What fun things have you found lately?

I think a lot of us are more likely to  push boundaries and try new things when we’re teenagers and in our early twenties. The older we get, when we really should have more opportunities available to us, it seems like many of us settle for the usual, the expected.

I once described myself as a “Collector of Past Careers” – meaning that I was always open to something completely new. But I realize that I haven’t really adventured off into new directions that much in the last seven or eight years. At least, not as much as I’d like to say I did.

I have plenty of reasons, or maybe excuses, but I also have other options available. You see, it’s not just work, or vacationing in a new place. There are all kinds of new things to be done in this life.

So maybe you’ll try sword fighting. Or dressing up with the Renaissance Faire crowd. Or spinning fire poi and silk flags. And maybe you’ll find other ways to stretch and test yourself.

Next year I plan to run in my first triathlon. I’ve started training, very slowly I’ll admit, and writing down my intention here is a way to make that goal tangible – make it something I’ve committed to publicly, so that I’ll be less likely to give it up when I’m feeling tired or frustrated or overwhelmed by all the demands on my time.

If I can do this, I can do almost anything I set my mind to.

So what will you try for the first time this year?

SO. Pain. We all have it. I’ve written of it before, and of how I as a writer need to be fearless in my writing. But that’s easier said than done, I’m afraid.

There’s that word too – AFRAID.

Another word that needs to be tossed aside when I’m writing. I can write of fear, and of pain, but until I break through the fear and pain involved in creating the work it sits festering in my mind and heart.

And yesterday I read something about healing through writing (article 1, article 2 ). So, you see? This is all for good purpose. My  figurative  self-exposure; the self-torment sometimes elicited by opening up the boxes in my mental attic.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Fifth grade. I went to a now-defunct elementary school in La Jolla, where Mount Soledad slides into La Jolla Shores. Ellen Browning Scripps Elementary – I still have a fondness for ole’ Ellen, all these years later.

But fifth grade was a difficult year in some ways.

It started out promising, as all new school years can. And some of the trouble I brought on myself.  And the rest … I don’t know.

I loved to read.  That is probably one of the biggest understatements ever.

I loved to read; I always have; still do. It has been my very favorite thing ever since I taught myself to read at age four, to the everlasting surprise of my Montessori preschool teacher.

Reading has sometimes been a compulsion. Or like a starving person’s need to eat. I quite literally read street signs and billboards, and the sides of cereal boxes at the breakfast table. In the shower I would read all of the text on the shampoo and conditioner bottles.  Lather, rinse, repeat. Every day.

(My eyes don’t work well enough for me to do that now, and it sometimes makes me sad…)

Although my fifth grade teacher was wonderful (I accidentally called her ‘Mom’ at least once), and she is still a friend today, I was also bored in class at times. And if I had a book I was reading, I would tuck it on my lap under the top of my desk and I would read. Just read. Until the teacher asked a question and called on me, and I had no idea what she was asking about. I had been completely enveloped in the world of my book.

I would try to stall, to see if she might change her mind and ask someone else. Sometimes I would duck my head and pretend I was looking for something in my desk – especially if she was asking about the homework I hadn’t done.

Crazy, huh?

And some of the boys at my little table-group would make fun of me, imitating my desperate blind groping for “something” in my desk. Arik L. continued the taunting longer than any of the others – I hated that boy for a long time…

It didn’t matter to me that I brought it on myself by not paying attention in class. This was a BOOK we were talking about! My reason for living! Ignoring it for seven hours or more of daylight would be like asking an addict to give up their fix. No substance I’ve ever experienced (not even Coca-Cola, and some of you know how much of *that* I drink) comes close to the compulsion I have to READ.

But that teasing wasn’t the only thing to happen in fifth grade.

I was in a combined fifth and sixth grade class that year. It seemed so exciting and grown-up for a while.

There was a brown-haired sixth-grade boy named Steve P. in my class. I don’t remember now if I’d paid him much attention in the beginning of the year, but I’ve never forgotten him since. Maybe it’s time to…

I had a few friends at school. More than I ever had in the years since, now that I look back. Angela L, Gabriella D, Nancy R (who had the same birthday as me, I think), and some boys that I hung out with too: Chris J (the only boy who was significantly taller than me), Gerry S, and one of the Jeffs (a popular name – I think we had three in my class one year). It’s hard to believe I could name that many people I thought of as friends – it’s been so very long since that felt true…

One afternoon I got a call at home. It was Steve P. We talked for a few minutes, and at the end of the call he asked me out. I was so excited and happy! I can’t imagine or remember what “going out” would have been back in those days when I was ten or eleven – younger than my own daughter is today. But I was excited and happy and the world was full of promise.

Until the next day.

On the playground at school, waiting to play 4-square or 9-square or something similar, Steve P and his best friend confronted me while I was standing with some other kids in my class. He denied asking me out. Ridiculed me. I don’t remember any of the words now, just the feelings – standing on the cracked blacktop with fresh white paint striping the games courts, under a grey-blue La Jolla autumn sky, as the bottom dropped out of my chest, my heart falling through the ground beneath me.

As if I were a camera pulling focus, it seemed like my friends and classmates moved away and all that was left was me. With these sixth-grade boys and their friends telling me how ridiculous it was that anyone would ever want to go out with me.

I think that was the moment when I really retreated for good.

Much better to live in books than in the real world. If I didn’t like a book I could close it and start another. So much more appealing than the ‘real world’, where I had to keep seeing those same people every day.

I stopped playing on the playground with other kids. When I wasn’t reading I would walk around the school. I examined the colorful leafhoppers on the hedges lining the school fences. And I waited – to leave that place for good.

In sixth grade I applied to a private school in town. When the teachers at EBS wanted me to fill out cards to choose my electives for the next year at the local public junior high, I delayed and refused – because I was 100% certain that I would be accepted at the other school, and I wouldn’t have to go to school with these same kids the next year.

In retrospect that wasn’t a very useful tactic, but I did turn out to be correct.

And best of all, only three other kids from my school got accepted – and they were “good kids” – at least they weren’t of the group that still teased me for the terrible crimes of reading voraciously and daydreaming in class.

And one of these days I hope to finally purge the thought that Steve P was right 30+ years ago. But today, after spending seven and a half of the last eight years as a single woman with no close romantic relationship, my heart still finds it easy to feel that it’s ridiculous to believe that anyone decent would want me.

EJL

Please Stop Laughing at Us, by Jodee Blanco

I was teased and excluded by my peers in school from the time I was in fourth or fifth grade until I left high school.
Before that I had friends (I think).
After fourth grade I had (with a few exceptions) … people I went to school with.

One of the worst years for me was eighth grade. I had to co-write a short play with other students  in my English class, and perform it at the end of the unit. I had been out of class for an orthodontist appointment on the day that teams were chosen, and when I came back there were a few groups of 4-5 kids and one pair of boys – so my teacher made me work with them.
Those boys were two who had teased me more than most; they were my tormentors.
On top of that, I was uncomfortable with the play they had started writing while I was out, and with the character I was supposed to play. I was mortified by the character’s name and intended costume, especially knowing that we would be performing one afternoon in front of everyone in the eighth grade.
I went to the teacher; I have no recollection of what she told me, but since we went on to perform the play, I know she didn’t help me.

Would she do things differently now?
I hope so.

In eighth grade, thirteen years old, shy and awkward and wanting to be accepted, I “co-wrote” and performed a short play based on the legends of Pele, goddess of volcanoes.

I was “Erotica, goddess of sex and surf“.

Tell me again, HOW is this appropriate for an eighth grader?
Would you want *your* thirteen year old daughter stuck in this situation?

The two boys played surfers who had offended me. My contribution to the play? I got to come up with their death scene.

(It really didn’t help as much as you might think.)

My costume?

I had to wear a bathing suit.

I was mortified.
But I had learned over the previous four years to keep my reactions to myself as much as possible – trying not to let anyone know how ashamed, embarrassed, or hurt I was – because nothing ever changed.

My teachers and parents gave all the same well-intentioned – and utterly useless – advice: to ignore the taunts because surely they would stop (one day…).

After that afternoon in the school theater (a tiny old building at that time) some of the kids in my class would occasionally tease me and call me Erotica - for years.

I hated it.

And the more it went on, the more I withdrew from everything.

I never got truly suicidal in high school, but I was depressed and lonely. My mind and heart went to a very dark place.

As I got older, starting in tenth grade, I began leaving campus whenever I thought I could get away with it – mostly during study hall and lunch time.
Only seniors were allowed to leave campus during the day, so I had to be careful when and where I went and try not to get caught.

I spent a lot of time at a little tennis shop near the school. I drank Cokes and listened to the radio and just hung out there. The guys who worked there were nice and talked to me like a regular person. It was my sanctuary. (Thank you RSW guys!)
When the solitude of the library or the prayer garden or the bleachers at the athletic field was too much for me to take, I went there – and for a few minutes or a half hour I felt better. I felt like I was accepted and safe.

That was all more than twenty years ago, but the tears come back so easily when I think of those days…

Reading this book has brought so many things to the front of my mind. But best of all it’s giving me ideas of what I can do better for my own children.

Read this book. It could change your life.

Some people, particularly his extended family, ask me if I plan to “get him into a regular school” at some point, or if I plan to keep up the homeschooling indefinitely.

Why should I?  Do they have some belief that a “regular school” would be better for him in any way?

My mother acts as his teacher during the week, and he has a teacher/consultant whom they meet with every four weeks. He’s working above grade level in several subjects, and below grade level in *none*.  He has the chance to study topics that interest him, and we can minimize the boring topics. We can also avoid spreading as many falsehoods, biases, and errors as we are aware of, since we don’t rely only on the mass-produced textbooks with information that’s several years old, as most public schools do.

He has social times with kids his age in gymnastics class and cub scouts. Just because he studies his classwork at home doesn’t mean he is isolated from everyone outside our immediate family group. Far from it, in fact. He is much more social and outgoing with everyone he meets, from age 1 to 99, than most conventionally-schooled third-graders I’ve seen.

He is smart as a whip. He’s reading books at the sixth-grade level. He devoured Harry Potter books 1 and 2 in a couple days each. He’s doing fourth-grade math. Because we have freedom in our curriculum, over the past four years he has studied chemistry, physics, biology, ancient history, music, art, gymnastics, and dance (ballet, tap, and ballroom), and Russian language.

How many third-graders do you know who have had such a diverse elementary education?

About 4 years ago I heard about Asperger’s Syndrome. A condition at the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum. As I read more about it, and my mother and I did more research, it quickly became clear to us that my son had all the signs of Asperger’s Syndrome. The DSM-IV identified 6 diagnostic criteria, with four categories of symptoms each listed under two of the criteria. At that time my son had strong symptoms under *every* criteria. (Several of those symptoms have slowly eased, as we’ve worked with him over the last few years.)

We went to his pediatrician, but he would not offer a diagnosis because he said it was up to the school.

The school psychologist would not diagnose him, saying that it was up to the pediatrician.

I didn’t need an “official” diagnosis because I wasn’t looking for financial benefits for him. I didn’t need their diagnosis in order to get any special educational accommodations, because we were already managing that very well on our own. So I decided not to pursue any more diagnostic paths at that time.

Then, maybe three years ago, we noticed that he was making a lot of repetitive behaviors. He seemed to be totally unconscious of them. It started with things like chewing his fingernails, and moved into sounds like tongue-clicking and a loud, strong teeth-chomping. My mother was afraid he would crack his teeth from the violence of the chomping.

His pediatrician said those were “just tics”, and that they would probably fade over time. He gave us a handout to read and said that we should not try to bring my son’s attention to the tics, because that could cause him additional stress and make the tics worse.

Over the next year or two his tics changed.  Chewing his fingernails eventually was replaced by chewing on the collars of his shirts. He would eat holes in the shirts and I had to constantly mend or replace them. The tongue-clicking and chomping faded. But in the last year I’ve seen a veritable blooming of tics. They don’t happen all the time, and if he’s relaxed and rested they may disappear entirely. But when he is stressed or especially tired they’ll start up with no warning: blinking; eyes and mouth gaping wide in almost the reverse of a blink; shoulder shrugs; closed eye-head nodding; head tilting to the sides, touching each shoulder in turn; vocal outbursts of words or sounds or squeaks.

He can’t stop it voluntarily. Sometimes he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but other times he does. When that happens it bothers him. But he still can’t stop it; and if anyone tries to get him to stop, it just continues and makes him feel worse.

The last couple times my father has seen my son, he’s tried to get my son to quiet down and stop making so much noise or acting disruptive. He commented to me one time about how “it took two of us to wrangle him” – my son.

The thing is, it *doesn‘t*. He’s not a horse to be wrangled, he’s a boy. A boy with some social difficulties. A boy whose tics may have moved all the way into Tourette’s. A boy with a bright, quick mind and vast varied interests who can’t always keep himself quiet. He’s a loving, caring, compassionate boy.  A boy who saw a younger child with an empty basket at the Easter egg hunt yesterday, and offered the child two of his own eggs.

He’s a boy who stutters and has a wonderful speech therapist who he sees every week. She tells him about other people with the same kind of speech difficulties, and he feels more at ease knowing that he’s not the only one who struggles. He loves music and sings nonsense songs to himself when he’s playing at the computer.

He’s a boy who “tics” when he’s under stress. Trying to shush him won’t get him to stop. But going to him and giving him a gentle hug, or just rubbing his shoulder, might help him relax. A simple hug and a kind whisper can help him stop his unruly body. An action you take to make the environment more calming and relaxing, reassuring, can make all the difference in the world.

I would ask my family to remember this next time they get frustrated with him. He’s frustrated too, and he needs our help – our sympathy, understanding, and love – so that he can stay unselfconscious.
So that he can relax and just be… my son.

My name is Erica. I sometimes tell people I’m named after a flowering shrub.
I’ve been married and divorced, and I kept my ex-husband’s last name because I share it with my children. But that name isn’t really how I think of myself.

At birth I was given my parents’ last name. The surname shared by my father, my grandfather, and a line of men reaching back at least a couple hundred years and spanning at least three countries. I grew up thinking the Lindseys came pretty directly from Scotland, late in the nineteenth century. But as I dug into my family history I found that they stopped over in Ireland for at least a few decades in between. Maybe longer. I don’t know yet.

Professionally I have a title – another sort of name. If I say I’m a technical writer, does that mean anything to you? Does it help fill in some details in your mental image of me? I’ve been a Program Manager, Production Supervisor, and a “Quality Data Manager” – possibly the most contrived title I’ve ever had. Is the picture any clearer, or is it even more fuzzy and confused now?

My career has never taken a direct path. I write technical manuals for industrial printing systems. I used to produce custom maintenance manuals for homebuilders to provide to their new home buyers. I’ve been a commercial truck driver, a department store sales associate, a veterinary technician, and years ago I was briefly a waitress at the best darn bar and grill in June Lake, CA (Tiger Bar)

So do you think you know me any better now?

But wait! There’s more…

Yes, there are lots of other kinds of names: labels for hobbies and interests; titles for levels of rank or skill. I enjoy renaissance faires and I absolutely loved learning to fight with shinai and rapier. I haven’t actually fought in about two years – but I still call myself a fighter.  That is the label I feel most comfortable with – the one that I believe fits me most truly, even though my other responsibilities have prevented me from going to practices for far too long.

So is it still an accurate name? Does it fill out the essence of “Erica” any more?

There are even names to describe a person’s past: I am a TBS alumna, college and grad school graduate, a veteran.

And then there is another set of names. This area gets tricky. Some of these labels have been hidden or denied in the past, less so now. These days people may talk more freely of OCD, anxiety, or bi-polar disorder. That’s all well and good, especially when you’re talking about other people. But do you have the courage to name your own emotional, mental, social, or learning difficulties?

If I tell you I am an adult with Asperger’s Syndrome, does that change your perception of me any more than the other names did? If you knew me way back when I was growing up, maybe this label does explain something about how I behaved. But what about now? Would this label-name make sense to those who’ve only met me in the last few years?

Does it help?  Does it hurt?  Or does it make any difference at all?

And finally, the real question. The one that all of this has been slowly leading up to. I can only address it if I believe that the previous set of names is helpful.

How do I name my children when I speak of them to others? By given name? By age and sex? By grade in school? By hobbies and interests?

By diagnostic terms?

If I tell you I have a child with dyslexia; another with Asperger’s, perhaps with Tourette’s as well – does that tell you more about them, or about me?
What does your reaction say about you?

And would it seem strange to you then, after hearing all of those things, to see me all alone on a misty spring day dancing in the middle of a grassy field, my iPod and earbuds almost invisible as I spin and twirl my tie-dyed silk flags around me?

Or would you smile, and laugh, and say “that’s Erica”?

On the other hand, I know better – I know that, much as I want to deny the idea, one day my grandpa will not be there. And besides the sheer fact of his presence, our relationship, and my love for him, I also face the loss of his knowledge and memories – all the things that make him “him”.

So I set myself a new task for this year. Not a goal, not a “resolution”, but a recurring task. I began the year by interviewing him for a while on New Years’ Eve. I asked him about his service in World War II; something that we’ve talked about before, but of which I still have a lot fewer details than I’d like to have.  This year I will continue to talk with him with intention – to interview him. And I will write down and record every bit of information that I can glean from him.  I plan to post most of my findings here.  At the end of the year I hope to have a treasure trove of memories; something that I and all my family can come back and browse through whenever we have the thought to. And if any of my readers have a connection to these times or events, please comment. We need to remember. We must.

W.D. Lindsey served in the US Navy from sometime in 1943 until December 1945, after the war ended. He sailed on the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid (CV-11) through the south Pacific. He was in the battle of Leyte Gulf (link 1, link 2). He survived the divebombing of the ship by two Japanese planes on November 25, 1944 (link). Although the ship survived, she was severely damaged, and had to go to drydock for repairs. The damaged ship had to sail to Pearl Harbor to offload all munitions before it could sail to California for repairs. After Hawaii, she sailed first to San Diego then to San Francisco, where the repairs were made.

Some time later, around March of 1945, my grandfather was reassigned. “The saddest day of my life” he told me. He was assigned to a destroyer, the Jarvis (the third ship by that name), DD-799. The Jarvis was based in the Aleutian Islands, off Alaska. After V-J day, the Jarvis was among the ships to sail to Japan to support the occupational forces.  After the war, the ship and crew sailed through the Panama Canal to dock in South Carolina, where my grandfather left the ship around December 1945, at the end of his tour of duty.

I’d have to say I agree with that.  There have been months at a time where I’ve carried a notebook with me wherever I went, and when an idea hit – or when I had some time to myself while I waited for someone else – I would dive in and write like mad until the idea was exorcised, or my free time was up.

Probably the most productive months and years of my writing life have taken place while I had my AlphaSmart in working order. Now my original AlphaSmart is limping along, still able to record files, but no longer able to export to my PC for some reason, so I’ve left it in the trunk of my car where it does no good, except to accuse me when I open the trunk and see it peeking out from under the latest load of old clothes destined for the Goodwill.

I miss my AlphaSmart. I guess it’s time for me to sort things out and get another, because it really does make a huge difference for me. I write longhand fairly quickly, but my typing can keep up with the speed of my thoughts much better. And the startup speed is so much more satisfying than the warm-up speed of a laptop, that one of those really isn’t a suitable replacement.

But in the meantime I can make do with the old way: pen and paper, pencil and notebook.  As long as I have a way to sort through my thoughts and record them for later.  After all, the opportunities still present themselves. And I am an opportunistic writer, after all.

I also check on talks and presentations posted at ted.com, and sometimes come across something amazing like this one: Qi Zhang’s organ performance  At first listening, I wasn’t sure what to make of the music, but the performance and the programming that went into the machine are amazing on their own!

Here are two resources I’ve used in the past year. First is a free downloadable music notation software package. It runs on the most popular computer plaforms, and it allows you to write music and play it back on your computer. If you have a midi-enabled keyboard, I believe you can connect that to your computer and enter the notes that way – as you play!

 http://musescore.org/

The next resource is one of my favorite recipe websites. It includes recipes collected from several food magazines, as well as from individuals.  When you’re in the mood for something new, or find an unfamiliar vegetable at the farmers’ market, search for a recipe here!

http://www.epicurious.com/

What is one of your favorite non-academic resources?

Here are a few key sites that I’ve been checking on this month, as the kids go back to school.

Reference sites:

• Dictionary m-w.com
• all the links from abbreviations.com/about 

A collection of back to school resources:

• www.infoplease.com/spot/01school1.html

Conversions:

• Currency  oanda.com currency converter
• Measurements  infoplease.com unit conversions

Literature:

• bartleby.com
• project gutenberg

What’s your favorite back to school reference site?