Go figure.

I can’t throw a frisbee to save my soul. When I aim it at Jake, it veers right by thirty to forty degrees. When I try to compensate by aiming thirty degrees left, the damn thing goes thirty degrees left. Just when I think it’s hopeless, I get one right to him. Then it’s back to the same ol’ crap.

But somehow, I know how to play badminton.

Badminton’s next on Jake’s PE torture wheel, so I bought some rackets and shuttlecocks a while back, and after our frisbee fiasco we futzed with badminton. And I know how to serve and hit it and all of that. When did I ever play badminton? Sis, didn’t we have rackets and a net when we were kids? Or perhaps it’s because I played some tennis in high school. Not much. Some. Enough, perhaps.

You have to understand, I can’t throw, catch, swing, dunk, hit — none of that. So to find out that I can not only serve a shuttlecock but do it accurately and consistently is nothing short of mind-boggling. Jake’s having a hard time serving, though, but on the other hand, he’s got me beat in frisbee. If we can figure out a game where he throws me the frisbee and I slam back the shuttlecock, we’ll have a great time.

D.

Conflict averse

So I’m wondering, to what extent do we have control over our neuroses? Can will power alone undo ingrained personality traits?

As I think I’ve written (albeit long ago), I grew up in a war zone. The arguments were constant and high stakes, and since my bedroom shared a wall with my parents’ bedroom, I heard everything. How my brother (who shared my room) slept through it all is beyond me, or perhaps he did hear it and chose to keep quiet. I used to bang my fist on the wall and scream at them to be quiet. I don’t recall it ever doing any good.

I’ve always attributed my conflict-averse personality to this aspect of my childhood. It’s a pervasive trait, and I consider it a neurosis since it does impair me, at least to a mild degree. When I was in private practice, I made Karen do all the firings. Not that there were many, but she got the job. I would leave the office when she was ready to do the deed. I’ve never been able to watch more than ten or fifteen minutes of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Crazy shit like that. In public, at work, in the hospital, if folks are yelling at each other, I’ll run the other way.

The thing is, it’s sometimes necessary for me to stay. To not run the other way. To endure, to listen, to keep my head together. And it’s damn difficult.

If this were a phobia, I could cure it by gradually ramping up the intensity of the exposure. Start by watching Bill O’Reilly interviews, perhaps, and then graduate to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Eventually, I would go on the Maury Povich Show.

I wish there were an easier way.

D.

The project

I’ve been absent the past few days because Jake had a MAJOR PROJECT! for Theology. As in, THIS WILL BE A HUUUUGE PART OF YOUR GRADE so you had better not turn in crap. The task: answer ten rather personal questions and illustrate your answers. The questions ranged from, “Something that really irritates me is . . .” and “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is . . .” to “An experience which brought me closer to God is . . .” For the last question, my little atheist was allowed to explain why he was an atheist. He designed a page with planets and a teapot, and included the infamous Russell’s Teapot quote. I’m sure this will endear him to his Theology teacher.

We went a little crazy with the project, including some origami, a pop-up of Stephen Colbert at his desk (“Something that makes me laugh is . . .”), and working toothed gears (don’t ask). But I figure Jake is competing against kids whose mothers are scrapbookers. Hey, if I could have gotten my sister the rubber stamp fanatic involved, Jake’s project would have been amazing. And creativity is half the grade.

The name of the game is introspection, I suppose, and one question which gave him fits was, “When I’m older, I want to be . . .” Thing is, Jake doesn’t know what he wants to be, so I asked him to think about what he wants from himself as an adult. I asked him, “What would you need from yourself and from life to not feel disappointed?” I think it’s an important question. I wish someone had asked me that question. Not that I’m disappointed, but thinking about it might have saved me a few missteps along the way.

I don’t think he liked my question. Instead, he listed some of the features of what he would consider a good career: primarily, well paying and adequate free time. I’m not sure he realizes yet the importance of intellectual stimulation; perhaps he figures that’s what free time is for. But I don’t care how much free time you have — if your 8 hours on the job is mind-numbingly repetitive, you’re not going to be happy.

So, yes, he listed SOME of the features of a good job. We couldn’t figure out how to illustrate, “Cannot be outsourced.”

D.

The bump

Late Tuesday night, we found out that Jake would have a PE test on Friday: he would have to bump pass a volleyball back to his teacher five times at a distance of 12 feet.

This left us with two days to practice.

Not Jake's PE teacher.

We bought a volleyball Wednesday afternoon, went to the park, and started working on it. We had a frisbee, too (Jake’s next activity for PE), so when we tired of volleyball, we tossed the frisbee around.

We tired of it . . . um . . . often.

(more…)

The fourteen minute mile

That’s how long it takes Jake and I to run a mile. The school wants him to run it in under 10 minutes, to which I have only one comment.

Are they insane?

We’re not built to run a ten-minute (or less!) mile. We have short little hobbit legs that are meant to run down supermarket aisles, maybe, but not laps. And certainly not miles.

It’s a funny thing. I can put in an hour on the elliptical trainer at high resistance and I’m fine. Drenched in sweat but fine. Put me on the road and ask me to run, and I’m miserable every step of the way. Maybe it’s because I can’t watch TV while I’m doing it.

I feel for my son. I really do. I had forgotten how nice it was to graduate high school and know that I would never again be judged on my physical prowess. Now we’re back in the hell of doing X pushups and Y situps in 60 seconds, bringing up the rear in the mile-running competition, and don’t even bring up the horror of team sports.

I wrote his PE teacher tonight . . . tried to tell him that we’ll do what we can, but we’re constrained by the genetics of the situation. I wish there were more emphasis on individual fitness, less on being able to meet certain abstract milestones.

They issue grades in PE. Grades! Whatever happened to Pass/Fail?

D.

More sickos

There are at least four of us on my floor of the clinic, all with the same symptoms — painful hacking cough, fever. I can’t really claim I have it worse than anyone else, but I might. I asked our pulmonologist to take a look at me today. I was wheezing and my temp was 102.5. Well, that explains the chills I was having all day. He was concerned by my report of drenching sweats, and sent me off for a Valley Fever blood test. Also, he started me on a couple of inhalers and an antibiotic.

Meanwhile, my mother has problems. I’ve always subscribed to the “too mean to die, she’ll outlive us all” theory, and that may yet be true. In recent weeks, her mental status has taken a steep plunge, and my father has been assuming it’s dementia.

I kept telling him to take her to the doctor to rule out treatable illnesses, and I explained organic brain syndrome to him, but he hasn’t listened to his youngest son. Tonight, apparently, her behavior became sufficiently whacked that he called 911 and got her admitted to the hospital. Or at least I really hope they admit her to the hospital for a workup. Nowadays, hospitals are loath to admit people for things that can be done in an outpatient setting. Medicare loves denying payment for unnecessary hospitalization. In any case, I hope the doc who sees her tonight treats this with seriousness and thoughtfulness and realizes she’s someone’s mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. And that the doc hasn’t had a rough day and just wants to get the hell home. And that he isn’t trying to work through his shift with a fever of 102.5.

Bad timing all around. I’m too ill to make the drive to Vegas (where my parents live) and I’m on call for the next nine days. Soonest I can get out there, short of taking more time off (which I have NOT accrued), would be two weeks from today.

Something evolving this fast, it’ll either be some treatable metabolic problem or something horrible. Either way I hope I get to see her. Even if she is too mean to die.

D.

Unclear on the concept

You mean I wasn’t supposed to bring my son with me to Back to School Night? Then why do I have memories of my parents dragging me along with them to the elementary school for BtSN?

I tried to make it interesting for him. I told him, “Try to find the moms of the cuter girls in your class. That way you’ll know what they’ll look like when they get older.” Fortunately, I whispered it to him; otherwise, I think I would have crossed the line between Insufferable and Downright Embarrassing. Nevertheless, the minutes crept by. Forty minutes in a hot cafeteria . . . with no food.

Was I really supposed to go around from room to room to meet his teachers? Why? What possible motivation could I have to do such a thing? If we have questions of his teachers, we email them. Is this supposed to give me a glimpse into the adolescent zeitgeist? Make me a more empathetic parent? I think I’m plenty empathetic as it is!

So I’m afraid we slunk off together after the introductory comments were concluded. We were hot and we were hungry and I, for one, had had a very long day which wasn’t over yet (I still had to return to the hospital to complete a consult I’d rushed through at lunch . . . instead of eating lunch). Call me grumpy. Call me hungry. Call me a little bit of both.

I hope we don’t get dinged for not showing up in the classrooms. I did show up for the introductory comments, after all. That’s gotta count for something!

D.

Catholic school it is.

Jake creamed the entrance exam. Said that the toughest thing about it was the time constraint: 298 questions in 3 hours. But he still managed to answer at least 293 of the questions.

Jake said the test was Easy. Disturbingly easy.

At one point, the other kid taking the test asked Jake, “What’s perpendicular?” Jake stared at the kid and pressed on. He said to me afterwards (and this really cracks me up): “How does someone get to 9th grade and not know geometry?”

Okay, so I’m bragging. So sue me.

No place in town to buy the uniforms. I gather most parents have already gotten stuff mail-ordered weeks ago. Perhaps we’ll have to make a trip down to LA to go to the uniform store this weekend. Meantime, we shlepped down to the mall tonight for a white polo shirt and khakis so that Jake wouldn’t look too much out of place tomorrow. (Tomorrow’s the orientation, Friday is the first day of school.)

Next to the best thing about creaming the entrance exam: no interview! We don’t have to worry about the dreaded “What is the role of faith in your life?” question! We won’t have to fret about the impression Jake would make while explaining lynchings in Mafiascum! (As in the response to the question, “What do you do for fun?”)

But the best thing about going to the Catholic school: we can tell the public school system to blow it out their Board of Education!

D.