We sat down with the kids yesterday and transcribed their letters to Santa.
I figure the part about the face must be because she was thinking about Santa’s beard. She was completely serious about it, so I added it just as she said.
A grade school classmate of mine died this year of a heart attack. I found out about it from some of our other classmates on Facebook. I see old photos of him there, as my classmates periodically share them, and so I’ve reflected on his death a few times now. There’s a discussion group dedicated to memories of him. I was invited to join at some point.
I never did, because I had nothing positive to say about him. He was never anything but an asshole to me, frankly. Near as I could tell in grade school, nothing made him happier than ridiculing other people. Naturally, most people are usually pretty different after grade school, and I didn’t ever even see him again. I’m sure he had some redeeming qualities, and I sort of regret that I never got to see them. And judging solely on the comments in this Facebook discussion group, he was a very different person to lots of other people.
He was actually the second person from our class (of just 25 or so students) to die. The first, another Mike by coincidence, succumbed to cancer of some sort, three or four years ago. I remember being a bit more struck by the tragedy then, not even because he was the first or we were all that much younger, but because he didn’t have an easy life at all. He joined our class when he repeated the third grade, never did well in school, and didn’t have any friends in our little class. He seemed to have to steal his happiness and self esteem when no one was watching. I hope his life got better than that; it’s hard to imagine how it wouldn’t, really.
I couldn’t help but compare them when I heard about Mike D. I’m sure Mike S wouldn’t have had an outpouring like this. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, maybe D learned kindness and S was psychotic, and it’s a testament to how poorly I knew either of them. But at face value it sure seems like a depressing confirmation of everything grade school taught me about human nature.
I brought Dwight (my accordion) to our Music Together class yesterday. I had worked up simple arrangements of three songs from the current songbook, and accompanied the class while they sang and danced. (I sang along where possible too, but was thinking too hard most of the time.) It was so much fun, I’m looking forward to doing it again sometime. I also want to bring the uke in at some point.
After class we went to Verizon Wireless to look at the new Droid, which Laura went ahead and bought. (I’m officially jealous. I love my Samsung Flipshot, but man is that thing sexy.) The kids entertained the sales guys by pretending to talk on the dummy model phones throughout the store. One of the guys went in back and got a couple of discontinued models, and gave them to the kids as toys. They were so proud. They’ve been making pretend phonecalls on them ever since.
Then, next door to Verizon is a Tae Kwon Do school, and they were celebrating their fourth anniversary with free food, demonstrations, a bounce house, and cake. The kids had a ball and wore themselves out. Riley was imitating the demonstrators, kicking and shouting an approximation of “hyah!” We got to thinking about how martial arts would teach a lot of the things that Riley needs most: confidence, discipline, focus. We spoke with the manager, and she was very supportive, saying they work with special needs kids all the time. She set Riley up with an instructor — a teenage boy who surprised us by being really good with Riley. We signed Riley up for classes. He seems excited about it, we’re hopeful he’ll participate well.
(Of course, as I typed this he was screaming his lungs out, in protest of being sent to “quiet time” for having screamed about having to wear non-preferred underwear because he wet his Spongebob ones. So we shall see. Rome wasn’t built in a day and so on.)
Baaaa. Got this from
If you comment here, I’ll choose five of your icons to ask you about. (Or, if you have fewer than five icons, I’ll just choose one.) Then you do might a post explaining the significance of those icons.
But you can also comment here if you just want to ask about another of my icons but don’t want to do the meme. I’ll add it to the list below.
Other Guy: So your job is to stay at home with these two?
Me (spinning Lydia in the air): Yup.
7-year-old: Your job is to stay with them? That just sounds like a dad.
Me: Well, I am their dad.
7yo: That’s not a job, what’s your other job?
Me: I don’t have one right now–
7yo: You lost your job?
Me: No, I left it so I could take care of them at home.
7yo: That was a dumb idea.
Me: …
7yo: You could be making… a hundred dollars a week!
Me: *visualizes him doing Dr. Evil pinky gesture, chuckles inwardly*
(Other topics included Bakugan and the Coca-Cola museum.)