Spring Break is drawing to a close, and it's been a nice week. I was overjoyed to start the week celebrating 3.14 - Pi Day to those who don't recognize it. It's a double celebration, because that day also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday. I feel it is my duty to celebrate all things round and brilliant on that day. My kids humor me, because the torture is just that much worse if they fight the tide. Katie got into the spirit by making a festive "Happy Pi Day" banner for the dining room. Elizabeth drew circles on the driveway and blew bubbles. We had quiche and chocolate pie for dinner - which we didn't eat until the area and volume had been calculated. It was good fun.
So, it was just a couple of days later when they asked me if I had always been this big of a geek. Sadly, the answer is, "no." I was a closet geek in high school. I balanced the A+ test grades by not doing homework. I pretended to be irritated when my boyfriend wanted to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, instead of making out, and told him I only tolerated it because Wesley Crusher was cute. But, in truth, I enjoyed it. I partied with my friends, and told no one that I liked writing poetry and enjoyed playing Dungeons and Dragons. Serious closet geek. I was much older before I realized the true joy in my geeky friends - they knew what they liked and didn't give a darn how other people felt about it. I married a geek. Every guy I dated before him was a geek. I should have realized when I spent Halloween my 17th year, in a graveyard, taking pictures with infrared film. Cute classmate was just an excuse - the pictures were awesome. Photoshop has nothing on properly handled infrared film.
So, if I have advice to my daughter, who worries sometimes about being on the outs, it would be to let the "geek flag" fly...everyone her age is floundering for who they are. At least embracing your differences frees you up to enjoy the moment. Second word of advice - embrace the inner geek, but dress the outer geek with style and grace. People still form opinions based on what they see in the first few minutes. Third piece of advice, whether you are solving complex equations, writing poetry, beating a high score on xbox, tap dancing, or singing opera - OWN your art...geek and all. Whatever your interest, embrace and and find what makes you passionate. Oh yeah, and back to advice #2 - try to look nice while you do it. Really, there's a fine line between geek at heart and geek with pocket protector. Don't cross the line.
So, my kids are going back to school on Monday. They'll embrace history papers and Shakespeare, and well...maybe they won't embrace Shakespeare, but they'll accept it as a fact of life. Pi Day is behind us for another 360 days, and already I'm planning ahead. The good news - Katie told me that we can celebrate 22/7 day on July 22nd....22/7 is a nome de plume for Pi, you know. And she cared enough to point it out to me.
Embrace your inner geek. And hug the geeks closest to your heart.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
If At First You Don't Succeed....Pick Your Butt Up Off the Floor and Do It Again
Tonight I watched my oldest daughter struggle through something new. Her regular dance class was canceled, so she tried out an adult contemporary class down the street. She's never danced contemporary. She is twelve - the youngest age allowed in the studio in the evenings. And somehow she was shocked that it wasn't an automatic success. I didn't stay for the whole class, because I knew she was self-conscious enough, but what I saw didn't look so bad to me. She mostly kept up, and some of her lines looked quite nice. Contemporary is nothing like ballet, nothing like jazz, and on a different planet from tap. She was learning new lingo, new combinations, and new ways of holding her body - to an eight count that moved at a speed faster than middle school gossip. In other words, it was hard. Katie doesn't like hard. Or rather, she doesn't like hard when anyone else is watching.
One of my daughter's teachers recently told me that she thinks Katie might be afraid to make mistakes. Hmm...noticed that, did she? Well, not so much afraid to make them, but afraid that someone else might notice. I'm not a soft-sell kind of mom - I'm not afraid to say, "you're not perfect, big deal, move on." But really, how DO you teach persistence? I worry that, because so many things have come quickly and easily to my eldest child, she won't see the value in working for the things that don't come as easy.
I admit that I am guilty of the same so many times in my life. But it's gotten easier since I've had my girls - for once, I am held accountable, because their eyes notice everything. When I was thirty years old, I had an expired driver's license. I had to retake my driver's test, in my own car, with my own kids in tow. And I failed. Miserably failed, at parallel parking. I was absolutely horrified. I wanted nothing so much as to go home and get into bed, pulling the covers up over my head. As an adult, I had failed at a basic life skill, and my kids had seen me do it. One of the hardest things I've done in my adult life was to go back to the DPS office that next morning, and do it all over again. I passed...barely...I think they felt sorry for me. Now I drive an SUV...and I really can't parallel park the thing. I get through life just fine without that skill. Admitting that I'm bad at it hasn't killed me.
Growing up, I had a love/hate relationship with my piano. I loved the idea of playing, and I was pretty good at what I knew....but I didn't much care for the time and the learning curve. No way to learn to play an instrument without making a whole lot of mistakes.
Making mistakes is an art. Learning from them is real intelligence. See, I figure if I make a mistake once, I'm pretty smart - because I have an opportunity to learn something. If I keep making the same mistake, however, then I must be pretty dumb. Sometimes I'm dumber than dirt, because I repeat those mistakes again and again.
And some of the proudest moments in my life have come from the little things that were hard won, after lots of mistakes, and picking myself up painfully and doing it all over again. Generally these were things that were worthwhile.
So, Katie tried two new things this week. She took a self-defense course last night, and she kicked some serious butt (and I have the bruises to prove it). And she tried a new style of dance, and she's not sure that she wants to go back. But I've seen how happy she is when she dances, and I think it's worth a little pain and maybe some embarrassment on her part, if she gets half as excited about it as she did the first time she got the hang of sweeps or twelve-steps in tap (yeah, I don't really know what those are either, but it sounded neat).
When my kids tell me something is hard, I say, "awesome." Something to view as a goal. Something to sweat over, and a sense of accomplishment looming in their future. You can sit on your butt and watch the world go by, or you can get up and dance again. I prefer to dance. Well...figuratively, anyway.
One of my daughter's teachers recently told me that she thinks Katie might be afraid to make mistakes. Hmm...noticed that, did she? Well, not so much afraid to make them, but afraid that someone else might notice. I'm not a soft-sell kind of mom - I'm not afraid to say, "you're not perfect, big deal, move on." But really, how DO you teach persistence? I worry that, because so many things have come quickly and easily to my eldest child, she won't see the value in working for the things that don't come as easy.
I admit that I am guilty of the same so many times in my life. But it's gotten easier since I've had my girls - for once, I am held accountable, because their eyes notice everything. When I was thirty years old, I had an expired driver's license. I had to retake my driver's test, in my own car, with my own kids in tow. And I failed. Miserably failed, at parallel parking. I was absolutely horrified. I wanted nothing so much as to go home and get into bed, pulling the covers up over my head. As an adult, I had failed at a basic life skill, and my kids had seen me do it. One of the hardest things I've done in my adult life was to go back to the DPS office that next morning, and do it all over again. I passed...barely...I think they felt sorry for me. Now I drive an SUV...and I really can't parallel park the thing. I get through life just fine without that skill. Admitting that I'm bad at it hasn't killed me.
Growing up, I had a love/hate relationship with my piano. I loved the idea of playing, and I was pretty good at what I knew....but I didn't much care for the time and the learning curve. No way to learn to play an instrument without making a whole lot of mistakes.
Making mistakes is an art. Learning from them is real intelligence. See, I figure if I make a mistake once, I'm pretty smart - because I have an opportunity to learn something. If I keep making the same mistake, however, then I must be pretty dumb. Sometimes I'm dumber than dirt, because I repeat those mistakes again and again.
And some of the proudest moments in my life have come from the little things that were hard won, after lots of mistakes, and picking myself up painfully and doing it all over again. Generally these were things that were worthwhile.
- riding a bike
- rollerblading
- knitting
- playing instruments
- swing dancing
- baking a souffle
- casting clay on a wheel
So, Katie tried two new things this week. She took a self-defense course last night, and she kicked some serious butt (and I have the bruises to prove it). And she tried a new style of dance, and she's not sure that she wants to go back. But I've seen how happy she is when she dances, and I think it's worth a little pain and maybe some embarrassment on her part, if she gets half as excited about it as she did the first time she got the hang of sweeps or twelve-steps in tap (yeah, I don't really know what those are either, but it sounded neat).
When my kids tell me something is hard, I say, "awesome." Something to view as a goal. Something to sweat over, and a sense of accomplishment looming in their future. You can sit on your butt and watch the world go by, or you can get up and dance again. I prefer to dance. Well...figuratively, anyway.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Barbie's Dream House, Perky Plastic Boobs, and Other Fantasies
My quick run to the grocery store tonight turned into an hour - fifteen minutes to find what I wanted, and more than thirty minutes waiting in line. I had plenty of time to look through my purse, people watch, file my nails, rotate my tires, whatever....and I ended up reading the covers on the magazines at the check out stand. I never buy those, because, well....they're too fluffy even for me. But I like to read the headlines...who are these articles addressing? All of them are aimed women, or at least at the women we're supposed to want to be. Sixteen different magazines, and all the featured articles were aimed at four basic female interest groups: weight loss, how to be better in bed, what celebrity was breaking up/getting together/having kids/adopting kids/buying a house/selling a house, and how to get rid of cellulite. According to the newstand, cellulite is the new cold war era Russia - quietly creeping into our society in droves, and preparing to wreck homes and marriages across the country if we don't all fight it with beauty products and Thighmasters.
The so-called women's magazines at the checkout had hints for matching my haircut to my face, how to buy fashion shoes on a budget, and a million and one low-fat recipes for lasagna (which is not meant to be low-fat, just save it for special occasions...). Or, maybe if I just stay away from the lasagna, I wouldn't NEED the Thighmaster. Not one of the magazine covers elaborated on why I spent nearly $60 to fill up my gas tank this morning, or what's going on in the world of astralphysics, or about cancer research, the troops in the Gulf, or any one of a million questions that would cross my mind before I'd worry about what fashion don't Vanessa Hudgins committed last week.
Now, I'm not saying that all magazines are fluff, but that's what is sitting at the check out stand. Because women do most of the grocery shopping, and fluff is what is sitting there waiting for us to make our impulse purchases. I never see Mensa puzzles at the check out stand.
Again, who buys this crap? I'm sure in the perfect world of Barbie and Ken, this is all a women needs to feel fulfilled. Me, I'm a little more pessimistic. First of all, my dream house doesn't clean itself, and unlike the Barbie version, mine has a toilet. That doesn't clean itself either. My thighs aren't plastic perfection, and ok, yes, they've got a little bit of cellulite. In fact, according to a three year old, I should work out more because my leg tops are getting just a little bit jiggly. Wait, I'm pretty sure I saw an article on that this evening....
See, I'm raising two girls of my own, and I don't want them to grow up in a world where they think that thirty days to thinner thighs is a high reaching goal, or that they should care too much about what the plastic people in Hollywood are doing in their dream house lives. Barbie never had kids to worry about influencing. Of course she didn't, since Ken was never anatomically correct. Maybe she should have hooked up with GI Joe instead, but of course, in the Barbie world, war doesn't fit one of women's four basic areas of interest. So, no soldier boys for Barbie the Banal.
Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Barbie, and I loved her little plastic world. I loved her dreamhouse, and loved playing dress up - especially the little pink, impossibly high heels. But I knew the difference - I wanted to play with Barbie, not be her. Well, OK, I might have wanted the pink convertible. There's a reason why they named it her DREAM house, and her DREAM wedding, and her DREAM yacht....they're fantasies.
In my fantasy, Barbie has a kick-ass career and Ken stays home with the kids. The back rooms in the dream house are looking a little worn, because Ken can never manage to get the crayon off the walls or the bubble gum off the pink sofa. My fantasy Barbie likes walking barefoot and finally manages to walk on flat feet, instead of on her tip toes.
In my fantasy magazine rack, I find helpful information, and things that women really want to know. The top ten places to vacation with kids, without scary sized cartoon characters, gimmicky theme rides or exploited animals. How to talk tech with your auto mechanic, so you don't get fleeced. How to juggle kids, a job, and grad school. How about why you should keep in touch with friends, and how sad you'll be in later life if you don't. How about real issues for women - forget fad diets, how about someone writing about what it's like to try and maintain a healthy lifestyle with no time, no money and no energy.
In my fantasy, those marketing at our impulse to buy shiny magazines will look beyond the two dimensional people on the pages, and realize we're real human beings with complex thoughts and better ways to spend our time - even in an endless check out line. Next time, I'm bringing a book.
The so-called women's magazines at the checkout had hints for matching my haircut to my face, how to buy fashion shoes on a budget, and a million and one low-fat recipes for lasagna (which is not meant to be low-fat, just save it for special occasions...). Or, maybe if I just stay away from the lasagna, I wouldn't NEED the Thighmaster. Not one of the magazine covers elaborated on why I spent nearly $60 to fill up my gas tank this morning, or what's going on in the world of astralphysics, or about cancer research, the troops in the Gulf, or any one of a million questions that would cross my mind before I'd worry about what fashion don't Vanessa Hudgins committed last week.
Now, I'm not saying that all magazines are fluff, but that's what is sitting at the check out stand. Because women do most of the grocery shopping, and fluff is what is sitting there waiting for us to make our impulse purchases. I never see Mensa puzzles at the check out stand.
Again, who buys this crap? I'm sure in the perfect world of Barbie and Ken, this is all a women needs to feel fulfilled. Me, I'm a little more pessimistic. First of all, my dream house doesn't clean itself, and unlike the Barbie version, mine has a toilet. That doesn't clean itself either. My thighs aren't plastic perfection, and ok, yes, they've got a little bit of cellulite. In fact, according to a three year old, I should work out more because my leg tops are getting just a little bit jiggly. Wait, I'm pretty sure I saw an article on that this evening....
See, I'm raising two girls of my own, and I don't want them to grow up in a world where they think that thirty days to thinner thighs is a high reaching goal, or that they should care too much about what the plastic people in Hollywood are doing in their dream house lives. Barbie never had kids to worry about influencing. Of course she didn't, since Ken was never anatomically correct. Maybe she should have hooked up with GI Joe instead, but of course, in the Barbie world, war doesn't fit one of women's four basic areas of interest. So, no soldier boys for Barbie the Banal.
Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Barbie, and I loved her little plastic world. I loved her dreamhouse, and loved playing dress up - especially the little pink, impossibly high heels. But I knew the difference - I wanted to play with Barbie, not be her. Well, OK, I might have wanted the pink convertible. There's a reason why they named it her DREAM house, and her DREAM wedding, and her DREAM yacht....they're fantasies.
In my fantasy, Barbie has a kick-ass career and Ken stays home with the kids. The back rooms in the dream house are looking a little worn, because Ken can never manage to get the crayon off the walls or the bubble gum off the pink sofa. My fantasy Barbie likes walking barefoot and finally manages to walk on flat feet, instead of on her tip toes.
In my fantasy magazine rack, I find helpful information, and things that women really want to know. The top ten places to vacation with kids, without scary sized cartoon characters, gimmicky theme rides or exploited animals. How to talk tech with your auto mechanic, so you don't get fleeced. How to juggle kids, a job, and grad school. How about why you should keep in touch with friends, and how sad you'll be in later life if you don't. How about real issues for women - forget fad diets, how about someone writing about what it's like to try and maintain a healthy lifestyle with no time, no money and no energy.
In my fantasy, those marketing at our impulse to buy shiny magazines will look beyond the two dimensional people on the pages, and realize we're real human beings with complex thoughts and better ways to spend our time - even in an endless check out line. Next time, I'm bringing a book.
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