When Homework is a Family Affair

When did homework become a family affair? Probably right around the time that applying to the college of your choice became a competitive sport. I can still hear my parents snorting through their martinis when I asked them to help me build my California Mission. My mother would bring out the Elmer’s Glue and popsicle sticks and say “Have at it.”  Now, apparently, you have to produce a YouTube film with a game app for whatever project is being studied. 

Please understand, I think it’s great that children get to exercise all their creative skills so they can “integrate the knowledge through all mediums to improve learning”. Just don’t ask me to help. 

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I fondly recall helping my 11-year old daughter with her math. She didn’t get it. Or at least that was her story and she stuck with it. The problem involved figuring out how many video cartridges 5/8” deep will fit into a box that’s 15-1/2” long. Yes, video cartridges. It was that long ago.

Now I’ve just spent an entire day congratulating myself on clothing and feeding the kids and getting them to school on time. I had driven 40 miles to the office in bumper-to-bumper traffic, argued with lawyers and finance types, skipped lunch, taken one bathroom break, driven 40 miles back through bumper-to-bumper traffic, cooked dinner for two kids and had just collapsed on the couch with a donut. I was as close to a coma as I could be without a physician’s diagnosis and was wishing I had something in the medicine cabinet stronger than Advil.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t figure it out. I could. Just not using the teacher’s preferred method. It was all I could do not to tell my daughter that the answer to how many willfit in the box?is: A crap load. Any remaining space would be filled with packing peanuts.

Which brings me to Isaac Newton, the discoverer of the principle of gravity. My 12-year old son not only had to do a written report AND an oral report, he also had to fully clothe a paper doll. With real clothes. No just drawing it on with crayons.

So, here we were scanning the internet for a photo of Isaac Newton in period clothes. I’m showing my son how to make a clothing pattern, using a pair of scissors just sharp enough to cut Jello. I’m scrambling to find cloth he can use for clothes. I started to feel like Scarlet O’Hara ripping down those curtains at Tara as I considered whether or not my husband would notice six inches of missing fabric on his pant legs. I contemplated skinning the cat to make one fine hairpiece for old Isaac. Instead, I spared the cat and shredded a pair of bedroom slippers.

Right about that time, I noticed that my son, who steadfastly remained uninterested in the artistic merits of this project, had adhered his fingers together with the last of the Super Glue. I brought out my old companion, Elmer’s Glue, which I discovered had petrified into a white chunk of rock because the last kid who used it (our daughter, who tried to glue 10 lbs. of glitter onto her bedroom door as a way of creating a secret entrance to “fairyland”…) didn’t put the cap back on.

My last resort: duct tape. I handed the fabric and tape to my son.

When I came back, I was dismayed to discover that old Isaac was so full of duct tape that all you could see were his eyes. He looked as if he was about to be stuffed into the truck of a car and taken to the Jersey Meadowlands.

As night began to fall, my son was reapplying Isaac’s hairpiece while reciting his oral report on how Isaac Newton explained gravity. A picture began to form in my mind of what I would have liked to send to my son’s teacher.

It’s me, standing on a chair. A hangman’s noose is slung over a ceiling beam and around my neck. The caption on the photo reads:

 “To my son’s teacher: When I kick the chair out from under me, not only will I have explained gravity but I’ll never again have to help with one of these damned reports!”