Thursday, January 17, 2008

But, I Don't Wanna Go to School, Mom!

At forty-two, the last thing I wanted was to go back to school, but, thanks to my teenager, I'm being forced to. It's January and that means the end of the semester: projects and cramming for finals. So tonight, for the second night in a row, we are working on a civics project.

Oh joy.

So here I am, struggling to recall what the information I've retained in the years since high school which, I'm sorry to say, is pretty damned little. Being ADD, I wasn't a good student to begin with and then you add teenage angst, hormones along with the fact that I got mono TWICE my senior year and almost ended up not graduating, and you got yourself a cornucopia of delightful educational memories. And now I get this!

Daughter: Describe Capitalism.

Me: Bill Gates

Daughter: Describe Communism.

Me: Itunes...oh, no wait, that would be Amazon.com now since their deal with Sony.

Daughter: Contrast and compare Democratic and Republican parties.

Me: Dumb and dumber.

My daughter wasn't amused.

After we finished the civics project, it was on to advanced algebra. Now in my world, letters and numbers don't mix. It's sort of like putting blue cheese on your Cocoa Puffs... IT JUST DOESN'T WORK! The minute you start substituting numbers with letters, my eyes glaze over and the drool pools in the corner of my mouth before forming a puddle on the floor by my feet. I...just...don't...get....it. Who uses this anyway? Maybe in some occupations, but certainly none my artistic daughter will go into. But it's required for school. Sorry kiddo, Mom's out on this one.

After that came American Lit....Hellooooo have you read some of this stuff? Harry Potter is ripped from the shelves while being touted as demonic witchcraft yet the schools insist our children read things where depression, poverty, murder and at times perversion run free because it's "Classic Literature". I'd rather sit and listen to Barry Manilow all day while plucking my eyelashes out one by one.

Again, daughter isn't amused. So she picks up her things and heads up to her room There at least she can make up better answers than her mom can in peace and quiet.

1 comment:

BestDayEver said...

Ya know--you have some pretty good answers. One liners but it tells it like it is!