As I write this Cupcake and I are watching ESPN.
What are we watching, you might ask?
The Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Here are some of the words that have been spelled correctly so far:
Yeah, we're nerds. So what?
Actually FROM my beloved daughter, to herself, written and posted on her blog August 21, 2010:
Dear Future Self,
Remember how hard it was when you got to the last week of summer vacation and suddenly you had a bazillion math, reading, and writing assignments to finish? Don't let that happen again. Especially because summer 2011, you are going in to 6th grade and also going 8 weeks to camp. Listen to mom. Don't complain.
Just do your homework.
PS: To those who read it: My mom had me write this as a note to convince myself that ALL SUMMER HOMEWORK MUST BE DONE. This is a real live note to self.
I promised Cupcake I'd delay-post this so she could see it fresh when the 2010-2011 school year ends. Now everyone visit her blog and cheer her on. Thanks.
Wanna know why I learned nothing in law school and was consequently an incompetent and fearful lawyer, which is why I now write this blog and drive a lot every day and run a web site instead of flaunting my brilliant lawyerliness?
Let's blame it on this dress:
More precisely, let's blame it on the girl who wore something very similar to this dress.
She wore the lavender muumuu every other day for the entire second semester of my second year of law school.
Every. Other. Day.
It's a pleasant dress. Soothing, looks comfortable, unpretentious. Of course it's not exactly the kind of thing you'd expect a law student to wear. Most of us favored rather somber, serious attire: dark suits, airline stewardess pumps, striped cotton shirts, fussy bow ties, and of course pantyhose, always with the pantyhose even though we were in New Orleans.
I'll just give you a moment to catch your breath while you imagine wearing pantyhose in New Orleans at any time of year.
The problem with the lavender muumuu was that it was hard to ignore. A black suit or dress can be disguised with shoes, jackets, sweaters and accessories, but the lavender muumuu is the lavender muumuu every day of its life no matter what you do to it. Unless she owned a closet full of lavender muumuus, this specific dress was her uniform two or three days each week for a solid semester.
Wanna know why the muumuu almost caused me to flunk out of law school?
Because she alternated it with this:
This is a lovely dress: feminine, soft, also looks quite comfortable. I wore a dress very much like this one to a college formal once; I might even have a picture of myself wearing it.
But this dress was also quite memorable, hard to disguise, again not exactly what one might expect to see on a second-year law student in a classroom or work situation.
And she wore this dress whenever she wasn't wearing the lavender muumuu.
So. Two or three times a week she wore the lavender muumuu and two or three times a week she wore the floral chiffon.
Oh, she tried to disguise them. She accented with a sweater:
or a crocheted shawl:
Sometimes she wore a black blazer:
Like my mad drawing skills?
She wore different shoes:
Ouch -- that looks like it might hurt
Some days she wore boots :
But nothing she did was able to disguise the fact that she wore these same two dresses day after day after day for an entire semester.
So why, you might ask again, did I almost flunk out of law school? What is it about two dresses that almost derailed my career as an attorney?
Have I mentioned that I tend to be scatterbrained? That I can be forgetful? That I often have trouble concentrating?
I spent the entire semester fixating on those dresses.
Were there really only the two of them? Could she possibly own several similar but not identical dresses? Did she like them that much or were they all she could afford? If all she could afford was two dresses why not choose something more generic? How many different ways could she try to disguise Dress One and Dress Two? Did anyone else notice the bizarre state of things? Did anyone care as much as I did? Did she think nobody noticed? Did she care if anyone noticed?
I obsessed so feverishly that I could feel my GPA sliding. I seriously considered sending her some cash anonymously with a note pleading that she buy herself something else, anything else, to wear so I could go back to doodling paying attention in class.
What classes did we have together? I have no idea. What was her name? Nary a hint. What did she look like? Your guess is as good as mine.
I do know that over the summer she must have lost weight or come into some money because the next fall she looked slender and beautiful and had a slew of new clothes, and I never saw the lavender muumuu or the floral chiffon again.
What a relief.
Marlene, do you remember this?
The class bully took one look at me working the school store and scooted out the door.
He knows I turned him in.
Is he afraid I'll rip his head off and turn him inside out if he comes too close to me? Or could he possibly feel guilty for relentlessly tormenting my kid? Don't know. Don't care. He's done his damage and redress would require an extended and extraordinary effort on his part which I don't believe he can pull off. I don't want redress. All I want is for him to know I'm on to him and watching all the time.
Those eyes in the back of the head that are standard issue to new moms? I'm still finding them useful.
In ratting him out I probably canceled out every Cool Mom point I've worked so hard to earn. Despite all the times I let my kids splash in mud or dye their food purple or mattress slide down the stairs, I probably brought myself back to zero in an instant, but it was worth it.
The bullying was hard to prove. You can't get any traction complaining to a teacher that a classmate is mean to your kid because they're all mean and mean is so hard to pinpoint. But when the class bully said something cruel to my kid, loudly and jubilantly and in front of a bunch of other kids, I finally had some traction.
My mother was an expert at bully-retaliation. She'd storm up to school, grab us around the collar as we tried to escape, shake her finger at all the kids in the playground and snarl: "Show me which one of them did this to you."
This didn't give us standing as the most popular crayons in the box; rather than ranking among the magentas, periwinkles, golds and silvers, we fell in with the seafoam, maize and butternut crowd. I hated it.
But I also hated the bullying.
I've waited to catch the class bully in some misstep and it finally happened. I asserted my new leverage to insist he be kept away from my kid as long as they're in the same school. I tried to intervene as invisibly as possible but it's HARD when I feel like vaulting to my feet and bellowing J'ACCUSE!! every time I see him.
But it's okay. I don't have to do anything else.
He knows I'm watching.
Cupcake's grade is just wrapping up their unit on Ancient Greece; last week they presented their play, based on the twelve labors of Heracles (Hercules). Heracles was forced to perform twelve tasks to atone for having killed his wife and children in an insane rage.
Here's a recap (thanks to the Encyclopedia Mythica); italicized and/or pointless insightful comments are mine:
Heracles was the son of the god Zeus and Alcmene. His gift was fabulous strength; Heracles' main antagonist was Hera. She eventually drove him mad, during which time he killed his own children and his brother's. He was so grieved upon recovery that he exiled himself and consulted the oracle of Apollo. The oracle told him to perform twelve labors:
- Kill the lion of Nemea. Its thick skin was impervious to weapons; after seeing his arrows just bounce off the animal's hide, Heracles strangled it.
- Kill the nine-headed Hydra. Two new heads would grow on the Hydra from each fresh wound, and one was immortal. Heracles burned the eight and put the immortal one under a rock. The Hydra in the fifth grade play looked suspiciously like a bunch of sock-adorned hands popping in and out of holes in a pink tablecloth.
- Capture the Ceryneian Hind (a female red deer that belonged to the goddess Artemis). Heracles chased it for many months, then captured it alive.
- Kill the wild boar of Erymanthus. The boar in the play was a stuffed pig with white tusks pinned inside its grinning mouth. Rather than instilling fear in the audience, this hapless adorable swine inspired mainly snickers.
- Clean the Augean Stables, which hadn't been mucked out in thirty years. The muck was portrayed by several large brown (odorless, thank goodness -- or maybe thank Zeus) pillows. Heracles diverted a nearby river to wash the muck away, with the aid of several actors dressed as cows.
- Kill the carnivorous birds of Stymphalis. What a surprise: fifth graders wearing feather boas, even pink ones, look exactly like man-eating birds.
- Capture the wild bull of Crete.
- Capture the man-eating mares of Diomedes, played by half a dozen of these:
- Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons. Cupcake played Hippolyta and the girdle was a golden, woven leather belt that the actors found gaudily wonderful but which I actually used to wear back in the days when I had Duran Duran hair. Cupcake had a rollicking death scene:
- Capture the oxen of Geryon. Lots of livestock tending going on here.
- Take the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Heracles tricked Atlas into getting he apples by offering to hold the Earth for Atlas. When Atlas returned with the apples, Heracles asked him to take the Earth (a beach ball masquerading as a globe) for a moment so he could go get a pillow for his aching shoulders. Atlas did so (in one performance actually dropping the beach ball globe, but it wasn't the end of the world -- or was it?) and Heracles left with his apples. Cupcake was the head of Atlas, supported by an unseen minion on each side:
Where have I seen this before? Oh yes:
Bring Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Hades, to the surface world. Cupcake also played Cerberus but with only one head instead of the traditional three because, as she noted on her blog, the other two were off duty. I think she was supposed to evoke this image:
The best aspect of this role? She got to eat a cookie in every show.
Feel free to compliment Cupcake and her class as much as you want. If not, no problem; I'll still revisit this post every once in a while just to put a smile on my face.
I blundered. For a change.
But I have a plan -- a wonderfully evil and diabolical plan.
It's supposed to snow here tonight and tomorrow -- a lot. Yet, even though our area boasts a plenitude of snowplows and a copiousness of road salt, we seem to panic at the mere mention of the "S" word. But me? I'm not worried; in fact, I'm pleased, for some or all of the following reasons:
Aren't I clever, except for that part where I set up simultaneous lessons for my kids at opposite ends of the city?
My son announced he was joining the school yearbook. Trying not to show my delight out of fear of scaring him away, I mentally congratulated myself: Yay! Yearbook is safer than wrestling or running, and the uniform is way more affordable.
After the first meeting he declared that he'd signed up to photograph cross country meets and the first was somewhere less than 1100 miles away and he had to get there right after school tomorrow, and I'm like: Okay, Bud, let's have a little talk about after school activities. It appears that, at least until you can drive, it'll be mainly my responsibility to get you to and from your extra-curriculars, so let's set some ground rules, shall we? How about some advance notice when an event is coming up; for example, instead of announcing that the meet is this afternoon and you need me to drive you nearly half the length of the Oregon Trail by 4 pm, can you let me know at least a day in advance? How's that work for you, Pal?
Grudgingly he agreed that, since I control the car keys, I might be making some sense, so Saturday morning we got up early and headed out with ample time to make it to the first race of the weekend.
As soon as we arrived at the park and parked in one of the park parking lots, Robey bolted with the camera, leaving Cupcake to carry the case because he's a good delegator that way. Cupcake and I and Miss Puppy set out for the field at a more leisurely pace. After circumnavigating a significant portion of park acreage trying to find the designated field, then tracing the drenched and muddy perimeter of the field in search of the white tent marking home base for Robey's school, we found: a couple of trainers, a few students, some parents -- but no Robespierre.
Just as it was dawning on me that I might have lost my kid, who probably didn’t have his cell phone because that would be too logical, my phone rang with a vaguely familiar caller id. It was Robey, calling from the zoo, and I was like: Robespierre, my darling, how in H.E.Double Toothpicks did you end up at the zoo?!
So Cupcake and I and Miss Puppy got back in the car and picked up Robey, who was waiting sheepishly outside the zoo, and we drove back to the meet, this time parking in a more suitable lot, and everything was pleasant and perfect from then on.
Game over, right? Happily ever after, right?
You don’t know us very well, do you?
While Robey was snapping photos of muddy high school students, Cupcake entertained herself by schlucking back and forth across an out-of-use ball field. She’d trudge to the middle, leaving gigantic, goopy footprints in the mud, and then slog back to the edge, where I’d pretend not to know her; then she’d start all over again.
Eventually Cupcake called out that she was stuck and I told her she was funny and then pretended not to know her some more.
She repeated that she was stuck and I told her to stop kidding around.
Then she pulled her foot out of her shoe and the shoe stayed where it was and I wasn’t laughing any more.
So, here’s where things stood:
Heaving a sigh of resignation, I plodded through the mud, praying for the mercy of the slapstick gods.
Miss Puppy and I slipped and slid out to the center of the field. Cupcake pulled her foot out of the mud-logged shoe, balancing on the other foot while leaning on my back. I bent over and pulled the loop on the heel of her shoe and… nothing happened. I mean, nothing. That sneaker was sunk in the mud like it was rooted there. Meanwhile, any moment some Labradoodle was sure to catch Miss Puppy’s attention and she’d be dragging us through the mud like a couple of stuntmen.
At times we looked like this:
For a moment we looked like this:
And there was a moment when we looked like this:
I pulled some more. I put my hand inside that shoe and yanked and wiggled it. Finally, with a huge sucking sound, the shoe splorked free of the nasty red glop, Cupcake slid her foot back inside it, and the three of us scrambled back to the edge of the field.
In the end, one of us looked like this:
Testing over and not a moment too soon. Who'd have thought someone could be so resistant to being told she's smart? Really, does Angelina Jolie tirade when someone tells her she's beautiful? Does Bill Gates squawk when reminded how wealthy he is? Does Justin Bieber demur at being told he's talented?
Don't answer that last one.
The tests confirmed my suspicions -- Cupcake's one smart cookie -- but I was forbidden to speak of it because she was positive that being smart equaled being a freak. Every time I even tried to mention it she was all:
got it here.
So academic tweaks were made. Stakes were upped, challenges were increased, special projects were introduced, pleas for home schooling subsided. But not a word was mentioned to my daughter.
While I was at it, I applied her to one of those national gifted educational thingies offering on site programs and remote stuff through summer school, publications and web sites. I figured it might be a good weapon to have in my arsenal, but again, Cupcake would have none of it. She assured me, not too congenially, that she would never NEVER participate in any such program and she didn't want to hear anything about it from me again ever. Ever.
here it is.
So I quietly ignored email updates from the organization describing courses, seminars, meetings, conventions, publications, web sites and a book discussion group.
But...
I must have muttered about the book discussion group one evening after I'd fallen asleep on the couch from exhaustion.
W?HAT!!?? she bellowed. Did you say BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP??!!
As I picked myself up off the floor and brushed Cupcake footprints from my abdomen, I explained that the organization she wanted to have nothing to do with did in fact have an online book discussion group and that the first book on the list was the Lightning Thief.
Well.
Cupcake joined that group the instant it came online. She prepared her comments in advance. She stalked other members. She fretted and nagged that our trip to Israel would interfere critically with her ability to get online while the discussion group was in session.
Luckily for her, we had a hotel with WiFi and she'd just happened to bring along her laptop.
And all that invective about testing and gifted programs?
She was all:
Option One:
Move Cupcake to a gifted program, either in a public school where she'd be singled out taken out of class a few times a week for personalized tutoring, or in a self-contained program where all the students yuk it up together over quantum physics jokes follow an accelerated curriculum.
Let me just say -- BLECH to both options, since either would necessitate contending with a kid who liked her friends and her school (except for the frustrating and boring part). I sensed it was fairly unlikely I could convince her that her school that had just been repainted... and renamed... and relocated... and repopulated.
Still, I had to explore all the options at once because I had no way of knowing which might flop and which might pay off.
In April I called the administrator of one of these programs to arrange a tour and learned that I was calling WAY too late in the season to have ANY hope of acceptance, there were NO spaces available, NOR would there be, as students simply NEVER withdrew from this PRESTIGIOUS program once accepted, and she wouldn't even CONSIDER allowing me to apply until AUTUMN.
Now, I recognize that this lady gets daily calls from parents who insist that their itsy-bitsy phenomena would be an asset to any educational program. I realize that every potential student has x-ray vision that can melt away cellulite while giving a nice, even tan; or can recite Pi to 100,000 digits forwards and backwards in Aramaic; or can construct a working model of the USS Constitution out of matchsticks, dryer lint and maple syrup. I get it. I get that she's the gatekeeper for a program pursued by maniacal parents convinced that their children will develop a cure for tone deafness or homesickness before the age of 17.
But I also know that, should Cupcake have been admitted to her precious program, this sentry lady would have instantly transformed into my bestest friend ever, inviting me over to enjoy a Nehi or YooHoo, house sitting when I traveled, and offering valuable advice on what to wear to the next American Idol concert.
Meanwhile, I had to scramble to get my ducks in a row before the beginning of the next school year. If Cupcake was going to have to be relocated I was going to need to know that and prepare for it before the Gatekeeper started offering tours in the fall.
So. Transferring to a different school. Can't even begin to apply until next fall. Meanwhile, Cupcake frazzles herself daily.
Tune in next time for: Home Schooling?
Spoiler Alert: No Way.
Advantages and disadvantages to living behind a high school:
RELAX -- we don't. We're composters -- we don't litter. Geesh.
Anyone have anything else to add? What are the advantages to your neighborhood?
You know how department stores will call you if someone tries to use your credit card after it's been idle for a certain amount of time to make sure the Terminix man wasn't snooping through your desk drawers while ostensibly treating your house for weasels or carpenter ants?
You know how some gift cards expire if you don't use them before a certain date because the stores are counting on your forgetting the cards so they get to keep your money without having to surrender services or merchandise in exchange?
That reminds me -- I'd better schedule that pedicure soon...
Well, guess what? BlogHer just sent me a plaintive note wondering where I've been and politely withdrawing my advertising until I post again. But really, I have an excuse. It might not be a good one but it's an excuse:
The bus was late.
No, that was yesterday. Hold on...
The dog ate my blog.
No... no -- not that she wouldn't try, but she's actually been on good behavior lately, if you ignore the recently shredded purple Ugg*.
Bar Mitzvah.
Yeah, that's the ticket. This Bar Mitzvah has had me busier than a one-armed man trying to paddle a canoe in a straight line. I've been busier than a termite in a sawmill. I've been busier than a one-armed man trying to pitch a tent in a wind storm.
Hellooo? Anyone out there? I know you're there -- I can hear you breathing.
And, as if the Bar Mitzvah weren't enough, I was in charge of Teacher and Staff Appreciation gifts for the month of May at Cupcake's school and I chose to give 77 people each two 750 ml bottles of Pellegrino sparkling water, which adds up to 156 bottles in thirteen 30-pound cases of twelve; each bottle had a ribbon and a mushy note tied around its neck, which took a month to accomplish, and then I had to deliver the bottles around a school comprising six three-story buildings equipped with precisely zero elevators, which is why the next time I tackle Teacher Appreciation the gift will entail an unsharpened pencil or a handful of feathers for each teacher although why they'd want feathers I don't know but it's enough already with shlepping 390 pounds of water.
So anyway BlogHer: I'm reallyreally sorry I've been ignoring you but it's nothing personal and thanks for your kind note of suspension which I totally deserved and I promise that I'll be more reliable as soon as this Bar Mitzvah has been accomplished and the kids sent off to camp exactly a week later, and while I have your attention can you do something about getting William Shatner to host Saturday Night Live? Thanks.
*Spell Check suggested egg or fuggy and I don't know what fuggy means but I think it might be my new favorite word.
When did giving out Valentines in school become such a big deal?
Chapter Eight. That's all you need to know: CHAPTER. EIGHT. The rest is prelude and epilogue, and while it might occupy you if you need something to read, you don't need it like you need Chapter 8.
I'm reading Jodee Blanco's Please Stop Laughing At Us... One Survivor's Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying. Ms. Blanco offers a stirring (although frequently wordy and sometimes garbled) memoir of relentless persecution by classmates beginning in elementary school and enduring all through high school. Her story is gruesome and at times so extreme as to be barely believable, except that we've all seen it, inflicted it or lived it.
Visit Blanco's excellent and attractive web site for information on her program, It's NOT Just Joking Around!, and by all means pick up her new book (I am NOT being compensated in any way for this review. Jodee Blanco doesn't know me from Adam. I feel very strongly about this issue), but if you don't have the inclination, merely bookmark this post because I'm going to give you the quick and dirty intro to her program right now.
Here we go.
"How often are you hanging out by the lockers with your friends when someone who you don't think is cool passes you in the hall? You and your friends look at each other and roll your eyes, perhaps even snicker. I know that you're not trying to be mean,' I explain. "You're just joking around, right?" Heads begin to nod. "Wrong!" I shout. "To that person, it's not just joking around. When you ridicule, bully, exclude, or ignore someone on purpose, treat that person as if you wish they didn't exist, you're damaging them for life," I exclaim."
...
"I thought things would be different [in high school]. There was this girl who let me sit at her table every day as long as I promised not to talk, to her or her friends. Can you imagine how hard that was? ...Then, one afternoon, one of them gets up and tells me that I can't sit there anymore. 'It's not like we hate you or anything,' she says. 'It's just that everybody else does, and we don't need them to start giving us a hard time too.' I begged them to reconsider, explaining that no one else would let me sit at their table. 'Look, Jodee, it's nothing personal.' I then began what would become the most humiliating journey of my life, going from table to table begging people to let me sit with them."
"Eventually I ran out of the cafeteria and into the bathroom and cried," I say. "But if a teacher had gone up to any of those kids and said, 'Hey, you guys, I just saw Jodee weeping in the lavatory, what did you do to her?' they would all have responded, 'We didn't do anything.' And they would have been telling the truth! Bullying isn't just the mean things you do," I say. "It's all the nice things you never do! Letting someone sit alone at lunch pretending not to see how badly that person wishes to be included? Bullying! Letting someone walk to class by themselves afraid to talk to anyone for fear of being rejected? Bullying! Always choosing the same person last whenever dividing into teams for gym or class? Bullying! It's all bullying!"
Recognize yourself in any aspect of this story? I'd be surprised if you didn't unless you were home schooled and even so -- who knows? maybe your mother was a bully.
Bullying is like psychological kudzu: we might never eliminate it, but we can fight like the dickens to control it. Whatever protection we can offer our children and each other will be better than what our parents and teachers offered us (not assigning blame here -- they did what they thought was right), which amounted to: "Ignore them. They're just jealous because you're so smart/talented/pretty/bipedal/straight haired/curly haired/bucktoothed..."
Blanco's most surprising, yet sensible, piece of advice is not to ignore bullies at all:
"Never ignore the bully and walk away. You must look the bully in the eye without any emotion or fear, command him to stop, and then stare him down just long enough to let him know you mean business. Next, begin walking away, and then turn briefly back toward him and say "See you later."... [S]tanding up for yourself nonviolently in the moment abuse occurs is your human right."
Thoughts anyone? If you had to choose a side, which would it be?
NOTE: According to Strollerderby, today marks the beginning of No Name-Calling Week.
