So I started to tell you about my son's most recent stunt, but got sidetracked by my rat handler story. Here's what took place while we drove to the animal shelter yesterday.
My son asked, "Can we go to the library?" Although we are all rabid readers, we tend to buy books rather than borrow them. At any rate, Doug rarely asks to go to the library. I was surprised but said, "Yes, of course we can go to the library."
"Tonight?" he asked.
A "ping" appeared on my parent radar. "Yes...."
"When?" he asked. I suggested we could go right after our time at the animal shelter, and he relaxed.
About ten minutes later, he asked again, "Can we go to the library?" We had a rerun of the earlier conversation. It felt like deja vu all over again, or that scene in "The Matrix" where Neo sees the black cat twice.
The third time he asked, I said, "What's the urgency about the library?"
He needed to "get a book".
Why? Because he was supposed to do a report on a book.
Oh? When was the report due?
Why, tomorrow, of course.
I held my tongue. When you are a parent, you know it feels great to yell and lecture in these circumstances, but it won't really help anything. Plus I had a feeling there was more coming.
Sure enough, later on, while holding rats and bunnies, Doug said nonchalantly, "If you had to give a talk about someone, who would you pick?"
Was this a rhetorical question? Or was something else going on? I said cautiously, "I'd pick either someone I admired, or who does something I'm interested in so I could learn more about it."
"Yeah, but who would you PICK?"
The parent radar is blipping like crazy now. "Who would *I* pick, or who would YOU pick?"
"Okay, me."
I thought, then suggested he talk about his friend Tim. Tim is the potter who has mentored Doug for the last four years. He has been an amazing friend to Doug, encouraging his pottery work and also advising him on the business of craft and life in general.
"No, they gotta be in a book."
IN a book?? A CHARACTER in a book??
My son's teen angst is in almost full-blown mode. No! For God's sakes, mom! There has to be a book ABOUT the person.
AHA! Again I hold my tongue. I personally feel I've done very well with the scant information I've received. Whatever. I get it now. Doug is supposed to read a biography, or autobiography, and then give an oral report on the book. Tomorrow.
I refrain from asking when this assignment was made. What would be the point now? My tongue is bloody. I am a good parent, I am a good parent.
We go to the library. Although my husband is the new patron saint of librarians with his popular "LibraryLookUp link" he invented last year, the rest of our family tend to be library scofflaws.
**This link is actually very cool. When you are at Amazon and ready to click that "Buy It Now!" button, you can clink his link instead. It instantly tells you whether the book is at your local library, and if so, whether it is available or not. And if it's not, it tells you when the book is due back. You can read about it here: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html
But the rest of us tend to darken the librarian's day. Whenever we try to check out books, the librarian's face saddens and we are informed that we have fines. Many, many fines. We tend to lose our books, though to our credit, we are always very contrite, taking full responsibility and rarely claiming we actually brought them back and the library must have lost them. To their credit, usually the librarian allows to take a few books out anyway, if we promise to pay the fines the next time we come. But usually even this gentle humiliation is too much for us, and we just go out and buy the damn book.
I proceed to pay fines and get Doug a new library card. He scoots off to the biography section. When I join him, he's narrowed his selection down to two choices. Which one would I (Mom) choose, he asks.
Hitler....or Thomas Jefferson.
Now, for the ultimate Parent Quiz:
Can you tell me the criteria for his selection? If you have a teen, you'll probably guess.
Wait for it....
They were the two shortest books on the shelf. That is, short in terms of page count.
And of course, they come quite close to each other in the alphabet. The part of the alphabet that's shelved at about eye-level for Doug.
I'm trying very, very hard not to laugh at this point. Because, when you are the parent of a teen, you spend most of your time trying either not to laugh or not to cry. Trying not to laugh is infinitely more enjoyable, but it really pisses them off.
Hitler or Jefferson? The architect of ultimate evil, or the architect of the Declaration of Independence, our national heritage of freedom and independence?
Hitler or Jefferson? The greatest mass murderer the world has ever known, or one of the greatest statesmen ever known?
Hitler or....
Hey! There's a book on Houdini!
Right there on the shelf, between Hitler and Jefferson. Right between them in so many ways... Not quite as archetypal, but perhaps a little manageable in scope. A little easier to write about.
The book is a bit thicker than the one on Hitler or Jefferson. But the font is bigger....
Doug agreed with my suggestion, and checked out the book. He seemed just as relieved as I did.
I don't know how he did it, but three hours later, Doug emerged from my office with a pretty good report on the Houdini book. He thought it was good, heavy on the analysis of his magic tricks but not very deep on the man's background or motivation.
Not bad. Not bad at all. Perhaps not Rhodes scholar material, but impressive just the same.
My husband suggested I wait until AFTER the presentation is graded before making this story public, and I agreed.
