thirteen thousand five hundred years ago
PDF LINKS TO FORMS I AM REALLY TEMPTED TO FILL OUT AND SUBMIT
I might like to do some mosquito research.
This phone is crap! Get me a better one!
Your opinion matters: do old people suck?
I bought a low-flow toilet; now give me sixty dollars.
SOMETHING NEW TO WORRY ABOUT (SORT OF)
I sometimes call Nora's preschool teacher “The Uptight Hippie” because of her contradictory attitudes. One minute she is all Free To Be You And Me and the next minute she is gently telling me that she has “observed” that Nora occasionally eats “quite a bit of snack” and “could there be something wrong” and “does she eat enough breakfast.” (My responses are “probably not,” “yes, her own and a good chunk of her father's,” and [unsolicited third response] “jeez, she's chowing on self-serve Veggie Booty, which by the way 'getting your own snack' is a Montessori activity, and which by the way again my kid weighs less than thirty pounds at three years old. Let it go.”) Thus, I tend to take the teacher's pronouncements both seriously and not so seriously. Seriously in that okay, years of experience and childhood-education degrees; not so seriously in that her personality, goals for the preschool experience, and knowledge of my kid all differ greatly from mine.
So, when the teacher noted that Nora was stuttering, I reacted with a strange combination of instant defensiveness and complete lack of concern. On the one hand, she's a little kid! Who is usually just too excited to spit it out! That's not stuttering! On the other, yup, but she'll grow out of it. Somewhere in the middle there is the tiny voice saying hmmm and looking up stuttering facts on the Internet, and realizing that the Uptight Hippie might actually be on to something this time.
Nora seems only to stutter when talking to adults. She is not in the least bit timid or hesitant to talk, so the stuttering = shyness thing does not hold up in her case. Her stuttering is the “classic” kind, where initial sounds are repeated, and seems to be slightly worse on words start with vowels or that are somewhat new to her (“arrow” was a recent ordeal). We just wait it out and let her finish, but I will admit that the times when she screws up her beautiful little face and works so hard to say something are difficult for me to watch.
So. My half-assed research indicates that about 90% of kids her age outgrow the stuttering without intervention, as long as no one shames them or gives them grief about it (duh, but I guess some people need to be told). School, however, has recommended further evaluation, and I am waiting on a callback from their speech therapist. Nothing is decided yet, but I am torn. Is it good to get a professional opinion on what we are dealing with? Or is the very fact that we think it needs “dealing with” going to give Nora the idea that all is not right with her mad language skills? I don't know.
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
Yeshiva Boy In My Neighborhood #1: Is that a new suit?
YBIMN #2: Yeah. Hand-me-down from my cousin.
YBIMN #1: It is remarkably ill-fitting!
YBIMN #2: Yo, check it: I'm wearing it with white socks, bro.
YBIMN #2: Damn. ALL the Rachels be wanting your fine ass.
YBIMN #1: You know it. Somebody get Potok on the line! New title: The Chosen…For The Best-Dressed List!
YBIMN #2: He died in 2002 but in a non-literal way I totally understand what you mean!
Empty Cheeto Bag: I am but a husk, friendless in an uncaring world. Emptied of my cheesy snack goodness, I was cast aside without a care. I drift hither and yon, the lowliest of the low, buffeted by the wind and by the unseeing feet of vast multitudes. My future is dark indeed, and I long for merciful unconsciousness.
Me [walking past]: Christ, that's enough. Get over yourself.
Empty Cheeto Bag: Shut up, bitch! I wasn't even talking to you!
Me [turning around to flash the “L For Loser” signal on my forehead]
Empty Cheeto Bag [calling after me as I walk away]: Fuck you!
REAL ONE THAT WAS EVEN STRANGER
Nora has this huge playground ball, really more the size of a stability/exercise ball. The other day she put it on the toilet, where it was quite a sight for me when I walked into the bathroom and found this multicolored 20-inch orb rising out of the bowl.
Me: Wow, what's this?
Nora: I'm pretending that's poop.
Me: It's huge!
Nora: A huge piece of poop. A gargantuan piece of poop. I'm sorry, but it will not go down with the flusher.
Me: Who pooped this huge poop? Was it you?
Nora: No. I don't know who did it, because I wasn't there.
Me: I guess it will just be a mystery then.
Nora: Maybe it was a wild boar.
This child is so weird sometimes. A wild boar? You are pretending that a wild boar broke into the house and took a beach-ball-sized dump in our toilet? Okay.
—mimi smartypants is dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.