no TV for us!

Have you ever been so desperate for someone to play with you that you were willing to do practically anything? I remember once when I was little (maybe seven years old??) my parents tried to make me eat liver. It started out as a big slab of liver, at least it seemed like a big slab to me, in reality it was probably no bigger than a deck of playing cards. But it didn’t matter what size it was, it was not going in my mouth. The funny part is, I didn’t even know what liver was – I just knew it must be disgusting by the way my parents were so insistent that I eat it and wouldn’t be getting up from the table until I did. And unfortunately for them, I am stubborn. At age seven, I had the stubbornness to wear down the patience of Mother Theresa. So I sat at the table during the meal, then while everyone else cleared the table (except for my plate of liver, of course), and while they went about their days without me. I was prepared to sit there until the second coming of Jesus, if need be.

My mother must have known what I was thinking, because eventually she cut the liver into pieces and fed them all to the dog except for four pieces. And she insisted that I eat those last four little pieces. God bless her for trying, but there was still no way I was eating that liver. Hours passed and I was still sitting there at the kitchen table, not eating the liver. My parents were wearing down. They had a little conference and came to me with the decision: they would give the dog three pieces of liver, I would eat the remaining piece. To them, it was a great solution. To me, it was never going to happen.

Since the rest of the family left the table, my younger brother who was probably four at the time, was in the living room waiting for me to play. He kept peeking around the corner, telling me to just eat the liver so we could play. Finally when no one was around, he ran into the kitchen, came over to my plate, and without saying anything, he ate my piece of liver. I was free and there was nothing my parents could do because the dog had eaten all the rest! My brother had turned from bratty little brother to coolest kid on the planet in ten seconds!

So this weekend, I wanted Bryan to hang out with me and watch TV or a movie. But he couldn’t because he had forty-five reports to grade. They were reports by seventh graders and they were on the differences and similarities of plant and animal cells. Blah blah blah. I could see the night ticking away while he read the reports with the speed of a sloth on benedryl. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I took some of the reports and started reading them myself. I am, after all, certified to teach kindergarten through eighth grade. I didn’t technically grade anything but I read each report and handed it to Bryan with a synopsis of which parts had been included or left out. My purpose was to speed things up a little so that we could watch some TV.

Unfortunately for those seventh graders, I actually read their reports. I doubt they were counting on anyone actually reading something as dry as Plant Cells vs. Animal Cells. But I did. And after reading a handful, several of them started sounding familiar. In fact, a little too familiar. I thumbed back through the pile and found two that matched pretty much exactly. I pointed it out to Bryan. He groaned, as this isn’t a fun thing to deal with for a teacher. I left him with those matching papers and kept reading. My plan was backfiring in a big way. The more I read, the more I realized I was reading a lot of the exact same thing over and over again. In the end, there were 13 papers that were the exact same, except for the names at the top. This didn’t lead to Bryan and I relaxing and watching TV as I had planned. It led to Bryan in despair at the kitchen table until late that night, trying to figure out what to do with them all on Monday. We did figure out that they had all used the same website and just “copied and pasted” from the website to their reports. Ugh.

So much for my plan to help and get things done faster so Bryan could play. I should have learned from my little brother all those years ago. I shouldn’t have read those dumb reports – I should have EATEN them.

it really was the frog's fault

One night last week I woke up to a terrifying sound. No, it wasn't Flavor Flav whispering sweet nothings into my ear - it was a different kind of terrifying. It was a sound like a million rocks being thrown at every window of our house. It took me a minute to figure it out because I had never heard anything like it - it was hail. Lots and lots of golf-ball sized hail. About a minute later, Bryan's mom called us to tell us to get to a shelter because a tornado was headed our way.
Now, if you live in Oklahoma, you already know this but if you are from somewhere else, you might be surprised to find out that hardly anyone here has a basement, including us. Some people have a little one room "basement" under their house but more common is the storm cellar (think Wizard of Oz). We don't have that either.

I took Wesley into the bathroom with a candle, fully expecting every window in our house to be broken but what troubled me even more was the thought that WE WERE ABOUT TO DIE!!! On TV you always hear tornado survivors say, "It sounded like a train was coming straight towards us," and that is exactly how it sounded.

Now, when I was a youngster, probably about six years old, I remember my dad decided that our family should have a practice fire drill. I know - it sounds very "Brady Bunch" and in reality we couldn't have been further from the Brady Bunch but DARN IT, we were going to be prepared for a house fire. Well, my sister and I shared a room in the basement which meant that to get out, we would have had to climb up on our dresser and out through the window well. This should have been a real treat - what kid doesn't want permission to climb on the furniture and out the window?!? Well, the answer is - me. Because I knew there was a frog that lived in that window well and it might touch me. Or even worse, look at me. And I knew in my six year old heart that it would be better to burn to a crisp than go near that frog. After many failed attempts to coax me out, it became clear that even the Jaws of Life would not get me through that window. My poor dad's plan to practice fire preparedness had failed, all because of me. The end result was a string of cursing that would have been more appropriate if, say, I had actually SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE.

But back to last week....I think my dad was right to try and make a plan. And in case we have another tornado, we need a plan, too. Because during our brush with the tornado, it became clear to me that our plan was something like this: gather in the bathroom and kiss your *asp* goodbye. And that plan doesn't work for me.

So I guess on my "to do" list, I need to add another item: formulate frogless plan for tornado preparedness. Yeah, that should be a piece of cake.