I've Just Got A Lot To Say

Being five is hard.  I don’t really remember much about five.  I remember not crying the first day of kindergarten, securing my dignity for the next 33 years.  I remember taking my Star Wars record to school in the hopes that all the kids could dance to the soothing beats of John Williams.  In actuality, the teacher said, “You can’t dance to this.”  That’s when I put on the Cantina Song, like a boss.   But, I imagine it’s probably hard these days for a five year old to navigate the depths of Kindergarten in 2013, where you have to learn to read and count if you want to go to first grade.  My kid has had her share of trouble, mostly brought on by her personality.

They have a traffic light system for behavior.    If you’re completely awful, you get a red light.  If you do something wrong or get multiple warnings, you get a yellow light.   Walk the line and green is fine.  A blue light is reserved for the best of the ass kissers their school has to offer.  My kid has probably had equal amount of yellows as greens.  Most of the time, I question the validity of the punishment, but with her owning a tablet computer now, we gauge her use of it but what she brings home.  Sometimes, the explanations are a bit shady.

Like the time they were playing charades and she said, “Bum”, prompting her classmate to tell the teacher she said a potty word.  Well, that got her a yellow.  We interrogated her, because we were convinced she had to have said something worse.  Like, where could she have heard such language?  (troll face)  But she swore up and down that she did, in fact, not swear.  My wife eventually said, “Really?  You said bum?  Oh, for God’s sake, the teacher needs to get a life.”   And, of course, the next day, she got another yellow.  Her report stated that she informed her teacher that, “My mommy says you need to get a life.”   Well, apparently, everybody heard this statement at her school.  She was pretty up front with it.  

Then there was the time she was getting a couple of yellows, because she wouldn’t stop acting like an animal.   We had a long talk about “playing the game”.  “Look, I understand you’re five.  You pretend to be animals.  But, while you are in school, they don’t appreciate it.  So, don’t act like an animal at school.”  “OK”, she says.

A few weeks later, after a string of good reports and even a few blue lights, the yellow showed up again.   When we looked at her report, it said, “She was acting like a turkey.”   So, we told her,  “Look, didn’t we have this conversation?  We asked you to not act like an animal.  You promised us you would not do that in school.”  Her response?  “A turkey isn’t an animal.  It’s a bird.”   Now, I didn’t want to get into semantics over animal vs. bird.  So, we just face palmed.

Then, after a three day stretch of a green and two blues, she came home with another yellow.   “What did you do this time?”  She told her mother that she got into trouble for talking.  Her response to why, “I’ve just got a lot to say.”

Indeed, she does.   So, I am exploiting that trait.   She saw me playing a new game called Game Dev Tycoon and I was sucking pretty bad at it.  She offered advice on how to design a bestselling game and soon I was raking in the dough.    Later on that night, I decided to record her for an AngryCast video.

 

Mongo and Bailey Play Game Dev Tycoon
on The Angry Cast

The First Day Of School

And so it begins. Tuesday was my daughter’s first day of school. Well, preschool / daycare if you want to be academically accurate, and half day if you want to be chronologically correct. I took an extra day off for the Labor Day weekend so that I could be there for moral support. Had things been different, my wife would have had her mother riding shotgun on our daughter’s first trip to school. Sadly, her mother died this past Spring and I felt that I needed to be there, even if I was a poor substitute, to make sure everything went smoothly since my wife was a little apprehensive about this. She felt a little guilty sending the little one off to school. She felt she should be at home with her instead of leaving her in daycare. But, with October around the corner, it’s getting to be that time of the year and that means she’ll be back to work at the local farmers’ market she’s been working at for the last 16 years. We had originally thought about holding off a year since our daughter will be going into Kindergarten after she’s already turned five. She’s a July baby, after all.

The truth is, I’m glad. Not because she’s out of the house. I’m at work so I don’t get any benefit from her being in preschool. Besides, we have to pay for her to be there and that pretty much makes whatever my wife makes at her job a wash. It’s been a little rough the past few months. With my wife’s mother passing away in April we’ve kind of taken a hit in the wallet. It’s purely on us, though. I’m not blaming anyone but myself. We don’t cook much and when we do, we cook for my father-in-law as well. You see, before April, we spent close to three or four nights a week eating dinner with my in-laws at their house. Again, we don’t cook much. We’d also go out to eat at least three nights a week with them. Since April, we’ve been going out a lot more or cooking for her Dad. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it started to add up.

So, my wife decided that she needed to go back to work, if for anything to have money for Christmas. The only reason she’s even doing Christmas this year is for our daughter. Now, we could easily make three changes that would save us enough money to not have to worry about Daycare but we’re lazy. Sometimes, when you get home from working an eight hour day and you spend the next three hours teaching piano lessons you would rather just go out to eat instead of cooking dinner. But all of this is neither here nor there and my going off on that tangent was just as bad as that cliché I threw out there at the beginning of this sentence, so we’re moving on with the story.

Needless to say, my wife had to go back to work and that caused my daughter to have to go to some form of preschool or daycare. My father-in-law picked up more projects at work and has been going every day and cannot watch her like he had. That was Grammy’s job before she died since she was “retired” [read: job was eliminated] The concept of putting our daughter in preschool so my wife could work which was necessary to pay for the preschool is a snake eating its own tail puzzle. Still, socializing the child with other kids, her age, and allowing her to pretty much play in the Petri dish that is preschool would help her immune system. The kid already has a few strikes against her in the heredity department. Both our family histories are riddled with issues from cancer to MS to diabetes. Thankfully, she has been very healthy in her first three years and hopefully she inherits my immune system.

So, all of this build up and tangent taking and misdirection hasn’t caused you to flip over to ICANHASCHEEZBURGER for a mind numbing kitteh fest? Ok, I’ll get to it. First day went off without a hitch. We got to scope out the place last Friday and the munchkin seemed to be ready to stay there all weekend. She was a little upset with having to get up early on Tuesday and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t able to wear her pajamas to school. I told her save that for college. When we walked her in we had to drop off her paperwork and while my wife dealt with that I was having my arm pulled out of my socket by my kid trying to get into the classroom. We were told that it was best if parents said goodbye and then went away because hanging around might give the child a sense of anxiety if she saw the parent having a problem letting go. So, we said goodbye and she gave us a kiss and never missed a beat going back into playing. Apparently, it would be OK.

We both decided to grab some breakfast and went back to the house. Here I was, home from work, free to do whatever I wanted for the next four hours and I was bored out of my skull. I watched a little TV, played a little PS3, and basically surfed the Internet for awhile with no real direction. I even got a progress report in my email box from the school. The little one was completely acclimated to her surroundings. They couldn’t even tell that it was her first day. She even made fun of one of the boys in her class. “Aw, she’s just like her mother,” I thought.

Actually, I’d venture to guess she was more like me. I never shied away from a social gathering when I was a kid. I was all about being in the mix. Granted, I have become embittered by the world around me in my older age and lead a somewhat hermetic existence. Offline, that is. But growing up I learned to roll with the punches and adjust to the situation. I explained to my wife how my first day of school went. I realized within five minutes of entering the classroom on my first day of Kindergarten that I needed to keep a low profile when it came to fear and anxiety. Now, I had some preschool under my belt and some might say I was the scourge of the classroom. I led a few revolts and even enlisted the aid of another classmate in a black ops campaign which resulted in the flushing of another classmate’s sandwich down the toilet. I don’t know why we did it but I apologize immensely for it happening. Anyway, since I had some schooling beforehand I wasn’t walking blindly into the fray but I was a bit nervous. It was only a half day but it was every day. And it wasn’t just for fun, there was actual learning to be done and the class was a bit bigger than what I was used to. All of this added up to me feeling a little scared when I walked in but I kept it hidden.

However, there was a moment that solidified my thoughts on how to handle myself in these types of situations. I had walked across the room and my mother was still standing in the doorway, just in case I needed an escape plan. I turned to make a decision, feeling a little overwhelmed, and then it happened. There was a blood curdling scream coming from the door. Another boy had shown up and he was not exactly prepared for his mother to leave. She let go of his hand and was turning to exit and he went four alarm kablooey. It was like a train wreck but I wasn’t watching him. I was watching everyone else watching him. That was the moment I realized I needed to play it cool. If for anything else, it’s 30 years later and I still remember that moment and I remember the kid’s name. I would like to be remembered in 30 years but not because I had a complete meltdown my first day of school. I simply looked at my mother and we both shared an unspoken moment that went like this.

MOM: What do you think?
ME: I’ll be fine.
MOM: You sure?
ME: Are you nuts? Did you see what just happened?
MOM: Right. I’ll see you in a few hours.

Now, it’s day number two for my kid and it’s a full day at that. I got the progress report from my wife and everything went just fine. I have yet to hear the Silent Hill like sirens blaring overhead so I will take that as a good sign that she's behaving well and having a good day.  I think the parents have more hang-ups about their kids going off to school than the kids do. Although, considering the display put on, by that kid back in Kindergarten, I could only imagine what his mom did out in the parking lot. She might have spontaneously combusted right there in her station wagon. I at least waited until I got out of the parking lot to shed one lone internal tear. No one saw it and that’s 30 years of conditioning still going strong.
Class dismissed.

Princess Leia and Kindergarten Redemption

It seems the older I get, the more I can spin silly and pointless stories by weaving the tiny, fine threads of relevancy into a thicker, more industrial strength rope of crap. Since I have been on a back to school kick this past couple of posts I thought I would share a first day of school story from my own life.

I was recently in a conversation with someone about how some schools, nowadays, offer all day kindergarten to students. I was taken aback by this revelation as I was firmly rooted in the mythos that kindergarten was a half day rite of passage for children. That first foray into public education was a small step, to be taken, and not a full gallop into eight hours of instruction. Besides, at the age of five, what can they be teaching kids that takes eight hours? Times have changed, I guess. In my day, I had afternoon class which meant I could sleep in and watch most of The Price is Right before having to be educated in subjects that aren’t as nearly as important as how much denture cleaner costs and should I bid a dollar, confident in everyone else’s inability to understand the actual retail price of a Zenith floor model television set in a fine oak cabinet. These are practices that would not be exercised again until I reached college some 13 years later and could schedule all my classes around this meticulous study of the economy and retail industry.

From the moment I set foot into the viper pit that is the public education system, I knew I needed to choose my path very carefully. I was in a strange land with unfamiliar native mores. I looked around at all the kids playing together and knew that this was something that could make or break me over the next 12 years. I was a little hesitant to jump in right away. Even though I had spent the previous year in preschool, I had reservations about doing this on a daily basis for the next nine months.

In preschool, I was known as a man who could get things. Other kids joined in my reign over the plastic kitchen sets. They would partake in my practical jokes, hurrying back in from recess to hide underneath the tables, in an attempt to confuse the teacher of our whereabouts. Once, I even convinced a friend of mine to help steal another classmate’s sandwich and we flushed it down the toilet. In preschool, I was someone. But in the real world, I was just another kid, like everyone else. And that world was about to get bigger as the one person who knew me was about to leave.

My Mother was getting ready to head for the door and for a moment I thought I could not hack this dreadful experiment. I could feel the knot tighten in my throat and the burning sensation in my eyes. Soon the air was filled with falsetto ranged wails and streams of tears, flowing down the doughy cheeks of a child not wanting to be left behind by his mama. But they were not my tears or my wails that had pierced the atmosphere. Before the first drop could form in the corner of my eye, another child standing a few feet away from me had begun to sob uncontrollably and latched onto his Mother’s leg with a vice like grip. I stood there gawking, not at his performance, but at the reactions of the other children in the room. All forms of play and interaction had ceased. All attention was focused on this child, flailing around at the door. His mother trying to pry his clasped hands from around her thigh, now numb from lack of blood flow. As the minute long exchange took what seemed like hours, we all witnessed the equivalent of the first day for fresh fish in Kindergarten. Somebody always breaks down crying. Happens every time. The only question is, who's it gonna be? It's as good a thing to bet on as any, I guess.

After the spectacle had ended, my Mother looked at me and we both shared a look of understanding. The kind of look that says, “I love you, but I can’t show it right now or I’ll never survive past recess.” She nodded and left. For the next four hours, I would have to fend for myself in this uncharted territory. An explorer in a foreign world of sand boxes, story times, and milk and cookie lunches. I figured I better make friends fast or I will be swallowed up by the system. Another casualty of social calcification, doomed to a lifestyle unfit outside these walls.

I scanned the room for someone I could interact with and not be dismissed as weak and inferior. This small towheaded boy sat on the other side of the room and I struck up a conversation. He was a rather quiet but cordial kid named Richie. We became friends that first week of Kindergarten. On the playground we took to imagining ourselves in the Star Wars universe. I was, of course, Han Solo and he was my loyal Wookie companion, Chewbacca. The merry go round was our Millennium Falcon and the slide that stood nearby served as The Death Star, with it steps on either side, an arched ladder in the back, and a space underneath to hold an imaginary Princess Leia. We made various attacks on that slide in many offensive campaigns against the Empire, which were real girls, at that age, always returning to the merry go round in victory after freeing the invisible Princess. Those were definitely the greatest days of my early scholastic career. Soon those days, like many in my youth would be over, converting to a sepia toned flash of synaptic nostalgia.

One night, a fire had broke out at Richie’s home and they had ended up moving away. I never heard from or saw him again after that. He faded into the tapestry of my mind and serves as a small, but bright stitch on a much larger and faded canvas of memories. I have no idea where he is in this world but I still remember the days of him gurgling out a passable bark as Chewbacca. His own voice, used so little in our conversations, is gone from my recollection.

There have been times when I have visited my parents’ home, nestled among the trees on the ridge overlooking my old Elementary school. I would stand on the edge of their yard, near sunset, looking down at that same playground that served as my “Long long ago in a galaxy far, far away” nearly three decades prior. The playground equipment still stands, however, standing on the edge of the merry go round, today, would invariable spin the metal plate off its axis, grinding it into the concrete slab beneath it. With my 30 years of growth, attempting to fit myself underneath the slide would result in needing the jaws of life or a really good can opener to extract me from my confinement. Those relics of recess past were better left seen at a distance in the pristine condition I could make out with my strained eyesight. Getting closer would reveal the Monet-like painted truths, rusted and worn and in places missing paint. Those chips could probably be found in the stomach contents of a small child enrolled in the school or a thirty-four year old, suffering from acute lead neuropathy.

In any case I hope my friend is out there, somewhere, doing fine. I hope one day I can shake his hand. I hope I can tell him that the continued missions of Han Solo in those days, minus Chewbacca, were victorious yet not as fun without him. I hope.