer, it sometimes takes superb logistical management skills to get them to sit in two or more different corners until you return, but it can be done.
Over time, my garage breaks and extended bathroom breaks helped “Dare to be calm” become a habit. I didn’t have to physically leave the situation in order to stop acting like every holler was a forest fire. I stopped being an overcaffeinated, REM-deprived Smokey the Bear Mom and became Zen Mom. Om.
I taught my older babies/toddlers Meditation in the Moment before it became a popular parenting strategy. “Let’s all take a step back and breathe deeply three times. Let me hear you breathe. Breathe in, sloooooowly. Breathe out. No spitting. Breathe in, breathe out. Put down the squirt gun, I AM watching. Let’s start over. Breathe in…” and so on. Sometimes it worked smoothly; sometimes it was more of a struggle. But it did work, mostly because the only other choice, from experience, was mayhem and screaming, and I had had enough of both of those.
Which led to the phrase for the preschool years “Make your life easier by limiting choices.” Given unlimited choices and/or a doormat mom, preschoolers will be fretful, cranky, sweaty little despots with snot-covered upper lips (an un-charming look which a friend refers to as the “glazed donut” face). They are never happy, and they make sure no one around them is happy either.
By this time, with three kids, I had given up trying to be the nicest mom any kid ever had, and learned the real lesson of parenting (I think), which is, they need someone to be unapologetically in charge; they need a confident leader. As a sidebar, whenever I watch Super Nanny, this is what I see her teaching the kids and parents – first teach the parents to lead without apology or exception, then teach the kids how to follow. It makes all the difference. Anyway, part of what I learned was to stop offering them too many choices.
It started with scheduling. If I let them wander around in their pjs, without saying anything about getting dressed, then sure as the sun rises, at some point during the day there’d be a problem, they’d whine and roll on the floor, a preschool mutiny would ensue, and stress would begin. So, no choice, they didn’t get breakfast until they were in their day clothes. I also limited breakfast choices – hot oatmeal or Cheerios. I didn’t even buy anything else, much to my husband’s occasional dismay, since he really favors Corn Flakes for a late night snack.
As they got used to it, they became calmer and surer of their universe. I could hear them telling each other things like, “You have to clean up now, Bunny, Mom’s going to read Dr. Seuss to us before we help with dinner!” The more they settled into the routine and became adept at it, the more choices I could creatively add in – at one point, for several years, I made up a menu grid for the month. They each got to pick a dinner (with certain food categories mandated) for each week, and, regardless of how peculiar it might be, if it met the nutritional requirements, we made it, and we ate it without complaint. Mostly.
They would negotiate with one another; Bunny would say, “Spawn, I don’t like peas.” Spawn would reply that he liked peas and Doodle liked peas and Dad liked peas, so she was outvoted. Then she’d ask if they could also have salad (notice that’s “also”, not “instead”). Spawn would, with his very young brow furrowed, seriously consider the request, then decide that salad, too, would be OK, and he’d have me add it in.
When they started public school, the working phrase mutated to “It takes a united team to raise a child, but when in doubt, the parents trump.” Mom and Dad have to agree on standards and practices that meet or exceed school expectations, and that’s the baseline for what we expect and support our kids in doing. And we have to stand by that, every step of the way, or it’ll fail because one thing school kids will unfailingly do is test limits every minute.
Sometimes it has meant making choices the school didn’t like – in 7th grade Spawn had a class called, “Skills for Adolescence”. Now, had this been an etiquette class, or a practical, hands-on class on dealing with interpersonal conflict resolution or study skills, I could have stood behind the school and defended the appropriateness and/or applicability of the class. It wasn’t. It was one of those time-waster, creates more problems than it solves kinds of classes – offering speculative, hypothetical situations that my rurally raised kids don’t encounter, and asking them to make decisions and show decision-making processes for situations that have never even dawned on them, much less occurred. And, at that age, lots of kids are not particularly good at extrapolating situations; they’re still grounded in the tangible – they like math problems to have a definite answer, and they still expect the world to be more black and white than gray.
Spawn did not like the class. He was getting a D in it. I got a call from the vice-principal and another from the teacher, and we agreed to meet. I prepped by reading the workbook, which made my eyeballs catch fire, and when I read Spawn’s perfectly reasonable responses, my eyeballs went nuclear. We met. Their concern was that Spawn had decided to answer every question with, “I’d ask my Mom first.” I asked them what was wrong with that, and they replied that they were looking for answers like, “drugs are illegal and a bad idea, and I could get in trouble, and I should tell school officials right away.” I countered with wondering how Spawn’s answer was wrong, still, since asking advice from a trusted and known adult authority figure was a very good idea before taking any action of a highly significant nature, and why they felt that a minor child should circumvent his parents in making decisions in those important situations. They had no comeback, just asked for more detail in the future.
Spawn got a supportive earful, too. I told him I understood his dislike of the class and let him hold forth about it for quite a while. Then I reminded him that we had standards of academic performance, and that if he was aware of what answers were expected, I expected him to bring the grade up to a C, but that beyond that, I supported his protest of a do-nothing, parent-undercutting class which he found offensive. In retrospect, I think that was one of the best moves I ever made with him; I gained his trust, his willingness to share his problems with me, as much as a teenager will, and his respect, since I had shown him respect, too, and still maintained family standards. The school discontinued the class three years later.
I’ve done the same thing with the other two as well. If the school stands on legitimate ground, they have my full support. If they’re trying to get away with shoddy, slipshod practices, I have words with them, and, if those make no changes, then I remind my kids that they have to live up to OUR standards, not the others. I try to help them to understand that their education must be wrested from the unwilling members of the school, and gratefully accepted from the able and adept. It has yet to be easy.
And now, we’re moving into the college years. It feels like the parenting catchphrase is becoming, “Trust them to fly; they may occasionally need navigational help.” And that’s hard, too.
When they were babies, my phrase was “Dare to be calm.” I posted it on the refrigerator, on an index card on the windowsill over the sink, and had it as part of my daily affirmations. Babies, when not sleeping, were in a constant state of urgent or immediate needs, it seemed to me at the time. They were hungry; they were wet; they were poopy; they were bored; they had a rash, an itch, a fever, diarrhea; they were teething; they needed an immunization; they were hungry, wet and bored again. Sigh. It just went on and on, 24 hours a day.
Sleep deprivation played a big part in my choice of phrase. As I became less resilient, less patient, more stressed, it was easy to freak out, to feel overwhelmed, to want to shove my head down the garbage disposal just for a few more inches away from the latest wail. None of that was doing any good, so I re-read my Dr. Spock book. I watched humor shows on PBS, while holding babies. Finally, it dawned on me. Very rarely, in fact, almost never, do babies die of wailing. It is possible to go and stand in the garage for one full minute and curse like hell where no one can hear you, bang a hammer on a workbench to take out your frustration, and then return, with greater patience and less stress, to take care of the screamer. When there is more than one screamer, it sometimes takes superb logistical management skills to get them to sit in two or more different corners until you return, but it can be done.
Over time, my garage breaks and extended bathroom breaks helped “Dare to be calm” become a habit. I didn’t have to physically leave the situation in order to stop acting like every holler was a forest fire. I stopped being an overcaffeinated, REM-deprived Smokey the Bear Mom and became Zen Mom. Om.
I taught my older babies/toddlers Meditation in the Moment before it became a popular parenting strategy. “Let’s all take a step back and breathe deeply three times. Let me hear you breathe. Breathe in, sloooooowly. Breathe out. No spitting. Breathe in, breathe out. Put down the squirt gun, I AM watching. Let’s start over. Breathe in…” and so on. Sometimes it worked smoothly; sometimes it was more of a struggle. But it did work, mostly because the only other choice, from experience, was mayhem and screaming, and I had had enough of both of those.
Which led to the phrase for the preschool years “Make your life easier by limiting choices.” Given unlimited choices and/or a doormat mom, preschoolers will be fretful, cranky, sweaty little despots with snot-covered upper lips (an un-charming look which a friend refers to as the “glazed donut” face). They are never happy, and they make sure no one around them is happy either.
By this time, with three kids, I had given up trying to be the nicest mom any kid ever had, and learned the real lesson of parenting (I think), which is, they need someone to be unapologetically in charge; they need a confident leader. As a sidebar, whenever I watch Super Nanny, this is what I see her teaching the kids and parents – first teach the parents to lead without apology or exception, then teach the kids how to follow. It makes all the difference. Anyway, part of what I learned was to stop offering them too many choices.
It started with scheduling. If I let them wander around in their pjs, without saying anything about getting dressed, then sure as the sun rises, at some point during the day there’d be a problem, they’d whine and roll on the floor, a preschool mutiny would ensue, and stress would begin. So, no choice, they didn’t get breakfast until they were in their day clothes. I also limited breakfast choices – hot oatmeal or Cheerios. I didn’t even buy anything else, much to my husband’s occasional dismay, since he really favors Corn Flakes for a late night snack.
As they got used to it, they became calmer and surer of their universe. I could hear them telling each other things like, “You have to clean up now, Bunny, Mom’s going to read Dr. Seuss to us before we help with dinner!” The more they settled into the routine and became adept at it, the more choices I could creatively add in – at one point, for several years, I made up a menu grid for the month. They each got to pick a dinner (with certain food categories mandated) for each week, and, regardless of how peculiar it might be, if it met the nutritional requirements, we made it, and we ate it without complaint. Mostly.
They would negotiate with one another; Bunny would say, “Spawn, I don’t like peas.” Spawn would reply that he liked peas and Doodle liked peas and Dad liked peas, so she was outvoted. Then she’d ask if they could also have salad (notice that’s “also”, not “instead”). Spawn would, with his very young brow furrowed, seriously consider the request, then decide that salad, too, would be OK, and he’d have me add it in.
When they started public school, the working phrase mutated to “It takes a united team to raise a child, but when in doubt, the parents trump.” Mom and Dad have to agree on standards and practices that meet or exceed school expectations, and that’s the baseline for what we expect and support our kids in doing. And we have to stand by that, every step of the way, or it’ll fail because one thing school kids will unfailingly do is test limits every minute.
Sometimes it has meant making choices the school didn’t like – in 7th grade Spawn had a class called, “Skills for Adolescence”. Now, had this been an etiquette class, or a practical, hands-on class on dealing with interpersonal conflict resolution or study skills, I could have stood behind the school and defended the appropriateness and/or applicability of the class. It wasn’t. It was one of those time-waster, creates more problems than it solves kinds of classes – offering speculative, hypothetical situations that my rurally raised kids don’t encounter, and asking them to make decisions and show decision-making processes for situations that have never even dawned on them, much less occurred. And, at that age, lots of kids are not particularly good at extrapolating situations; they’re still grounded in the tangible – they like math problems to have a definite answer, and they still expect the world to be more black and white than gray.
Spawn did not like the class. He was getting a D in it. I got a call from the vice-principal and another from the teacher, and we agreed to meet. I prepped by reading the workbook, which made my eyeballs catch fire, and when I read Spawn’s perfectly reasonable responses, my eyeballs went nuclear. We met. Their concern was that Spawn had decided to answer every question with, “I’d ask my Mom first.” I asked them what was wrong with that, and they replied that they were looking for answers like, “drugs are illegal and a bad idea, and I could get in trouble, and I should tell school officials right away.” I countered with wondering how Spawn’s answer was wrong, still, since asking advice from a trusted and known adult authority figure was a very good idea before taking any action of a highly significant nature, and why they felt that a minor child should circumvent his parents in making decisions in those important situations. They had no comeback, just asked for more detail in the future.
Spawn got a supportive earful, too. I told him I understood his dislike of the class and let him hold forth about it for quite a while. Then I reminded him that we had standards of academic performance, and that if he was aware of what answers were expected, I expected him to bring the grade up to a C, but that beyond that, I supported his protest of a do-nothing, parent-undercutting class which he found offensive. In retrospect, I think that was one of the best moves I ever made with him; I gained his trust, his willingness to share his problems with me, as much as a teenager will, and his respect, since I had shown him respect, too, and still maintained family standards. The school discontinued the class three years later.
I’ve done the same thing with the other two as well. If the school stands on legitimate ground, they have my full support. If they’re trying to get away with shoddy, slipshod practices, I have words with them, and, if those make no changes, then I remind my kids that they have to live up to OUR standards, not the others. I try to help them to understand that their education must be wrested from the unwilling members of the school, and gratefully accepted from the able and adept. It has yet to be easy.
And now, we’re moving into the college years. It feels like the parenting catchphrase is becoming, “Trust them to fly; they may occasionally need navigational help.” And that’s hard, too.
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