OKAY FINE! Numero six

I'll do some more. I probably won't do all of them...some of the prompts are stupid or too touchy-feely, but I'll just decide as I go.

Something you hope you never have to do.

The obvious (albeit correct) answer is lose a child (or spouse). This is what my sister said. To that, I totally agree. However, since that has already been adequately discussed, I'll try to go with something else. Still child related, though.

I hope to never have the problems with Cohen that my parents had with me.

As I mentioned in the critically acclaimed Trois, 5th grade was around the time I stopped caring about school and/or grades. It wasn't that it was too hard. It also wasn't that it was too easy. Believe it or not, I was actually a really bright kid. I don't know what my IQ is (or was...I'm not sure if/how it changes over time), but I was in all the "gifted" programs through my early years at school school. A lot of my teachers theorized that I started slacking off because I wasn't being challenged enough. Sadly, that was not the case. It would have made no difference how much I was challenged. I was smart, but I was just lazy.

That's really all there is to it. It may have been that the fact that I was smart contributed to the problem. I knew I was smart. As a result, I thought I could get by on that alone. I aced most of my tests throughout school. I did relatively well on the SAT. I just didn't feel the need to do any homework. I figured that if I could just prove to my teachers that I knew the stuff (via good test scores), then that should be enough*. Unfortunately, that isn't how it works in school. In addition to knowing the material, one also has to actually do the work assigned. This is a concept I never really got a good hold on.

Kimberly was the opposite of me. Well, I take that back. She was gifted as well. Very smart. She was the opposite in the sense that in addition to doing well on the tests, she actually did the work as well. Kimberly studied. She did homework. More than just that, she did her homework without being prompted or forced by her parents to do the homework. She didn't have the same problem as me of coming up with a new lie every day for her parents (e.g: My teacher didn't assign homework today, My teacher gave us time in class to do the work, There was a bomb threat, so we missed 2 hours of class today). She just did the work. It paid off, too. She makes a considerable amount more than I do.

I know my parents would love nothing more than to see me have to deal with Cohen, should he follow the same path that I did. Of course, I know that my parents don't want Cohen to make bad grades in school, thus making it harder for him to find gainful employment when he's an adult. It's just so I can "get what's coming to me". I wouldn't blame my parents one bit if they found delight in my frustration at Cohen's not falling far from the proverbial tree. For everyone else's sake, though, I hope he inherits his mother's work ethic...at least as far as school/homework is concerned. No one should have to go through what my parents went through...not even me!

*I will admit, now that I am 31 years old, that I still believe that statement to be true. I understand that this does not translate to the real world, where "doing" is more important than simply "knowing". However, in grade school, the objective is teaching and learning...not "doing". There's plenty of time to learn how to "do" after all the learning has taken place. I don't know, it makes sense to me.