When I applied
to journalism school, I was drawn to the idea of immersing myself in
dawn to dusk work to to cover important events and take part in history.
I badly wanted to be part of the media mix. I may be the only person
who was admitted to journalism graduate school by citing Hunter S.
Thompson's Fear
and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 as an inspiration.
However,
it only took a few courses and a few stressful interviews for me to
realize that my extreme social anxiety and inability to effectively
schmooze might keep me from my goal of being a world-class journalist.
Seizing on my task- and detail-oriented abilities, I veered into the
world of copy editing instead. If I couldn't report on history, I could
at least make sure it was spelled correctly.
After I got my master's degree in print journalism, I had a lot of jobs. Some of them had to do with print journalism,
many of them had to do with dogs (a stint as a vet receptionist and a
worker at a doggy day care among them). I have since returned to writing
through blogging, but have shied away from interviews, as they are one
of my biggest anxiety triggers.
When I was a kid in elementary school, we had semi-frequent fire drills.
The alarm would go off and we would all line up and file outside. We'd
patiently wait until the principal told us we could go back inside and
once we were back in our classrooms, she would let us know how fast (or
slow) the school got outside safely. Because I grew up in an earthquake
area, we'd also have earthquake drills when we would crouch under our
desks until we got the all clear to come back up.
Kids these days have a whole different set of dangers to prepare for.
Yes, they learn how to evacuate the school, but they also learn to
prepare for the possibility of school invasion and dangers from people,
not just nature.
I'm always hearing stories these days about how connected we all are
online and how we spend too much time sitting at our computers. Stories
like that first make me defensive (but my online community has done so
much good!) and then they make me nod my head in recognition (yes, I
suppose I do spend too much time on the computer), and finally make me
think about how far computers and I have come in the past 20 or so
years.
I got my first computer about two months before I headed
off to grad school in 1996. (That is, if you don't count the Atari 400
my family had as a child, and I'm not sure I do.) I had managed to get
all the way through high school with a typewriter and all the way
through college with a Brother word processor—which was often borrowed
because it was so high tech and useful.
For a long time I was a
Luddite when it came to computers. I thought they were lame and
unnecessary. After all, my Brother could do anything I needed it to. So
what if it took all night to "print" out long research papers with its
typing mechanism? In my Berkeley college-age idealism I disliked
computers, not just because I didn't understand them (and I didn't), but
also because of the "computer gap"—meaning that computers and all their
privileges were only available to the wealthy.
I don't think anyone really likes going to the doctor and I am no exception. I went to the doctor this week for a full physical, and it was the lamest hour and a half I have spent in recent memory.
I mean really. You walk in for your appointment and the first thing they do is whip out the scale. Thanks a lot, doctor. Then, if you're me, even if you walked in feeling completely healthy, you walk out with a sheaf of papers of referrals and instructions. Thanks even more.
My family has one car. Well, a minivan really, but still only one
vehicle. No, not one vehicle, because my husband has a motorcycle. So he has two vehicles, but I don't because I don't know how to ride a motorcycle. I only have one vehicle. Well, I do know how to ride a motorcycle, but I don't know how to drive one. You get the point.
There
are lots of reasons why we only have one car. Economically it makes
sense. Environmentally it makes sense. Practically it makes sense. Most
of the time we don't need that extra car. It would sit in our driveway
almost all day every day. Even when we do need an extra car, usually
one of can hustle a ride. The ride hustler is generally the parent in
charge of the fewest children at the time.
Every once in a
while, however, one of us gets stuck.
As we residents of the DC Metro area freak out about the snow, the snow!, OMG! THE SNOW!, people who live in more regularly snowy parts of the country laugh and laugh and laugh at us.
"We
get that much snow every winter," they say. "We don't cancel school and
work every time it snows," they say. "You guys are wusses," they say.
Okay.
Fair enough. But I do have a few rebuttals. First of all, you may get
this much snow on the ground every year, but does it all fall within
five days? Yeah, I didn't think so.
My youngest son, Quinn, is scheduled to go to kindergarten next fall. I
am literally counting down the days, tapping my toes impatiently, and
drumming my fingernails on the table waiting for the day that all three
of my kids will depart the house every morning at 8:30 and not return
until after 3.
I'm really excited. So imagine my dismay when Quinn's preschool teacher
called me in for a conference and told me, "He seems young. Maybe you
should think about keeping him back from kindergarten for a year."
I may have passed out after I heard that. I reawakened to her
continuing with, "Think about it. Listen to your instincts." And then I
sadly shuffled out of the preschool.
Way back in high school physics, I learned that a body at rest will
remain at rest. Over the past several years as I've tried to return to
a regular exercise regimen, I have been reminded of that over and over.
Until
my mid to late 20s, I didn't exercise much at all, and certainly not on
purpose. But then came several years of rigorous, regular exercise. I
would run or work out at the gym nearly every day. When pregnant with
my first and second kids, I exercised to within a week of giving birth.
But
then, somehow, somewhere, somewhen between my second and third child, I
lost my way. I stopped exercising and I started gaining weight.
Being a parent is cool. There's a whole lot of love that you get to give and receive. You get to boss a group of small people around. There's always someone whom you can tell to bring you your shoes. Or a beer.
But there are downsides too. We all know it. I now present to you, in no particular order, ten reasons why it sucks to be the parent.
1. When your kid accidentally clonks you in the bridge of your nose with the back of his head, you can't freak out and curse at him. You have to be understanding and say, "accidents happen," when really you want to cry and yell mean things and hold a grudge.
My kids go to a very large elementary school. There are something like six kindergarten classrooms and nearly all of the third graders have class in "portables," which is misleading because they seem to be pretty permanent little additions to the outside of the school. I don't think this situation is uncommon in the Montgomery County Public School System.
When I first heard about this, the first thing I thought was, "Oh, thank God it's not my school." And then I felt bad for all the little kindergartners going into Oakland Terrace.
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