Failure...matey!

As an English major...nay, as an even slightly educated, English-speaking human...I should be too ashamed to admit this even to my closest friends, much less blog about it to all three of my readers. (I admit to a certain amount of overlap in those categories.) And I should certainly hesitate to expose my child by telling this. It puts my cultural literacy teaching skills in the very worst light. It puts my child's literacy in almost as bad a light. But I have decided to pass the buck and blame the school, thus turning this into an expose' of the deplorable academic failures of our education system, instead of a mea culpa regarding my mothering.

So, today we were in the car and something, I'm not sure what, put the September Baby in mind of Shakespeare, and he asked me something about him...something along the lines of why do people make such a big deal about the stuff Shakespeare wrote?

Now, I took a whole year of classes on Shakespeare in college (besides, Kenneth Branagh's Henry V is one of my favorite movies ever). I felt I was therefore uniquely qualified to answer a question like that. I mean, this is what parents wait for, isn't it? The glimmers of a yearning, curious mind in their progeny...proof of life, proof of intelligence! And I'm The Mother, after all. The Stay-at-Home Mom whose job it is, besides chauffer, to Be There when the Big Questions come up. The ones whose answers shape the future, not only of the child, but of mankind! And there I was, the Literary Parent to the Good Doctor's Science Parent. So, I turned down the conservative talk radio show, put down my iPhone, and began...

"It's 'cause...well...Shakespeare...William Shakespeare...was, like, you know...a really good writer and stuff..."

The February Baby piped up, sounding surprised and a little puzzled, and said, "I thought Shakespeare was a pirate!"

I gasped and swerved. "What?" Shrilly, "A...pirate?!?"

Then I laughed and twiddled the wheel, steering the Suburban off the curb and back into the street. "You're just kidding...aren't you, sweetie? Hahaha!"

"No, I'm not kidding," he said. "Honestly, for the past ten years, I've thought he was a pirate. I never knew he was a writer."

Wow.

Yeah.

That story is all I need, if I ever do need to prove my ineffectiveness as a parent--my utter uselessness at shaping the next generation.

However, as I said, I've decided to take the modern approach and shove the blame off on his school teachers.

And The Three will be drifting off to sleep tonight while listening to me read Hamlet...or, at least, while watching my DVD of Henry V.

With hope in our hearts and wings on our heels...

I ordered the DVD of Chariots of Fire last week; I thought it might be interesting to the September Baby since he is starting to run cross country track with the PCS team. I remember feeling inspired to sign up for track when I first saw it...that didn't stick. But, honestly, I was just looking for an excuse to buy the movie.

I realized in reading the cover, that I was the same age as Win is now when I first saw it. Good grief. It really doesn't seem that long ago...1981. I wonder if it will impress him as it did me. I can still recite parts of the movie along with the actors. And, like it did me, the music has already made an impression on the February Baby, and when he's doing homework asks to have the soundtrack playing on iTunes.

(I can't help but muse a moment on the difference in the ease of watching this movie now...a few clicks of the mouse on Amazon.com...as compared to, gulp, almost 30 years ago. We had to drive or, in my case, be driven to Jackson to see it. And that happened more than once, if my memory serves. Then when it finally came out on video, friends of ours borrowed an extra VCR in order to copy it...hmmm...I think that really might have been illegal. Ooops. Surely the statute of limitations has run out on that crime by now, so I won't feel bad about ratting them out here, on this my unvisited blog.)

I've not had the chance to really sit and watch the whole movie...I've listened, awash in nostalgia and that C.S. Lewis type of joy, while The Three watch it in the car. But I look forward to the time when I can. And in watching the boys play their sports...whether track, soccer, or football...I pray that they will "feel God's pleasure when they run."