Life with five and three-year-old daughters means listening to so much needless drama, all of it at full volume.
“No fair!”
“Spider!”
“That’s not a T-Rex! It’s an Allosaurus!”
Then there’s the bloodcurdling scream that makes my legs work faster than my brain. The pain scream.
While acting as Odie’s sous chef, Viva gripped the pan’s edge to flip a pancake instead of its handle. My heart goes out to her. I’ve made the same mistake and it hurts like hell. I got her fingers under cold running water within seconds, California drought be damned, while Odie fetched ice cubes and Motrin. She cried off-and-on between guttural noises of agony for the ten minutes it took the ice to work its numbing magic. Eventually, in a weak yet theatrical voice, Viva allowed that the pain would be greatly improved if she could watch cartoons in Mommy’s chair.
Relief flooded in. Once the negotiations start, I know she’s feeling better.
My life teems with negotiations. Spring break means I show up to parenting full-time, and students’ negotiations shift to email. I must say, though, knock on wood, the latest progress reports went out with nary a peep from them.
Sure, there will be some last minute begging and pleading before final grades, but that mostly comes from the parents. They simply don’t know any better, poor dears.
I brought home shopping bagfulls of notebooks, thick folders of tests, and class sets of essays. Everything that didn’t make it onto the report cards. My plan was to spend a little bit of time each day, maybe an hour or two, marking papers (Coworkers who read my blog, I can hear you. Stop laughing!).
I negotiated Friday the 13th “off” for myself, of course, because I’d already worked the whole day at school. Then Saturday, I negotiated for one complete sloth day. Which turned into two, which turned into seven (What time is it? Damn. Eight). And here we are.
Undoubtedly, my students are just as bad or worse. They had nine full days to do their spring break assignments. I imagine most of them are taking a look at the document for the first time today. Sunday afternoon at the latest. As above, so below.
My spring break calendar has been delightfully full and blessedly empty: Full-time parenting, all 13 episodes of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Google image searches for my next tattoo, household chores, mourning the latest death on The Walking Dead (hashtag EverybodyAteChris), my first spin class and its resulting Acute Pudendal Neuralgia.
That means my crotch hurts. I expected it, I did. There’s only so much you can “prepare” for pain. Viva isn’t the only gal in this house pounding Motrin. With goblets of pinot grigio? Yeah, just me.
Kimmy Schmidt is superb. Most of my “stories” are hour-long dramas that make Odie retreat to another room with a backwards look that seems to say, “Who are you?” This half-hour comedy from co-creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock kept him in the room (hurrah for preserving marital harmony!) and had the best comedic use of spinning class in my vast TV watching experience. If I hadn’t already planned to attend class at the “new” spin studio I’ve been driving by for five years, this would have inspired me. My writer friend (he actually makes a living at it), who also watched and spun this week, posted some provocative questions such as “HAVE we joined a cult?” “Did I just float up to the ceiling, or am I hallucinating?” and “Is this the most amazing workout like ever, ever, ever?” (Yes, he does write for ABC Family). I’m taking my second spinning class tomorrow, assuming that I am able to sit on the bicycle, so I will explore these questions in depth in a future post.
My midlife crisis is humming along apace with Odie’s. These bitches are expensive. We’re relegated to middle class midlife crises, so I’m having to choose between the tattoo and the Botox (Note to self: be sure to tag this post “first world problems).
Pringles is working on her jokes. She still leads with the punchline, but her timing shows promise. Viva’s fingers appear unblistered. They both have ankles hanging out the bottoms of their pants and bellies visible above the waistbands. How am I supposed to finance my midlife crisis with two children growing out of their clothes all the time?
You’re right!
Grandparents.
I need to go make some calls.
Happy first day of spring! May all your noxes be equi.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Pretty Funny
Louis C.K. told David Letterman that in a sold-out comedy show of 15,000 laughing audience members, what he sees are the 1,000 people who aren’t impressed. Letterman chuckles knowingly. Anyone in the business of making people laugh can probably relate. I notice that Louis C.K. is not good-looking, but his fame and comic genius make him appealing. I have no doubt he dates women 20 years younger who would be considered “out of his league.”
I’m a teacher not a comedian, but as Neil Postman pointed out in his brilliant book Amusing Ourselves to Death, all discourse is entertainment now. I’ve even had commenters here tell me that if I made education “fun” I’d have an easier time with students. Even the president needs to crack jokes to keep the nation’s attention during important speeches.
Louis C.K.’s comments made me think of high school and how people develop their popularity. The genetically-blessed don’t have to do anything but be. Everyone else has to do something. I’ve seen an awkward boy on the autism spectrum with echolalia be taken in by a group of thugs who find him entertaining. At first, we teachers tried to “rescue” him, only to discover that somewhere in those thug hearts where there exists no trace of empathy or respect for teachers and learning, was a protective instinct to keep this kid safe from other bullies. He became a sort of bully mascot.
The chubby boy studies John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley and becomes a comedian whose genetic disadvantage is his comedy brilliance. He’s able to attract a cute cheerleader girlfriend. Not an A-lister, to be sure, but one of the peripherally popular girls. Enough to get him invited to the right parties because he makes everybody laugh.
The intellectual elite are in a group by themselves. They are going places. They will run the world. All of those jerks who call them four-eyes, nerds, suck-ups, and losers are going to be begging them for jobs. These kids are going to top universities. They may long for the kind of popularity that we all long for, but they’ll be fine.
No matter when you go to high school, nothing much changes except the technology. Kids submit essays as Google Docs now and read textbooks on tablets. We teachers text our students homework reminders and run literature discussions via blog. The hunt for identity that characterizes adolescence is impervious to technological advances.
I was promiscuous in high school. It isn’t generally accepted for women to admit that, much less to brag about it. The dance of adolescence is supposed to involve boys pushing girls for sex and girls being the gatekeepers. “Nice” girls and “good” girls don’t “give it up.” For all that adults may think high school kids have lost all morality and are basically humping in the stairwells, that dynamic still exists. Longterm couples are probably having sex (we all knew that couple who disappeared together during every social event, or if you were as unlucky as my group, didn’t feel the need to seek privacy). Everyone else is navigating the rules: the explicit and the implicit ones.
Pretty girls don’t have to be funny nor do they have to work to attract men. So the stereotype says. If I’m funny, does that mean I’m not pretty? I’m married, so I don’t need to pursue other men, but I can’t help but want them to look at me with desire. I worked to be seductive and amusing. I never possessed the kind of beauty that made it unnecessary. My self-esteem is wrapped up in being funny and pretty. As I approach my 43rd birthday and tote around my adorable daughters, I relate to E.B. White’s narrator in “Once More to the Lake,” who sees his own inevitable decline and death in the person of his replacement: his son.
I feel a combination of pride and sadness watching my beautiful girls grow. One has big, wide-set eyes and silky blonde hair. The other is tall and skinny with thick wavy long hair. If all goes well, they are both poised to fulfill cultural ideals of attractiveness.
But you bet your ass I’m teaching them how to be funny.
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