Tag: school

I got yer spirit week right here

This time last year, I was trying and completely failing to make a breathable tortoise beak out of duct tape. 

My daughter wanted to dress up as a tortoise for the 100th day of school, because . . . I don’t know, tortoises sometimes live to be 100 years old, and it made sense to her. I was just so thrilled the kids were actually back in school in person, I was willing go along with any stupid project. 

My other child decided nothing would do but to wear a shirt to which someone (“someone”) had sewn 100 little bells, so I did that, too. (Yes, I packed an extra shirt on the off-chance that one of the long-suffering adults in her classroom somehow grows weary of the sound of 100 bells on  a child who could not sit still if it meant the difference between life and death.) 

If you’re thinking to yourself that the 100th day of school does not sound like a real holiday, you are so right. Some say it originated to encourage and celebrate teachers and students who have made it about halfway through the school year. Some say it’s just a great chance to sneak in some fun math lessons. Still others say that some school districts decided they would allot per-student funding based on how many kids were present on one particular day, and they chose day 100, so the school decided to plump up their budgets by luring in as many of the little scamps as possible with the promise of parties and fun; and that’s already sketchy enough, but then then Pinterest got wind of it, and now the day has taken on a horrible life of its own, completely unmoored from even its shaky origins.

It’s sort of like how Christmas has become entirely secularized and is now all about commercialism, except that 100 Day started out being about money, and now it’s just about making parents stay up until midnight sewing bells on a shirt, and whimpering, “Tell me this looks like a turtle shell.” 

Either way, now that I’ve gotten the requisite snarking out of the way, I have a terrible confession to make: I love stuff like this. I love special days, and I love spirit week.

I live to twist fruit rolls into sticky little rosettes and jam them on top of dozens of mini cupcakes for Valentine’s Day parties. I adore hot glueing bits of cardboard to other bits of cardboard to make elaborate armor for a kid who has decided she must be a glow-in-the-dark ostrich pirate for Halloween.  I’m totally in my element bashing hard candies with a hammer to make stained glass Christmas cookies for the bake sale. I don’t know if it’s because I can remember so clearly how thrilling it was to be a kid and to show up to school on A Day That Was Special, or if it’s just that my own adult life is just so dull that hot glue is enough to spice it up, but I truly enjoy making these dumb little crafts and projects and costumes.

I’m sorry. I know people like me are making life harder for people like you. I am what I am. 

That being said, even crafty people like me have our down days. There are weeks when I open my calendar and my spirit groans to discover that it’s spirit week. There are plenty of mornings when crazy hair day isn’t something to plan with giggles and anticipation; it’s simply completely unavoidable, and I’m less concerned about sharing it to Pinterest and more concerned that someone will share it with child protective services. And I know I’m not alone.

So for the parents who have no natural creative impulse, or who are just too dang busy to consider dealing with yet another special thing in the morning, I’m presenting this list of alternative, more humane special activities that most parents can manage, and I hope their schools will consider them:

Favorite Shirt Day Child must show up wearing his favorite shirt. Bonus points if his mother has no idea where this shirt came from, and it features a trashy, ghastly, tasteless design that makes her wither up inside like a little bug on a very hot day, but she lets him wear it all the time because it is the delight of his heart, and she loves him even more than she loves her reputation. Bonus points if it has jelly on it because he also wore it yesterday, because  . . . it’s his favorite shirt. 

Twin Day Dress up exactly the same as someone else in the world, probably. I mean, there are a lot of people in the world. Chances are pretty high someone else is wearing that same outfit. See? Twins. Fun. For academic enrichment, look up the word “doppelgänger.” Spend the day staring out the window in case he happens to walk by. 

Favorite Character Day Dress up as your favorite potential character, assuming somebody someday writes a book about a kid whose parents are TRYING, okay? Everybody has PANTS ON, okay? It’s not like we just dropped you off in a CORN FIELD or something. 

Thing Day Child must show up with a thing. Just any thing, as long as it’s something the child made completely on his own, using materials found on the floor of the car or bus, or on the ground outside the school door. Must be so weird and wretched that it’s manifestly clear that it was made without help or intervention from an adult. Kid loses points if an adult even has to know about it. Or, if the kid forgets to make a thing, it can be an invisible thing. Or it can be a stick or something. It’s fine. It’s whatever. Call it “child-led” if that helps you sleep at night. 

Name Day At some point during Spirit Week, when you pick your child up, you will be asked to state your child’s name. If you can’t immediately come up with it, you will be given a hint. If that doesn’t work, you will be given a cocktail and some warm socks and sent to bed. 

And there it is. Hey, we’re all 100 days closer to the grave, anyway. Some of us will be there with bells on.

What are your kids really learning at school? How will you find out?

When my family used to homeschool, I used to interrogate myself about which was be worse: The horrible knowledge that I was in charge of everything they would learn that day? Or (if we switched to someone else teaching) the horrible knowledge I wasn’t in charge of anything they would learn that day?

It was very hard to get used to sending my kids off for six or seven hours a day, and not really know what they were learning. Now that I’m used to it, I can see that some of it is great, some of it is fine, some of it is terrible, and some of it is just baffling. The thing is, I never really know how much I know. All I know is what the kids choose to tell me, or what I can figure out.

This is true for every parent who is not physically sitting on top of their child twenty-four hours a day. All you know about what your kids are learning is what you are allowed to know, by the people your kids come into contact with, and by your kids. That is the nature of kids growing up.

Right now, there is a case working its way through the courts about whether or not parents should be able to get their kids to opt out of learning with books with LGBTQ+ themes. The problem with stories like this is that, reading it, I don’t really know what these books are. The article says the parents who are suing object to “LGBTQ+ inclusive books.”

It mentions, “Some of the books at the center of the clash include Pride Puppy, geared toward preschoolers and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, geared toward students in kindergarten through 5th grade.”

You get the general impression from reporting on such stories that the parents are opposed to these books solely because they include LGBT people. This may be the case, but I have read numerous stories phrased identically to this one that, when you drill down into the facts, are revealed to deliberately mention one title but not another, or excerpt one page but not another. It’s hard not to conclude that the goal is to make the parents appear foolish and bigoted. It’s hard not to conclude that the article is complicit in hiding something from the general public.

Slate magazine—hardly a mouthpiece for conservative, reactionary parents—recently published a story about this very phenomenon, in which the author admitted that he thought it was overblown hysteria when people objected to the popular sex ed book It’s Perfectly Normal. But when he saw the actual copious and explicit drawings of intercourse, masturbation, and genitalia designed for ten-year-olds to pore over, he was taken aback.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image by USAG-Humphreys via Flickr (Creative Commons)

It will be so much easier if they make their own lunches

Our kids pack their own school lunches. 

There are several reasons for this. First, it fosters self-sufficiency and independent thinking. It also gives them some awareness and appreciation of how much work goes into planning and preparing a meal. More importantly, a child who’s chosen his own food is much more likely to actually eat those foods than a child who is surprised and disgusted by the choices someone else has made for him. No food is nutritious if it goes uneaten!

Best of all, it’s so much easier for the parents. Packing lunches is a lot of work, and this way, I get to just put my feet up and relax.

Of course, first I have to remind the kids to make their lunches. I have the choice of doing this as soon as they get home, when they are exhausted and cranky, or later, when they are cranky and exhausted. Either way, there is occasionally a bit of resistance; but this can easily be overcome with some firm, cheerful reminders. Here is a sample dialogue:

Parent: [Child’s name], please make your lunch now.
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: [Child’s name], will you please make your lunch now. [Child’s name.]
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: [Child’s name], please make your lunch now [Child’s name.] [Child’s name.] Make your lunch.
Kid: [No answer.]
Parent: LUNCH. LUNCH. LUNCH.
Kid: What???
Parent: Please make your lunch.
Kid: Okay. Sheesh! You can’t just say “Lunch!” and expect me to know what you want!
 
The child will now need to locate his or her lunch box. If by some miracle the child has not left the lunch box at school, on the bus, or in the Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom where you stopped for an emergency poo, you will be able to easily locate the lunch box by the cloud of fruit flies hovering overhead.
 
Your child may notice that their lunch box “smells funny for some reason” but may need some assistance in identifying that reason as last week’s tangerine peel collection that it seemed like too much work to throw away, so they brought it home because surely their mother needs some elderly tangerine peels.
 
No matter, you can easily wipe down today’s modern wipeable lunch box with a damp cloth, perhaps give it a once-over with some baking soda to ameliorate the stench, possibly douse it with kerosene, pat it dry, and you’re ready to pack the lunch. I mean your child is ready to pack his lunch all by himself, while you put your feet up.
 
He will accomplish this by packing one snack pack of chocolate pudding and then going to lie down under the table. Why is he lying down under the table? Because there isn’t any food in this house.
 
You will point out to him — possibly waving your arms a bit, as you point it out — that there is so much food, in such vast quantities, and in such an array of varieties, it would have rendered Mansa Musa instantly insane as his brain tried to comprehend the sheer opulent luxury of it all.
 
But no dice. All you ever buy, it seems, is dumb boring things that are barely even food, like fruit and meat and cheese and yogurt and crackers and trail mix and cookies and pudding and hummus and chips and vegetables and fruit snacks and pumpkin seeds and bagels, and meanwhile all the other moms are buying Flamin’ Hot Sharkleberry Pop Tarts with Limited Edition Rockin’ Sockin’ Tropical Holographic S’mores Drizzle Pods, because other moms love their children.
 
At this point, you may be tempted to remind your children that, when you were in elementary school, you used to bring in a baloney sandwich, an apple, and a couple of store brand graham crackers with jelly on them, and you considered it a special treat if the jelly had seeds in it. And there certainly weren’t any insulated bags or adorable mermaid-shaped mini ice packs to go in those lunches! We got salmonella and we were grateful for it! We considered it an honor!
 
But this approach is an error. Your child will consider the fact that you ate graham crackers just further evidence that you are some kind of defective moron who is incapable of judging right eating, and he will make fun of you on TikTok. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is. 
 
Eventually, with some persistent reasoning and bargaining and a little bit of screaming, your child can be coaxed to continue adding food items to his lunch box, until finally he discovers that it is nearly full. He will have achieved this all by himself, with only a little bit of help from you, who will by this time have spent the last forty minutes standing there with your head deep inside the cabinet, mumbling, “How about Triscuits? okay, then how about Ritz crackers?okay, then how about Goldfish crackers? okay, then how about Wheat Thins? okay, then how about Saltines?” and all the while you can actually feel your bones wearing down and turning into dust inside you. How about Wheat Thins with the bone dust of your mother on them? How about that? 
 

But your untimely demise aside, the good news is, your child will finally have a hearty, nutritious lunch. Well, a hearty lunch. Well, it is mainly chocolate pudding, but at least you know the little creep is going to eat it. And best of all, he made it all by himself, and saved you so much work. Looks like this generation is off to a fine start, and you can go put your feet–
-Oh no, wait. This pudding was produced on machinery that also processes nuts. I guess junior needs some help after all. 

 

_________

PBJ Image: JefferyGoldman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s for supper? Vol. 222: Back to Zuul

Sorry, there will be no follow-up Ghostbusters reference in this What’s For Supper. I just ran out of title ideas. We did go back to school, though. 

If you look closely, you’ll notice that all the food photos this week were taken either outside, or in my bedroom. This is because I’m spending half my time pining for the kids because they’re at school, and the other half hiding from them because they’re home.

Here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Pork ribs, mashed potatoes, corn

Damien made his lovely sugar rub for the pork ribs, and cooked them on the grill. Scrumptious as always. Great little char, great caramelization, a little sweet, a little hot, nice and juicy inside.

You could make a big batch of this sugar rub and have it on hand in a baggie for just about any kind of meat, and it really makes it special. 

Jump to Recipe

I made seven pounds of mashed potatoes, and it wasn’t enough. Next time, a full ten. I also remembered too late about garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, where you boil the garlic cloves right along with the potatoes and then mash them in, then embarrass yourself with how much cheese you add.

 

Jump to Recipe

Next time! 

SUNDAY
Spaghetti carbonara

Always popular.

Damien made dinner while I languished or something. Oh, wait, I was doing school supply shopping! Really down to the wire this year. I remember the first year I did school shopping, when we were SO broke and having SO much culture shock after years of home schooling. I remember being so heartbroken and outraged that I was expected to buy a thumb drive for my innocent sixth grader. It seemed like they were trying to turn her into a faceless drone, enslaved to technology and commercialism. So, this year, Corrie got a P.J. Masks backpack and Frozen II water bottle and a shiny gold Wonder Woman dress and Lion King socks and whatever the hell else she wanted. And all Crayola, no Rose Art at all. You can judge for yourself if that’s progress or not. Anyway, Damien made dinner.

 

Jump to Recipe

MONDAY
Aldi pizza

For the first day of school, a nice, easy meal was in order, especially since I had somehow made myself believe school was still a full week away, so we had zero acclimatization to the new bed times. 

School is . . . okay. The kids are okay with masks. The school has set up tents for outdoor classes and lunch, and the kids sit on yoga mats, and no one spends more than 45 minutes in a room with other people, and they have fans going all the time. They do temperature checks every morning. They ask my five-year-old if she’s been out of the country (and I always listen closely for her answer, because you never know). It is okay. I have no idea if they’re learning anything. Corrie has learned a dinosaur song and a fishie song and has a friend named Greta. She has a classmate named Oliver who is silly. We have no idea how long this all will last, but for now, it’s okay. 

Mirabile dictu, no one in the school has life-threatening allergies this year, so we can pack whatever we want for lunch, so there’s that. In a few weeks, we’ll add in hybrid public high school and Catholic high school, and eventually the college kids will go back to college. Moe is in quarantine. It’s been several days since anyone called Clara “Hitler” for enforcing mask rules in the store.  Walmart is selling unscented hand sanitizer again, so you don’t have to go around smelling like fermented cranberry fart. It’s okay. How are you?

TUESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, carrots and hummus, broccoli salad

I cleaned out the cabinet and discovered I’ve been diligently stocking up on sunflower seeds and dried cranberries, for some reason. So I poked around and found a recipe that uses both of them, along with broccoli and a basic dressing (mayo, white vinegar, sugar, pepper). 

Everyone liked it well enough, and it was a nice change from coleslaw. Vaguely autumnal. Some people also add bacon, but I was trying to pretend it was a vegetable. You could also put minced red onion.  Maybe a little blue cheese. But it was nice in its simple form. 

WEDNESDAY
Steak teriyaki stir fry, white rice

Feeling unambitious, I bought two bottles of ginger teriyaki sauce. I’m often unhappy with my stir fries because they are watery and the vegetables are overcooked, because I crowd the pan and overcook some ingredients while others are catching up. So this time, I cooked the food in batches and in stages. I heated up some sesame oil and cooked the strips of beef in batches until just barely not pink, then took the meat out of the pan. Then I cooked the broccoli in the meaty pan until just barely done, and then I added the red peppers and cooked them just a little. Then I put the meat back in and added the sauce and just stirred everything up quickly so it was heated through, and served it over rice.

Good results! The vegetables were crunchy, the meat wasn’t chewy, and the sauce did not get watery. I made a bunch of rice in the Instant Pot, and it was a tasty, pretty meal. 

Steak continues to be cheap, and I’m running out of ideas! We’ve had steak and cheese, steak salad, steak steak, and tortas. What else do you make with steak? Never thought I’d have this problem. 

THURSDAY
Carnitas with guacamole, corn on the cob

Not the very fine carnitas from J.R.’s Art Place that you cook in a pot until the meat’s all lacquered and lovely, but still not bad. I put a giant bone-in pork picnic in the Instant Pot with a can of Coke, some cinnamon sticks and bay leaves, orange quarters, salt, pepper, and oregano, and cooked it for 35 minutes on high. It wasn’t really tender, so I gave it another 35 minutes. It still wasn’t as tender as I wanted, but I was out of time, so I pulled the meat out and shredded what I could, and cut the rest off. Then I spread it in a pan and sprinkled it heavily with chili powder and salt, and crisped it up under the broiler.

I flirted with the notion of beans and rice, but it seemed hard, so we just had the meat with guacamole, and cheese, sour cream, salsa, lime wedges, and cilantro. 

I made some rather tomato-heavy guacamole with the few avocados that didn’t turn out to be all sad and grey inside. What the heck is wrong with avocados lately? They’re not overripe, they’re just blighted or something. What do you expect: These are Joe Biden’s avocados. Ask yourself if you’re really prepared for four more years of Joe Biden’s avocados.

FRIDAY
Tuna burgers, cheesy tomato soup

This may just be a fantasy. Most likely, people will request plain tuna with mayo. But I will offer the option of tuna burgers.

 

Jump to Recipe

And I will offer tomato soup from a can, and they can put cheese in it. Or they can act like it’s not even exciting that it’s finally almost soup season. But it is exciting! It is. 

 

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Smoked chicken thighs with sugar rub

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups brown sugar
  • .5 cups white sugar
  • 2 Tbsp chili powder
  • 2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 2 tsp chili pepper flakes
  • salt and pepper
  • 20 chicken thighs

Instructions

  1. Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit. 

  2. Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked. 

 

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Garlic parmesan mashed potatoes

Ingredients

  • 5-6 lbs potatoes
  • 8-10 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
  • 8 Tbsp butter
  • 1-1/2 cups milk
  • 8 oz grated parmesan
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Peel the potatoes and put them in a pot. Cover the with water. Add a bit of salt and the smashed garlic cloves.

  2. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer with lid loosely on until the potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.

  3. Drain the water out of the pot. Add the butter and milk and mash well.

  4. Add the parmesan and salt and pepper to taste and stir until combined.

 

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Spaghetti carbonara

An easy, delicious meal.

Ingredients

  • 3 lbs bacon
  • 3 lbs spaghetti
  • 1 to 1-1/2 sticks butter
  • 6 eggs, beaten
  • lots of pepper
  • 6-8 oz grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon until it is crisp. Drain and break it into pieces.

  2. Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente. If you like, add some bacon grease to the boiling water.

  3. Drain the spaghetti and return it to the pot. Add the butter, pieces of bacon, parmesan cheese, and pepper and mix it up until the butter is melted.

  4. Add the raw beaten egg and mix it quickly until the spaghetti is coated. Serve immediately.

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White Lady From NH's Guacamole

Ingredients

  • 4 avocados
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 1 medium jalapeno, minced
  • 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 limes juiced
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • salt and pepper
  • 1/2 red onion, diced

Instructions

  1. Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two. 

  2. Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.

  3. Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly. 

 

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Tuna burgers

Ingredients

  • 1 can tuna
  • 1/2 cup bread crumbs
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • seasonings, minced onion, etc.
  • oil for frying

Instructions

  1. Drain the tuna.

  2. Mix tuna thoroughly with egg, bread crumbs, and whatever seasonings you like. Form into two patties. 

  3. Heat oil in pan. Fry tuna patties on both sides until golden brown. 

Returning to school? Don’t worry: It’s impossible

When I first started home schooling, my mother told me, “You know, the thing about home schooling is that it’s impossible.”

She was not only experienced but a pioneer, one of the first in the region to even attempt such a thing as home schooling. So she knew what she was talking about. But a ray of sunshine she was not.

It was the last thing I wanted to hear, that my new plan was impossible. Who could wake up each morning and willingly set out to do a thing that cannot be done? I knew I was born to home school my children. We would be courageous explorers on the sea of ideas, ravenous guests at a banquet of wisdom and culture. My children’s 12 years of school would be only the beginning of their education, and they would graduate with a lifelong thirst for learning.

Well, we did make a sundial one time. And a bean mosaic. All my kids can read and add and tell jokes, and no one has once suggested they would be better off learning how to make brooms. After six years of home schooling, we realized it was time for a change, and since then, we have tried private school, charter school, public school and this coming year, parochial school. We have at least dipped our toes into just about every form of educating children, and guess what we learned?

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Ready for school? Take this quiz and see.

The department stores have been ready since the middle of May. The clothing catalogues have been ready since early June. The teachers have been ready for close to 72 hours now.  How about you, mom? Are you ready for BACK-TO-SCHOOL?

Here’s a quick quiz to find out how much gin to buy:

***

Clothing! Are you ready?

(a) Your school doesn’t require uniforms, but you do. Your children’s outfits for the next three months are chosen, monogrammed, pressed, and shrink-wrapped (with alternates for unexpected nippy weather) in a special digitized wardrobe that automatically yanks garments out of rotation if anyone in (ugh) public school is seen wearing them.

(b) Each kid owns enough clothes to go all week without wearing anything with holes, obvious stains, or beer slogans.

(c) You really need to stop stalling and get the winter clothes sorted and put away.

Lunches! Are you ready?

(a) You spent the summer perfecting the spreadsheets that tell you when to place bulk orders at Whole Foods so that the everyday staple pantry items (quinoa, bulgur, kefir, quingur, bulfir, and kefoa, which is pronounced “feh”) dovetail with the seasonal produce you expect to harvest from your garden, which you water using barrels that collect your hot yoga sweat, which, not to brag, is quite organic.

(b) You have a general idea of what your kids like to eat, and you try to pack it for lunch. If they don’t gobble up every bit of their packed lunch, they can always fill up on PBJ when they get home.

(c) You give yourself a gold star every time the school doesn’t send home a note saying, “Braedonica only had a pickled cocktail onion and a baggie of dog food in her lunch again. Please remember nutrition matters for young brains, sadface!”
By gold star, you mean “martini.”

Transportation! Are you ready?

(a) Yes, there is a bus that will pick up your child and bring her home, but, chérie, yellow is just not her color. So you’ve hired a dedicated Lyft driver for the morning and afternoon commute. He only drives an Audi, though, and that’s how it’s going to stay until a certain little offspring nudges that GPA up above 3.8.

(b) You’re going to be the mom waiting at the bus stop in a robe, or occasionally that mom driving frantically to school in a robe. So you’re not morning people, so big deal.

(c) You are seriously considering buying an RV and just living behind the school’s swing set until next June, because you’re really, really, really not morning people.

Homework! Are you ready?

(a) Per the training your child has received since he was at four months’ gestation, he doesn’t even want to play, snack, rest, or goof off until homework is completed, double-checked, initialed by both parents, autoclaved, and stowed away safely in the lightweight titanium binder etched with “For Your Consideration, Magister.”

(b) Your kids know they are expected to keep up with their work. They also know that Mom will forget to ask if they have homework half the time, and they only really have to do it when Daddy comes home before bedtime, because Daddy Always Remembers. Doing a little over half their homework earns them a solid C-, which is their version of the American dream.

(c) You know what we do for homework around here? We endure. That’s what we do for homework. Initial that, pal.

Extracurricular activities! Are you ready?

(a) It’s so hard, isn’t it? You beg and plead for the children to just relax and be kids, or at least choose an after-school club that is just plain fun, but every year it’s the same thing: “Motherrr, we simply can’t turn our backs on our commitment to fostering functional STEM literacy among the unwed pregnant cat population. Be the change you wish to see, Motherrr!” they say.
You worry, but you’re also proud. So proud.

(b) Each kid gets to do one thing, and that’s it. There’s only so much extra driving and extra check-writing you can stand.

(c) Extracurricular? As in besides school? They want us to do a whole other thing? Does weeping quietly in a corner count as extracurricular? Because we can do that.

Traditional Beginning-of-the-year Teacher Gift Ideas! Are you ready?

(a) Wait, what?
(b) Come on.
(c) Kill me.

***

ANSWER KEY:

If you answered mostly (a), you are so ready, it’s already next year, so why not stay home and read back issues of GOOP by the light of your own intense awesomeness?
If you answered mostly (b), you are like 90% of the population, so relax.
If you answered mostly (c), you can hang around with my awful kids, and we’ll all feel better.

***
Image by ThoseGuys119 via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A version of this post ran in 2016. So sue me. 

I’ve been to eleven thousand school concerts, and I have something to say.

My late father-in-law leaned over and whispered, “This is the hardest part of being a parent.”

We were all in pain, physical and psychological; we were all chilled to the bone and exhausted beyond all reason. We felt as though we were losing our minds, as dismal, unintelligible noises assaulted our senses. We were all trapped, and no one knew when release would come. Worst of all, we had to keep clapping.

Yes, it was a school concert. This was sometime during the third hour of our exile in a school gymnasium. We manually held our eyelids open toward three fourteen-year-old girls making vaguely soprano whispering noises to the accompaniment of a sweating pianist. It was, if I recall, part of a salute to rockabilly in medly form. A medly which should have been called, “When Will Death Come?”

Well, my husband and I have witnessed nine out of ten kids sing their way through an awful lot of schools. Some of them had sensible, humane, even brilliant music directors, some of them . . . did not. We are proud of our kids, and we like them, and all. We support them, basically. Some of them are even kinda musical. But I have a thing or two to say. 

School concerts should not be three hours long. Never ever ever ever. I don’t care if it’s an excellent program bristling with stunning performances of world-class masterworks. IT SHOULD NOT BE THREE HOURS LONG. Anyone who has a school aged kid needs to be buying groceries, drinking gin, or asleep, and three hours away from doing those things is three hours too long. 

Songs should be age-appropriate. Since these are school children performing for their parents, exactly zero of the songs should be about sex or lust. You can get away with some innuendo in high school, but otherwise, basta. Let’s all get together and demand not to be put in a position where we look like a jerk for not wanting to clap after a nine-year-old girl belts out an anthem about her burning desires. 

And “dance teams” should be illegal. Hell damn fart. Where are the adults?

Kids shouldn’t have solos unless they are pretty good for their age. I realize this is crushingly harsh, and when I’m done with this essay I am going to go out and hit some flowers with my cane, but I still insist a solo is something you earn by being a little bit better than the other kids. I will make an exception if maybe a kid has overcome tremendous obstacles and has found a way to shine despite overwhelming adversity etc etc etc, and even though it’s not an objectively good performance, it really moves you. Fine. I just find it really hard to believe that all eleven terrible soloist are this particular type of shining star. I know these kids. They’re just regular mopes. Off the stage, mope. You dun sound so good.

Kids should perform things they are capable of performing, with maybe one or two “reach” numbers. If it’s the day before concert day and the sounds they’re producing make your skin crawl even mildly, go ahead and cut that number. Nobody in the audience is going to stand up and shout, “I say, choir master, I object! This program simply wasn’t long enough!”

If you let anyone beatbox, you should be shot. I don’t make the rules. 

The teacher does not get to perform. I’m sorry, am I your mom? Are we all your mom? No?  Well then! I guess we’ll just have to spend a moment of silence contemplating how sad it is that you ended up teaching the mouthbreathers in East Flupping Middle School chorus instead of dazzling Broadway, and then we’ll leave it at that, rather than enduring another encore of “How High the Moon” by Ms. Coulda Woulda Shoulda and Her Rather Startling Dress. 

If you want to include an emotional ceremony commemorating the special relationship the students have with the teachers, and you somehow didn’t do this during the rest of the entire year that you had together, you get three minutes. THREE MINUTES. When this folding chair has been biting into my thigh for over an hour already, my last remaining bit of patience will be entirely transformed into white-hot loathing if we have to pause the program while forty-three girls in heels they absolutely cannot manage pick their way across the risers and totter over to receive a carnation and a hug and an award for some choir in-joke, and then totter back while everyone giggles and claps and sighs. It’s not that I’m cold-hearted. It’s just that I hate you all so much. 

And what about the audience? Don’t they have any responsibility? 
Yes. They need to not sit there slowly and sensually scratching their husband’s back all throughout the show. Gah. 
 
Oh, and you can do a standing ovation if you want. I’m sitting down. I’m sitting down. 

Pseudoscience, shmeudoscience. I believe in graphology.

When I was in grade school, we spent an inordinate amount of time learning penmanship. We didn’t just learn a specific way to form each letter and call it done; we spent hours every week getting it precisely, excruciatingly correct.

We would send off writing samples in official yellow folders to some faceless penmanship expert who, I imagined, was installed behind a polished mahogany desk with a magnifying glass permanently affixed to her eye. Weeks later, our samples would return to us, critiqued. We would be scored on things like how wide the loops of our lower-case g’s were, whether the masts of our h’s swooned too far too the right, and whether, in our fifth grade intensity, we pressed too hard on our Number 2 pencils. We’d be graded individually and as a class, and we had to keep sending them back until we produced something deemed adequate. 

In retrospect, it was bizarre. Our schooling was not otherwise exacting or pedantic. Volleyball was big, as were popcorn parties. Science class circled constantly around the central idea of “the webs of life,” and we filled out copious worksheets about our feelings, and coloring in charts to show whether our behavior toward others could be classified more as Warm Fuzzies, Cold Pricklies, or something in between. But when it was cursive time, it was all business.

I imagine there was money involved. Some tightly-wound busybody with deep pockets and a fetish for handwriting would disburse a major grant to the school if all the young ones emerged with properly trained pencil hands, maybe. 

Except for a few stray Jasons and Heathers who were born knowing how to make a perfectly ornate capital G in all its ghastly glory, everybody hated penmanship lessons. But it hasn’t turned me against the idea of kids learning cursive. Science backs the idea that it’s important, if not as all-consumingly important as it was when I was growing up. Learning cursive helps kids’ brains develop, engaging both the left and right hemispheres; and people engage better and retain ideas better if they write notes out in longhand, rather than typing. My kids are learning cursive in their elementary schools, but it appears to be a simpler, more streamlined version, which is good.

I have another, more frivolous reason for hoping cursive stays around: I believe in handwriting analysis — up to a point. I don’t think you can tell everything you need to know about a person based on his handwriting; but I do believe you can tell something, especially if we’ve all started from more or less the same standard and then developed our own deviations.

My mother used to take a gander at the handwriting of the young men my sisters were dating, and she’d be enthusiastic or wary, depending on what she saw. And she was onto something. It’s not a science, but it’s not nothing, either. You can also tell something (not everything) about a person from how they dress, what car, they drive, their tone of voice, their personal hygiene, and so on. Some of it has to do with external circumstances and how we’ve been taught, but some of it expresses who we are. Something interior gets put on the page, flowing through the pen.

Take a look, for instance, at this handwriting sample from one Thomas Aquinas, shared by Weird Catholic on Facebook:

How much of this is how he was taught to write (and the quality of the pen and paper, and how much light was in the room, and how much of a hurry he was in, etc. etc.), and how much of it is his own personality expressing itself by deviating from the norm? I have no idea. But what I see (and yes, there are huge gobs of confirmation bias at work in my analysis. Whatcha gonna do) is:

Those horizontal marks over letters. What are these? Aquinas would have been writing in Latin. I’m not enough of a scholar to know if they are dots over i’s, or some other diacritical marks. Whatever they are, they are long (not just over one letter) and are heavier at the right than at the left, and they look aggressive and definitive and a little bit angry.

The individual letters are very upright, not slanting to left or right, which suggests self-control and rational thinking, and also a certain amount of reserve and coldness toward others. No rush toward the future, no pining for the past; and no inordinate dependence.

You wouldn’t mistake this handwriting for that of a shy or indecisive person, or a sentimental person. It’s confident, possibly arrogant, but not showy. The pressure on the pen is very consistent throughout. This isn’t someone with meandering thoughts or a lot of time to waste. The words may not be clear to the reader, but it doesn’t seem like the writer suffered from any sloppiness of thought. 

Anyway, it’s mostly just fun and games. If you want to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll readily agree, and I won’t even hold your cold pricklies against you for it.

It’s true, though, that when someone has been raised with a keyboard and barely knows how to form letters, you can’t tell much from the unpracticed chicken scratches they do produce. And that’s a shame. All my life, I’ve looked forward to the moment when I can walk solemnly up to my daughter, grasping in my trembling hand an intercepted love letter from her beau, and telling her, “This man makes his lower-case a’s with a little gap at the bottom! RUN AWAY NOW!”

Ah well. In the words of Thomas Aquinas . . . 

. . . yeah, actually I have no idea what he says. 

 

 

To Mrs. Rich, wherever she may be

Thanks for taking us out past the playground into the warm, dim, shadowy woods so we could drink our cartons of milk on a carpet of pine needles while you read to us about The Little Red Hen. I really liked it.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Photo by Yogurt yeah [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Nervous about kids starting school? 10 things to remember

As I’ve mentioned a million times, we have tried nearly every form of schooling that is out there. The biggest change was going from home school to the classroom. Lots of adjustments, in our habits and our attitudes! Here are ten things we learned the hard way.

(Please note: this post is intended to help parents who have some trepidation about starting their kids out in school. All of the “lessons” in it come directly from my own family’s experience, and are not intended to mock, belittle, or stereotype anyone. If you insist on assuming that my motives are foul, just remember what they say: “assume” makes an “e” out of you and your, um, ass. Or something.)

1. A kid who is old enough to go to school is old enough to pack his own lunch. He’s also more likely to eat food he chose than food you chose for him; and food that gets eaten is always more nutritious than food that doesn’t get eaten, no matter what it is. However, an adult must inspect these lunches regularly to make sure they have more nutritional content than the bag in which they are packed. No, checking how heavy the bag is does not count.

2. Teachers do not want tea lights or magnets or paperweights or wreaths or adorably decorated clothes pins. They want gift cards to office and craft supply stores, or to Starbucks, and they want boxes of tissues and Clorox wipes. Or, they would settle for an involved parent. They would probably prefer an involved parent.

3. Being a Catholic means you’re going to be different, and kids need to learn, sooner or later, that it’s not the end of the world to be different. If your kids are going to be in an environment where they are the only Catholics around, they need to have constant reminders (in word and in deed) that Christians are bearers of Good News, not bearers of hostility and smugness.  Also, If you are a serious practicing Catholic, you’re just as likely to stand out in a typical Catholic school as you are to stand out in a secular school.  The wearin’ of the plaid is not a guarantee of an excellent faith formation and a wholesome environment, so pay attention.

4. Skip the personal bottles of hand sanitizer to be used every time your snowflakes come into contact with the outside world. We actually got sicker when I tried hard to sterilize everything, because kids do need to be exposed to some germs. Try and remind them to wash their hands before they eat, but just resign yourself to some sniffles and pukies, and get on with your life. But don’t let them share hats or hairbrushes! Trust LICE me LICE on LICE this LICE one. (If they do get lice, that’s not the end of the world, either.)

5. Most teachers are not the enemy. We’ve run across a few teachers who genuinely don’t like or understand kids, and sometimes a situation really is unendurable, and you need to switch teachers or even switch schools.  But generally, if a teacher is in the classroom, it’s because he wants to do right by your kid. So if there is a problem, start by believing that you can at least partially solve it together with the teacher, rather than by believing you need to protect your child from the teacher.  It’s much easier to communicate with someone when you go into it acting like you’re on the same side.

6. If you’re going to believe everything your kid says about what happened in school (“Mrs. Fleishhacker says that she was going to beat me with barbed wire if I didn’t wear matching socks tomorrow!”), then it’s only fair that your kid’s teacher should believe everything your kid says about what happens at home (“Here is my picture of my family eating breakfast! All those whiskey bottles are my mom’s”).

7. Yes, your kids will probably change somewhat when they’re put into a new situation. This is just human, and not necessarily a bad thing.  Be ready and open to embrace positive changes, as well as being on the alert to ferret out bad changes. Do be concerned about a kid whose behavior changes drastically — a cheerful, outgoing kid who becomes very quiet and withdrawn, or a cooperative kid who becomes defiant and obstinate. Some changes are normal when kids are adjusting to a new environment, but if you’re worried, trust your instincts and look into it. There could be any number of things going on: a bad teacher, a good teacher who is approaching your kid the wrong way, a bully, a character defect in your own child, not enough sleep, hunger, or any of dozens of physical, emotional, psychological, or situational problems that don’t have anything to do with school. Most kids go through rough patches at one time or another, so if this happens to your kids, don’t assume he’s lost or ruined or that you’re a failure; but do take it seriously if your kid is consistently unhappy for a long time.

8. A lot of kids crash right after school. It’s partly being tired and hungry, and partly because they’ve been trying really hard to be good all day, and their tanks are empty. If possible, just be grateful it’s not reversed, and do your best to wait it out until the kid matures a bit. Have a snack ready, and be prepared to give even older kids some decompressing time before you expect much out of him after school.

9. Remember that you are still in charge of your child’s education. If there’s something they’re not getting at school, you give it to them. If they’re hearing something that’s not true, correct it. If you need someone else’s help to educate your kids, that is not an objective failure on your part!  Remember that they’re still your kids, and you can and must be the primary influence in how they see and respond to the world.

10. You’re not going to get an ideal education in a brick and mortar school. You’re also not going to get an ideal education by home schooling, or by unschooling, or by semi schooling, or co-schooling, or private schooling, or charter schooling, or attending-all-the-conferences-and-working-yourself-into-a-damp-spot-on-the-carpet schooling. Some schools are better than others, but since we are dealing with finite time and human nature, there will always be gaps. Expect this, fill in what you can, and remember that your kids are people, not empty mason jars waiting to be filled up with the perfect combination of ingredients. We’re making people, here, not soup.

***

A version of this essay originally ran in the National Catholic Register in 2014.