Bike Riding - It Isn't All Water

When I was in kindergarten or thereabouts, I was taught to ride a bicycle.  I do not write that I learned to ride a bike although I eventually did.  I was taught to ride a bike. I did not particularly have any inclination to learn this skill at the time; I was told I had to. For some reason it was required. I have the idea that my teacher was my dad, but I have a suspicion that my mom was also involved. 

We lived in a small town, and our house was fortuitously across the street from a small church with a small paved parking lot that had a small patch of gravel near it with a small bit of grass beyond that. There was a significant bump riding into the lot from the street.

As I was coerced into learning this skill, a parent held on to the back of the white banana seat of the purple two-wheeler with a white basket decorated with colorful plastic flowers, and as soon as said parent decided I’d mastered balance, parent would let go, and I would promptly fall over.  My recollection is that the parent(s) in question got fed up and told me to stay in the parking lot until I could ride the bike. 

I did.  I don’t remember how long it took, but I learned to balance, to avoid the gravel patch, not to go careening into the grass, and I may have even pulled the lever on the handlebar bell a few times.  Soon, I abandoned the parking lot for the street, up and down, to my friend Melinda’s house.

David Foster Wallace gave the commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005 in which he asserted that our monotonous adult lives all depend upon how we view that monotony.  We have the choice, he asserted, to be annoyed, or we can simply see our daily experiences, like a grocery store or a traffic jam, as “water” – the stuff daily life is made of.  And, he further suggested that we have the choice of how we view the water.  We can view people and the annoyances of life in any number of ways, and it is incumbent upon us to consciously choose how we encounter life. 

True enough.  However, I would go on to say, that one needs to view life, its people, and its situations for what they are; not everything is water.  There is gravel, heavy traffic, and big bumps.  It's not all the same.

Some of life’s experiences involve people making you do things you don’t really want to do.  We all have tasks that we must do on a daily basis at the behest of others.  Riding the bike.  We can whine or bitch about it, but adult life demands that we do some things that we just plain don’t want to do.  If we are lucky, we have parents or mentors who teach us to balance as we are getting started.

As we are riding that daily life bike, we may encounter paved patches.  We can manage quite well on these.  Some of us may find our patches a little small and strike out to find larger patches to navigate.  Still, no matter how big your paved road of daily tasks is, there are always some gravel spots.  Those must be ridden on or around.  The grass beyond must be respected.

Thinking that all the roads we are riding on are the same, might just land us unconscious on the side of the road with a concussion.  Navigating daily adult life is more than just saying “this is water” and making a conscious effort to encounter life thoughtfully.  This navigation also demands that we recognize our surroundings for what they are, keep our balance, and steer as needed. 

Once we get the hang of the riding and navigating, we can, occasionally, ring our handlebar bell.  The analogy is stretching bit, but my point comes down to this:  it’s not all water.  There are basic tasks, annoying people, extreme stresses, and things to be swerved around.  It behooves us to see what we are riding on.  It’s not all water, and if we acknowledge the people or situations for what they really are, then, perhaps we become expert riders.  

Down in the Slumps.

Have you ever had a slump?  The kind where nothing is quite right but you should keep sweeping the floors and making the beds. The kind of slump that tempts you to lie in bed most of the morning playing Candy Crush and hating yourself?  The kind of slump that keeps dishes in the sink a day too long? These slumps encourage multiple pizza nights and one or twelve too many glasses of wine. 

You know, when really what you want to do is anything other than what you have to do but you can’t really put your finger on what you have to do or what the alternatives might be.  The papers pile up and nothing tastes good.  Maybe you get a cavity or an ingrown toenail.  It’s a stale cracker time. You might even find yourself wishing for some kind of minor non-life threatening and non-expensive catastrophe.  Just enough to jar you.  To get you going.  To wake you up. 

You’ve become a zombie.  Well, not you perhaps, but I did.  It was the midwinter for me.  The unexpected ice storm that, despite its beauty and the fact that we did not lose power, seemed so out of place in Georgia may have played a role.  Perhaps having to monitor my youngest child’s homework in a way that I never did with the older two got to me.  It has been the mid-winter of my discontent to be sure.

Don’t get me wrong:  I got up.  I went to work.  I returned phone calls and bathed (not simultaneously).  But, I just wasn’t feeling it.  Neither was my family.  We moped together.  We discovered that the family that mopes together gets on each other’s nerves. 

Perhaps you have had too many inches (feet?) of snow and too frequent subzero temperatures to really shake the blues.  No sun for days?  You know what they say:  all clouds and no vitamin D leads to … unfinished clichés and too much wine drinking.  So, what’s a person to do? 

Take an exotic vacation around the world?  Go on a silent, spiritual retreat?  Out to eat with friends?  The movies?  Stay in bed until being there actually becomes aversion therapy that kicks you up and out and back into life?  Who knows.  Sometimes we just have down times. 

Despite what all the magazine covers want you to believe, it is perfectly normal to not feel normal.  You don’t always have to rearrange your closet or freshen up winter with a colorful pillow or add sparkle to dinner with a splash of citrus or start an energizing workout. 

You can just order pizza and watch Netflix.  It’s okay.

Our tendency, as driven Americans, is to berate ourselves if we are not at the top of our game all the time. No time like the present to start something new or find a new cause or just cheer up. Feeling down?  Chin up! Press on. Put on a happy face!  I disagree. 

It seems to me that if we spend time berating ourselves while we are in a slump we get even slumpier. If you are hating yourself for being in the funk, then how can you expect to get out of it?  We are kicking ourselves while we are down.  We treat ourselves so badly – worse than we ever would treat a friend who was feeling down. 

We really should practice mindfulness even and especially in the slumps.  Explore your slump – feel its walls, explore its caverns, listen to its sighs.  Take a deep breath of the slumpy air – taste it.  Wallow in the pond of slumpiness; dunk your head in it.

It will end.

Then, you’ll keep going – on your own schedule and in your own time.  The snow will stop falling.  The temperatures will warm up.  Candy Crush will become mind numbingly boring. The cat will need food.  You will move to the next phase.  And, just maybe - if you have been in a mindful slump, you move forward – and you are a new person with a better understanding of your life and yourself.

ax^2 + bx + c = 0

Everybody has an Achilles heel.  Everybody.  Even the most brilliant people I know – some of whom are former students – have an area where they just are not as confident.  Mine has always been math.

Over the years I have joked with my students about how I always do grades and all math on a calculator or computer.  It’s the truth.  When I have important statistical reports that I need to prepare, I do the math, and then I take it to our school’s calculus teacher, and ask him to check my numbers.  I am humble and he is kind, as well as generous with his time.  I do math when I cook - halving or doubling recipes.  I can balance my checkbook and proofread my paystub.  That’s about it, folks.  And, I have always covered up my math deficiency with jokes and extreme proficiency in other areas.

In considering pursuing a second master’s degree, I was going to apply only to a school that did not require any testing.  Then, as Murphy will tell you always happens, I found one that I really want to apply to that requires the GRE.  I signed up to take it on December 20, being relatively confident because I took this test 24 years ago and did well enough.  Friday afternoon I took a diagnostic test online.  Results:  95% in verbal; 0% in quantitative reasoning. 

I am not joking.

I texted the results to my eldest son.  His response:  “That’s bad.”  Same text to middle son: “No problem.  I’ll teach you.”  Same text to a friend who is in the middle of applying to med school: “Give me a book and two days, and I can teach you everything you need to know.”  Same text to my sister: “Are we even related?” 

Later that night after drinks with friends, I reflected upon this result and I became very sad.  The kind of sad that call forth tears whenever the topic flits across one’s mind.  Middle son asked me what was wrong, and I said (in typical middle school girl fashion):  “I’m stupid and it makes me sad.”  He responded (in typical now-I-will-be-the-parent-for-a-minute fashion): “You’re not stupid; you can relearn this math because you once knew most of it.” 

Rewind to 7^th and 8^th grade.  It always stuns people when I tell them I was in accelerated/honors math in junior high.  In fact, it still surprises me.  I remember the room – up and around the corner from home ec and woodshop.  I fondly remember the teacher:  Mr. Page.  Love that man.  I don’t remember what we learned.  I don’t remember how on earth I was in “smart” math – pretty sure some money changed hands on that one.  At any rate, I trundled along in math – getting As and Bs as best as I can remember.  I preferred humanities, but I could hold my own in math. 

Enter Mr. Anderson – if there is a teacher who should have never been allowed in a classroom, it is this man.  He was a very tall balding blond man who sat next to his overhead projector, drew angles and talked.  Geometry was not my friend.  Still, I went in after school.  I tried to get it.  I attempted the proofs.  Then the day came:  I was in his room, ostensibly getting help, and he became exasperated with me.  I was at the end of my rope trying to get whatever the concept was that was eluding me, and he was at the end of his trying to explain it to me.  As he packed his briefcase, getting ready to go coach basketball, this was the sentence that ended my math career:  “You know, you’ll never really get math because you’re a girl.” 

I should have been taken aback, horrified, enraged.  I should have reported this overt sexism and lack of professionalism to the principal or my parents.  I should have taken this statement as a personal affront-turned-challenge and excelled in every level of math, eventually becoming a world-renown rocket scientist or economist or mathematician.  I don’t know what – if anything – I said to him. What I do know is that from that moment until today, December 8, 2013, I gave up.  I did not report his comments to anyone; I did not take them as a challenge; I was not mad.  I had been given permission to give up, and so I did.  I have bachelor and masters degrees, and the last time I took a math class was my junior year in high school.

I have a student in Russian class this year who frequently says, "I'm not good at languages."  It's not true.  She is doing well, and she has the best of reasons to be in the class:  to one day talk with her birth mother. Motivation. I have a friend who is just out of college who defends her perceived weakness in English with such light-hearted phrases as, “I can’t write; I’m an engineer.”  This isn’t true, and I know because I taught her in Advanced Language and Composition in high school.  In fact she can write – it may not be her favorite thing to do.  She may feel she is stronger in other areas; she probably enjoys sciences and math more, but she can write. She just finished reams of med school essays.

The same is true of me.  I may have forgotten most algebra and never truly learned geometry, but I can learn some now.  I am motivated. I can do math. As we enter the holiday season, I hope you don’t have to take standardized tests, but I do hope that you are thinking about challenging yourself.  Sure, we all have areas that we accept are weaknesses and that’s that.  But, there are other areas where we might sit up and take notice.  We might think about learning or relearning something for our own edification.  In the end, wouldn’t that be a better way to spend time than watching cat videos or reading all of those internet lists? 

So, what are you going to learn?

Baby Einsteins

This past week my youngest son got a rash.  My middle son ranted about the ineffectiveness of the student government at his school.  My eldest son decided to revamp his college plans – again.  None of these things are what I wanted for any of them.  We all want our kids to be healthy, to believe in that being involved in your community can improve life, and to go to college and get a good job.  None of that was happening this week for us. 

Over in New Orleans, where my sister lives, her sons’ school implemented a no-nuts policy.  It’s not a new, clever math program, nor is it a program to decrease helicopter parenting.  It is a dietary restriction for all.  As you might surmise, it is a policy that prohibits nut spreads and products throughout the school.  According to the American Peanut Board less than one percent of the population suffers from peanut or tree-nut allergies; another source suggests that 1.4% of children have nut allergies.   Compare that to 2.5 percent of children who have milk allergies.  Are we making policies at schools for the 2% now?  It would seem so over in the bayou.  If I know my nephews, they may suddenly develop allergies to homework or break out in hives over pencil lead.  As a life-long teacher, I do need to know about special needs or allergies your child has, but I don’t need the school to make policies based on those needs. 

When I was a teenager, I babysat a kid who was allergic to almost everything.  Throughout his childhood, this boy’s skin was swollen or welty because he had allergies.  He learned not to eat the things that irritated him, and his parents were cautious with his diet and contacts.  However, they did not demand across the board policies at the school to protect their son.  They taught him and those who cared for him (including the teachers) what he could and couldn’t have or do.  Institutional policy wasn’t altered for this one child.  Likewise, my Jewish friends did not picket the school demanding no pork ever be served in the lunch lines.  They simply didn’t eat it.  My middle son is a vegetarian, but he does not like people to make a big deal out of it.  If he’s going to a friend’s house, he doesn’t demand different foods or extra expense because of his needs.  Of course, there is a difference between an allergy and a dietary choice, but if a person demands that society stop just for them and their issues – whatever they are – well, that person might just be feeling a little bit overly special.

As the villain in the Disney kids’ movie The Incredibles asserts:

But everyone wants to be special.  And, every parent definitely wants their kids to be special.  Preferably for some super talent – a music prodigy, a math genius, or a future professional athlete.  The fact of the matter is that most people are regular.  In reviewing Wikipedia, it appears there are less than two hundred music prodigies worldwide, across all genres and across all instruments, including voice since the 1700s.  That’s less than one a year for the whole world – for over three hundred years. On the sports front, about one percent of NCAA Division I, II, or III players will make an NFL roster, much less be the next Drew Brees or Jimmy Graham.  But, if your child doesn’t have super talents, maybe he can be special and get attention due to his allergies?  

I work with high school students and their parents. I have found that it is immeasurably easier to be frank with the kids about their chances at getting into Harvard or Yale than it is with the parents.  All parents want to think that their child is destined for greatness, and we all know that greatness only comes out of the Ivy League.  Well, no.  But that is a prevailing attitude.  We all know that there are excellent leaders, teachers, doctors, accountants that attended State U.  That’s where most of us went to college – if we were lucky enough to go to college.  Did you know that less than seven percent of the world’s population even has a college degree?  You have one?  Feel special. 

My sister asserts that there is nothing wrong with being average. Most people are – that’s why it’s called “average.”   While that may be true, it is also certainly true that everyone wants to feel special in some respect.  On the job.  In the home.  To their spouse.  In their neighborhoods.  The problem is that many people seem to be going about earning the “special” title in the wrong way; they are trying to over-control or negatively approach situations or ideas in order to get that title.  Not everything that happens at a school or in the community requires outrage or a movement or a 5K run.  But, have a look around, and you’ll see these sorts of things happening everywhere in order make a point, or get a new policy, or raise money and awareness.  It’s exhausting; some of us just want to sit on the porch and have a beer. 

I have a neighbor who objects to everything the homeowner’s association does; she wants to be recognized and heard, but rather than get involved, she simply sends vitriolic emails to the association.  Parents want to make sure their children are learning and progressing in school.  Instead of ensuring homework is done and the child is learning responsibility, many of them lodge formal complaints, mount campaigns against certain books, or just bad mouth a school or a teacher until they get some action. Among teachers there is a phrase that is always heard, every year after parent conferences:  “Now I understand.”  If you, as a parent, have time to stand in carpool lines and complain, you have time to volunteer to help – to support the mission of the school. 

If my child fidgets a little, perhaps he is AD/HD and needs medication and extra time for tests and extensions on homework.  That’s not a way to feel special – that’s a way to guarantee your child will grow up expecting to be catered to.  And, no, I’m not disparaging those with real learning differences – like I said, 20 years in education – I know differences exist, and they need to be addressed.  But, there are those parents who simply want extra attention for their children, and thus for themselves, and seek it with unreasonable demands and undocumented differences: rallying against nuts or milk products or berries in school cafeterias or demanding extra attention because a child is simply undisciplined.  Therein lies the problem.

A couple of years ago I was instructing my middle son to do something that he had neglected to attend to.  He responded, “Mom, you’re damaging my self-esteem.”  I looked him right in the eye and said, “It’s called self-esteem for a reason.”  You and your child may not be Mozart or Julie Andrews.  You’re probably not Julio Jones or Peyton Manning.  And while you may be good at math, there’s only one Gabriel Carroll or Zerah Colburn.  But, we can all be forces for good.  We can be special if we just do our stuff:  job, school, yard work, laundry.  If we could all just agree that average is the new special, then, maybe we all can relax, sit on the porch, and have that beer.

Arts and Crafts: Or, Why Not to Go Greek

         People who know me now are infinitely surprised to learn that I was in a sorority in college.  Furthermore, when I go on to tell them that indeed, I was not only in a sorority, but was also pledge class president, scholarship chairman, ritual chairman, and chapter president, they nearly fall over in a faint.  Obviously, I do not have sororitiness to my present demeanor.  In fact, whenever an about-to-go-to-college-and-I’m-a-little-intimidated-about-leaving-home-and-high school friends-age person asks me for my thoughts on or recommendation for the Greek system, I have to say I discourage it with all my being.  However, it was an odd requirement of being in a Greek chapter that led to my actually being able to teach my mother something.

            In our sorority, we had family systems, as I suspect many sororities used to, and perhaps still do.  As a new pledge, you got a pledge mom.  Ostensibly, this person would show you the ropes, much like a professional mentor in the workplace.  Upon being initiated, which was after a semester of pledgedom, your mom had cross-stitched you a pledge pillow.  A remembrance, of sorts, of your childhood within the bonds of sisterhood.  After receiving your pledge pillow and full membership status, you were expected to adopt a child immediately or at the next rush, whichever came first.  I did, in fact, get a pledge daughter from the next fall rush and commenced to helping her navigate the intricacies of sorority life: 

            “Yeah, the party is Friday from 8-11.”

            “Umm, the kitchen quits serving breakfast before 2 pm.”

            In addition to such overwhelming complexities of living in a sorority, I had to figure out what cross-stitching was and find a way to make a pillow from it.  Now, one might think that someone who had taken some amount of Girl Scouts and 4-H in her earlier life, as well as having a mother who sewed and mended probably everything I wore in childhood, and who owned – well, I’m not sure, but more than three sewing machines – would have some kind of aptitude for such a mundane task as creating a token of sorority life.  Well, cross-stitching , it turned out, is not complex needlework.  Putting the pillow together properly, turning it inside out, stuffing it, and sewing the suture firmly shut actually required a PhD in civil engineering.  Nevertheless, Lisa received her pillow in due course.  I have the sense that it wasn’t until the following school year that she got it, but I can’t be sure.  I mean, between the parties, chapter meetings, schoolwork, and parties, who has time to sew?  Once I got it down, though, I realized there was potential here. 

            I stitched something for my mom for some holiday – I don’t know what it was or what holiday it commemorated.  I do know that she loved it.  (Since becoming a mother myself, I happen to know that loving any handmade craft from your child is part and parcel of the mom contract one signs upon giving birth – page three, paragraph 8.  “Mommy, I made this out of mud, dog poo, and grass – it’s sculpture of you!!”  “I love it!  I’m putting it on the kitchen window sill right next to the painted rock and remains of last year’s dandelion bouquet!”)   That I had discovered a craft that was beautiful, well, at least attractive, probably stunned my own mother.  I had never exhibited even the slightest artistic ability.  Well, I had taken ballet and performed adequately enough to garner an occasional solo at a showcase or two – but really, art and I are oil and watercolor.             

            Not long after this initial gifting, Mom asked me to show her how it was done.  Now, anyone who knows anything about crafting knows that basic cross-stitch can be done quite successfully by blind monkeys.  And, just now, I have realized that I am sure that my mother - who graduated high school at the age of 16 and went on to college, a teaching job and raising three daughters (the list could go on for pages) -  did not need my instruction in order to figure out how to cross-stitch.  Nevertheless, I showed my mom how it was done and – for the sake of my dignity -  I am going to maintain that I taught my mom how to cross-stitch. 

            I went on to make one more pledge daughter pillow, employing the help of a few engineering majors when it came to stuffing the cursed thing.  Mom, however, has gone on to create literal works of art with cross-stitch.  All seven of her grandchildren have an intricately woven framed picture commemorating the day of their birth.  I would venture to guess that anyone who knows my mother or whose mother or grandmother knows my mother has one of her works of art somewhere in their home.  I know I have at least ten of mom’s needle-art in my home. 

            So, it is with some pride that I take partial credit for the hundreds of pieces of art that my mom has created, as a result of my teaching Mom to cross-stitch.  And, if that’s too much of stretch for you, well, just remember – you can learn cross-stitch without joining the Greek system.  Just come see me.