Kids Today

 

 

“Kids aren’t like they used to be.”

“You can’t raise kids the way you were raised because the world isn’t what it was when you grew up.”

“It takes a village to raise a child.”

These sentiments have been chanted for years now, and I don’t think they’re entirely true.

Kids haven’t changed over the decades. What has changed is adults’ attitudes toward them and the adult expectations. They are no longer seen as moldable pieces of clay without individual personalities. Adults don’t treat them with the “Do not speak until spoken to” rules we were given, and they accept that children have opinions. They’re no longer told, “You’ll do it and you’ll like it,” as we frequently heard on “Leave It to Beaver.”

Instead, they’re allowed to have opinions, and they’re listened to, sometimes far beyond what their experience and knowledge indicate they should be.

In the dark ages, when I was a child, I was more likely to get a backhanded smack on the mouth if I tried to argue once I was told to do something. No, I didn’t come from some repressed family. Most kids in my era had a similar upbringing. And the backhanded slap was more of a flick that startled rather than hurt.

My opinion was only considered when I was choosing what to eat in a restaurant, or what I wanted for Christmas. Even then it was taken into consideration as part of what my parents could afford. When my mother took me clothes shopping (before about age 10), she shopped for the clothes, and once she had decided what clothes were in her price range and what style she liked, I was consulted on which of three or four items I wanted and what color – as long as it wasn’t purple, since my mother hated purple. As I got older, I had more choices, but she had the final say on price range and level of modesty until I bought my own clothes, when I was finally allowed to choose purple. I was never without opinions and desires. They simply weren’t always taken into consideration.

So, it wasn’t kids that were different, it was what was acceptable behavior that changed.

As far as the world being different, yes it is. Of course there have always been differences according to where one was raised.

My parents grew up in the city. There was a certain sensibility one had living in the city that wasn't the experience in the suburbs or in a rural area. Most of my cousins grew up in suburban areas that were more citified than my more rural suburban area, so they had more street smarts than I ever needed. I was seen as the unsophisticated country mouse who didn’t think ducks and chickens in the next yard was any big deal, but was impressed by sidewalks and street cleaners.

Our city parents moved to the suburbs ostensibly to have more room to raise a family, and demonstrate more prosperity than their first-generation parents. What was less apparent to us kids was our parents’ desire to stay in a white neighborhood as the cities became less segregated.

I’m not ashamed of where I grew up. I had no say in that decision. I think I missed opportunities for growth and understanding in my childhood because my parents saw racial segregation as somehow protecting their children. From what? I’ve never been clear on that.

And yes, we’ve thankfully moved beyond people being allowed to refuse to sell their house to someone of another race, so children are exposed to and more comfortable with people of other races and ethnicities. Even still, I heard a couple of high school students complain not long ago that there isn’t as much racial and ethnic diversity in our area as they would wish.

Many of my friends’ adult children are moving back to the city our parents couldn’t wait to flee.

As far as education, children don’t learn in the same way we did. They print and some don’t know cursive. They use chrome books and tablets and not copybooks and looseleaf. Their textbooks are often written in “soundbites” rather than full-length pages or double columns with few pictures. They sometimes sit in “pods” or around tables, sitting on therapy balls instead of chairs. They don’t sit in desks with the chair attached, in long rows facing a blackboard. Many kids today would ask what a blackboard is. (Psst: it's a white board that you use chalk on.)

But my generation was subjected to changes in the curriculum, too. Starting at about age 9 (4^th grade), we had this anomaly known as “modern math” in which we had to organize objects into sets and subsets. What this had to do with math, I still can’t fathom. I never used it in subsequent math classes, but for four years we wasted the first two months of school with a repetition of this nonsense before we got down to the business of learning arithmetic. And it’s only gotten worse, at least in the schools I’ve worked in in New Jersey.

A “new” method of setting up algebra problems made the subject more difficult for me until I finally got a teacher who taught algebra equations “the old fashioned way,” which was what clicked with me.

Education has always evolved, based on what subjects were necessary and what was no longer relevant.

But school education is not about raising children.  Teachers  aren’t in charge – even in religious schools – of forming a child’s behavior, values and empathy. That’s the parents’ job, although there are some who would prefer to dump all learning on the schools.

A teacher’s job is more difficult if parents don’t teach basic good manners and consideration of others’ rights and feelings. While a child needs to learn subtle differences in acceptable behavior in different environments, such as the classroom and the school yard, if the basics aren’t there, the subtleties will be meaningless.

It’s still the parents’ job to instill basic good behavior in their children, just as it was for our parents and grandparents.

So, yes, you can and should raise your child with morals and values and a sense of acceptable behavior. Maybe the morals and values are slightly different, but there are still some,  regardless of how “modern” society becomes.

I believe the greatest disservice we do to children is to raise them with an inflated, entitled sense of self and no manners.

And then we come to the village.

While it’s true that no man is an island, I wouldn’t want the village determining what sort of people my children would become – if I had children. As my mother told me when I went away to college, “I had 18 years to instill my values in you, and if I didn’t succeed, it’s a little late now.”

And the village’s values didn’t always align with what she wanted for me, which is why she taught me to fight against peer pressure. If I complained about not being allowed to do what “everyone else” was doing, she’d reply, “And if everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump off after them?” At the time, I didn’t know where Brooklyn was.

When I was a child, neighbors wouldn’t hesitate to correct anyone’s child who wasn’t behaving. But if you needed correction by the neighbors, you heard about it from your parents when they found out. As the parents saw it, they were being judged by your bad behavior.

I think neighbors trying that now might be in for a good telling off by some parents who think their children are too precious for correction. But they can still tell you to get off their lawn.

While the village was reinforcing what behavior was acceptable, it was your parents who had the final say. Now, sadly, many people don’t even know their neighbors, so the village suffers by not being allowed to help as the guardrails of society.

So, while each of these assertions has some level of truth to it, none is entirely true. We need the village to guide acceptable behavior, not to teach it. And while the world continues to change, kids are kids, and they can and should still be taught basic civility and manners because kindness and empathy never hurt anyone.

 

About Books: The Jeremy Myles novels

 

Many years ago I heard about a boy who had been kidnapped. I don’t recall all of the details, only that he was taken when he was about 6, and there was never any ransom demand. He had simply vanished. There were no leads. His face on a milk carton didn’t produce any information. Then at age 12, he returned.

His tale was a harrowing one of kidnapping, abuse, both physical and sexual, and his eventual escape when the man who had abducted him came home one day with another 6-year-old, since a 12-year-old boy was no longer of interest for the pedophile kidnapper.

He determined that the little boy would not suffer as he had, and he made a plan to get them both out.

They even made a television movie about this kidnapping.

For some reason, I’m drawn to stories like this. I have my suspicions why, but suffice it to say I am curious about how people in such situations manage not to be crushed by their circumstances.

I didn’t research the actual kidnapping. In fact, I don’t even know the name of the boy this happened to. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t need that information. Considering how many children’s pictures end up on milk cartons every year, I’m sure there are other stories out there about similar kidnappings.

I wasn’t interested in writing a biography. I wanted to write a fiction story about someone in similar circumstances with different twists embedded in the story. However, when I tried to write the kidnapping story and the day-to-day life of the victim, I quickly became bogged down in the technicalities and had to shelve the idea for a few years.

When I came back to the story, I realized the tale I wanted to tell was about what happened after. People lose interest once a child is back with his parents, as if he could pick up his life and it’s as carefree as it was before the kidnapping ever took place. I doubt that’s ever the case.

I wanted to know what happened after; how did this character return to “normal”? Or did he? Could he be a civilized person able to cope with teenage stresses?

My story begins when the boy, Jeremy (not the real name of the real-life person) is entering junior year of high school at age 16. He has been home with his parents since he was 12, and it has taken that long to convert him from a nearly feral, frightened boy suffering PTSD from 6 years of physical, psychological and sexual abuse to being able to have some social interactions with his peers.

At various times since he returned home, sending him to school was attempted without success. As a newcomer, he was bullied or ignored, resulting in him melting down or lashing out.

Since he couldn’t go to school, he was tutored, although his father wanted him to return to school at some point before he was old enough to attend university. The family’s move to a new state when they inherit a home that had been owned by a relative provides a new chance at attending school. The fact that one of his cousins, with whom he is comfortable, also attends the school makes the transition a bit smoother than previous tries.

Once he appears to be adjusting to school, his father gives him a 3-strike rule: he can have 3 failures in behavior. At the third one, he must accept some distasteful chore to be completed as punishment without complaint in order to teach him responsibility.

His years of private tutoring have put him slightly ahead of his peers in some subjects, but he’s somewhat lacking in socialization. When he meets a girl at school who is friendly, he is determined that he will do anything not to lose her friendship. He even makes friends with some of the other boys with the help of his cousin.

Not everything goes smoothly, and he does eventually have his third strike. At that point, he decides to put his friendship with the girl to the test, and, swearing her to secrecy, lets her read a file that documents all that has happened to him. This also provides the reader with the information about the kidnapping without making the entire story about it.

Teenage alliances being fluid, there are betrayals and misunderstandings, and Karma takes its own time visiting.

This book was originally supposed to be a one-off novel. Of course, things are not always what they appear to be, and a second novel, which takes place in Jeremy’s senior year of high school, finally puts all of the pieces together.

Having found out who betrayed him in the previous novel, he believes everything will finally settle down to what other boys his age experience. After all, he has been assured that everyone involved with his kidnapping has either been arrested or killed, so he need never fear anything from those people.

Jeremy has a brother who has been out of the family’s graces since shortly after kidnapping through his own choice. His sister is the only one in contact with him. Believing he is the cause of the estrangement, Jeremy wants to try to heal the rift and get to know his brother, who is living in another state.

He does eventually convince his brother to meet him, and helps to try to reunite the family.

Meanwhile, a chance vacation at the shore brings Jeremy face to face with someone he thought was long dead. Panic, police investigations and U.S. Embassy inquiries ensue to try to flush out the last person involved in the kidnapping, who has, so far, escaped justice.

Jeremy’s life is kept off-balance while the professionals try to figure out what went wrong. But Karma finally does prove she can be a bitch in the right circumstances.

Both novels take place in Yardley, Pennsylvania, Princeton, New Jersey and many points in-between.

 

Mothers and Daughters

 

Mothers and daughters often have an odd relationship.

My mother was an identical twin. I never had any trouble telling them apart. There was something slightly different that I saw in their looks. And their personalities couldn’t have been more different.

My aunt was an extrovert. My mother was an introvert.

They were born in the 1920s, and typical of that era, were born at home, which makes the survival of both a bit amazing. They were the only twins in their grade, and possibly in the school, so everyone made a fuss.

Typical of the times, their mother dressed them alike throughout their childhood. Since they went to Catholic school, their uniforms were more of the same.

When they became teens, my mother was content to continue dressing alike. According to my mother, my aunt wanted to be more independent. She was a size smaller than my mother, so she frequently tried to find outfits in her size that weren’t available in my mother’s size.

I think of my mother as the dependent twin. Her mother didn’t help things. If one wasn’t invited somewhere, the other couldn’t go. Consequently, when she was invited to parties or other outings, my mother thought my aunt was the one people really wanted, and she was only invited so her sister could go.

Because they were always together she didn’t develop much independence.

When it came time for high school, my mother wanted to go to the Catholic high school. My aunt didn’t. But their parents couldn’t afford to send both to Catholic school, and their mother wouldn’t split them up (which would have been a good thing, especially for my mother’s development), so they both attended the public high school, which my mother didn’t particularly like.

My mother’s father was Catholic, but her mother wasn’t. Since the children were raised Catholic, and had been sent to Catholic elementary school, their mother felt she’d fulfilled her obligation.

As was usual at the time, my mother lived at home until she married. She got a job when she finished high school, and dated, like other girls.

One boy was interested in her that her mother wouldn’t allow her to date because he wasn’t Catholic. She told my mother life was difficult enough without having different religions in the family. She spoke from experience.

My mother dated a few different boys, but there was a war on – this was the 1940s – and many went off to the military.

She was thrilled when the cute, “older” boy from the next block down asked her out. He went into the military, too, but was discharged early due to a medical complication, and they were married in 1944, when she promptly left her job and handed her husband all of her money.

I balked when she told me that. When my husband and I married, we didn’t like the way each other did banking, so we kept separate bank accounts in separate banks. Her take on marriage and finance is not mine.

I was the only daughter and the youngest. A preemie born before the advent of the NICU, I wasn’t necessarily expected to live. I suppose tenacity kept me alive.

To say I have a temper is an understatement. I’m of Irish descent and an Aries, and descended from redheads on one side of the family, which gives some indication of just how much temper stereotyping and tradition say I have. I’ve been told The Taming of the Shrew could have been written about me (The main character is also named Catherine), except I’ve never succumbed to being tamed.

Actually, I think the zodiac descriptions are nonsense, and the Irish people I’ve met have been sweet-tempered and lovely, and my ginger relatives were always wonderful when I saw them. Still, I – although not remotely a redhead myself – seem to fit the trifecta stereotype.

It isn’t difficult to imagine the conflicts between my mother and me when I was often forbidden to do the things my brothers were allowed to do for no better reason than I was born female. In fact, most of our conflicts had to do with gender and gender roles.

My mother always strove to make me “ladylike”. My so-called friends in the neighborhood would pick fights with me, and say the most horrendous things to me. I would like to have hurled an expletive or two, given them a litany of their shortcomings, and had nothing more to do with them, preferring solitude to joyless friendships.

But no. According to my mother, I must never stoop to their level. I had to be kind because, how would I feel if someone said that to me?

Excuse me? Someone did!

Consequently, since this was drilled into me since I was a wee, small child, I have never been able to have a face-to-face spoken confrontation with anyone. I choke on the words. Everyone thinks I’m fine with everything, and they can say what they like with impunity.

I’ve long said that this inability of mine was the greatest disservice my mother ever did to me.

But oh, can I write letters that drip daggers and seethe with sarcasm. If you’ve injured me, quake if a letter arrives from me.

But most of these things were the occasional spats mothers and daughters have. My mother and I got along well. She would tell me stories of her childhood, and I would rail against the injustices done to her. I wouldn’t let someone do that to me or tell me I couldn’t go to college. I wouldn’t care if I didn’t have all the best things. And she would tell me things were different then.

Her parents were lucky they didn’t have me as a child. Anyone who knew how adamant I was, even at six, that they weren’t going to make me write with my right hand knows I would have been beaten to a bloody pulp by the 1930s nuns, and refused to submit.

Submit was never part of my vocabulary. Even my mother in the 1960s and ‘70s would often shake her head and say, “What are we going to do with you?” (My fear was that they'd return me to the orphanage. I always believed I was adopted because I didn't look like my brothers -- that is, I wasn't a boy. And I couldn't tap dance, so what good would I be there?  My only knowledge of orphanages was Shirley Temple films.)

One of the few things my mother and I had in common was that we were both born female. She didn’t mind it. I hated it. I always said she wanted a daughter, and she got me, instead.

Another thing we had in common was being introverts.

As a child, I was also shy, but somewhere in high school I think I mostly outgrew that – they’re not the same thing.

I still prefer the idea of a party to actually going to one, and I have to rehearse what I’m going to say when I have to make a telephone call to a stranger. I have to plan on what so say if someone else answers, tells me the person isn’t there, or if I have to leave a message on a machine. It's so much preparation! Texting is a godsend to introverts everywhere.

Dealing with people is exhausting, and I don’t know where my mother found the energy to not only deal with, but actually enjoy three children. She once told me she’d originally wanted five or six kids.

Of course, she couldn’t understand how I could dislike parties and meeting people, yet absolutely love getting up on stage to perform. I told her I only get stage fright at parties. On stage, you’re separated from people, and you know you’re doing the one thing those party  people are afraid to do. On stage, I’m in my element; at a party, especially where I don’t know many people, I have to pretend to be some character and play a part. (And being a writer, I have lots of characters to choose from.)

Attending an all-girls Catholic high school was probably the best academic decision she made for me. Because she was denied that choice, I was denied any other. But it allowed me to flourish scholastically. Socially,  not so much.

Girls were always difficult for me to understand. Growing up, I never knew when they were going to decide they didn’t like me for a day, a week or forever.

High school was a bit easier in that regard. I didn’t have people bullying me for being better at schoolwork than they were, as I had experienced in elementary school. We were separated into academic “tracks”, and I was mostly with the “smarter thans.” Being in the middle range of that group, there was nothing in that regard to bully me for.

I still didn’t have many friends. I always wanted to be popular, but in hindsight, having a lot of friends probably would have been exhausting. That was for the extroverts.

But how was I to ever date if I went to an all-girls school? Oh, yes, there were dances. But I lived a half hour from my school, and my parents wouldn’t let me have the car – although my brothers were allowed to take the car to any and sundry thing they needed to drive to. That was another bone of contention between my mother and me.

“Boys are supposed to drive.”

“But I don’t have a boyfriend because I can’t meet any boys because I can’t get to the dance because you won’t let me use the car.”

While this wasn’t entirely true, it was my argument.

I was in the church guitar group, and there were boys in it. The problem was, the boys I liked were dating other girls. Most of the rest were younger, weren’t interested, or weren’t old enough to drive.

Only through the magic of my mother setting things up with her friends who had sons, as well as a boy in the group who also didn’t have a date to the prom was I able to attend the junior and senior proms. In those days  one wasn’t even allowed to buy tickets to the prom without a date.

“You can’t because you’re (just) a girl,” has never been an acceptable reason for anything in my mind.

Anger combined with the “just a girl” restriction developed a very strong sense of independence in me.

I can’t? Hold my wine. I’ll show you!

I probably accomplished more because I was told I couldn’t than for any other reason.

I stood up to my parents when they threatened to take me out of said Catholic high school halfway through because my father lost his job. Always very private about finances, they wouldn’t go to either the parish priest or the principal of the school to plead hardship for a tuition reduction.

I told my parents that if they tried to pull me out of my school where I knew everyone to put me in a public school where I’d have to start all over again learning my way around, and have no friends halfway through high school, I’d go myself and tell the priest and the principal about the situation they were trying to keep private.

They were horrified, and threatened, but I was determined. In the end, no one was told. They left me in my school, and my mother got a job to pay my tuition. (At 16, no employers believed I actually was 16, so I couldn’t get a job. Otherwise, I would have paid my own tuition.)

It was surprising when, after graduating from university, she treated me like an adult, not like the child who had better be on her best behavior when we were out or just wait till you got home!

During a 10-year period when I was actually at an appropriate weight for my height, as a joke while looking for a bathing suit, I tried on a bikini and was surprised it fit. My mother was with me at the time, and actually encouraged me to buy it – I didn’t.

When one so-called boyfriend dumped me suddenly – the  vast majority of my friends were married with children by this time – and in frustration and not a few tears, I said, “Why can’t anyone ever love me," she actually cried.

The thing is, my mother was keen on my finding someone and getting married. I wasn’t. I simply didn’t like being dumped, especially with lame excuses or gas lighting.

My mother, the dependent twin, went from her father’s house to my father’s house, and never really learned how to be independent. I was born independent.

I went from my parents’ house to college, where I made my own decisions on a daily basis, back home until I could – sort of – afford an apartment alone.

When my father died, I had moved back home to go back to college for something I could get a job in. My mother transferred her dependence on me. She couldn’t make a major decision without consulting me. If one of my brothers visited, she consulted him instead. I found it quite frustrating that she was never her own advocate. I’ve always bristled somewhat to have to consult with someone on more than a superficial level about anything. I suppose that’s why, in 13 terms of college, I had 11 different roommates. And I even liked some of them.

Relations between my mother and me were generally good as long as there wasn’t a third party involved. Once the third person entered the picture, I felt like I was expected to dissolve, especially if said third person was male. I was, after all, only a girl.

Once I got married – at 39 – my mother was anxious for me to have children. Me, not so much.

I assumed it was probably a foregone conclusion that a first child – no, only child – at 40 wasn’t going to happen, and I proved correct in that.

I’m amused when people sigh and say how sorry they are that I didn’t have any children. I kind of laugh and tell them I’m cool with it. Besides, if God had intended me to have children, I would’ve been born male.

My mother, on the other hand, was decidedly not cool with it.

One day, we got into the whole baby discussion, and her desire for me to have a baby so she “could have grandchildren before I die.”

Don’t ever do that to me. I am not responsible for other people’s burdens.

I told her she had a granddaughter and two step-grandchildren. She somehow thought that didn’t count because they lived at least five hours away, and she never got to see them.

I am not without a sense of humor. I told her if she wanted to have grandchildren so badly, she should’ve had them first.

The whole grandparent thing is lost on me. My mother’s parents died well before I was born, so I never think of them as my grandparents. My father’s parents were it, and we saw them only a couple of times a year. They lived in the city, an hour away by the roads and speed limits of the time. They had so many grandchildren, I don’t think anyone was particularly special. I never had the impression my grandmother was particularly overjoyed to see us.  I didn't actually think she even liked me, although I think my grandfather thought I was okay. I didn’t know them well.

I have fond memories of my grandfather taking us for walks around their part of South Philadelphia.

The thing I remember most about my grandmother was that when I was a teen and into my twenties, every time she saw me she wanted to know if I had a boyfriend yet, and the answer was always no. I don’t remember her ever noticing me when I was a child.

She hadn’t wanted my parents to name me Catherine because none of the Catherines born into the family had ever married. My grandfather’s youngest sister was one, and she was a spinster.

My parents didn’t give any credence to such superstitions. And I, devil that I am, would tell my grandmother that I was simply following family traditions.

My mother was always my staunchest ally, although I didn’t always appreciate the fact. She would defend me against any outsider, even if privately she would tell me I was weird.

Still I think she did the best she could for me, and I did the best I could for her.

My Favorite Year

 

            “What was your all-time favorite year?” asked no one, ever.

            However, I think about things like that, and my answer is usually age four.

            Four?

            It seems like an odd age to pick, but, while I was completely dependent on my parents to provide food, shelter and clothing, I was an autonomous individual by four.

            I could bathe myself – except washing my hair – brush my teeth, dress myself including all fasteners except my shoelaces, and feed myself, except for cutting my meat.

I knew the precise code for the perfect bath temperature – three turns of the hot water faucet and the cold all the way on as far as it would go.

I knew my colors, numbers, address and phone number, even though I wasn’t allowed to use the phone because we had a party line and the lady who lived behind us was always on it. I wasn’t allowed to cut with scissors, but I could color – just not inside the lines.

            I also knew the names of the days of the week, although I didn’t know what day it was unless it was Saturday or Sunday because my dad didn’t go to work on those days. And on Sundays we went to church where the guy in the fancy gowns mostly spoke in a foreign language, and at the end we would say that prayer about the knives (to my ears part of it sounded like, “Show unto us thy knives of mercy toward us.”)

            Sometimes on Saturday night we would to go Confession, which consisted of my parents and brothers standing in line to go into a closet while I waited in the pew. In those days, we didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped out of church or murdered in it. Besides, if my mother told me to stay there, the whole heavenly host could not have pried me from the spot until my mother returned.

            I remember I once asked my mother what they did in the church closets. She told me that’s where they kept their skeletons. (Imagine my surprise at seven, when I made my First Confession only to discover there were no skeletons. I had been looking forward to seeing them.)

            Sometimes in the summer, after Confession, my dad would take us for a drive, and we’d magically end up at Greenwood Dairies, where we would get ice cream cones.

            Four was also the age at which I received the only spanking of my life because of a failed attempt to assert my independence.

            At four I knew the rules.

            I could play in the back yard on the swings, sliding board and in the sandbox, contentedly pretending to be my brothers’ friends from school: Ricky, Gerry, Joey, Steve or Wayne. I never pretended to be the ones I actually knew.

            In summer, the lady who lived in the summer house next door, and was about a million years old, would stop and talk to me. She was even older than my grandparents, and had white hair in a bun, little round frameless glasses, and she always wore a dress, even to rake the leaves. She had a teenage granddaughter who invited me over once, and I got to drink lemonade with her on their side porch.

            Mostly, I played in my yard, where I could also ride my tricycle or the pedal car that sometimes went forward and sometimes backwards. I could never figure out how to make it go the way I wanted.

            The people who lived behind us had a dog. He was brown and white or black and white, and his name was Zeke. They kept him tied up in their back yard. There was space between their chicken coop and their outhouse for Zeke to come to the fence. I would stick my hand through the chicken wire to pet him. He seemed to like that. Since we didn't have a dog at the time, I used to pretend he was my dog.

            Sometimes the lady there would come to the fence to talk to me. I never knew what she was talking about, but I would stand there respectfully while she talked, even though I wanted to play. When my mother would see her talking to me, she’d call me in. She would say the lady was gossiping, and it wasn’t the sort of thing small children should hear. She didn’t mind me talking to the million-year-old lady, though.

            Four was about when my mother started talking about my going to school. She would tell me all the wonders of school, like learning to read, making friends, learning math and learning about the world. And all of this would occur once I turned six.

            Of course, I thought it was just one of her stories. I would never be six!

School was where my brothers went with their schoolbags and lunch boxes.  I had a toy lunch box that would fit a half sandwich, and my mother would fill the plastic “thermos” with milk. I used hold my lunch box while I waited with my brothers for their bus to come. They’d dash down the road to the bus stop. I’d go as far as the corner and wave at the bus as it passed. (This caused a bit of teasing once I started school.) Then I would return to the house and play in the yard, my lunchbox safely in the fridge.

Somehow, I thought I would die before I ever made it to six. I had no health issues, but I could never imagine reaching such a great age.

Once I did reach that mighty school age, the next best year of my life was going to be 17. I picked it simply because I liked the number.

But alas! 17 wasn’t as good as four. At 17 I was a senior in high school.

At the beginning of the school year, we received our class rings at a special ceremony which, my school being Catholic, included Mass. Throughout the day friends would turn your ring on your finger as some kind of good luck ritual.

That night there was a dance. My date picked me up, and after pictures at both houses, we were on our way.

Although my date and I had known each other since we started school, we didn’t know a lot about each other, so the conversation was rather halting until we realized that music was pretty much our only common interest. So we chatted about things musical on our half hour drive to the school, where the dance was held.

But a school dance was not to be in our future. About 10 minutes from school, we were in an accident.

This was the ’70s. New cars didn’t have seatbelts or padded dashboards, and no one I knew had a new car. 

As I was hurtled forward into the windshield, the only thing that kept me from going completely through the glass was my knees hitting the bottom of the dash. Rather than death or worse, I ended up with a concussion.

My date wasn’t so lucky. His mouth hit the steering wheel, and the wires from the braces on his teeth broke, causing a bloody mess. When we arrived at the hospital – my first ever ride in an ambulance – they wouldn’t even touch him because his injury was an orthodontic one.

The following Monday at school, my classmates wanted to know where I was Friday night. They looked doubtful when I told my story, and I had to let them feel the lump on my forehead before they believed me. My oh-so-supportive friends assumed I didn’t have a date, and had made up a story about coming to the dance.

The rest of being 17 was non-descript, so I moved on to pick my next favorite year: age 21.

I had my 21^st birthday as the highlight of that year because I spent my birthday in England, the place I’d wanted to go since the Beatles visited America, during a study-abroad semester. 

On my actual birthday, we had a field trip in which we visited Peveral Castle and then on to Chatsworth, the stately home of the Duke of Devonshire, who happened to be the chancellor of Manchester University, the school I was attending in England.

A few weeks later I got to meet some distant cousins who lived in London, and spent Easter with them.

21 promised to be one of the better years, all-in-all. But I stopped trying to pick best years after that, since most years have tended to have their good parts and their less-than stellar parts. Even 2020 the neverending year of Covid-19, held a silver lining. While I didn’t get to go out to celebrate a milestone birthday – who did? – I had a preview of retirement for a few weeks before we resumed work virtually.

And for what it’s worth: I could get used to that.

Things They Did Not Teach Us in School

I love to watch the expression on the faces of the students I work with when I tell them that I was never taught to print.

When they hear that I learned cursive in first grade, they generally want to know, “What about kindergarten?”

Then I tell them that my school didn’t have kindergarten, and my mother saw no reason to send me to public school to play dress-up, play in the playground and the sandbox, and take naps. I had all of those things at home; no reason to catch other people’s germs.

Nowadays, kindergarten has replaced first grade in the learning department, and what my peers did in kindergarten, children now do in pre-school.

I only missed out on the socialization part, and I’m not sure I ever quite caught up.

But those are not the only differences in schools of today versus “in my day.”

I still think I had the advantage, learning cursive and never having been formally taught to print. Our teachers assumed we were all intelligent enough to figure out how to print. It isn’t that hard.

I did.  Well, with the exception of the letters that I reversed until mid-high school. Even those, I figured out ways to fix.

 Z, for example. I reversed that. But I discovered that if I wrote Zorro (a popular TV show of my childhood) on the bottom line of the letter, if all of the letters came before the Z when I tried to read it, it was backwards.

Now teachers teach the children who reverse b and d to make two fists with their thumbs up. The one that comes first (the left) is the b, while the one on the right is the d.

I had my own way. Make the bed.

Huh?

Well, you need a headboard and a foot board. Then put the pillows (the half circles that make up the rest of the two letters letters) in the middle. Then let e jump on it (since monkeys aren’t allowed to jump on the bed.)

Okay, it’s a bit out there. There I go, thinking outside the box again.

But having learned to write, there were other subjects to master. While I know when to use fewer and when to use less – something many do not – and which to/two/too to use, as well as when and how to use lie and lay, there were other things I did not learn in school.

For example, when my husband, Blue Scream of Jeff, told me he learned about the Vietnam War in school, I thought he was joking. Yes, he’s younger than I am by about a decade, but still! We did not learn that in school.

We lived through it.

When I was a senior in high school, they had finally finished arguing about what shape the table should be – I thought at the time round was a no-brainer – and had started the Paris Peace Talks. We sometimes watched that on television in Social Studies class.

Years later, after failing to get a job in my field of study from college, I fell into teaching fifth grade quite by accident. While the school was still as white as mine had been, some color had been introduced to the history books.

“In my day,” African Americans – who were called, by the nun who taught me, Negroes and Nigresses – were not introduced into American culture until we studied slavery. Yes, it was mentioned in passing that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned plantations, and therefore slaves – although Sally Hemmings was never mentioned in Catholic school! – the idea that there were free blacks in any of the northern states was something we were not told.

Imagine my surprise as a teacher when, preparing my class notes on the Boston Massacre, I discovered that the first person killed in the skirmish was a man of color, one Crispus Attucks! And he wasn’t the only black man who fought against the British! It was a revelation.

While I learned all sorts of things about Russia, India and China in World Cultures I and II, I never learned word one about the French Revolution. The first time I ever heard of Trafalgar was when I bought a Bee Gees album of that name (With Barry Gibb dressed as Lord Nelson after his having been shot).

We were taught about the French and Indian War – a war not between the French and the Indians – but no one ever mentioned that was a portion of the 7-Year’s War in Europe.

Likewise, we were taught nothing of Spanish, Italian or Scandinavian history, other than where history had to do with the popes or Christopher Columbus.

Moving on to Geography, we were taught countries of modern Europe, Asia and Africa – well the African countries with the names they had back “in my day.” But while Egypt has remained Egypt throughout history, I was never able to locate places like Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire in relation to places we have now, like Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, etc.

I only know Zimbabwe in Africa used to be what I knew as Rhodesia because it became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia while I was studying in the UK, and their news was full of that fact.

And what ever happened to Sparta? That was my favorite place in ancient Greece! I loved the story about the Spartan boy who stole the fox. You still have Athens, Thermopile and lots of other places, but just try to book a vacation to Sparta (or for that matter, Troy, to see the Trojan Horse.)

I suppose some years had too much jammed into them. Fourth grade was almost entirely the Middle Ages – which is probably why fourth grade was my favorite. Sixth grade had Greek, Roman and Ancient Egyptian history – which is probably why I absolutely hated sixth grade.

Seventh grade had Westward expansion and the Civil War, and Eighth grade covered the Reconstruction era, World War I (for about 5 minutes one afternoon), the great Depression (for a depressingly long time), World War II (forever, but without mentioning much of importance like the D-Day invasion or Iwo Jima), and the Korean War (which was only mentioned as having been a war).

While I believe in general I received an excellent education in my first 12 years of school, much of history was sketchy at best.

We learned about the wave of Irish immigration, followed by the Italian immigration, and then war and things, but we were never taught any reasons why those immigrants left their homes to come to our shores.

Even our shameful treatment of Native Americans was well hidden with excuses such as the idea that they were savages, most of whom refused to accept Catholic Christianity. No mention was ever made of small-pox-infected blankets being given to these people, or the fact that the US government violated every treaty it ever made with the Native Americans.

What I learned of the Potato Famine or Native American history came from my love of reading, well after I had finished my schooling.

All I know about the French Revolution came from reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

I suppose I could have been a history major in college, although I can’t see that as a good route to a career, especially since most of the history I did learn didn’t much interest me.

I loved the Middle Ages, but my parents refused my request to stay two extra terms at Penn State to earn a minor in Medieval History on top of my dual bachelor’s degrees.

Who knows where it could have led? I could have really been something at the Renaissance Faires!

Outside the Box

I sometimes wonder if I was born with a form of dementia.

I generally call it a short-circuit in my brain, which sometimes behaves almost like an out-of-body experience.

This sort of thing has been happening all of my life, and is not simply something that started after age 50. In fact, it hasn’t happened much at all since age 50.

I don’t know if it happened before I started school. The first memory I have of it was when I was in third grade. It was the first week of school. I know this because we were still in regular clothes, and hadn’t started wearing our uniforms yet.

In those days, girls’ dresses usually had sashes. As an eight-year-old, I couldn’t manage to tie the sash behind my back, although I could button, zip and tie shoe laces, all in front of me.

It was the end of the day, while we were waiting for our bus. I had asked one of my friends if she would tie my sash. My recollection of what happened was that I stood there quietly while she tied it, and that was the end of it. Well, she had said something funny, and I giggled.

However, the teacher, who had been out in the hall, suddenly dashed into the classroom wanting to know who had screamed. I thought she was crazy. No one had screamed. There was a little quiet talking, but certainly no screaming.

I know I was confused. My friend immediately looked at me and said quietly, “You did.”

I had not! When no-one said anything, she went around the class asking each person if they had done it. Everyone said no, and my friend kept saying over and over – quietly – “You did.”

I was the last one questioned, and when she asked, figuring my friend knew something I didn’t, I said that I did it. Because I hadn’t admitted it immediately – or perhaps because it had happened at all – I was given a punishment of having to write a 100-word apology.

When I got home, I explained to my mother what I knew of the situation, and what my friend had told me. Of course, she would not contradict the teacher or even write a note saying that I had no memory of the incident whatever.

What I should have done, except that, at eight, I didn’t have the words, was write my side of the story, and how I had no idea what she was talking about. At the end, I could have apologized for any inconvenience I might have caused.

But, as I said, I didn’t have the words. Instead, I wrote an apology that basically used the word very – misspelled as verry, I do recall that much –to make up about 90 of the words in the apology. And I’m sure it was tossed in the rubbish as soon as my back was turned.

The second time happened was when I was about 10. I was visiting relatives for a week. Apparently, when my aunt was out getting a few things for dinner, my cousin fell off one of those baby sit-on-and-scoot toys. Apparently, too, I told my aunt this when she returned home a few minutes later.

Nothing was made of the incident, since there was no blood, bruising or tears involved.

Later that night, apparently, my aunt thought something wasn’t quite right with my cousin. She asked me about him falling. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had no recollection of him falling or even of telling her about it. I tried to pull the memory of it, but it was like trying to retrieve a parsley flake from molasses. All I could do was shrug and say I didn’t know.

I don’t think I have had any other episodes quite like that since.

There have been times when I was so involved in the pretend life I lived inside my head that I was out of touch with what was going on in front of me in the real world. 

Who I was in my head was never who I had to remember to be in real life. So there were times when I told people my name was David Michael instead of Cathy. That usually got strange looks. I’d laugh and say I was just kidding to cover my tracks. But anyone who really knew me as a child knew that I always pretended to be a boy named David Michael.

The other form this has taken started when I was in high school, and has also only happened a couple of times that I recall.

The first time was in Chemistry class. I really wanted to like Chemistry. I had visions of being the mad scientist. But my Chemistry teacher happened to be a warm body with a science degree, and that degree was in Biology. She could only explain the work in the exact words that were in the book. I seem to be a "textbook dyslexic," and so couldn’t make sense of what I was reading in the textbook (or any textbook, really).

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what she was teaching. Since our class was first track –what would now be called advanced placement – it was unusual for the majority of the class to fail to understand content or, as it turned out, to fail the first major exam.

Our intrepid teacher continued to repeat the same words in the same order to be met with the same lack of understanding from the class.

Finally, I raised my hand and said, “Do you mean…” and proceeded to spend five minutes explaining, in completely different words, the points she had been trying in vain to give us. It was a great explanation. All around me I heard, “Oh, now I get it!” along with the oohs and aahs of understanding. It was perhaps my best performance ever. 

Unfortunately, I have no idea what I said. I couldn’t even hear what I was explaining. It was as if some pixie sitting on top of my head was explaining Chemistry in a foreign language for all I got out of it.

The teacher’s eyes lit up. I never saw her so happy ever again. “Yes, yes, that’s it!” she said.

“I don’t understand that,” I replied, sincerely.

She immediately became extremely angry with me, and told the girl in front of me to explain to me what I had just said. Apparently, her explanation wasn’t as good as mine had been, and I never did understand.

And from that moment, that teacher never gave me credit for any intelligence whatever. I suppose I was lucky she didn’t send me to the principal for insolence.

The only other incident like that that I can recall happened when I was in my 20s. A friend was trying to explain to me how electricity works. I still have no idea.

After he spent about half an hour explaining it to me, I explained it back to him using completely different words, giving him an accurate accounting of the principles of electricity. It sounded very much like I knew what he was talking about.

But again, what was coming out of my mouth had no attachment to my conscious brain. I can’t access the portion of my brain that knows this stuff.

When I finished, he seemed happy that I understood. Until I told him that made no sense to me whatever.

I know he had used an analogy about electrons moving through a wire like water runs through a pipe. And at least he got a good laugh – and has never let me live it down – when I picked up a piece of wire, closed one eye, and looked at the end of it.

“Where’s the hole?” I asked.

No, I had no idea what he was talking about.

I know I’m not stupid. I know these things must be in there somewhere, but there’s no key to the door they’re locked behind.

The only other thing that comes close is when someone asks if I have an idea of how to do something to help one of the students I work with. Without even being aware that I’ve thought of something, I’ll give them a suggestion that usually causes their jaw to drop because they never would have thought of it.

I just shrug and say, “I kind of tend to think a little outside the box.”