So okay, that previous post wasn’t real mature. On my drive to take Nicolaus to preschool – which is obscenely far and makes me feel guilty because of gas and polution and because planets are precious and delicate and I know that somewhere a baby snow owl is weeping because we had to put him in the school 20 miles away with the cool old blocks and the shaded playground (our son I mean, not the baby owl) – I thought about my post.

I thought about those lousy teachers who humiliated me for reading big books and for writing stories and drawing pictures of things they weren’t talking about. And for a second I stopped being cranky long enough to see it from their perspective: Here was a mostly mute little girl. She is sitting quietly in class, working hard, with her head down, always working working, but not working on anything related to the topic at hand. And it’s very important stuff we’re covering here. She needs to learn the parts of speech! How will she ever learn to write worth a shit if she doesn’t learn the parts of speech? And FACTORING. For the love of God, we’re dividing up integers here – it’s practically a MIRACLE – and it’s as if she doesn’t even care.

They were right, I didn’t care. I didn’t give a tiny little crap about factoring or diagramming sentences. The textbooks for history and science were interesting, but once I had read the chapter I didn’t have time to sit there and listen to the teacher go over her outline of the same stuff on an overhead transparency. And I really, really did not have time to copy down the transparency word for word. I mean, what in the fuck is that? Even court reporters and medical transcriptionists don’t have to copy things down word for ever-loving word.

I came up with my own short hand system of symbols and letters, just to make it a little more exciting. Mix it up, you know? That did not go over well, and to my horror was held up and waved for all the kids to see. I remember hearing “What on EARTH?” and lots of laughing. It was awesome.

Another time I spent a week trying to see how little paper I could possibly use. I copied all of the overheads in teeny tiny letters and scrunched all the lines together, cramming four and five pages worth of stuff onto the front of a single sheet of notebook paper. That was fun, until the teacher noticed what I was doing and made me re-copy all of it.

That was in fifth grade, the point where I recognized the situation as an all-out hostile one. These people were deliberately wasting my time and were putting my shy ass on the spot – on purpose, just to be whores. So in order to keep things fair, I started stealing stuff from the supply closet. Books, crisp new pencils, typing paper. Clean and white and free of those annoying lines, typing paper was perfect for drawing on. Over the next two years, I probably stole – gosh, easily ten dollars worth of paper.

Well think about it. That’s an assload.

Anyway, I was driving and thinking about all of this… and in addition to thinking that when my kids turn 18 I should send a big check to Greenpeace, I thought about those teachers.

What other choice did they have? What could they have done with a kid who checked out in first grade? What could they have done to make me pay attention?

In defense of the whores, I can’t think of a dang thing.

I know there’s a good chance that the novelty will wear off and I’ll be bored of drawing little kids and eventually it’ll seem like just another job. But for now can I just say WOOOOOOoooooooo!! I GET PAID FOR THIS.

Oh and! To the teacher who crumpled up my drawing and threw it in the trash and to the other teacher who embarrassed me in front of the whole class because I was drawing instead of listening? And to the art teacher who was such an unbelievable whore to art students who weren’t super excited about school! Spirit! And football games and decorating the halls for homecoming or whatever…
Fuck to you all. I’m getting paid to draw little swirlies and stuff. R YEW JILIS??

This post might be like
phone calls
cell phone

cutting out.

I’m that
therfucking tired.

But I can’t go another min
osting

Graham

steps. Talking more
omparison to Mr.Do you want me to tell you the Odyssey in its entirity? And DO you?

but still. He says “Kitty” and “tree” and bath and ball and some weird unpronounceable thing that clearly means Mouse. Ver M
therfucking cute.

always ready to smile and laugh, and I swear he loves to la
AT ME. Just like
father. Couple
Wise asses.

sleeping so much better lately. In his motherf crib!

eats and works and does hand motions to Itsy Bitsy spider

demands that we do his bidding. He’ll grab your hand and make you pat him with it, or he’ll grab my hand and shove a toy horse into it and then move my hand up and down so the horse walks.

This is nothing like what I want to write. That all makes him sound like a stereotype of a baby. Which he sort of is. But he’s MY moth

aby and if I think about it too directly I can almost lose my mind with gratitude.

ife s too mother

perfect.

Nicolaus has decided that he is cool with the fact that there are other kids his own age who exist on this planet. Now when we go to a playground, instead of hanging out by himself on the outer perimeter he walks right up to anyone his size or smaller. And he starts talking to them.

I knew this guy in college named Roger. Roger was a pretty nice guy, but more than once I almost stabbed Roger in the eye with my pen just to make him stop talking about technical details of things that I didn’t need to know.

I accidentally asked him a question one time, and he said “Oh, well see that’s actually very interesting…”
And so began the most tedious 45 minutes of my entire life, even including all those meetings I had to go to when I worked at SBC that were all about some newfangled internet “ADSL” crap. Yawn, right? At least at SBC they gave us little notepads we could use to take notes and silently ask our team mates helpful questions like “Are we going to develop boilerplate for this technology?” and “Dude, the guy giving the presentation SO WANTS YOU” and “I think Neil just farted.”

But Roger didn’t give me a little notepad. All I could do was stand there and wait for him to finish.

I’m not saying that Nicolaus is tedious to talk to. He’s not like Roger. No no nonoooo, I’m not comparing him to that guy at all. Except in the sense that to other children, he is exactly like Roger. Most of the time he just starts lecturing them on a random topic and the poor kids have no idea what the motherfucking fuck he’s talking about, with the stalactites and stalagmites and dinosaurs evolving into birds and carnivorous dinosaurs became? Hawks! And owls and other carnivorous birds. And parasaurolophuses became those kinds of birds that have stuff on their heads.

You zoned out reading that just now, didn’t you? Admit it. It’s cute and cool because a little kid is saying it, and *I* love listening to his wonderful lessons but I’m A) his mother and B) a huge nerd with few friends. But really and truly let’s admit that there is a reason that Ross Geller has a hard time with the ladies. Except in that one season where Tyra Banks was a paleontologist, but I had pretty much stopped paying attention by that point.

What?

Oh. My kid talks a lot.

So I didn’t know what to tell him when he came home from school bummed out because the other kids ignore him. “I try and TRY to talk to them and tell them about insterding things, and you know what they do? They just walk away! And don’t say anything.”

My heart broke for him a little, because he’s trying. Damn you, other kids – would it kill you to nod your head and pretend that you see the invisible chihuahuas and/or care deeply about volcanoes?

I didn’t know what to tell him. Kevin, any ideas?

Kevin sighed, “Well, Nicolaus I’ll tell you something about other kids…”

I waited for the words of wisdom. The strategy, the key he needed to make friends in life.

“It doesn’t get any better. Other kids are just weird. And when you’re a grown up, you’ll find that other grown ups are weird too. A lot of times, what they do just doesn’t make any sense. It’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

Okay, so it’s not a strategy, but I think it helped. Hey it’s nothing personal, people are freaks.

****
I started writing this entry on Wednesday, but was blinded by a headache so I didn’t have a chance to post it. Thursday I mentioned to his teacher that he’s been upset that the other kids ignore him when he tries to talk to them.
“Oh!” She looked to make sure he wasn’t in earshot, “That’s because they don’t realize that he’s talking to them. Nicolaus talks all the time. He walks around narrating everything that he’s thinking or doing, so when he starts talking to them…” she shrugged her hands and smiled.

I don’t want him to stop his constant outer dialog. He’s been doing it since he was a baby, and I can’t imagine what he’d do if words were stuck inside his head. So for now we’re sticking to they’re just weird, Nicolaus. I don’t know why. They just are.

Yeah, so the week is bumping along. A little better, but only because we are forcing it to improve. I did manage to get my hair the exact right shade of purple, bringing joy and celebration to no one except me. I’ve been trying to get this color for almost a year, and now that it’s done it’s only going to last a couple of weeks but hey! It’s been a rough week. I’m clinging to the triumph. Woooooooooo go me!

Shit. Graham just dumped an entire bag of pretzels out for the dog all over the dining room floor. Mouse adores this baby with all of his quivering, pointy little heart.

Which! Pretzels! Perfect! Because in place of an actual post with actual syntax and cohesive parts of speech and all, here is a little comic I sketched out months ago. One day I’ll make a category for these or something.

The proper way to introduce solids to your baby