My oldest son is graduating high school (hopefully) in 10 days. There were more than a few moments of doubt that we would ever get to this place. Yeah, my kid has got some issues and I have more than a few issues with school, with expectations, and with life in general.
So, it is as a parent of this type of child, and as a person who hated and did not fare all that well in school, any school, that I look at these commencement exercises as not a beautiful stepping stone, but something to be done with, preferably quickly.
First of all, the ceremony is on my birthday. Name for me one person who wants to sit at a graduation ceremony on any day, much less their birthday. Seriously, please, tell me and I will call them up so that they can take my place. My kid will never know.
Second of all, I received in the mail a laundry list of rules of etiquette that irritatingly took the jam out of my doughnut. One of the bolded headlines is MARCHING INSTRUCTIONS. Is this a class of Hitler Youth, or just, you know, regular kids?
A few tasty excerpts that really get my blood boiling are:
" you have paid for your cap and gown so you can "keep it" as a souvenir"
Whoo, whoo, whoo! Effing really? How much did that cost? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO WITH A GRADUATION GOWN AFTER GRADUATION? And why is "keep it" in parentheses? Is it because you won't "keep it"? Your "parents" "will" in their "garage"?
What a total waste.
" boys should wear a dress shirt and tie, dress slacks with dark socks and dark dress shoes. Girls should wear a dress or a skirt and blouse "
a) Great. There goes another $150
b) What century is this? Why do girls have to wears skirts or dresses?
Gross.
" A professional photographer will be taking a picture of each graduate as he/she receives the diploma. (this part is inexplicably underlined) These pictures will be available for purchase on line on a secure website. "
Meaning: Cha ching
I will take my own shitty pictures, thanks.
Oh, and " the ceremony will be recorded and you will be able to order a copy."
Oh, goody. Nothing better I can think of than fast forwarding through two hours of yawn-tastic ceremony to watch three seconds of my kid NOT looking at the camera. And I get to pay for it? Where do I sign?!?
One last thing: "you will receive your diploma only if all financial obligations with the school have been cleared, and if you exhibit appropriate behavior during the entire ceremony."
I would love for them to try and tell me that my kid did not behave, so therefore, he does not get a diploma. Nice try. We are finally out of here, I think the kid is entitled to flip off the principal, no? I mean, NO. I don't want my kid to flip off the principal, but seriously? Way to try and scare us into being good little automatons one last time.
Maybe I am just an antisocial jerk. Maybe I just don't get it. I mean, I get (to a point) rules. I get (to a point) ceremony. I just don't get why my kid can't wear sneakers. I don't get why there is not an open bar for parents (they would clean up!) to make the ceremony more enjoyable. And I really don't get mortarboards.
Anyway, Happy Graduation, everyone! ***takes a shot***
When most people see the word processing, they most likely think of what a computer does. It transforms information into readable text, pictures, kitty cat memes, etc. It processes computer jibberish into a medium that our brain recognizes, quickly.
What I want to talk about is the way people interpret information. Specifically, how me and my youngest son see and hear things.
When I was a child, before I began school, I was a genius. I read whole books way before I entered Kindergarten. I had a grasp of the English language that probably rivaled that of an average ten or twelve year old when I was five and my use of sarcasm and humor made adults weep with glee.
It was universally accepted (okay, my mom WAS my universe when I was five) that I would get straight A's all through my school years, that I would graduate from Princeton and become a successful brain surgeon/astrophysicist, or at the very least, a writer that used correct grammar.
It didn't turn out that way; far from it, in fact.
By the time I hit second grade, I was already "not working up to my potential". I fidgeted. I lost my homework. I didn't DO my homework. My desk and bookbag were overflowing with crap and my mother and my teacher were both shaking their heads (at best) and screaming (at worst) at me over my laziness.
"If you would only APPLY yourself!"
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that throughout my school years, I'd at least have a couple, two, t'ree bucks.
I carried on believing that I had just been a lazy student until I had my own children and I started seeing my struggles in theirs; especially, in my youngest son's.
Like me, he talked and read very early. My mom often recounts a story of E, sitting on her lap, at about eighteen months old, reading her Scrabble letters out loud while we played. He was and is a very bright boy.
Within the first few months of Kindergarten, we realized that he was having trouble, though. It turns out, this trouble had a name: Processing Disorder.
There are three basic types of processing disorders: Auditory, Visual and Sensory. Sound, Sight and Touch/Feel or Tactile.
E and I both have trouble with the way we interpret what we read. Often, our brains are on the next paragraph, while our eyes are still on the one before. It leads to confusion.
We are also not very good at following spoken directions, which is part of the reason for my doing so poorly in school, when nearly every class relied on lots of talking by the teacher and lots of note taking by the students. I would invariably get lost at some point, quit trying to figure out what I was supposed to be writing and would start daydreaming and doodling.
When the time came to turn in the homework that was assigned during the drone, I would usually have missed it, taking the parking break off the steamroller at the top of the hill of crap that was my missed assignments.
In classes that I had a good grasp of: History or English, I could usually make it up and get by; but math, especially Algebra, was another story. If I missed one thing, I was lost for days and weeks, often never to get back on top of things. It didn't help that my Algebra teacher was the same one for three years in a row and that she was a psychotic, polyester pantsuit wearing, drunk. I was afraid to approach her for help and when I did, she repeated the tired old line about being lazy and not applying myself, instead of understanding that I was having trouble. Needless to say, I didn't ask for her help very often, except under threat of bodily harm or house arrest carried out by my mother.
I was grounded for approximately 742 days of my high school career.
So, when I got an email from my youngest's teacher about some writing assignments he had missed, I responded quickly that I would talk to him about it and we would get things straightened out as soon as possible. Only, I read it wrong...
And mixed up the assignments she was talking about...
And confused the whole situation further...
And had to ask her for more time, because I had made things worse...
And it hit me that as much as I have learned to compensate for my struggles with processing, it is a lifelong challenge.
I have to remind myself to slow down, to re-read, to clarify things that I am not quite sure about.
And sometimes, I forget.
And I think of all the times that I have felt totally lost, when it seemed everyone around me knew what they were doing, even now, still, today.
When everyone else brings the paperwork to the meeting and is on time; I wonder why it is so hard for me. Why am I such a scatterbrain?
And I look at my kid's desk and backpack and have a flashback of my own.
And I feel for my kid.
And I am thankful that I "get" it.
And I hope I can help him.
And I think that he will probably always struggle, as I have.
And then, the ray of light: I have a life. I have held on to jobs. I have made something of myself, though it is miles short of the goals I have set. I have SURVIVED.
He will, too.
It sounds like a Cold War era thriller or some End of Days movie. It isn't.
No, the Brassica Project is something so hideous, so unspeakably nightmarish that if it were a movie, it would be Saw 7. Was there a Saw 7 already? Well, whatever Saw comes next.
It started innocently enough. A school project for science. Yay! This will be fun! We get to do it together! Over Spring Break!
Wait. What? You have to complete a science project over Spring Break? Uh, okay...less fun, but, WEGETTODOITTOGETHER! What a great time to bond over Elmer's glue and...
Wait...
Oh, there's a list of items we need to buy?
And we can only use these very specific items?
But, Brassica at least comes in lots of colors, so we can pick that, right?
No.
It's not that Brassica is ugly. Okay, for a flower, it's kind of ugly. Yellow is not my favorite but, whatever.
The first time I had to help with this project, it was for my oldest son. The lessons I learned the first go round were:
1. Children should never be left unsupervised with paint: Ever.
2. When paint dries, the dowel you so carefully painted sticks to the newspaper that you put down to protect the table.
3. I would rather sell my soul to the Devil himself than ever, ever undertake this gluey, horrific nightmare again.
After buying three different colors of pipe cleaners, wooden dowels, two colors of some eco-nightmarish foam, paint and a terracotta pot to put it in, I was down two hours of my life and $25.
And, just as an aside, what is the deal with learning about plants by building a replica? Can't we just grow one? Wouldn't that be
smarter/easier/more meaningful/less wasteful/greener?
And the fun hadn't even begun, yet.
Turns out that this Beelzebub foam does not stick very easily. And the wooden dowels need to dry over night before gluing them into place...which then, also needs to dry overnight.
Overall, we spent 5-6 hours on this ugly, useless project; all for a smiley face sticker and a place on the shelf with the other 27 identical, crappy looking "flowers".
WHAT THE HELL?!?!???
I tried to block it from my memory and it worked until the last day of school when B brought it home.
Really? Now I have to display this? Where is my jar of tonsils? I want to put them on the same shelf. Pretty sure that procedure was less painful and no less attractive.
After a few months, I was able to remove this atrocity from view, under the guise of "saving" it (in the garbage can) for the future.
I almost forgot about it. I had been drifting blissfully through the school years when, I saw it: The instruction sheet for another Brassica project. NOOO! Dear God, NO!!! WHYOHWHYOHWHY?!?!?!???
We managed to live through that one as well, but barely.
Our two youngest are so close in age that they are in the same grade at school. When my middle son didn't receive this project the same year as the youngest, I thought we were in the clear.
But then...
Like an antelope munching unawares, I was pounced upon by another sheet of instructions.
This time, I flat out refused. I voiced my concerns to the teacher. I told her where to go what I thought of this insane project.
In the end, I relented, but only because I liked this teacher so much in every other respect and because the class was such a small size that having C's ugly flower missing would have been pretty obvious.
Three boys. Three nearly identical wood and foam and pipe cleaner flower models. They seem to have managed to escape mostly unscathed, but I still have nightmares about it. I wake up screaming "Wait! The glue hasn't dried! The petals are falling off!", before I realize that I will never, ever again need to undertake another Brassica project.
