Spaced out on sensation

Tonight, our church held an "Oscar Night." Among more sophisticated numbers, the choir did "Time Warp." A member had won the right to this command performance at the church's auction. I wanted him to get his money's worth, so I tried to rally the troops a little. And so, as always happens, I was volunteered for the lead. Volunteered, which is to say, everyone else took a step back and I was standing there. Which occasioned my buying fishnet thigh-highs at our local sex shop "for church." A great recruitment tool, that.

Girl stayed behind to help us clean up. Driving back home, I imagined other mothers recapping the night's experience for their daughters. I imagined that some of them were telling their daughters how pretty they were, how poised, how accomplished. And I told her, in my life, it is quite possible I have never been the most polished person in the room, the best dressed. I'm not saying I haven't had my moments, but I'm not beautiful. I'm not saying I don't have pipes, but I'm no musician. I'm not saying I'm not clever, but I don't have a well-honed intellect.

But what I have been, what I will own, and what I hope to pass on to her, is I have been game. Our people -- our family -- I think that's what we are. We're game.

Stuffed Animal Olympics

At our house we are having the stuffed animal olympics, featuring events which start out recognizable, but, when modified to suit teddy bears, take on a Calvinball vibe. Tonight's event was allegedly beach volleyball. Only without the skimpy suits and with rules such as "If the ball goes out of bounds and into the kitchen, one point." After getting beaned enough times, Girl instituted the "If you get hit, that's a point for you." rule. Jones thoughtfully considered this turn of events, and then pitched the ball straight into his own head, yelling "I win!"

Comic Widow

So, apparently there's a word for me and it's Comic Widow. A great moniker, that. Sounds like a bunch of hilarious women yukking it up at the wake. But no, the comic widow is merely the spouse you deposit poolside with the kids while you get your geek on at the con.

Yes, my beloved and our dear friend NiceGrl made the rounds while the kids and I took in San Diego's museums, beaches and pool.

We reconnected at dinner. They'd be all exhausted and freaky, loaded with swag, dumping all of the information from their crania at once, their eyes all bugged out with over-stimulation, and a little moony over some of the celebs. There may have been squealing.

Unclear what impression this is having on Jones, who went with them on one of the days. He likes him some comics and cartoons -- the usual super heroes and such. Beloved turned him on to Avatar, and he is frequently to be found practicing his "air bending skills". Time will tell whether he manifests into a true fanboy.

I think next year I will venture inside. I do think I'd like some of the panels. And I could be more of a helpmate, standing in for him when two events are happening at the same time, bagging more freebies, fending off wookies, or Japanese schoolgirls, as the situation demanded.

Did I say "overlords?" I meant "protectors."

It is the year 2020. Aliens have taken over. They have decided your constitution gives you too many rights. Pick five of them to keep. If you are all unanimous, then you may keep those five rights. If not, then you lose all of them. What rights do you keep?

This is the task put before Girl's 5th grade class yesterday. I was the special guest lawyer. So it was cute that "right to a lawyer" was one of the first things to go. One girl said, well, if you're guilty, you should go to jail.

So nobody goes to jail just because they're too dumb to be able to say the right thing? That never happens? (Crickets) Let me put it this way -- have you ever been in a situation where somebody could out-talk you? Like, they always win just because they're older than you and it just seems like they can always say the right thing and you're there all shy, going, "Um, shaddup."

Can you think that maybe when a regular guy is talking to a cop or to a judge that maybe that guy would feel like that?

Or what about Ernesto Miranda (Of "Miranda Rights")? He was guilty as sin, but we didn't send him to jail (Not for that particular crime anyway). Why? Because -- write this down, children -- rights are not a reward for good behavior. They're rights. We have a "right" to them. That's what makes them "rights."

Three rights were absolute no-brainers for them:
Right to bear arms
No cruel and unusual punishment
Freedom of religion

Why those three? Hot topics, I guess. Especially I can see where they would think that the one about God was the "right" answer.

They were less clear about peaceful assembly. One boy said, well, Martin Luther King already did that, so we don't need that one any more. (Excellent.)

So, it's all good now? Nobody ever abuses their power? Nobody ever needs to stand up to anybody in government now?

But of course it is difficult for kids this age to question authority. Frankly, that's probably appropriate for 5th grade, so this is where it was nice to have alien overlords to be the heavy.

Say the aliens decide that we all have to pay for the air we breathe from now on. We might want to say something about that? In a group, maybe? Should they be able to arrest us just for meeting?

They weren't hearing me about privacy, either. But again, as kids, I don't think they're really feeling the "My home is my castle" thing. With kids, it's a process of "unlearning" that respect for authority.

We had the same problem in high school when teachers would try to point out something racy in a novel. We'd spent so much time getting our minds out of the gutter, we just couldn't believe that the innuendo really was there. I distinctly remember our Great Gatsby teacher practically heaving over the desk, announcing, "Come on, guys. This is hot stuff!"

That's how I felt about our little experiment. I just wanted to shout, come on guys, our founding fathers were some radicals and heretics. Get feisty here!

Too Much Information

I was opining aloud to My Best Beloved that Girl was at that point where she needed a proper bra when I thought, is this one of those marital TMI moments best kept to myself?

My Darling has no dog in that fight, as the gender roles are rather rigid in this particular domain. The integrity and maintenance of Girl's business is ceded entirely to me and likewise My Sweet owns the controlling interest in Jones's.

However, if this arrangement is demure, well, that is sheer coincidence. I cannot say it is because we're so very classy. Not as much as Jones delights in working the word "booty" into every conversation. (Also, dam. He'll pretend he's a beaver so he can say he's building a dam. Or he'll sing "We all go down to Amsterdam. Amster, Amster dam-dam-dam.")

No, our arrangement owes nothing to diffidence and everything to the birth order of the parents. My Love and are both reeeaally bossy. It's just a good thing for our union that we have one of each.

So, it occurred to me that Light-of-my-life might appreciate an accounting of my stewardship, but what's the rule?

I mean, when I came of age, my mother reported the news to my father, who, being the more ceremonious parent, made several awkward gestures at celebrating the event. Y'know what? Probably doesn't need to be a beautiful bonding moment with your father, actually. (Especially as, once, when I was laid up with cramps, my sire consoled me with the wisdom that all of this could have been avoided if Eve hadn't sinned in the garden. Yeah, thanks for that.)

I think that I probably need to hold back. As much as I have to fight the tendency to treat my daughter like a girlfriend, I should probably also fight the tendency to treat my husband like a girlfriend. But, Dear Reader, I can still blab to you, can't I?

It was a star before it was Harry's godfather's name

Last night we attended a demonstration about star-gazing and, when it was dark enough, we all went out and looked at Saturn, Mars, Sirius, and Betelgeuse through some really great wide telescopes. I am personally so blind to the distinctions among any of them thangs up thar that I can't find the big dipper without help. So, I am always amazed that anyone actually can.

The evening was sponsored by our school district's gifted program. And I am grateful for it, even while I am increasingly embarrassed that our gifted program is the worst kind of gifted program.

A "gifted" designation should be handled like a handicap, by which I mean, high IQ should be accomodated in the same quiet, mainstreamed manner as another challenge. As much as possible, there should just be a subtle shading of complexity and volume without a lot of fuss. It's not a reward. It's not an honor society.

Here's what a gifted program should not be -- a chance for elite parents to perpetuate their own privilege by gobbling up the resources of the school.

Here's what it should not be -- carte blanche for kids who aren't necessarily any better behaved than their peers.

Here's what it should not be -- a chance for parents who spend a lot of time, energy, and money giving their kids a leg up to congratulate themselves on the native intelligence of their well-coached sweeties.

It should not be fun field trips that basically send the message you're so far ahead you can afford to coast.

And it should definitely not be your career track or the pool from which you are encouraged to choose your friends.

I remember at the orientation for my step-brother's gifted program, a student asked what should I tell my friends who have not been invited to participate. The man replied, "You could say, 'You're good at other things, like sports.'" Well, now, as my step-brother was one of a handful of Black students in a really old-school burg, h*ll if we were going to turn down the chance for him to stand out in a positive way. But it sure didn't feel good to perpetuate all that rot.

A good deed punished

I went with a neighbor to a naturalization interview today. This was a favor, as we are moms together. Her girl is in my scout troop. Girl has slept over at her house. Jones has gone to her daycare. I often sit with her at PTA and community meetings. I know her and her husband to be block-watching, whistle-blowing, field-trip-attending, cookie-baking, carpool-driving parents of the highest order.

There was an embarrasing moment when she had to answer questions about a "hit" that came up when the FBI ran her prints. Seems she was a foster parent and her ward presented with a broken bone. When she brought the child in she was questioned as a routine matter but exonerated and charges were presumably brought against the perpetrator.

The computer print-out merely says that she was released. You have to have the actual court records to see that she was exonerated and that in fact she is the one who reported the problem. There was a scramble through all the papers, but we did have the court records, so it didn't hold her up.

The interview went well and she burst into grateful tears. When she apologized for blubbering, the officer demurred. No, she said, it is gratifying to see someone take citizenship so seriously. So many people take it for granted.

I always find these scenes of gratitude a little bit uncomfortable. Because often the person has had to tolerate a lot of indifference and bureaucracy to get to this point, and the humility just emphasizes that power differential.

I was still dwelling on the FBI "hit". Why is the burden on her? How begrudging, how indifferent, how bureaucratic was the investigating officer not to simply make a note in her computer file that she is the good guy here? She is the person whose impulse to mother, to volunteer, to speak up, to advocate for a child brought the abuse out in the open and the perverse result is that she gets stuck with a "child endangerment" label for the rest of her life?

It makes me think back to all of the times that as an involved mother I have had to agree to a background check -- volunteering at the school, as a girl scout leader, as a camp chaperone. I fully support the background checks, of course, but how awful would it be to have to explain the alarming note on my file every single time?

My hope for her, as for many of my naturalization clients, now that they are citizens, is that they prove their American-ness by getting a little more uppity.

Circle Supper

Well, I hope that I read everyone else right, but I think the circle supper was a success after all. Americans spend so much of their time breaking into age-appropriate groups that there isn't hardly ever any real inter-generational give-and-take. And it's too bad, because I do think that something is lost.

I think the retirees got something out of having the kids around. They were mostly well-behaved, although Jones spilled some sauce on the carpet. I really got a lot out of seeing people enjoying their well-planned active retirement. For me, where I am in life, I need to feel that there is a pay-off.

I feel like this was a milestone for Girl because she really held her own in the grown-up conversation, piping up at more-or-less appropriate lulls in the conversation and inserting more-or-less relevant tidbits. She doesn't completely have the feel for it, but the crowd was an awkward mix anyway, so there wasn't really an established rhythm for her to throw off.

Beloved and I pride ourselves on our timing. We hardly ever make the rookie parenting mistake of if the party's fun now, it'll be even more fun in an hour. But we did miss the witching hour by about fifteen minutes, staying for coffee when we should have bolted after the cake. Still, I think we escaped any major bad behavior. We made to leave and he said, "Finally," but I don't think anybody heard.

Reluctant

One unexpected consequence of this OWL curriculum that Girl is working, is that she has come away determined to dam up the floodgates of her oncoming puberty. The whole business of what lies ahead must seem messy and unseemly and not worth the trouble, from where she sits. She is about the age of Anne Rice's vampire girl and it constantly puts me in mind of the tragedy of that character, forever frozen at that stage of development. She allows as how she might want a little more privacy at this age, but she is adamant that that is all the privileges of growing up she will avail herself of, for now, thanks anyway.

How weird and perverse that I am the one watching the pot, watching for the bubbles, thinking I might add a pinch of salt. What's the name of that one boy in your class that you said was hilarious?

I am channelling Erma Bombeck, which is hip nowadays, haven't you heard? We worry that our kids are developing too fast and we worry that they aren't developing fast enough. Yeah, howzbout I leave that pot alone?

Great Blacks in Wax

Dinomom's timeline of Black History Month projects gone awry made me suddenly aware of its complete absence from the curriculum out here. I believe the reasoning is that we're just libertarian cowboys out here on the lone prair-ie not hurting anybody and don't bother us with anything that happened before we joined the union.

I had high hopes for Girl's wax museum project, wherein the 5th graders were supposed to portray animatronic replicas of figures from early American history. Visitors would hit a button and they would recite their bios and then return to a frozen position until the next person hit the button.

Girl went all out. She had even worked up a rap -- "I sent my bro Leo to M-D."

Although she was going for Caecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, her robes made her look the spitting image of Hermione Granger. But at least that takes care of her Hermione Granger costume for Halloween.

Alas, few of the students dressed up and even fewer researched their parts. Next to my Lord Calvert stood John Smith, dressed like Huck Finn and insisting that he was on the Underground Railroad.

No, sweetie, you weren't. Are you perhaps thinking of John BROWN?

No, I freed the slaves.

What slaves, pray, were you freeing in the 1600's?

The slaves on the plantations.

All right then.

It reminds me of when I did a research project on Kenya in fifth grade and listed Kwanzaa as a national holiday. Noone called me out either. Sigh.

Jump Rope for Heart

It's Jump Rope for Heart time and Girl selflessly sat this one out so that Jones could earn all the good swag. Check out Jones's fundraising webpage

B in P.E.

Girl has been down lately because she got all A's this quarter but for a B in P.E. I am truly torn as to how to approach this:

On the one hand, I don't want to play into any brains/ brawn baggage where I discount the P.E. grade.
On the other hand, the P.E. teacher seems like kind of a neanderthal. There seems to be LOTS of dodge ball and not much else.
On the other hand, this might be a good opportunity to practice the "I see that I keep getting B's in your class. How could I be doing better?" speech.
On the other hand, she's already prone to anxiety and I don't want her to get hung up on that kind of perfection.
On the other hand, there is a pizza party if you get all A's. This last seems an unworthy point, except that there are so few perks at our school, that I just feel like someone should throw her a bone.

Sooo, that's a lot of hands.

Baptism by Committee

UU's don't baptize, since, as the saying goes, the Universalist thinks that God is too good to damn him and the Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned. What we do is a "dedication." We had our children dedicated a few Sundays ago. Some weeks prior, the minister had had the group of us parents in to personalize the ceremony and we had filled up a white board with our brainstormed blessings.

A lot of our personal baggage shone through. As many of our group are lesbian/ gay, there was a big emphasis on thinking the unthinkable and on unconditional parental love. Also, many were new parents, still in the first throes of I love you so much it hurts; and hadn't quite gotten to our stage, where it's more like, please let some of my civilizing influence sink in. We veterans were in the minority.

Well, the minister was ill and so it fell to another of the staff to distill our thoughts into something coherent for the dedication. The result was that we all stood and recited the following aloud:

We want for our children to be happy, healthy, adventuresome, and to have a reverence for life. We hope that they enjoy growing up and remember their childhoods findly. We want them to be curious, inquisitive, and always have a sense of humor. We want for our children to be strong and wise, to discover and explore boundless opportunities; and to know and never lose their sese of joy. We want them to grown up in a community that is supportive, sustaining, welcoming, and safe. We wish for them to live a life of love with a sense of enduring hope and the knowledge that no matter what they for and where they go, we will alwys look after them, and never love them any less. We hope that they will trust us and know and remember that everything and anything is possible. We want them to have the strength, wisdom, and courage to make the world a better place -- and to do it together. We wish for them to be frank, forthright and just [mine], and to model it in the world; and that we as parents and a community will provide strong examples of that. We want them to have a spirituality based in many traditions and ideals, and to know the fulfillment of work, reaching out to others, and putting forth effort [also mine]. We want them to know that they will never be lost or forsaken; and that they be able to count on themselves, each other, and the rest of us. We hope that they will find a spiritual path at an early age, but to never stop questioning; and to have a sense of meaning and purpose always, no matter what life brings. We want them to find a path and life that they choose, and always know that they are loved beyond our measure.

Yeesh.

That. Is what happens when you are blessed by committee.

"Art is a gift from Jesus"

My six-year-old spaz-boy Jones is often over-shadowed by his very accomplished 10-year-old sis. He generally accepts her tutelage with adoration, but lately has been making “I just want to win, just once” noises. Time for some alone time with Mom, I reasoned. It came to pass that Girl had a dress rehearsal at a church that was within walking distance of several museums and the big city library. The rehearsal would be three hours long -- too long to pass by talking among the parents and too short to justify the drive home and back. By happy coincidence, it was also “First Friday,” when museums have late hours, so I took Jones along. We dropped sister off and had a lovely adventure, with Jones gamely “leading” me through the city night.

We ran into a father and daughter in the children’s area of the one museum. I’ve had this experience before where I come across a father out with his kids, clearly actively engaged with them. By all rights, this father and I should be able to recognize the same kinship with each other that mommies automatically enjoy. But I always say something too familiar and the daddy bristles. On a field trip, I once made a flip “What are ya gonna do” remark to a dad about going by my mommy title rather than my first name at school functions and got lectured about how we don’t lose our identities when we become parents. Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to talk about comprehensive immigration reform on the bus ride to the zoo?

So Jones come up to me and exclaims “Art is a gift from Jesus!” To which I reply, puzzling where he might have heard this -- on tv?, “Umm, yeah? Is that right?” Because for some reason it’s important to me that I appear to this dad as an indulgent parent rather than child-bride to a fundamentalist cult. The daddy looks at me with acknowledgement and blandly says, “Where do they get these ideas?” And I, taking the offered hand of parental solidarity, say, “Yeah, religion is like sex. They can’t just learn it in the street.” Oh, he folds up like a fan. Oh, I’ve spooked the daddy. He doesn’t meet my eyes the rest of our parallel play in the children’s room.

Now, I know I said the s-word, but I’m telling you. If that dad had been a mom, she would have just said something earthy right back or proffered her own embarrassing anecdote. We won’t have true equality until we can all be like my own step-father, who, having raised his kids on his own, can stand with a bunch of mommies and talk smack on his own kids like the best of them.

Hard out here fo' a shrimp

So my girl is in this choir, and being a shortie mc'short-short, she never has to guess where she'll be placed. So we were talking about how she'd better bring it because she'll be front and center all her life. Spouse walks by, mumbling, "Hard out here fo' a shrimp..."