Soapbox

One Thing I Know for Certain

One thing I now know for certain is that the day my first child was born, my IQ dropped at least 20 points. I know this is true because my teenager and almost-teenager remind me of this fact on a regular basis.

"Oh motherrrr!" they groan and roll their eyes when I make some particularly foolish remark, like "Isn’t this a cute dress?" or " if you put your shoes in your closet when you took them off, you’d know where they are right now!" Dopey me.

One day last week I was letting my stupidity hang out all over. First I picked my daughter up from school, and she told me that she hadn’t done so well in the vision screening at school that day. Foolishly I assumed this meant that she needed to talk about going to the eye doctor and getting glasses.

I asked her a few questions about what type of situation in which she was having trouble seeing, which annoyed her greatly. When I told her it was no big deal and I would call for an appointment when we got home, this put her in a huff. When I mentioned maybe needing "just reading glasses" she turned and glared at me as if wondering when I had taken complete leave of my senses. I only made things worse by reminding her that her cousins Grace and Abby both have glasses. She turned and pulled her coat up over her face, probably so she wouldn’t be seen riding in the car with me. And see, I’m so dumb that I wasn’t even sure what I had said that was wrong!

Finally, making a stab in the dark that perhaps, by talking about glasses I had made their existance my fault, I said, "Or, actually- at your age- you could probably just get contact lenses." There was no response for a full minute, then a muffled voice from within the coat said,
"Miss Hickey said that these days, contacts are so easy that kids get them all the time."
"Well there you have it: if Miss Hickey says it, it must be so!"
The head emerged from the coat: Crisis averted! A darn good thing, too: one more dumb word from me and I think she’d have jumped out at the next stop sign!

I guess I learned something from the experience, because I got on the right track a bit faster that evening with my son. He was complaining that he has to write a paragraph explaining what he will do for a final project for his History of Mexico class.

"So?" I asked as I stirred the noodles. "You do great projects."

"Mo-therrrr!" he chastised me, "you know I hate to have to decide these things! Why couldn’t he just assign me a topic?"
"No, you wouldn’t want that:" I assured him blithely, "you can think up way more interesting topics than your teacher could."

"Oh sure!" he dripped sarcasm. "Name one"
Chosing to ignore for the moment that by doing so I would actually be the one thinking up a better topic, I frowned thoughtfully.

"What about a project on the art of ancient indigenous people of Mexico?" I ventured, knowing what a good artist he is. When he didn’t say anything, I turned from the stove to gauge the response.

Uh oh- the look! The "How could someone as dumb as her have given birth to someone as smart as me?" look that every mother suffers at one time or another. But I was undaunted- I knew I could do better.

"Or…,you could re-create an ancient Aztec sacrifice."
In the blink of an eye, the look was gone, and an expression of "hey- she might just be onto something there" was on his face.

"Coooool!" he said.
"’Course, you’d probably have to use something else instead of a real human heart" I reminded him.
"They’d frown on the mess" he agreed.

"Maybe you could get one out of chocolate. Or, what if you wrote a musical comedy about the life of Pancho Villa? You could take tunes from popular songs, and make it a farce, like "Airplane" and get some other kids who don’t have a project idea to be in it with you."

He considered this new idea with respect, if not as much enthusiasm as the human sacrifice angle.
"We are going to study Pancho Villa. " he said, as if amazed that I had somehow surmised this fact.
And so another day drew to a close, with both of my children deciding not to disown me, at least for today.

I’m told that in a few years, when they’re trying to find an apartment and hold down a job, that my IQ will rise again to its pre-parenting level. Sometimes, that thought keeps me warm at night!

Respectfully submitted
by Tracy Meisky