Winning Is Over-Rated

I was walking Lola the dog.

Or as passersby like to ask, “Was she walking me?”

She began trying to haul me over when she saw another black standard poodle.

He was with his owner, not on a leash. When this dog saw us, he sat and looked back at the man. The man asked, “Can he say hello?” And when I said yes, he nodded to the dog and the dog walked to us.

But when he got up close to Lola, he growled at her. The dog, presumably taught this by his owner, didn’t like the way Lola was dancing around with excitement.

The owner asked me how old Lola is. (Answer: 8) His dog is 2.

“Oh,” he said, packing that syllable with as much disapproval as possible.

Clearly, Lola and I had just lost the dog-behaving competition.

But why did it have to be a competition at all?

I like that my kids play sports. But guess what I don’t like? The parents. I thought the school was kidding when it had parents sign an agreement that they would behave themselves. It didn’t work. You should hear what some parents yell from the stands. Horrible stuff screamed at children in public. And these parents are absolutely convinced that their child, if only they push them enough, is destined for the Olympics or the professional leagues. It’s bizarre and sad and horrible.

What’s worse is that same competition is well-entrenched in the classroom. I know one girl who just finished a high-school career of AP and honors classes. She hated her classmates, said that they’d be all over you if you made even the slightest error, telling you how stupid you are.

But those kids are just doing what they are being taught. Yuck.

Is The Writing On The Wall?

My daughter practicing graffiti-style writing.

I went to Staples for pads of paper.

I had to search.

Finally, I found a paltry selection of pads and notebooks in a little half-aisle tucked away next to the rubber bands, school-locker shelves and other slow-sellers.



You're not supposed to be able to read it.
 

Paper – the kind you write on, as opposed to the kind you print on – is on its way out. And the kind you print on, which currently still commands a whole wall in the store, is probably on its way out too.

I realize this is a good thing, environmentally, but it will take some getting used to for me.

My kids think I am crazy because I print out drafts while writing. (In my defense, I buy recycled paper and use both sides.) I tell them I think it’s easier to proof-read on paper, but they say no.

And I don’t think my teenagers ever became comfortable with cursive. In fact, my son’s mainstream elementary schools never taught handwriting. Sometimes, when I volunteer at my kids’ high school, I sit at a reception desk where students have to sign in. I have yet to witness a single one of them using the correct pencil grip. And according to this New York Times piece, not learning and using handwriting in school could be having other, surprising ramifications.

One less-than-surprising ramification: if kids aren’t taught cursive writing, they can’t read cursive writing. Is it going to become some kind of specialized skill, like puzzling out Egyptian hieroglyphics, to read handwritten documents?

Who is preserving the art of handwriting? Are you picturing the stereotypical schoolmarm? No. It’s graffiti writers! As the Amazon description of this book says, “Graffiti is one of the last reservoirs of highly refined, well practiced penmanship.” And what was the first advice my arty daughter got from a graffiti writer? “Learn calligraphy.”

Sour People Make For Sour Parents

Volunteering during exams at my kids’ school, I sat next to a sour-faced woman holding textbooks on her lap.

“Are you selling those back to the school?” I asked.

"Yes. But my son couldn't find one of his books, so I told him, ‘Then you’re gonna pay me for it,’” she declared self-righteously.

AND, she told me, he hadn’t wanted her to come to school today.

“I wonder what he’s hiding,” she said darkly.

You, probably, I thought.

I read an online conversation about who should pay for a teen’s cell phone: parents, child or a combination. One mother said she had told her daughter “no dice” on buying her an iPhone. (Meanwhile, about 95+% of all the kids at my kids’ not-wealthy school have a smart phone.) This daughter left to live with her father, who got her one. “Way to go, dad, for showing her how to be responsible,” the woman fumed.

I read (in the October 2013 issue of Smithsonian Magazine) that 51% of parents reported having amicable relationships with their grown children. This means, presumably, that 49% do not. Sad.

Some people love to huff, “Parents shouldn’t be their children’s friends.” Bullshit. I am perfectly capable of preventing my toddler from playing with electrical outlets or telling my teenager not to drink and drive, without being a vindictive asshole about it.

I’m not saying that having your kid pay for something themselves is a bad idea. But rather than being punitive about it, you could say, ‘You’re becoming adult enough to do this yourself,” perhaps even – gosh –  letting them see, regardless of what you buy for them (or don't), that you love, love, LOVE them.

That way, they can feel good about doing it themselves – and not nauseated that you revel in being nasty to them.

A Genius for Worrying

I hesitate to tell you this.

I wouldn’t want it to become permanently lodged in your brain.

OK, you’ve been warned.

My family has a superstition. Based on the idea that it’s what you least expect that’s going to get you, we believe that if you expect EVERYTHING, every single bad thing that could possibly (and not so possibly) happen – and most importantly, if you expend a lot of energy worrying about all of them, you can keep them from happening.

I thought I had hidden this tendency in myself. I got myself down to where I’d just say, “Be careful” whenever anyone left the house.

Until my husband finally wailed, “Stop that!”

My husband says we have a genius for worrying.

I am, I’ve come to realize, anxious. It was a revelation to me that there are people who do not think the way I do.  It doesn’t occur to them to think about horrific crashes every time they get onto a plane or into a car, for instance.

According to a very good book, My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel (worth reading if only because the severity of Stossel’s anxiety will make you feel downright normal), anxiety-sufferers tend to be more intelligent than average. And it does seem to me that you have to actively ignore some pretty glaring facts in order not to worry. Tens of thousands of Americans do die in car wrecks every year. My husband has told me he hates to try to talk me out of my worries because I can put together such a good case that he begins to worry too.

In fact, the idea that there are people running around (and driving, etc.) who do not have enough sense to worry makes me worry more.

Things to Keep in Mind

In her high-school career, my daughter input 3,473 terms into the flashcard website Quizlet.

She was memorizing facts for school.

She was quizzed on: Elements and their symbols. Rocks and their parent rocks. (Limestone becomes marble but sandstone becomes quartzite.) Supreme Court cases. (I actually like this one; my daughter will never have the brain fart Sarah Palin did.) Even Popes and the titles of their encyclicals, in Latin. (Catholic school.)

My son composed one of the most disturbing Quizlet sets imaginable: early-Christian martyrs and how they died. (This one was flayed, that one was pressed, that one had her breasts cut off.)

What good is all this memorizing?

Some say memorizing facts for math, like they did back in the day, is crucial. But my high-school math teacher told us never to memorize things you can look up. (I didn’t realize then that he was quoting Einstein.) He focused on getting us to use facts repeatedly; when we did that, we memorized them without trying.

Many teachers have their students make a “cheat sheet” to use during tests. That is a valuable learning tool: the student has to think about what is important enough to include, rather than just cramming.

Things learned by rote memorization, a/k/a cramming when it’s done in a hurry, don’t stick.

And as this teacher says, memorizing isn’t understanding.

According to my Google search, many pro-memorization folks aren’t talking about memorizing facts at all, but about memorizing poems. As someone who can still remember the poems I memorized in high school and who continued to memorize poems, voluntarily, as a pretentious English major, I agree that this kind of memorization allows you to experience the interlockings of words and rhythms in a way you never could just reading.

But, other than that, memorization is overrated.

Greetings, Earthling

I tend to like funny cards about
kids, dogs and bodily functions.
 

I have discovered an easy way to cheer myself up – and also feel more organized.

When I have some extra minutes and dollars, I stop by the greeting-card section of whatever store I am in – supermarket, Target, drug store – and buy whatever strikes my fancy.

Here’s the organized part: I now have a drawer full of great cards for whenever I need one for someone.

I tend to like only funny cards. In fact, I totally don’t get the “serious” ones. If you have a serious sentiment to tell someone, wouldn’t you want to write it yourself? (We also have – this was my husband’s idea – a few boxes of blank Crane cards lying around for just that purpose.)

In this article, Hallmark says that while funny is ok for Father’s Day, if you give your mom a funny Mother’s Day card, she’ll cry. I, a mother, totally don’t get that.

Nor do I get when people get sniffy about being sent an email rather than a written card. When KJ Dell‘Antonia wrote about a cool app for iPads that allows you to have a paper card sent to someone in the New York Times “Motherlode” blog, one commenter wrote, “Appalling. I am frankly hurt when I receive an e-card: the person couldn't be bothered to find a piece of paper, envelope, and stamp?” Easy solution to this, I think: don’t send that person any communication of any kind.

Aside from that, though, I like sending cards, electronic or paper. In fact, I once, on impulse, bought a box of cards (maybe because they were purple) and used them to write hello to the first eight people who occurred to me.

That was fun. I should do it again.

Proud To Be Loud

Actually, I’m not, but I’ve come to accept it.

For years and through the whole slew of apartments and houses we’ve lived in, I’ve noticed I could always hear our family – like when I was still in the elevator or out in the yard. I could hear my husband and kids talking, laughing, crowing.

I tried to convince myself that everyone can hear their own family like this, that it’s some sort of mystical, special sense.

It’s not, though, is it?

When we call each other to dinner, we never walk all the way up the stairs and quietly knock, whispering, “Dinner’s ready.”

We bellow “DINNER’S READY!” or my son’s simpler “FOOD!” from wherever we are.

When we are excited in a conversation, we get louder. The excitement can be happy: my kids telling me what happened at school today. (They can get so loud, I have to say, “You know, I’m right here next to you in the car.”) Or it can be negative: my son said, recently, when I couldn’t find my keys, that I “probably offended all sailors within a one-mile radius.”

I know people exist who live freakily hushed lives, diffidently whispering, tip-toeing around … unlike, say, my husband who recently clumped, in his bicycle shoes, from our bedroom, down the hall and down the stairs. When he got to me, he asked happily, “Did ya hear me coming?”

I’m with the little boy I saw recently in a cart his slightly sheepish father was pushing around the supermarket. Every few minutes, this little boy would just sing out, an amazing noise coming out of his tiny body. He sounded like a very loud bird, which made him very happy.

Here’s to the noise of life. May I never be too grumpy to enjoy it.