E.T.

My great-aunt E.T. passed away yesterday at age 94. Her given name was Ethel, and she went by Et for a long time, then E.T., and yes, she kept a plush E.T. doll in her house. She was a slice, a real one-of-a-kind person, and I am so glad I got to know her a little bit while we lived in Maryland. She lived in a big white house with a tiny white poodle. The dog's name was Snooky (long before the reality TV Snooki) and she had taught Snooky funny tricks. She would say "Snooky, sneeze and sing! Sneeze and sing!" and the dog would dutifully achoo twice and then howl musically. E.T. loved musical theater and the golden age of Hollywood; she had a large painting of Katherine Hepburn in her living room. She also had a large purse, and whenever I saw her she would say "I have something I want to show you," and extract said thing from the depths of her bag, usually a magazine clipping. E.T. had a variety of medical theories that seemed fairly wacky to me (raw foods, that kind of thing) but who can argue, when she lived to be 94?

One of my favorite things about her was that she would tell the most fantastic stories about some weird thing that was going on in her life, and I would be sure it was an elaborate fantasy or delusion, but it would turn out that every detail was completely true. One such story was about a frightening black mold that was growing out of her ceiling; personally I was sure that she was imagining this, but when I went to her house, lo and behold, there it was. I also loved how her conversation would wind around through the most astonishing range of topics, and I would be sure we were out in la-la land, but if I tried to rescue the discussion she would not allow interruption, and darned if it didn't all come together eventually. She was as sharp as a tack and very funny, and her unusual theories and wild speculations were perhaps not so wild after all.

Other guys

Dale drove a minivan full of fifth graders on a school outing, and rather than the car being full of Jordan's regular friends, it was other boys. These fellows have quite a different style than Jordan and his friends. They sat in the back telling dumb blonde jokes and dead baby jokes. Remember dead baby jokes?

Q. How do you get a dead baby to float?
A. Take your foot off its head.

Q. What’s worse than a dead baby nailed to a tree?
A. A dead baby nailed to a hundred trees.

Niiiice. They also recapped horror movies they have seen, including Silence of the Lambs. Dale was stunned. Jordan is nowhere near this level of crudeness. He and his friends are more in the fart and pee zone. When they get together they play Minecraft if we let them, Magic otherwise, and spin endless imaginative yarns involving enchanted creatures and magical powers and confrontations between various souped-up characters. They do not watch a movie like Maze Runner, or read the book. And I would not have it any other way. There is no need for additional cynicism or violence in their imaginative lives, especially since they don’t want it.

But the other boys’ style is more what adult friends of mine remember from fifth grade. The dumb blonde jokes, the horror movies, the works. Girls, too. I don’t remember fifth grade that way, but I don’t really remember much. And I guess whatever happens this year, more exposure is around the corner in middle school. I am not ready.

Jordan had been referring to these guys as the "popular guys." They are the cool kids. I am trying to poke around with Jordan’s language, because “popular” ought to mean well-liked, and I don’t think that’s what he means. Jordan first said a better word would be “well-known,” but then agreed that everyone knows everyone; he settled on “in charge.” In other words, they wield social power, independent of whether people like them. I think this is an astute perception. I wonder why things are this way.

What do you do when kids in your car tell awful sexist jokes? (Or racist, or whatever.) Dale said nothing, wanting to observe, and not wanting to make things even more awkward for Jordan. I get that, but I think that if it had been me, I might have been too angry to drive safely. I think I would have declared, "You will not tell rude jokes in my car," and would have steeled myself for their backtalk and eyerolling. I am sure I will be given the opportunity to respond someday… this was the first time, but it surely will not be the last.

Resolutions

I did it! I kept my New Year's resolution for all of 2014! Or close enough. I resolved to blog at least twice a month and 50 times in the year, and while there were two months in which I only posted once, I totaled a fabulous 54 blog posts. This is great for my own reflection, for keeping a fun family archive, and for including relatives and friends in our lives. I hereby renew this resolution for 2015.

Two other resolutions: First, throw an annual work party. I remember fondly that Lillian used to do this, and Joe, and Dale's bosses, and I think it is great stuff for group identity and getting to know each other. Joe used to do it on Einstein's birthday. I have decided to honor Piaget instead, and I will honor the day of his death, because it is in September (his birthday is in August which is not good with the academic calendar). And this year, I will also have a half-birthday party in February, when there will be lots of PER visitors in town for a conference.

Second, declutter 12 small but important areas of the house (one per month) - i.e. a certain drawer or shelf. For this I need to make a list. Perhaps on the monthly calendar in the kitchen.

Challenge overcome

For Jordan's second middle school application essay he had to respond to the question, "What is a strategy you use to overcome a significant challenge?" He was very resistant to answering this question: he could not think of anything, and got blocked and mad, and we both had to walk away from it. But a few minutes later he was ready to try again, and worked with me to write the following response:

Learning to ride a bike was a significant challenge for me. We tried with training wheels, but that wasn’t helping at all; I could ride, but I had no idea how to balance. Because my bike had gears, Dad could only put on one training wheel, so I always leaned to one side, which sometimes was the wrong side and made me go very slowly. After a lot of practice I was getting faster, but not any better; I had to slow way down at the corners and I still had no idea how to balance. 

One day, Mom and Dad made us learn how to bike. They said that they were going to take off our training wheels and our pedals, which would let us put our feet on the ground and walk while sitting on our bikes. This did not sound super exciting. We were going down to our nearest playground, which is one block away from our house. My little brother Aaron wasn’t liking the idea of learning how to ride when he’s heard horror stories of people falling off and getting seriously hurt. For some reason this made me feel better. Sometimes feeling that I’m not the worst one, I’m not the person at the bottom of the team, it makes me feel better. It doesn’t make me feel better literally but it makes me a little bit more confident. Mom also was bribing us with candy: whenever I coasted for a couple of seconds, or made a certain number of laps, or something else I had not done before, Mom would give me a half a Hershey bar or some other small piece of candy. Before we had started without bringing any materials, but after we started getting into it, which was only two days (Aaron spent half of the first day arguing), Mom brought cones and crackers. The cones were for going in between them, kind of like a slalom. Sometimes I would have to go through the cones and run over the cracker. It was pretty hard.

At first I didn’t exactly like the idea. I just wanted to have one of those easy days, without any homework, just a nice calm day, a day open for anything. I was considering learning riding a bike to be like homework, so I didn’t exactly like the idea. I don’t remember exactly how I felt but Mom says I was really mad. But since I am really good at keeping feelings in, it doesn’t exactly look like I’m super super mad, or sound like it for that matter. Meanwhile, my little brother Aaron was crying loudly against the fence. He is almost the complete opposite of me: he is pretty sensitive to his own feelings, which makes him show them to everyone else. But I still have tons of fun with him.
For learning how to ride a bike, one strategy that we used was biking with training wheels, but that didn’t work. We overcame the challenge by taking off our training wheels and pedals to learn how to balance, because pedaling is pretty easy. Another strategy was bribing us with candy and challenging us with cones and crackers, which made it feel kind of like a game instead of boring homework. Another part of my strategy is to keep my feelings in, because if I let them out then they kind of get a hold of me and make me simply not do it instead of not wanting to do it but doing it anyway. They make me feel reluctant even if it’s fun.

Because of all this, riding on the bike became fun! It was actually fun in the first place, but it’s never fun if you don’t think it’s fun and you don’t want to do it.

This essay talks in terms of a specific challenge, rather than how to overcome challenges in general, but I think that is appropriate for a ten-year-old. It was hard for him to see the strategies involved, but I think we got there: employ a good technique, make it a game, improve your attitude.

I could write a meta-essay about how he (and I) overcame the challenges of writing this darned essay. I tried to make it easy by using a helpful technique (letting him dictate), and projecting a cheerful attitude. But before he was ready to write he had to get through his own emotional response (about being required to do something he didn't want to do, especially a writing thing). Eventually, we actually had fun with it, and I think he experienced some of the satisfaction of articulating something about yourself through reflective writing. But it's not fun as long as you don't think it's fun and you don't want to do it.