By now, you’ve probably seen the movie or heard the story of Temple Grandin. Inspiring. Unbelievable. Poignant. The true story of a highly intelligent and autistic woman who craves the feeling of a hug, but can’t endure the human touch. She forges a special bond with cattle and then carves out a career designing systems for them to travel to their death without getting so much as one hive.
Apparently, completely calm, centered and happy cows make happy T-bone steaks. Rile them up, deprive them of the perfect coziness and pressure of Grandin’s specially designed chutes and you’re left with cortisol-riddled beefsteak that both tastes nasty and disrespects the beast. Like Grandin said, “We raise them to eat them so how’s about showing them a little res-PECT!!” Grandin even perfected a “squeeze machine”, as she calls it, which mimics the comforting feeling of a hug, without the unnerving (for her) sensation of two arms wrapped around her.
Somehow, she figured out that all she and the cows need is a little TLC.
I am inclined to agree with Temple, not because I totally understand her reasoning, but because I trust her. I saw the movie. I heard her interviewed on NPR. I’m also a fan because of another, more personal link.
See, there’s another Temple Grandin, one who lives in my world. I trust him, too. My version is a 43-year old math teacher and varsity softball coach who, each morning at precisely 7:20, takes his coffee and Sudoku into his "squeeze machine": the toilet closet. This, immediately after eating one bowl of cereal with sliced bananas both below the pile of cereal and placed on top, which he first slices lengthwise and then across, so each slice is a little half-circle. I guess this reminds him of geometry.
My Temple comes home every day at lunch, eats whatever I have fixed for him and then goes back to school with his afternoon treat in a bag: a yogurt and a banana. He sits at his desk, dipping the banana into the yogurt one bite at a time. His students pretend to be doing calculus problems, while secretly texting each other the following: BYGIAIA! (Banana Yogurt Guy Is At It Again!)
Those mornings when he peers into the fruit basket and sees that we’re out of bananas are dark, dark days. His face immediately droops. His brow furrows. He looks at me.
“You’ll survive, chief,” I say while pouring my coffee and shuffling toward the stove.
Trust me when I say, there is a teensy-weensy kernel in his brain, called the Temple Lobe, that tells him not to believe me. Unless he reads it in the sports page or on weather.com, no piece of data is trustworthy.
There are other things that give him the warmth and security he needs.
“I need my squeeze machine!” my husband yelled the other day when I told him I would not get off the laptop to let him check weather.com before he returned to school after lunch.
“You’ve checked it forty-two times today already. You checked it 10 minutes ago when you got home. What is the point?”
“The point is that if it doesn’t rain I need a plan B for practice. If it rains we’ll discuss situations in my classroom,” he said referring to what he might do if water fell out of the sky after school.
“So, write down an outside practice plan. You already know rain is likely. Why keep checking the weather? You could have had ten practice plans written for the next two weeks with all the time you’ve spent checking the weather!”
“Why can’t I just know?”
“Because you already DO KNOW. It said 80% chance of rain before mid-afternoon. Even if it said ‘150% chance of rain’ you know damn well you’d keep checking because that’s what you do.”
I knew what was coming next. Imagine the little black and white sketches that zoom through Temple’s mind when something does not compute.
“There’s no such thing as 150% chance of rain!! You know that!!” He hates it when I disrespect numbers as much as Temple hates it when cowboys disrespect cows.
“Whatever, Temple,” I said, referring the movie we’d just watched a few nights before, just to see if he was paying attention.
Suddenly, he was smiling. It was time for a scenario. We love scenarios.
“What if you found out that I was a highly functioning autistic?” my husband asked.
“What do you mean, IF?” I snapped, unable to keep the smirk off my face.
“Whaddya mean by that?” he said with that fake sad face he adopts just to get me to laugh.
“You check weather.com in the middle of FRIGGIN' JULY, that’s what! We live in California! It’s going to be hot! You’ve even got the kids doing it!" At this point, I can't even keep a straight face, even though I passionately believe in what I'm saying.
“What if a summer thunderstorm comes along?”
I turned and pointed to the living room window. “There’s my weather.com, all year long,” I said, adding, “Want to know what my ‘Plan B’ is? The sweatshirt in the closet!!”
There’s more. There are the clocks that he is umbilically tied to whether he’s at home, in a hotel or camping under the stars, where he ties his watch to the little pocket hanging on the inside of the tent. This because he is compelled to look at the clock just so that he knows what to feel: relieved (before 2 a.m.) or nervous (after 2 a.m.).
I once presented an alternate plan: my way. My way and my husband’s way are a little different. While he scopes the horizon, I tend to look straight down, careening through life, adjusting on the fly to whatever mishap I’ve recently created and fairly content to be in the moment. Other than important things, like appointments, kids’ practices and happy hour, I tend to take life as it comes. I'm not saying my way is better; like Temple's mother always told her, and anyone else who was tempted to judge, "Not more, just different."
I once suggested he cover up the clock at night, as I do, to ensure he won’t catch a glimpse. Of all the times to get bad news, the middle of the night is my least favorite.
“Why put yourself through the anxiety of seeing it’s 5:15 a.m. and that you only have 45 minutes left to sleep, which basically guarantees you won’t be getting back to sleep at all?”
“I just like to know,” he clipped.
“Well, I hope you are satisfied. You have most of our kids doing it. Way to go, Temple.”
“I need my squeeze machine!”
“Come here, honey. I’m you’re squeeze machine. I’m your Plan B.”
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Male genes, decoded
Sometimes, I consciously choose to let go of the surreal thoughts streaming live in my brain, born from trying to understand my children, and instead embrace what I see as the random thought patterns emanating from my husband’s mind. While my kids’ shenanigans actually bother me, given the biological connection and potential responsibility on my part for their weirdness, it’s actually entertaining to stop and contemplate where the hell my husband gets his ideas. Sure, we share our DNA with each other, but we don’t share DNA, so technically, I bear no responsibility for his thoughts.
While my children’s illogical conclusions (the dog pees in the yard, so why can’t I?) and mistaken beliefs (deodorant goes on the outside of one’s shirt) may be traced genetically back to me, thereby worrying the crap out of me, my husband’s oddities cannot. Hence, I don’t mind thinking about them.
Recently, I pulled up to our house after a long day of teaching, followed by picking up and dropping off kids at softball practice, only to find the front lawn freshly mowed. Hmmm, I thought, as I rolled up the driveway. I couldn’t imagine my husband would have come home during his prep period just to mow, then race back to school in time to catch the bus with his varsity softball team to their out-of-town game. I checked the garage. I spied the mower, wedged between the ping-pong table and the garage fridge, right where it had sat untouched since the beginning of softball season a month prior.
I walked out to the yard and inspected the precision cut. Nice. Definitely not a rush job. Just then, I heard the mower going in the back yard next door. Aha! It was our neighbor! He mowed our lawn because he’s retired, has nothing but time on his hands, the lawns are both small and most of all, he knows my husband is coaching three softball teams and in way over his head right now. What a guy. Neighbors rule!
Alas, those were my thought patterns.
Back to my husband’s thought patterns.
Returning home at eight o’clock that night, hubby brought it up first.
“Hey, honey, thanks for mowing the lawn,” he said with a thoughtful smile, knowing that I do things for him because I love him and not because I’m a passive-aggressive whack job. I know people who do this and guess what? They’ve got trained husbands who also know it! Husband stalls on a task, wife completes it, husband gets the cold shoulder for awhile, which suits him just fine because if he plays his cards right, it’ll last through the end of the seventh inning.
It’s a story as old as coupling itself. I can clearly imagine a caveman, sitting around, watching ants or whatever they did for fun back then, instead of going out and killing something for that night’s dinner. Along comes the wife, home from birthing her seventh baby in a nearby briar patch when she decides to take matters into her own hands, knowing the lazy slob is at cave, sitting on the rock. She clubs the first woolly mammoth that crosses her path and drags it onto the porch, just to make her husband feel bad about not getting it done.
“I didn’t mow it, honey; Ted did,” I said, smiling back at my exhausted husband and readying myself for his appreciative reply.
“That’s bullshit.”
I froze, not sure of what to do or say next. I wiped the smile from my face. Then, I made a mental note not to tell my husband that I put a fresh twelve-pack in the fridge in case he wanted to toddle over to Ted’s house with a couple of cold ones.
I turned toward the sink to hide the expression on my face which communicated something along the lines of, “What in heaven’s name is he thinking?” but with more f-words.
There was an awkward silence. I imagine it was equivalent to how a man feels when his wife asks him if she looks fat today. I decided to play it mature and direct by filling the sink with soapy water and getting busy on that pile of two dishes sitting on the counter.
“Oh, um, is that some kind of no-no or…” I asked casually before being cut-off mid sentence.
“Uh, yeah. You don’t mow another guy’s lawn,” he said snottily, as if I had a penis or something.
I was desperate to figure out where my husband was coming from. I imagined a somewhat different scenario, one in which my husband came home from work and found me relaxing on the couch, blouse askew, with an extremely satisfied look on my face and a cigarette dangling from my lips.
“Hi honey. Whatcha doin?”
“Well, Ted was just here, and….”
I mean, I can see how a husband might have a strong reaction to a neighbor reaching far afield of the boundary lines, but the lawn?
I tried it from another angle – anything to try and understand what my husband was thinking. This time, it was the other way around. This time, it was I who came home from work, plopping down my book bag and heading into the bathroom to take my first pee since ten a.m.
“Oh. My. God! Honey, you cleaned the toilet! You are so sweet.”
“I didn’t do that. Carol from across the street asked to use it and then she just knocked it out.”
“That bitch.”
“Honey, she did you a really nice favor. She asked to use our bathroom because hers wasn’t working.”
“I don’t care. You don’t wipe up another woman’s pubic hairs and pee drips.”
“Now, sweety, c’mon. She’s retired, home all day, kids grown. She knows how hard you work teaching and then have to come home and take care of four kids. She was just doing something nice for you.”
“She’s got her own bathrooms to monitor. You don’t do that. Nope. No way.”
Like I said, I tried to imagine this scenario. I kept getting stuck at my angry reaction to Carol’s obvious outpouring of support for her kind. Carol is my people. She understands me. She gets that sometimes, it’s just easier to shut the bathroom door, pretend it wasn’t there, and pour a glass of wine.
I looked at my husband, his jaw set, hands on hips as he stood looking out the living room window at the manicured lawn.
I decided to let him own it. Those genes were all his.
While my children’s illogical conclusions (the dog pees in the yard, so why can’t I?) and mistaken beliefs (deodorant goes on the outside of one’s shirt) may be traced genetically back to me, thereby worrying the crap out of me, my husband’s oddities cannot. Hence, I don’t mind thinking about them.
Recently, I pulled up to our house after a long day of teaching, followed by picking up and dropping off kids at softball practice, only to find the front lawn freshly mowed. Hmmm, I thought, as I rolled up the driveway. I couldn’t imagine my husband would have come home during his prep period just to mow, then race back to school in time to catch the bus with his varsity softball team to their out-of-town game. I checked the garage. I spied the mower, wedged between the ping-pong table and the garage fridge, right where it had sat untouched since the beginning of softball season a month prior.
I walked out to the yard and inspected the precision cut. Nice. Definitely not a rush job. Just then, I heard the mower going in the back yard next door. Aha! It was our neighbor! He mowed our lawn because he’s retired, has nothing but time on his hands, the lawns are both small and most of all, he knows my husband is coaching three softball teams and in way over his head right now. What a guy. Neighbors rule!
Alas, those were my thought patterns.
Back to my husband’s thought patterns.
Returning home at eight o’clock that night, hubby brought it up first.
“Hey, honey, thanks for mowing the lawn,” he said with a thoughtful smile, knowing that I do things for him because I love him and not because I’m a passive-aggressive whack job. I know people who do this and guess what? They’ve got trained husbands who also know it! Husband stalls on a task, wife completes it, husband gets the cold shoulder for awhile, which suits him just fine because if he plays his cards right, it’ll last through the end of the seventh inning.
It’s a story as old as coupling itself. I can clearly imagine a caveman, sitting around, watching ants or whatever they did for fun back then, instead of going out and killing something for that night’s dinner. Along comes the wife, home from birthing her seventh baby in a nearby briar patch when she decides to take matters into her own hands, knowing the lazy slob is at cave, sitting on the rock. She clubs the first woolly mammoth that crosses her path and drags it onto the porch, just to make her husband feel bad about not getting it done.
“I didn’t mow it, honey; Ted did,” I said, smiling back at my exhausted husband and readying myself for his appreciative reply.
“That’s bullshit.”
I froze, not sure of what to do or say next. I wiped the smile from my face. Then, I made a mental note not to tell my husband that I put a fresh twelve-pack in the fridge in case he wanted to toddle over to Ted’s house with a couple of cold ones.
I turned toward the sink to hide the expression on my face which communicated something along the lines of, “What in heaven’s name is he thinking?” but with more f-words.
There was an awkward silence. I imagine it was equivalent to how a man feels when his wife asks him if she looks fat today. I decided to play it mature and direct by filling the sink with soapy water and getting busy on that pile of two dishes sitting on the counter.
“Oh, um, is that some kind of no-no or…” I asked casually before being cut-off mid sentence.
“Uh, yeah. You don’t mow another guy’s lawn,” he said snottily, as if I had a penis or something.
I was desperate to figure out where my husband was coming from. I imagined a somewhat different scenario, one in which my husband came home from work and found me relaxing on the couch, blouse askew, with an extremely satisfied look on my face and a cigarette dangling from my lips.
“Hi honey. Whatcha doin?”
“Well, Ted was just here, and….”
I mean, I can see how a husband might have a strong reaction to a neighbor reaching far afield of the boundary lines, but the lawn?
I tried it from another angle – anything to try and understand what my husband was thinking. This time, it was the other way around. This time, it was I who came home from work, plopping down my book bag and heading into the bathroom to take my first pee since ten a.m.
“Oh. My. God! Honey, you cleaned the toilet! You are so sweet.”
“I didn’t do that. Carol from across the street asked to use it and then she just knocked it out.”
“That bitch.”
“Honey, she did you a really nice favor. She asked to use our bathroom because hers wasn’t working.”
“I don’t care. You don’t wipe up another woman’s pubic hairs and pee drips.”
“Now, sweety, c’mon. She’s retired, home all day, kids grown. She knows how hard you work teaching and then have to come home and take care of four kids. She was just doing something nice for you.”
“She’s got her own bathrooms to monitor. You don’t do that. Nope. No way.”
Like I said, I tried to imagine this scenario. I kept getting stuck at my angry reaction to Carol’s obvious outpouring of support for her kind. Carol is my people. She understands me. She gets that sometimes, it’s just easier to shut the bathroom door, pretend it wasn’t there, and pour a glass of wine.
I looked at my husband, his jaw set, hands on hips as he stood looking out the living room window at the manicured lawn.
I decided to let him own it. Those genes were all his.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Your Kids are Weird
Kids are weird. Especially your kids. That’s right, I’m talking to all you parents out there who send their kids to school every day armed with all the weirdness the world can handle. I’m qualified to make the call, because I’ve got kids of my own – but I’m positive about the fact that yours take the cake, evidenced by the chat I had recently while subbing in my fourth grade daughter’s classroom. Sure, my kid had her sweatshirt on backwards, but this other kid, Dougie, and I had the following conversation after I noticed him yawning and rubbing his eyes for the better part of the first hour of the school day.
Me: Sleepy, Dougie?
Dougie: Yeah, really sleepy.
Me: Didn’t sleep well last night?
Dougie: No, me and my dad went hunting. We were up all night.
To better understand what I was going through at that moment, imagine a split screen, showing what the two halves of my brain were trying to do simultaneously: form an acceptable reply. One side of the mental jumbo-screen flashed something along the lines of, “You went hunting and were up all night?” while the other half read, “What kind of hillbilly, redneck parent lets a nine year old stay out hunting all night on a school night?” Since the latter mental query contained its own answer, I went with the former:
Me: You stayed up all night hunting?
Dougie: “Yeah!” said Dougie, suddenly all fired up. I mean, I could tell this kid was a miniature version of his highly agitated dad, whom I’d never even met. “We got back to the gate too late and got locked in! We drove around and around to other gates and couldn’t get out!”
I pictured a really pissed off guy in camo-gear, which is scary, with a Remington or Ducks Unlimited cap perched crookedly on his head as a result of scratching it while he stared at the lock on the gate(s). Then I visualized Dougie and his dad sleeping in the truck. A big truck with a gun rack in the back window, maybe an ice chest bungee-corded in the bed and a “Nuke Iraq” bumper sticker on the tailgate. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly terrible parenting. They got trapped on a locked ranch. I got it.
Me: “Soooo, what did you do?”
Dougie: “Well, we had to call my mom.”
My mind conjured the image of a sleepy good ‘ol gal in her sweats, t-shirt and socks, sound asleep, being awakened by the sound of a phone and feeling that horrible surge of adrenaline that only parents feel when the phone rings in the dead of night while family members are out somewhere. Especially when dads, guns, ice chests and sons are involved. I pictured her looking at the clock. I asked Dougie for more information:
Me: “What time was it when you called her?” I asked
Dougie: “8:18.”
The familiar feeling of my one brain working on two realities hit me again. I only had a few seconds before I’d need to reply. Dougie was anticipating a reaction. A correct reaction. The kid needed some validation and I wasn’t about to let him down – especially after the night he had, which I was failing on a grand scale at understanding. I quickly recalled that yes, Dougie had been in his seat at 8:00 a.m., so how could he have called his mom at 8:18 a.m.? Better yet, why would Pa wait until morning to call? I decided to go with something vague to cover up the fact I was not computing.
Me: “Then what?”
Dougie: “She brought the extra key and I didn’t get home and get into bed ‘til 9:22.”
More eye rubbing and yawning. This time it was me. It was 9:22 right now.
Judging by the look on the kid sitting next to Dougie, whom I’ll call Mugsy, I had company. Mugsy’s mouth hung open. His brow was furrowed and eyes were turned straight up toward the ceiling as he crunched the numbers. My light bulb, on the other hand, shone brightly.
Me: “So, you went to bed last night at 9:22?” I said, with the building intensity of a trial attorney about to pounce on an unsuspecting witness. I had Dougie’s number, and it was 1-800-WEIRD.
Dougie: “Yes. It was like 9:22 or 9:23,” Dougie reiterated very matter-of-factly, while I tried to keep a straight face.
Me: “What time do you usually go to bed, Dougie?” I asked, expecting an answer of, like, 5:30 p.m.
Dougie: “Like, EIGHT O’ CLOCK!” he said with the dramatic flair of a highly offended Lawrence Olivier.
Clearly, Dougie needs his twelve hours or he’s just no good. I dismissed my witness, satisfied that I had solved The Mystery of Dougie and the Locked Gate(s).
I pictured my own kids subjecting the other adults in their life to stories such as the one Dougie had shared with me. Are there adults, like teachers and grocery store clerks who think my kid is weird? Do my kids have stories like this? If so, what would they be called? Sadly, it took only four seconds before I had a list going. Perhaps one would be “Why I Like to Smell My Sister’s Dirty Feet” or “Ketchup on Scrambled Eggs: Is There Ever Enough?” I stared dejectedly at the still-yawning Dougie.
Maybe your kids don’t have the market cornered on weird after all.
Me: Sleepy, Dougie?
Dougie: Yeah, really sleepy.
Me: Didn’t sleep well last night?
Dougie: No, me and my dad went hunting. We were up all night.
To better understand what I was going through at that moment, imagine a split screen, showing what the two halves of my brain were trying to do simultaneously: form an acceptable reply. One side of the mental jumbo-screen flashed something along the lines of, “You went hunting and were up all night?” while the other half read, “What kind of hillbilly, redneck parent lets a nine year old stay out hunting all night on a school night?” Since the latter mental query contained its own answer, I went with the former:
Me: You stayed up all night hunting?
Dougie: “Yeah!” said Dougie, suddenly all fired up. I mean, I could tell this kid was a miniature version of his highly agitated dad, whom I’d never even met. “We got back to the gate too late and got locked in! We drove around and around to other gates and couldn’t get out!”
I pictured a really pissed off guy in camo-gear, which is scary, with a Remington or Ducks Unlimited cap perched crookedly on his head as a result of scratching it while he stared at the lock on the gate(s). Then I visualized Dougie and his dad sleeping in the truck. A big truck with a gun rack in the back window, maybe an ice chest bungee-corded in the bed and a “Nuke Iraq” bumper sticker on the tailgate. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly terrible parenting. They got trapped on a locked ranch. I got it.
Me: “Soooo, what did you do?”
Dougie: “Well, we had to call my mom.”
My mind conjured the image of a sleepy good ‘ol gal in her sweats, t-shirt and socks, sound asleep, being awakened by the sound of a phone and feeling that horrible surge of adrenaline that only parents feel when the phone rings in the dead of night while family members are out somewhere. Especially when dads, guns, ice chests and sons are involved. I pictured her looking at the clock. I asked Dougie for more information:
Me: “What time was it when you called her?” I asked
Dougie: “8:18.”
The familiar feeling of my one brain working on two realities hit me again. I only had a few seconds before I’d need to reply. Dougie was anticipating a reaction. A correct reaction. The kid needed some validation and I wasn’t about to let him down – especially after the night he had, which I was failing on a grand scale at understanding. I quickly recalled that yes, Dougie had been in his seat at 8:00 a.m., so how could he have called his mom at 8:18 a.m.? Better yet, why would Pa wait until morning to call? I decided to go with something vague to cover up the fact I was not computing.
Me: “Then what?”
Dougie: “She brought the extra key and I didn’t get home and get into bed ‘til 9:22.”
More eye rubbing and yawning. This time it was me. It was 9:22 right now.
Judging by the look on the kid sitting next to Dougie, whom I’ll call Mugsy, I had company. Mugsy’s mouth hung open. His brow was furrowed and eyes were turned straight up toward the ceiling as he crunched the numbers. My light bulb, on the other hand, shone brightly.
Me: “So, you went to bed last night at 9:22?” I said, with the building intensity of a trial attorney about to pounce on an unsuspecting witness. I had Dougie’s number, and it was 1-800-WEIRD.
Dougie: “Yes. It was like 9:22 or 9:23,” Dougie reiterated very matter-of-factly, while I tried to keep a straight face.
Me: “What time do you usually go to bed, Dougie?” I asked, expecting an answer of, like, 5:30 p.m.
Dougie: “Like, EIGHT O’ CLOCK!” he said with the dramatic flair of a highly offended Lawrence Olivier.
Clearly, Dougie needs his twelve hours or he’s just no good. I dismissed my witness, satisfied that I had solved The Mystery of Dougie and the Locked Gate(s).
I pictured my own kids subjecting the other adults in their life to stories such as the one Dougie had shared with me. Are there adults, like teachers and grocery store clerks who think my kid is weird? Do my kids have stories like this? If so, what would they be called? Sadly, it took only four seconds before I had a list going. Perhaps one would be “Why I Like to Smell My Sister’s Dirty Feet” or “Ketchup on Scrambled Eggs: Is There Ever Enough?” I stared dejectedly at the still-yawning Dougie.
Maybe your kids don’t have the market cornered on weird after all.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Plan, Forest, Plan!
I may not know what I’m doing tomorrow (for as the Zen master says, it does not yet exist.) I may not remember what I did yesterday (for as the day planner says, it was forty-two things), but I do know what I’m doing today: planning.
My husband and I are going somewhere. Not to the Grand Canyon with the kids or to Vegas without them; those are trips. We’re planning a vacation. We’re going to Great Britain. More specifically, we’re going to Wales with some good friends of ours and we aren’t taking the children. There is a very good reason (lots of them actually) why we aren’t taking the children with us. They won’t be children anymore.
We’re going to Wales in 2018.
We hatched the plan a few nights ago, while out to dinner with another couple, the husband of which hails from Wales.
“What’s it like in Wales, Martin?” I asked wistfully, picturing thatched-roofed cottages, a rolling green countryside, and shepherds in natty tweed caps with small herds of white goats following behind. Baaaaahhh. Baaaahhhhh.
“It’s great. Pubs everywhere.”
“Let’s go,” I said to my husband, who immediately whipped out his built-in calculator (not the one he uses to count to one) and began wiggling each finger one at a time.
“2018. The last two graduate in 2018,” he said, in a deadly serious tone, and then added, “We’d have to be morons not to be able to save up for a vacation that’s eight years away.”
“We can go to Wales! Without the kids!” I squealed.
“Yay!” said my girlfriend.
“Cheers!” said her Welshman.
“College tuition,” said my husband.
A hush fell over the table. Our friends have one child. They were silent, but only in deference to our obvious pain. We have four children. Four tuitions. Four sets of books. Four kegs at one per month for four years, minimum, probably five and possibly nine if they follow in my footsteps…We stared dejectedly at our friends, wondering how they got so lucky to have fertility issues. Then, my husband and his calculator sprang to life (again, not the one he uses to count to one).
“Okay, here's how it's going to work," he began, as we leaned in so as not to miss any important details of the jewel heist it looked like we were planning. "We'll have everyone's braces paid off by 2015. We sell the house in 2016, after Jackson graduates. Then, we move into our rental, which still gives all three girls their own bedrooms. We’ll have time to save up even more money before the last two graduate because we’ll only have one piddly little mortgage! Wales here we come!!”
“Yay!” said my girlfriend.
“Cheers!” said her Welshman.
Like Forest Gump and his famous cross-country footrace, we were planning!!
My husband and I are going somewhere. Not to the Grand Canyon with the kids or to Vegas without them; those are trips. We’re planning a vacation. We’re going to Great Britain. More specifically, we’re going to Wales with some good friends of ours and we aren’t taking the children. There is a very good reason (lots of them actually) why we aren’t taking the children with us. They won’t be children anymore.
We’re going to Wales in 2018.
We hatched the plan a few nights ago, while out to dinner with another couple, the husband of which hails from Wales.
“What’s it like in Wales, Martin?” I asked wistfully, picturing thatched-roofed cottages, a rolling green countryside, and shepherds in natty tweed caps with small herds of white goats following behind. Baaaaahhh. Baaaahhhhh.
“It’s great. Pubs everywhere.”
“Let’s go,” I said to my husband, who immediately whipped out his built-in calculator (not the one he uses to count to one) and began wiggling each finger one at a time.
“2018. The last two graduate in 2018,” he said, in a deadly serious tone, and then added, “We’d have to be morons not to be able to save up for a vacation that’s eight years away.”
“We can go to Wales! Without the kids!” I squealed.
“Yay!” said my girlfriend.
“Cheers!” said her Welshman.
“College tuition,” said my husband.
A hush fell over the table. Our friends have one child. They were silent, but only in deference to our obvious pain. We have four children. Four tuitions. Four sets of books. Four kegs at one per month for four years, minimum, probably five and possibly nine if they follow in my footsteps…We stared dejectedly at our friends, wondering how they got so lucky to have fertility issues. Then, my husband and his calculator sprang to life (again, not the one he uses to count to one).
“Okay, here's how it's going to work," he began, as we leaned in so as not to miss any important details of the jewel heist it looked like we were planning. "We'll have everyone's braces paid off by 2015. We sell the house in 2016, after Jackson graduates. Then, we move into our rental, which still gives all three girls their own bedrooms. We’ll have time to save up even more money before the last two graduate because we’ll only have one piddly little mortgage! Wales here we come!!”
“Yay!” said my girlfriend.
“Cheers!” said her Welshman.
Like Forest Gump and his famous cross-country footrace, we were planning!!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Massimo's Oil
http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/massimo%e2%80%99s-oil
This is a short story I just had published in The Olive Oil Times. Follow the link to read a true romance...with olive oil.
This is a short story I just had published in The Olive Oil Times. Follow the link to read a true romance...with olive oil.
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