This story takes me back in time a bit.
In 11th grade, I took the National French Exam and came in 3rd in my state. In 12th grade, I came in 2nd (only because another bigger nerd than me from my same French class who had no friends and studied all the time beat me by one question). So, when our school coordinated a trip to Paris for some of the French students, I was first in line to go! It was a blast, and I spent most of my time translating off the walls of cathedrals, trying to avoid smelly tour guides, and making sure my vegetarian friends ordered the right kind of pizza at Pizza Hut outside of the Pompidou center. I got to go to Pere Lachaise cemetary, and witnessed a super-bizarre marijuana-smoking and wine-drinking ceremony at Jim Morrison’s grave (the highlight of the trip, from my teenage perspective). I saw the Louvre, the Museum d’Orsay, and the palace at Versailles, spent all my shopping money on pastries, and got to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Zenith.
At the Louvre, I was busy talking to friends (like 17 year old girls do) and not paying attention to where I was going. I tripped over something, and then regained my balance and continued talking to my friends while walking along. I heard my friends shouting, “You eeeeeeeeeee-diot! Look where you’re standing!!” That was about the same time I saw the grimacing security guard charging toward me. It was only then that I looked down and realized I had tripped over a small barrier edging, and was standing in the middle of an ancient Greek mosaic artwork that had been painstakingly relocated to the floor of the museum, one tile at a time.
Smooth move, right?
At least I didn’t break anything.
My little girl did well in 1st grade today. The teacher said she finished her work before everyone else, picked up quickly on some of the new material, handled the 1st grade math with ease, and had to be moved up to the 2nd grade reading book because 1st grade was too easy for her. God bless private schools, because I wonder how amenable to meeting her individual educational needs the public schools would be. The school my kids are at is far from perfect, but it is perfect for us, for now. 
A few weeks ago, my daughter, who is 5, commented that some hill we were driving by was “a really big mountain.”
“Sweetie, have you ever seen real mountains?”
“Yeah, mom, remember? We played on some big clay mountains at Mema’s house.” My Mema and Papa’s house has a big hilly red clay area out back. This child has never seen real mountains, which means that her little brother hasn’t either.
So, Daddy-O and I decided that rather than go home on interstates through Atlanta, we would go up to Chattanooga and then cut across the Appalachians. We didn’t say anything to the kids about it– we just figured we’d wait to see how long it took for them to notice the change in scenery.
It was a brilliant plan– the kids loved being in the mountains, and we stopped off a few times for good views and little creeks. Then came the part that wasn’t in the plan: Short Stuff, who had really bad chest congestion all weekend, started puking up mucus once we were about 45 minutes off of the interstate and on curvy mountain roads. We stopped a few times to take care of him and change his clothes (“We don’t have to tell anyone I was outside in the mountains in my underwear and no pants, do we, mommy?”), and finally found an old McDonald’s bag and gave it to him for if he got sick again. “Mom, do you have a pen?” asked Funky Monkey. “No, Funky Monkey, we are not going to write ‘barf bag’ on it,” I asserted. Apparently his 9 year old sense of humor had been thwarted by my momminess–”Aw, man!”
By the time we got the puking all taken care of, the kids were getting hungry (we had eaten an early lunch), and we stopped for dinner. We got back on the road, and the sun started to set. That was when it occurred to us that we had picked some of the most mountainous, curvy paths to take, so that the kids would have stunning views the whole way home. We did not anticipate being delayed by a few hours, and taking these roads at night, with neither of us being experienced mountain-drivers.
Can I just say that the “Great Smoky Mountains” are not so great to navigate after dark when you aren’t familiar with the roads and are not a mountain native? We spent FOUR hours driving 15 mph in the dark on winding mountain roads with terrifying dropoffs and no guardrail. Sassy Pants started crying about 1 hour into it.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m scared?” *blows nose*
“Oh, baby, don’t be scared! Why are you scared?”
“Because we’re lost.” sniff sniff
“Honey, we’re not lost. We have a map, and we know where we’re going.”
This is where Short Stuff (the 4 year old firecracker) chimed in: “I think I saw a sign back there that says there’s monsters ahead!”
Sassy Pants again: “Shut up! I know there’s no such thing as monsters!”
Short Stuff: “Well, I thought I saw a sign, anyway.”
Me: “There are no monsters, no signs about monsters, and we’re not lost. I saw the map, and this road does go to South Carolina. It’s just a curvy, hilly road, and we have to take it slowly. That’s all.”
This quieted the fretting for a bit, until we had been driving for another couple of hours on winding roads, and came upon a state line sign: Welcome to Georgia!
Funky Monkey read the sign out loud, and major freaking out ensued in the backseats.
“We are lost! I knew it!”
“I thought you said this road went to South Carolina?”
“Oh, great. Georgia. We’re never going to get home.”
I did my best stern mom bit: “Chill out, guys. We’re not lost. We are going to South Carolina.” Then I turned to Daddy-O, and under my breath muttered, “check the map.”
Turns out, Highway 28 does a bit of a turn through Georgia for a few miles before heading into Oconee county, South Carolina. No problem. Not lost.
The rest of the drive home was pretty uneventful, which is fine by me, as driving 4 hours on death-trap roads was event enough. Oh yeah, one final note: If you are ever passing through South Carolina and see a sign for a town named “Walhalla,” please be advised that the locals do not say “wall’ ha la” like my Sarasota-raised Floridian husband does. If you’re in the Carolina lowcountry, it’s pronounced “Wawl hah’ luh.” If you’re in the upstate, where we live and where Walhalla is actually located, you gotta get a little more redneck with it. “Wawl holler” will suffice.
Filed under: Part Nerd, All Dork
Okay, so maybe I am just a bit off kilter, but this video made me laugh so hard I dribbled diet coke on myself.
Filed under: Family Stuff, Love and Relationships, My Freaky Past, Part Nerd, All Dork, Society
Today, in my 5th-6th grade music class, I had to break up a hand-holding love-fest with my teacher/mom “this-evil-stare-will-only-last-so-long-before-I-break-down-and-kill-you” glare. Truth be told, the two kids are two of the cutest, sweetest kids I’ve ever seen, and I think it is absolutely adorable that they are having a little lovey-dovey cutesy crush-fest. However, my music class is not the place for it, even if it’s on a day we’re watching a movie.
After school, I went on to my regular job (bookkeeping for my dad’s office) and went about my day. Until around 6:30 pm, that is, when it occurred to me that my oldest son is now in 4th grade, and will be in the 5th-6th grade class next year. Within the next two years, my son may be celebrating his own lovey-dovey cutesy crush-fest. The mere thought made my heart race and my breath get wheezy. My baby, who I didn’t get to bring home from the hospital for two months, who I nursed back to health for over a year, and who was the light of my life during the time when I didn’t know if I’d ever find anyone to love… holding hands, with a girl. A GIRL, for crying out loud!! Lovey-dovey!! My baby!!
Sheesh, I’m getting old. Those of you reading this over the age of 20– do you remember the first time you held hands with someone? Your first kiss?Do you remember how absolutely whacked out your first few “relationships” were? My first kiss was a neighborhood boy named Michael. I was 12; he was 15. His sister, Stephanie, was one of my good friends. And I had the BIGGEST crush… on his best friend, Jason. Every time I’d go over to Stephanie’s for a sleepover, my mom would freak: “You stay away from that Michael boy.” As if I actually liked him anyway. Even when he stood on my front porch with the world’s largest stuffed animal for hours, begging for me to come out and talk– to rethink dumping him– I just wasn’t interested. Even when he wouldn’t leave my porch, and my next door neighbor, Donna, called to see if I knew “that guy on the porch,” I wasn’t interested. He did exactly what I had hoped he would– opened a door into greener pastures. And when I kissed the second guy I ever kissed, it was Jason. Mission accomplished.
Then there was Brian. His dad owned a bunch of local A & P grocery stores, and he was working as a cashier “to learn the value of a dollar,” something all rich dads try to impress upon their kids, I guess. “Hello, is this Christy? This is going to sound crazy, but I was the cashier at the A & P when you went shopping with your mom today, and I heard her say your name and got your phone number off of her check– so, um, do you want to go out sometime?” I was 15 and a total nerd at my own school– far too geeky, gangly, freckly, brainy, and self-deprecating to be of use to anyone– and Brian went to another school in town. After several months of flowers, candies, teddy bears, nice dinners, gentlemanly behavior, and scooting around town in his little white convertible, I had had it with cutesy-cute nice guys. “I can’t go out with you today– I’m, uh…, sick. Yeah, sick. The flu. It’s bad. Sorry!” Thirty minutes later, Brian was at my home, loaded down like a pack mule with get well cards, flowers, balloons, and teddy bears. I think my mother was more in love with him than I was.
It isn’t that I was some kind of heartless vixen. Truth be told, I was probably one of the biggest nerds in the school. I was one of those lonely kids in the gifted program who didn’t fit in with the preppy rich honors students, and wasn’t creative enough to fit in with the artistic honors students. I didn’t play the guitar or piano, couldn’t draw worth a crap, and my parents wouldn’t let me dress all “morbid-kid-listening-to-the-Pixies” like I wanted to. I’d feel poetry so deeply, but somehow when I went to put it onto paper, it sounded so…. so…. so high school. Trite, contrived, and appallingly boring. I had an artist’s soul and no real medium. So, I stuck with what I could do, and filled my time with band, math team, academic team, French club, and a variety of other school activities that didn’t require good looks, money, or profound talent. And I definitely avoided boys. I simply didn’t know what to do with them at that point. I’ve been married for almost six years, and I still sometimes wonder if I know what to do with them.
Given the form my early college relationships took, I guess that by contrast my first few relationships look pretty tame and desirable, even with their superficial intensity and lack of understanding of what real relation-ship entails. And I guess on some level, there are lessons learned in those first few relationships, but what kinds of lessons? Sure, you learn a bit about how to communicate, how to make someone feel special, loyalty, and romance. But you also learn a lot about how not to communicate, how to break someone’s heart, violations of trust, and anger. You manipulate, fib, test boundaries, violate boundaries, play with emotions, and walk the edge of pseudo-intimacy, all the while thinking it’s real. Older people tell you it isn’t real and to treat it as ephemeral, and you think they’re so old and stupid– they just don’t get how it feels to really like someone. When you’re that age, you have no idea how well they really do get it. I’m 30, and I think I get it (at least as well as a 30 year old can). I get that playing in-love is cute and fun, and I get that it puts kids into situations that can snowball into situations they aren’t ready to face. I get that it can teach valuable relational skills, and I get that (unreigned by caution) it can teach patterns of self-destruction that take a lifetime to unlearn. And I definitely get that my son, followed shortly by my daughter and my other son, are not far from dipping their toes into the waters of intimacy with the opposite sex.
And I guess that’s okay. Toe-dipping, touching the water to test the temperature, letting it run through your fingers a bit…. That’s all okay. But I hope that’s all they do until they’ve given themselves time to grow up a bit. The love boat doesn’t come stocked with life preservers, and it’s far too easy to get in over your head. Relationships between adults are tricky enough; there’s no need rushing into that trickiness.
I hope my two little classroom lovebirds are crazy about each other. I hope they bring each other lots of happiness for however long they’re together. I hope they enjoy how delightful a pure, friendship-oriented crush can be. And I hope beyond all hopes that they keep it nice and simple for now, avoiding the teenage melodrama that somehow often finds a way to creep in and destroy something innocent and healthy. One day, there will be a time for something more. But for now, they have childhood to finish. There will be plenty of time for a nice swim…. later.
