Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Today I’m spending 3+ hours in the balcony of a high school gym, while my son is taking a middle school entrance exam. When I thought about where to send him for middle school, I didn’t realize exactly what process I was setting in motion. But here I am, in a gym not quite like my high school gym – first, we didn’t have a balcony for onlookers. Second, our non-existent balcony lacked treadmills, elipticals, stationary bikes, and a hospitality table with Danish and coffee and the now omnipresent three-can garbage/recycling/compost dilemma that leaves me standing with my wooden coffee stir stick in utter confusion.

Over a breakfast of my son’s favorite (high protein, of course) foods, I asked him to give me some writing sparks, as I was feeling kind of stuck with what I would write about since I was taking his test time as this week’s writing time for me. The fact that I learned the term, “writing spark,” three years ago from one of my son’s teachers, who adorned open-ended topic sentences with happy little animals, flowers, fish, trees, or ornate curly-cues, is not something I’m proud of, but a writer should be free to steal ideas from any source, including their child’s second-grade teacher. [Thank you, Mrs. D.]

My husband chimed in, offering up first the possibility of writing about how proud I am to be the mother of such a great kid. “Done that,” I replied. “A ton of times.” I offered an alternative – “I could write about how much I love my husband…” and I looked over with what I hoped was loving appreciation – to which he beamed. “But I’ve done that, too,” I added, playfully. “You could never write too much about that,” he added, and I thought about all the things I could say today, including that I’m borrowing his car to get to this test as mine was acting up yesterday and I didn’t want to risk a car failure en route to the high falutin’ test; or that he cooked this breakfast of favorites and cleaned up the kitchen afterward, leaving my son and I to focus only on getting out the door well-fed and well-rested, or that in a thousand ways, he offers me up all the building blocks on which I’ve built this best phase of my life.

But I didn’t think I wanted to write about that today.

I opened my son’s test prep book, and found three options of essay questions that kids could write about to prepare for the essay question they’ll find on the test. Of course, they’re vague, open-ended questions designed to allow kids to write about anything, with no right or wrong, but simply to give a chance to show how they think. What if I wrote about one of those? It’d be kind of cool, both of us squirreled away using our minds in similar fashion, writing from our distinct perspectives.

Topic 1: Describe in detail where and how you would spend your perfect vacation.

“Easy,” I said. “You’d have a ton of things that would pop into your head.” He nodded, mouth full.

Topic 2: What would you like to do to make the world a nicer place in which to life? Explain.

I broke into song. You know, the old Coca Cola song: “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony.” I got stuck after the first verse, switching to la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la.  “It’s the real thing (Coke is), it’s the way it should be (la la la la la la).” I had no idea this song has been lying in wait in the recesses of my brain since the 1970’s, awaiting just the right trigger, this little upstart prep book becoming an instrument of torture now for me, as it has been for my son for the weeks preceding today’s test. And now, for the rest of this multi-hour writing session, and possibly the rest of the weekend, I’ll have the Coke song in my mind. My son doesn’t know it, so he’s spared from it becoming locked in his brain. Sorry if it’s now planted in yours, dear reader.

Topic 3: Who is your favorite relative? Why have you chosen this person?

Hmmmmm. We pondered this one in the car. Could it be a dead relative? Did it have to be blood? Could it be a relative by marriage or one who is primarily family because you have chosen that person to be family to back-fill the holes left in relationship by your actual relatives?

Topic 4: If you were granted the power to change one thing about your community, what would you change and why?

Easy, peasy. I’d put a decent high school in my community so I wouldn’t have to think about sending my kid elsewhere for school. Why? So I wouldn’t be encountering the private school track, with its over-anxious, over-entitled parents, the elaborate hoop-jumping entrance requirements, and the way in which no possible amount of income seems sufficient. So I wouldn’t be spending my Saturday morning in an expensive school gym, with a smattering of above-mentioned parents with laptops, holding myself back from the urge to climb onto one of the ellipticals since we had to leave so early I didn’t get a gym run in.

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Post script – As I edit this piece, still in the gymnasium, a cell phone begins to bark. Yes, bark. It barks several times, loudly, and a woman looks only slightly apologetic as she says, “It’s my husband. I’m sorry.” She did not, by the way, answer the call. She wasn’t actually sorry. I responded, “It’s OK – he’s your husband, not mine.”

I will never, ever have a unique ring of an obnoxious dog barking to let me know my husband is calling. His ring tone is more like the sound Samantha’s nose-twitch would make on Bewitched – my signal that a little bit of magic is coming my way. His is the only tone I pick up no matter what I’m doing.

So you see, Honey, I did end up writing about how much I love my husband today.