tuckova

late birthday present

For my birthday, Squire said he would destroy my enemies. Apparently my enemies are people who litter, people who stand in the tram doorways, and people who are stupid on the internet. That sounds about right.

www.flickr.com/photos/53678649@N00/4672018463/

Someday I will figure out the scanner and then I will be unstoppable.

sweetheart, bitter heart

We had some Drama and Hurt Feelings this weekend. Apparently his friends' visit on Friday was not all that and a bag of chips. They were to come over and play cards and look at his photos from vacation, of which there were maybe a hundred, plus video footage. And the friends were not very interested. They were talking about other stuff while they were looking and sometimes they weren't looking at all.  I mean, I have to say: more than 20 photographs and you have to really love the photographer. On the other hand, your two best friends? On the first hand, the photos aren't all that good, since for example he views the whole "Don't photograph against a window using flash" as nothing more than superstition. But back to the other hand: who are they, art critics? It takes like 20 minutes to look at the pictures and be interested in them, or pretend to be interested because you care about the person who took them.

So we had this talk, with his long legs draped across my lap because he is too old to sit in my lap unless it's really, really bad. This talk that involved prolonged staring at the ceiling because he is too old to cry about just hurt feelings. This talk where I explained that being an only child means that you're used to having people who care about you pay full focused attention to you, and you're even used to paying full focused attention to the people you care about, but that other kids may not see this kind of attention as a kind of caring. Even some adults don't see it that way. That because you were brought up by adults who were pretty interested in your stories, that may give you the idea that the stories are interesting, and some of them are, but some of them are only interesting to the people who can make time for them. Which two adults who only have one child can make time for a whole host of stories, particularly when they think that the one child is going to be paying attention to their stories, but some adults don't act that way, and a 13-year-old peer might not feel that way. That it can happen through the course of your life that no matter how interesting your stories are, no matter how interesting you are, some people will never be able to pay full attention to you. And I think one of the important things about you is that because you know how important it feels to be heard, you are a very good listener. And this is a blessing and a curse, to be able to fully listen to people and hear their stories and the stories behind them, and to remember them, but there is nothing but sadness if you expect other people to have this gift, or even think of it as a good thing, because many people don't.

I said it may for example happen that you are in the middle of what you perceive as a pretty awful time, and you will be asked to pay attention to someone else's story about how one time somebody was maybe looking at them funny in line. And you will feel both like you need to hear this story because you are vitally interested in other people and obliged to listen to them besides, and you will feel hurt because they haven't asked about you. I said it may happen that somebody gives you eighty percent of their attention, ninety percent, and you won't feel happy because you wanted a hundred. A hundred and ten. You could live like this until you're forty. Purely hypothetically I'm saying.

But what you need to know is that most people don't think of things this way. Most people are thinking of themselves, and they seem to live in the doors of trams, in the grocery store lines. But many people, people who are worth knowing, devote the amount of attention that they can. So you can choose to be angry because people don't pay what you consider to be enough attention, and go through life lonely; or you can hold out this measuring cup and be hurt when you find it empty or only half full; or you can focus on finding people who are worth your attention, and hope that they will pay attention to you in their own way, even if it's different. In any case: I'm not kidding about photographing against the glass. Seriously, that has to stop.

kids these days

A bunch of kids in Squire's class have facebook accounts. They're posting things that I, as a parent, would not want my child posting. Even if the account is locked, one can still see all the things of which they are "fans" and so on. So for example, I know that this 12 year old classmate of his, real first and last name, is interested in meeting men, long passionate kisses, and looking at men's asses in tight pants. What to think?

a. The parents know, and they don't care.
b. The parents don't know, and don't care.
c. The parents don't know, but would care.
d. other.

An American friend of mine suggested bringing this up at the school; that the school should have some kind of program to address it. To my knowledge, nothing along the lines of internet-savvy behavior is part of the curriculum. I don't know if kids are taught about it at all. Certainly Czech television doesn't have James Lipton telling them to give it a ponder. Is this a situation where one sticks one's head in, or not? I worry about these kids just putting more of themselves out there than they would if they were thinking straight; I worry about somebody getting hurt. Some pretty shitty things happened to me when I was a teenager that would not have happened if I had been prepared for them; there's stuff I would have avoided if I'd known how to. It is also true that I was warned very sternly not to do things that I went ahead and did. So maybe this risking of yourself is part of growing up?

What would you do?

dear people with children (or with opinions about children)

How do you handle your child's holiday giving? Because I am lost. I think that up until about (some age) you tell the kid the list of people to whom they should give gifts (which is sort of sadly correlated with "people from whom they can expect gifts" but here we are), and you discuss those people's interest, hobbies, etc., and then you take the kid shopping. Or, even better, you make the kid create something for each person. But this year I left Squire to his own devices and he did nothing for anybody. Whoops.

I think it makes more sense in terms of the "spirit of giving" for him to MAKE something, something personal. For the last couple years I had Squire make the Christmas cards with his own sweet hands, and that was his contribution to the gifties. But this year he didn't want to make the cards himself, and I didn't want to stand over him screaming. He also didn't want to just pick out gifts for me to buy and ship, nor did he want to take credit even when he helped me pick, which I appreciate in a way although it left him sort of stranded. I suggested alternatives (draw a picture? write a letter?) but I feel like, dammit, it's not MY GIFT. In retrospect I think I cut him loose too soon, but I really don't know.

Understand that I am not talking about epic gift giving. I give Christmas gifts to family only, for... well, complicated reasons. Of course also there's the "husband who doesn't do Christmas" element to consider. The man just doesn't. And what I "just doesn't" is pretend to buy individual presents from other people. And why should I nudge a kid when there's an adult in the house modeling the very behavior I'm saying isn't okay? And why isn't it okay? (I know why I think it isn't, and it's to do with "fairness" but really: if some people don't celebrate a holiday, why do they have to give gifts to the people that do celebrate that holiday, right?)...

So I dunno. All gifts this year that went outside our trio came from me, and I signed them as being from the three of us. And now Squire is in minor anguish because he didn't really send anything, and he SHOULD be in anguish, in my opinion, because people sent him things. I like to hope that this anguish will translate into him moving off his butt next year and doing something for the people who do things for him, but... am I supposed to be driving, still? Did I take my hands off the wheel too soon?

Your thoughts?

phone conversation

SQUIRE: Hey Mom.
ME: Hey.
S: What are you doing?
ME: I'm talking to you.
S: You sound sad. Are you sad?
ME: No, I'm okay. A little tired.
S: Well you can be honest with me if you are sad like you sound sad, and I think you do really sound sad for real. I trust this phone's transmitting capabilities to the full extent of... to the hilt.
ME: I... I'm fine, sweet. I'll see you soon.
S: Your laugh sounds good, now.

school in nature and books

Pretty much every year the elementary grades spend one week of school out "in the nature"-- it's camp, basically. Squire's first grade teacher didn't take them because she was afraid they'd all drown in the lake or get eaten by bears (that one did wonder for the fears of a number of students, I am sure, since she saw no situation without seeing a positively Gothic ending). But anyway, Squire's enjoyed the camps he's been to: he comes home with a dozen adventure stories, rich with the smell of campfires and unwashed boy.

He decided he didn't want to go this year because they're combining the two fifth grades and he doesn't like the other fifth graders and he particularly dislikes their teacher. He decided so firmly that he didn't even bring the forms home, so the first I heard of it was at the parent/teacher meeting when everybody was talking like they knew all about it. Awhoops: CAUGHT.

So anyway. The last week has been kind of a battle of him trying to put his foot down and me insisting that he doesn't have a leg to stand on. It is school. If he doesn't go there, I still have to send him to school every day to be babysat by the fourth grade teacher, and he still has to do the work. So. I've told him if he has a compelling reason, a logical articulated reason, then I will consider his REQUEST to not go, but he cannot REFUSE to go on the basis of "don't feel like it". We've gone rounds.

Don't get me wrong; I am not unsympathetic to disliking people. I myself dislike wide swaths of humanity. It's just, I ground my dislike in actions and outcomes. I dislike people who drive through crosswalks without checking for pedestrians because they hit me. I dislike people who are sloppy because other people have to clean up after them. I dislike teachers who talk about everything in terms of fear and danger because they frighten children into paralysis. So if he can say he dislikes this other teacher because of some action that has affected him in some way, I am behind him. But I suspect that the reason he doesn't like her is because she is the teacher of the rival class, which is the elementary school equivalent of being the coach of the opposing team: they make good lightning rods.

Since the classes will be combined next year, the sooner the two groups of students get over this rivalry and start learning to exist in each other's spheres (and respect each other's teachers) the better. I wish I knew more sports cause I bet there's a handy metaphor in their lexicon somewhere. Here: Imagine an apt sports metaphor for me, and I'll meet you in the next paragraph.

Anyway, so today he came home and said he'd decided to go because however bad the other kids would be, it wouldn't be as tedious as my constant harping on logic and reason, and the kids from his class would probably be enough fun to balance it out, and resisting it was taking the opportunity for fun out of it. He is smart, no?

So.

In other news, we're reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" which is just a great book to begin with and is enhanced now because I'm really enjoying Squire's interpretations of it as we go. Understand: this is a child who has not lived in the States, so on the one hand he's reading it as a foreigner would: it describes a past world that is not the world he knows or even an ancestor of a daily world he knows. On the other hand, he goes to school with a bunch of Roma kids, so he does understand what racism looks like (and xenophobia too of course) and the amount of sense it makes and what it's like to batter your head against it. And then plus there's sentences that are so simple and delightful, and the secondary characters (especially Calpurnia and Miss Maudie, who I would like to have run my house and garden respectively)-- they're like snapshots of a person you know or you'd like to know better, and it's a pleasure to read a book like this, that makes my head hum.

Practical Math

For Easter we dyed a whole carton of eggs which white eggs are not always easy to find here but we found a whole carton of them and dyed them with fantastic colors and then ate one just to see of course and took the rest to the cottage and Saturday night the Easter Bunny who had had perhaps a bit too much of the stuff with the human face hid the eggs all around the inside of the cottage, had to hide them inside because there was a snowstorm outside, and left a note telling Squire he had to find all eleven (because 12 made - 1 eaten = 11 left; Easter Bunny does math real good!) before he could get any of the chocolate; Sunday morning he was hunting and hunting and only found nine, which is amazing, because the cottage is like 9x9 feet and nearly no furniture. How hard can it be to find 2 eggs? The Easter Bunny in mufti was counting on her fingers frantically: one in the coat pocket, one in the tool box, one in the... no, we found all those! So we all got dressed and the fire was tended to and glasses were donned and the eggs were hunted ... but to no avail. Then Friar pointed out that a carton of eggs only has 10 in it here. HAD SQUIRE FOUND ALL THE EGGS? SHOW YOUR WORK.

Squire writes:

Oh, my G-O-D!
I got no real I.D.
But I say that I got one
to pass through the agencies

But no one really knows
That I like CD's
Like the rapping one's
And the Hip-Hop one's.

And then someone knows
that I got no RID
probably from the agencies
But it's too late!
I passed those stupid agencies!
Into another country-ry-ry-ry...

And when I come home,
I see a little tree,
A little Christmas tree,
Standing all alone,
In my living room,
And then I know,
That my real place is
home-ome-ome.

clearly, it's a poetic and somewhat metaphorical approach to the immigrant experience with an emphasis on the demands of paperwork, addressing the issues of identity and the definition of home in a culturally complex environment. right? or maybe he just wants to be sure we get a tree?

freedom of choices vs. freedom from choice

NIGHT 1
ME: Tonight, instead of arguing, let's vote for which game we play.
FRIAR: Catan!
ME: Catan!
SQUIRE: I want to play Clue.
ME: But we voted.
SQUIRE: I don't care.
[argue argue argue; we play Clue]

NIGHT 2
ME: Do you want to play Clue or Carcassone tonight?
SQUIRE: I want to play TransAmerica, it's my favorite.
ME: But I offered Clue or Carcassone.
SQUIRE: [heavy sigh, with drama] I guess we'll do what you want to do anyway.
ME: Well... I want to play a game.
[we play TransAmerica]

NIGHT 3:
ME: Okay, how about if you narrow it down to two games you want to play, and then we can choose one of those two.
SQUIRE: I don't want to choose only two games. I want to choose five and then you choose one of those.
ME: O... kay?
SQUIRE: Catan, Carcassone, TransAmerica, Risk, or Clue!
ME: Any of those... I guess Catan or Carcassone.
FRIAR: Catan!
SQUIRE: I don't want to play Catan.
[we play Clue and Carcassone]

Whereupon it was determined by me, who is tired of this Every Single Night, that games shall henceforth be played in alphabetical order. HA! It's a very democratic approach the games, albeit not to the players. But it is more democratic than the dictatorship we were sliding into, and sometimes in a democracy we have to do things for the common good, and it's to everybody's benefit to not have a stupid argument over what game to play every. single. night. Amiright.

11/44 = 1/4

We had the quarter-year parent/teacher conference at Squire Tuck's school. BOY do I like his new teacher. She just does so many small subtle things that I think are correct. Like she offered either individual private consultations or she said she could talk to us as a group. Offering to talk to us as a group says: We're all adults here. We're all working on the team that wants our kids educated. This runs circles around standing out in the hallway shifting our weight from one foot to the other for one or two hours, wondering what the hell was going on, and the teacher exhausted by the end. So we sat together and we all heard about little Vaclav and little Martin and little I don't know, some other kids' name that isn't actually a kid in the class. And then some parents stayed behind to talk about private concerns; I stayed behind to tell her I appreciated her approach and how much happier Squire was this year, and that I hoped she'd let us know if there was anything we could be doing.

It's always interesting to hear the parents' side of the story, isn't it? You learn so much. The mother who is defending her child's behavior is the one whose kid is a bully. The one who is surprised to hear that her kid is flailing is also the one who just had a baby. I am the only parent with a notebook for writing down what the teacher says, and I think at first that it is because one of my superpowers is Preparedness! but then it may also be because I'm the only one who can't hold a thought in her head for more than 5 minutes unless it's printed in front of me. I wonder what correlation that will be found between me and my kid, as I sit doodling in the margins of the notebook I brought and listening to the other parents.

No, yeah, I get it.

Out of the nine boys in the class, two have not yet been to the principal's office for discipline problems; one of them is our boy.The teacher says he's in his own world, and existing in that world keeps him from learning as much as he could, but he's not dragging anybody else away with him. It's both good and a little sad. The endless renderings of detailed spaceships, each window perfect, hold him drifting in orbit away from grammar and division; if he didn't have a tutor 3x a week, I doubt he'd be pulling in the Bs and Cs he's getting now. But it seems to me that now he's doing this because the schoolwork is boring and he'd prefer to draw, rather than because he is confused or because he needs the escape, so it's quite an improvement over last year. Baby steps, you know. And you could do worse than be a drawer of starships.

Last month the applications came around for the kids who want to transfer into college prep schools beginning next year. You were supposed to pay for the applications, and we didn't know, and I kept asking him about it and he didn't know, and we went rounds, and the date passed. I spent about 5 minutes being upset about it. Well, maybe a whole day. It's a door, closed, which always makes me want to kick at it. And Friar said: You cannot honestly think he could handle the workload college prep school when he can't even remember to tell us to order the applications. Which is: yeah.

This has been a Squire Tuck update.