Atrophy

Before this blog atrophies altogether, I'll add one story.

Van said, while snuggled down with Amanda before falling asleep, that he didn't want to have any children when he grew up.

"Why?" Amanda asked him.

"Because I want to have a quiet house," he replied.

Such insight!

ds

"Not Even the Beatles": What have we done to our Children?

Rather an academic title, that. Pretentious, to boot. But, then, I'm a pretentious academic, so it's all right. At least I didn't give it an alternate title, though I might easily have done: "Not Even the Beatles"; or, "Who will Police the Police?": What have we done to our Children?

When Penelope was very young--just over a year--I managed to teach her a phrase (inadvertently, of course). Some things were going on then with the local and federal governments, and I happened to ask, "Who will police the police?" Penelope thought this was marvelously funny. She asked me to say it again, so I did.

But then she started to ask me to say it whenever she saw a police car, which was fairly frequently. Then she began to say it herself, as clear as a bell and quite frequently. Finally, she started to say it whenever we happened to walk past a policeman (or even a security guard--she wasn't quite as astute then as she is now). It began to get embarrassing, especially when the policeman or -woman was doing something slightly odd: looking at jewelry in a store window, writing a parking ticket, taking a bribe. I started imagining what would happen if I were pulled over for a speeding ticket:

Cop: "Are you aware you were going fifty-five in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone?"

Me: "Er . . . ."

Voice from the back seat: "Who will police the police?"

Cop: "All right, wise guy . . . step out of the car!"

Van started using his own daddy-inspired phrase, and Powell immediately picked up on it. This one, fortunately, was more of a paraphrase of a phrase rather than the well-known one, but it still is an oddity of our family.

Recenly, the children have been trying to understand Christ's divinity. It all started with a discussion of who could throw the stuffed bear the highest. Powell can throw it pretty high; Van can throw it higher, but Penelope can throw it the highest. But Penelope decided that a bit of humiliy wouldn't come amiss when Van declared that he could throw it higher than anyone. "You can't throw it higher than God," she declared. (It wasn't clear whether she meant that he couldn't throw it higher than God could throw it or that he couldn't throw it higher than the point at which God was--either one, you'll agree, would be a feat well worth seeing.) "No one can throw higher than God," she concluded.

"Jesus can!" Powell instantly declared.

This lead to a lively debate about the relative power of each member of the Trinity. Penelope finally concluded, "Well, Jesus is God, so he can throw it just as high as God. But he isn't as big as God."

"Yes, he is," said both boys in stereo.

The discussion of the hypostatic union that followed would have made Thomas Aquinas go to bed early with a headache. The conclusion was that Jesus' incarnational body (which he still possesses) is not very big--a bit bigger than Daddy, they declared--but that his spiritual state and his divinity are co-equal with God's.

"Not bad," I thought. "All that work with the Westminister Confession has paid off."

Then they started chanting their conclusion in a way that would have lead Agustine to run off and find a random passage in his Bible so that he could write quite a lot about it: "Nooo one's bigger than Jeee-sus! Nooo one's bigger than Jeee-sus! Nooo one's bigger than Jeee-sus!"

That's when I joined in.

"No-ot even the Beeeea-tles! No-ot even the Beeeea-tles!"

Now they do know about the Beatles, primarly because Elmo has done a verion of "Drive my Car" that is horrific in most ways but that is most horrific in that Penelope prefers his version to the Beatles'. Curse you, Elmo! But they don't, of course, know the whole "Bigger than Jesus" [find out about it at http://www.newsoftheodd.com/article1012.html] fiasco. Naturally, they thought this was hilarious, especially because of their intense interest in bugs. I think they were imagining a mammoth beetle (John's voice cuts in: "Imagine there's a beetle . . . bigger than the sun . . . ").

Now, embarrasingly, the kids frequently employ the phrase in public.

Of a mansion: "That's a big house!" "Not as big as God!" "Nobody's bigger than God. Not even the Beatles!"

Of a baby we know: "My, but you're getting to be such a big girl!" "She's not bigger than God. She's not even bigger than the Beatles!"

Of a glass of water: "Will you get me a big glass of water, please?" "I'll bring you a big glass, but it won't be bigger than Jesus!" [thousands of giggles].

Let's combine both these in a tacky conclusion. It's good for Christians to be reminded that they may have a log in their own eye. "Who will police the police?" serves this function. It's also good to remember our own nature. "Not bigger than Jesus" does that.

[more later; the children awake!]

Another set of Surgeries

The boys, Van and Powell, encourage each other in a vast number and range of ways. Van is often the leader, but when he's feeling tired or uninspired, Powell takes over--usually taking his older brother to an anthill to continue their join entomological studies--viz., digging in the dirt.

The boys are quite close in age (they're four and three now, but there's only a six-month difference), and they've followed each other developmentally all their lives. They were circumcised on the same day, they went to the dentist first on the same day, they've had another operation on the same day, and now they're due for another operation.

This time, it's a tonsillectomy. Or, rather, it's two tonsillectomies.

Some parents have had to face many surgeries with their children--we're getting up there, but it hasn't become, by any means, routine. We know that this will help them in many ways, but we just wish there were an easier way.

More later--Van seems to be waking up!

Don't Care for Lawn Care

And, of course, there are many reasons not to care for lawn care. To be blunt and manipulative about it, there are people in the world who could eat for a week for the money it takes to put gas in a lawn mower for one mow. Also, it's often too hot.

This year, however, Amanda decided that it was time to get our lawn in shape. We've only been here a year, and I think we have a three-year grace period to get our house in order before we start working on the lawn (the number of boxes we've left un-unpacked is embarrassing!), but she's right that the neighbors don't see our basement but that they do see our pathetic lawn.

The trouble is that we've made friends who have put their faith entirely in Bob, the Lawn Genius. Bob is, apparently, to a lawn what Albert Einstein was to the Theory of Relativity. He knows much more than you'll ever even guess there is to know about the subject, and he'll just be able to communicate the rudiments to a lawn moron like me.

He's also a little like the Soup Nazi of Seignfeld (and, before that, of New Yorker) fame--what he says goes, and he doesn't have time to waste with those who don't obey his every command.

The command I had the most trouble with was the vacuuming command. Because they salt and sand the roads where we live, we need to spend a few hours using a shop vac to vacuum the two feet of our lawn nearest the curb. Since we live on a corner, that amounts to a fairly large number of square feet.

The Lawn Nazi says "Do!" and Amanda says "Go!" and Django goes and does.

Foolishly, however, I decided to seize the time available to me instead of procrastinating. (Just to throw a bit of vocabulary out there, the opposite of procrastinate is hodiate--I decided that hodiation was needed instead of procrastination.) It was about three o'clock in the afternoon--about the time the uber-kewl high school students get dropped off the bus on our corner.

I probably shouldn't have felt as foolish as I did, but all the high school acceptance emotions rose to the top--stylishly-dressed girls and bulky boys marched in waves over the lawn that the nerdy kid with the shop vac was unaccountably vacuuming.

Ah, so much for getting in with the in-crowd.

I imagine that the Lawn Nazi really asks people to vacuum their lawns as a test. If they're willing to do something as ridiculous as that, they'll follow his every command. If they'll endure the humiliation of going back to high school to be once again walked over by those whom the world admires, they'll buy the one-pound bag of fertilizer at $254.99.

End of the Semester

As the numbers of essays, exams, and projects to grade piles up, the number of distractions that can reasonably keep me from grading them all grows proportionally.

I teach at a mid-size Christian liberal arts college on the East coast. (Actually, it's on the West coast, but I'm trying to keep vaguely anonymous here!) My only hope is that I'll be able to keep my mind distracted during the graduation address. Last year, the speaker spent quite a lot of time telling the students to avoid playing cards, drinking, dancing, and going to R-rated movies after they graduate.

Thank you very much for your lovely legalism, sir! I'll keep it in mind. It's so nice to be told a set of rules that you have to follow--it means you don't have to think! And, since our students haven't been asked to think while they were at our college, why should we expect or even want them to think once they leave it?

Graduation is Tuesday. I'm hoping to bring a pack of cards to the ceremony.

Bashing Bush-Basher Bashers

One Christian liberal arts institution at which I've taught (I've taught at three thus far) came in consistently high in the "Nostalgic for Ronald Regan" category, which was disturbing enough--even to one generally and vaguely Republican in some of my politics. This institution could be voted "Most Nostalgic for George W. Bush" with no questions asked.

A vast majority of students and faculty defend our current president with the fervor of a rabid dog. Not only can he do no wrong, but to suggest that he can is instantly labeled "Bush-Bashing."

It's come to the point that there's an almost obligatory bashing of Bush-bashers in most public occasions. If anyone has suggested that things could be better, that person is a Bush-basher. To suggest that a good president ought to do these things and that ours hasn't is Bush-bashing.

Recently, I overheard colleagues discussing an article published in The New York Times: "Poll Gives Bush His Worst Marks Yet." Yes, that's Bush-bashing, too.

I want to stand up on a table and announce that Bush-basher bashing will no longer be tolerated! We're allowed to criticize any public official, no matter how revered.

The rhetoric is driving me insane. Criticism is bashing. Bashing is bad.

Frustrated.

Don't look too closely

The danger of starting off tacky is either that things are going to continue that way or that the point beyond the initial tackiness is missed.

My general cleaning policy has always been "Superficially clean, superifically inspected, superficially done." If you look too hard at any project, you're bound to find another layer that needs work.

But you need, at some point, to scrub. It may be that you notice something really grungy growing around the bottom of the toilet; or it may be that your boys are using the facilities but without advanced aiming techniques. Or it may be that someone else--a spouse, say--points out something to you. Occasionally, you've got to scrub.

The tacky part is that our lives in Christ are like that. I don't like to look too hard at any point because it might need more work than I'm wililng to give it.

At one point, I thought I could make a few bucks writing tacky Christian greeting cards. That sounds like an idea for one.

But think about this. One direction is the dirt that you don't notice. The other direction is the soap scum. Layer upon layer of soap . . . or bleach spray . . . or Johnson's Wax--they're just as hard (and sometimes harder!) to break through.

Our lives in church can be like that, too. Sometimes we need to break through the saccarine coating of ordinary church life to get to the core of what we're all about.

Maybe this emergent church thing has something to offer after all!

Subtle Adoption Themes in Children's Literature

While reading Guji Guji, a book by Zhiyuan Chen, my brilliant daughter asked, "Who are the bad guys for us?"

She's always a little too disconcertingly insightful. She and our two boys are adopted from Vietnam. The story involves a crocodile egg that is transplanted into a duck's nest. When the eggs hatch, one of the offspring is decidedly different from the others.

To that point, there's not much to distinguish between this story and the Brothers Grimm's "Ugly Duckling." Well, except that the different duck is a carnivore and that the story is likely to involve the phrase “ugly crime scene.”

Then other crocodiles come wandering in. They confront the crocodile-raised-as-duck about his identity, telling him that he is just as they are--he has sharp teeth to eat ducks, sharp claws to catch ducks, and a hungry nature to enjoy eating ducks. In short, he's an evil duck-eater, just as they are.

Perhaps my troubled reaction to this section of the book (which may have influenced Penelope to ask her question) is oversensitivity. I had recently watched a film about Vietnamese-Americans who became involved in Vietnamese gangs (the film had the word “dust” in its title). The story was similar—you’re one of us, not one of them. To be Vietnamese, you need to belong to our family, not yours. We may be bad, but you’re like us—you belong here.

My reaction may have been heightened by a general sensitivity to and hatred of racism. I’ve been taught to avoid it all my life, and our family makeup has made us even more peculiarly sensitive to matters of race and ethnicity.

I wonder how other families react to this book. How would a white family with black children react? Does it suggest that those who look like you are all bad and that you should avoid them entirely? I think it does.

The flyleaf mentions a friend of the author’s who is of Korean ancestry but who was adopted and raised “by a non-Korean family.” How would a white family with a Korean child react to this story?

I haven’t given an adequate answer to Penelope yet. I fobbed her off with some nonsense about it just being a story and that we’d talk about it some more.

As with all books that we don’t particularly care for or that are particularly troubling, the children love this book. They keep bringing it to us to read, even though we keep pointing them toward other books.

Mainly, I think I should tell Penelope that she’s much more like an innocent, harmless duck that’s been adopted by a family of crocodiles! Those who look like her are wonderful people—and we’re the ones who are in danger of eating her up. As we raise her, we need to be gentle and delicate, but we’re not necessarily up to the task. In fact, it’s only by the grace of God that we’re not complete crocodiles.