It's the thin line between reality and fantasy.
It's the thin line between sanity and madness.
It's the crazy things that make us think, laugh and scream in the dark.
“Don’t worry. My son is gay. Once you
get over the gay thing it’s not so bad. Here, have another drink.”
In life as in music timing is
everything. Arguably there is no perfect time to spring this on your parent,
but some times are better than others. The night before your Matric finals,
might not be one of them.
I know you think the world is all about
you.
You can’t help it; you are an
18-year-old boy.
I forgive you.
I don’t know if your father will.
Here is the thing.
It is not that you are gay.
It is that you are having sex.
You know how you feel about your parents
getting it on?
Multiply that by about 1 000 and you may
have inkling of how they feel about you doing it like they do it on the
Discovery Channel.
Let’s take the Matric finals first. Your
father is terrified for you. He’d write those exams for you in an instant. He’s
worried that you haven’t studied enough, that the education he gave you will
fall short, that you won’t be able to achieve your dreams and so on. He also
has to deal with the fact that in two months his baby boy will be moving out
and going to Varsity. He knows what happens at Varsity and he is panicking – a
lot.
Then you add into the mix that not only
are you sexually active, but also have been active enough to make a decision on
your orientation. Now he is remembering the Catholic Church trials in the
States and wondering if you’ve been abused. Then he remembers all the times
you’ve had a mate crash over in his house and he’s feeling a little
freaky.
Let’s put this in perspective. I’m not
gay, but back in the murky depths of time, I was young once too. It unfolded
like this…
Age 17
My father: “I’m going to the pharmacy,
do you need anything?”
My mother: “No, but pick up your
daughter’s pill while you’re there.”
He went to the pharmacy and was appalled
to given a box of birth control. He was convinced it was a mistake. It wasn’t.
Still, better safe than sorry he thought. She’s is just being careful and is
taking it for medical reasons totally unassociated with sex.
Age 20
My father and my boyfriend pass each
other in the hallway emerging from different showers.
We could just have been cuddling. Right?
Age 21
“Dad, I’m moving in with my boyfriend.”
Okay, he reasoned, two bedrooms in the
house, everything is still okay.
Age 23
“I’m getting married!”
Perhaps it won’t be consummated.
Age 25
“I’m having a baby!”
This was when the proverbial penny
dropped with a thundering crash.
My father looked across at my husband
and in the face of incontrovertible proof had to accept that I was sexually
active.
I don’t think he has ever quite got over
it.
You see, no matter you old you are or
how grown up you feel, your Dad will always see you as the tiny newborn baby he
held in his arms, the little boy he taught to ride a bike and as his son.
Okay, a Victoria Secret underwear model
might have been an easier sell than the captain of the rugby team, but hey,
he’ll get over the “gay” thing, just not over the “my son having sex” thing.
Ever.
Whether gay or straight, flinging your
sexuality in your parents’ faces can lead to disastrous consequences – in my
case, my father threatened to move to Saudi Arabia and put me in a burka.
They don’t flaunt their sex life in
front of you, so show some respect and conduct yours with a little bit of discretion.
And by that I do not mean in the
backseat of your dad’s BMW.
“A nation that is afraid to let its
people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is
afraid of its people.” John F. Kennedy
There are times when silence is a
virtue.
Like when your wife asks if her bum looks big in this.
There are times when secrets are best
kept.
Like if you are a fan of Justin Bieber.
This is not one of those times.
Today is Black Tuesday.
Weirdly enough
that was also the name of the day that marked the start of the Great
Depression. Regardless, I look like a large dissatisfied black bat of gloom today.
However, this Tuesday is so named because on the 19th October 1977, the Apartheid
government banned a number of publications, people and organisations involved
with black consciousness. It became known as Black Wednesday.
Today the South African parliament will
vote on the Protection of State Information Bill or as it more popularly known,
the Secrecy Bill. If passed it will effectively muzzle the media and hobble any
attempt to expose the cancer of fraud, embezzlement and corruption that is at
the heart of our government.
No government should ever be in control
of the media, although they all try because for obvious reasons it is a very
powerful tool to placate the masses. Desmond Tutu summed it up
very well by calling it an insult to all South Africans.
History repeats itself. I just was not
expecting it to repeat itself so soon. During the time Nelson Mandela was in
prison, not a single photograph of him existed in South Africa. The first time
most of us saw him, was the day he walked out of prison. His face was regarded
as a threat to state security.
What state secrets do we have that are
so vital to security that we need to hide them? In all honesty if we were in a
time of war, perhaps this bill might have legs to stand on, but it is built on
decidedly shaky ground right now.
The ANC published this peculiar diatribe on their website today:
Apparently, the bill is intended to crack down those pesky international spies that plague us.
What on earth are they spying
on?
Our total
ineptitude?
“The
foreign spies continue to steal our sensitive information in order to advantage
their nations at the expense of advancement of South Africa and her people.
However, you won't find foreign spies openly marching in the streets of Cape
Town complaining that we are removing their easy access to our sensitive
information.”
I
quite like the idea of spies marching down the road actually – a sort of James Bond
meets Austin Powers convention.
I hasten to suggest we have
more of a problem from Nigerian drug lords gunning down PTA moms in the
street, but that might get me sent to jail for some 25 years.
If it were really intended to protect
terribly important state secrets, it might have some credibility. But it isn’t.
It’s designed to protect corrupt little backstabbers so they can carry on lying
to the voting population who they view in much the same way as I view the ruling party – as a bunch of total idiots.
Shouldn’t politicians, municipalities,
tenderpreneurs and so on be held accountable?
After all, it is my money they
are spending on their big BMWs and mansions in Saxonwold. If some bint takes
her family and friends to buy blood diamonds in Angola and I have to foot
the bill for her chartered jet, do I not have the right to be a little miffed?
Of course back in the day they only had
to worry about carrier pigeons, TV, radio and print journalists. These days you’ve got social networking,
blogs, the Internet and virtual smoke signals.
No doubt the next step will be
following our new BFFs the Chinese into an Internet crackdown.
After that we’ll
probably start burning books.
Here's what Nelson Mandela had to say on the topic in 1994:
"Criticism can only help us to grow, by calling attention of those of our actions and omissions, which do not measure up to our people's expectations and the democratic values to which we subscribe."
What happens when a newbie uses the director's coffee mug? Answer: All hell breaks loose.
My friend, let's call him Bill for the purposes of this story, recently started a new job. Unaware of office etiquette surrounding personal mugs and in dire need of caffeine, he reached in to the cupboard and took the closest mug on offer. Unfortunately for him the mug turned out to belong to a senior director, let's call her Meg. Her fictional namesake is Meg the Hen from my son's reading books and it seems to fit the profile. Meg is a little OCD. This use of her mug was regarded as an assault upon her person and her office. To say she was livid it no exaggeration.
Bill is a man. Obviously, who knows any women called Bill? Anyway, Bill being a man could not fathom how anyone could possible over react so monstrously to the use of a piece of crockery, it was not as though he has started wearing her underwear after all. At most in this situation you would expect the conversation to go as follow:
"You are using my mug!" "Oh, I am so sorry, I didn't realise, I won't do it again." "Thank you, see that you don't."
And that would be the end of that. Only in this case it wasn't.
Meg, decided to escalate her displeasure at the abuse of her mug by one of the great unwashed (aka anyone else). She laid an official complaint with the powers that be of theft, misuse of personal property and a variety of other charges stemming from some deep insecurity that no-one respects her. It appears her fears have some roots. Some of other charges included being humiliated, having her authority questioned and so on. Bill was called in to explain his actions.
"I didn't know it was her mug. It was my first day and I wanted some coffee. I said I was sorry."
Shortly after this Ted appeared on the scene. Bill and Ted form a partnership much like that of their movie namesakes. Meg took one look at Ted and burst into tears blithering on about a conspiracy against her. She and Ted have a "history". The relationship deteriorated further. Every day she laid another charge against the duo until it became more than a farce than at its inception.
Of course it was inevitable that Bill was going to strike back. This leads to an insight about the sexes. Women will rush in where angels fear to tread, whereas men prefer to strategise their assault. Bill began by making a cup of coffee in the mug each day and taking a picture of himself drinking from it. These make up quite a nice collage on his desk.
Then one bright and sunny morning Bill had had enough. He laid a charge of sexual harassment against Meg for stalking him, staring at his crotch and generally regarding him a sex object making him feel extremely uncomfortable. Now labour law takes these quite seriously and so Meg was called in to answer to these charges.
The following day while the office was gathered together in the cozy communal workspace, Bill left his zipper down. It didn't reveal anything untoward, but a nice pair of natty Calvin Kleins. It is a fact universally acknowledged that no-one can help but stare at a zipper that is down. Women particularly as they wonder how to inform the person that their zipper is down while remaining innocent of staring at the offending body part.
Bill waited until Meg's gaze was draw inexorably down, before exclaiming loudly to the office, "Look! This is what I mean. She's doing it again! She's staring at my crotch!" He followed up with a lovely metrosexual emotionally laden sniff and vacated the room. There was a moment of silence before laughter erupted led by the powers that be and a large round of applause.
The moral of the story is don't go running to your boss to solve your petty coffee mug squabbles and never ever underestimate office politics. Also, if you think people don't like you you're probably right. Get over it. No everyone has to like you. God knows you probably don't like everyone either.
Sometimes laughter is the only option short of weeping hysterically.
If my better half had only listened to my words of wisdom he would've driven straight to Tara and checked me in . I'm sure the shuddering, oxygen depriving laughter would have been cause enough for a strait jacket and a menu of multi-coloured pharmaceuticals. Instead he did as better halves often do and ignored me completely.
The cause of this meltdown? On Friday afternoon Small boy aged 9 informed me that he was not going home with me but with his friend instead. I capitulated on the understanding that the mother would call me to confirm and send me the address.
Later on Friday afternoon we sat in gridlocked traffic and a torrential downpour on the way to Small girl aged 5's nativity play (in which she is the star of wonder, star of light). It was only as we pulled up to the school that we discovered the play was postponed due to the aforementioned torrential downpour.
Not to worry, because the school was on the way to the address provided by the school for Small boy aged 9's friend. I popped in the Garmap app on my BB and off we went. My husband regards the Garmap as a challenge and persists in ignoring the directions utterly in an attempt to prove it wrong. Eventually we pulled up to a large block of flats somewhere in Bedfordview.
It was the wrong address. A Chinese family lived there, but not the right one.
I called the number also kindly provided by the school. It belonged to a nice Chinese gentleman, but not the right one.
I sat in catatonic silence.
"No worries!" chirped the father, like some Australian sheep farmer in the face of disaster. He called the aftercare administrator from the school who kindly provided another number. It was now dark and the rain was still pouring down.
It was the right number. The only thing is we lacked the necessary cultural skills to interpret the conversation. We seized on a single word, Redham, in much the same matter as a drowning man will seize a piece of driftwood in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
And so we sat, in the dark, in the rain, with two cellular devices both which returned a "this application is not currently available" message. There are times when a good old fashioned book of maps beats high tech electronics hands down.
This about when the giggling started.
We found Redham. Now what? The other directions included something that sounded like "Sourpa".
"Look!" said my husband, "There's a complex called Sovereign Park. It must be that." I just giggled.
We drove up to the rather imposing front gate and were met by a large burly Afrikaans man. "Where are youse going?" he asked. I giggled in response.
Shooting a dirty look at me my husband explained we were looking for number 9, 19 or possible 90. "Ah," ejaculated the guard, "Chinese, ja?" At this point I was a goner. I laughed until tears ran down my face, until my stomach hurt, until I could hardly draw breath. Eventually, we found our missing child, who informed us he was staying until Sunday.
Halfway home, I had composed myself and turned to my husband to say, "Please tell me there is enough petrol in the car to get us home? If we ran out of gas now I think I will need medical intervention." Not to worry, I was told, there was plenty of petrol.
And then... THUNK! Thunkety, thunkety, thunk.
"What was that?" a startled husband asked.
"That," replied a mother on the brink of total breakdown, "Was the sound of a flat tyre."
For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, Homeless Babe of the Month doesn't sit right with me.
Admittedly, it works. I bought a Homeless Talk for the first time in years. The publication's positioning line is "Helping the poor help themselves". It is a very noble sentiment.
I just can't see how getting homeless women to pose suggestively is helping them at all, except to open up a new and more lucrative sidewalk revenue stream then a cardboard sign and a rent-a-baby.
I’ve pushed three pink squirming babies
into the world. It hurt like hell. I thought nothing could be worse. I was
wrong.
Parenting is the most painful experience in
the world and one that we are woefully under-prepared for. There’s a reason why
psychologists all over the world have couches filled with people blaming their
mothers for all their problems. That’s because we are to blame.
Parenting is like putting on a blindfold,
been spun around hundred times and then made to (still blindfolded) walk across
a tightrope below which yaws an endless abyss. If you pass that, you then have
to traverse a million miles of eggshells without crushing a single one in
4-inch stilettos.
If you manage that, you still have to get across a minefield,
kill some dragons without singeing your hair or chipping a nail, make lunch,
read a bedtime story, do long bloody division and find out what x equals and
why.
Forget Navy Seals training. You want
hard-core? Try being a mother.
The South African education system is a
write-off. You can send your child to a government school and sentence him or
her to a lifetime of semi-illiteracy, and a career path that peaks somewhere
around nail technician, or you can send them to a private school in the hope
that one day they will make enough money as the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company to
put you up in a nice old-aged home.
We’d like to laud the success stories of
the new South Africa, but when it some to education there aren’t any. Education
is for the elite. It’s not racist anymore. It’s just about money. Either you
have it or you don’t, and if you don’t you may as well bugger off. The private
schools may be non-profit, but they are still businesses and the bottom line is
that if your child is not making the grade, they have 70 others waiting for his
place.
Alright, they didn’t say it quite like
that, but it’s the overall feeling I got. My son is not making the grade.
Yesterday we went in for a group session.
My head was pounding, my palms were sweaty and I wanted to be ill. Actually,
the first thing I did when it was over was give thanks to my doctor and down
half a Xanax. Teachers scare the living daylights out of me. They have ever
since my Grade 2 teacher said she could turn into dragon and burn me to a
cinder.
Small boy aged 7 lacks the foundation
skills necessary for Grade 2. It sounds simple, but it isn’t, because they use buzzwords
and phrases that mean nothing to me. Ask me about marketing strategies, social
networking and ROI, and I’m your girl, but start using educational terms and
you may as well be talking Greek. I know what phonological awareness is as a
concept, but I have no idea what it actually means in reality. What is he
supposed to be able to do that he can’t?
There were two distinct approaches to the
intervention.
The school: Keep him back in Grade 1 for
another year
The parents: Put him forward and help us
build the skills he needs
Diametrically opposed points of view.
Neither party vaguely resembled the bamboo of Eastern philosophy. Two hours of
talking in circles later we got nowhere.
I think we all need to bend a bit. I
hate confrontation, so in sitting there in the headmistress’s office my anxiety
gets the better of me. Sitting in his classroom, my son’s anxiety gets the
better of him.
The thing is that what one person finds
totally stress free can move another to tears. Supermarkets are not stressful
for most people. For me, supermarkets are a full on nervous breakdown and end
with me sobbing in the frozen food aisle. The lovely sunny library at school is
a wonderful place for most of the boys, but is a place of terror for my son.
His anxiety levels are hindering him from learning.
Perhaps it is time to make a list. Lists
are good.
Staying
back in Grade 1
Pros
Cons
·More time to solidify his
skills base
·More time to mature
emotionally and developmentally
·Less stress with learning as
he will have already done it
·An environment he is already
comfortable in
·An easy solution
·When the “switch” flicks
he’ll get bored
·Anxiety based on having his
peers advance while he stays back
·Future stigma attached to
“failing”
·Doing the same thing over and
over is the definition of insanity
·Should perhaps do this at a
new school and the logistical implications at year end mean it is nigh
impossible to find him a new school
Going
to Grade 2
Pros
Cons
·Remains with his social peer
group
·A new teacher and new
environment may break his behaviour cycle
·New skills might excite him
·The “switch” flicking will
motivate him to achieve
·His lack of basic skills
makes the gap widen more and more between him and his peers
·His confidence fails more as
he fails to achieve raising his anxiety levels more
I am sure there are others, but these are
the basics.
What about the one thing we are all
missing. My son. What does he want to do? He wants everyone around him to be
happy to his own detriment. He’ll give me whatever answer he thinks I want to
hear. The school psychologist is now going to take two play therapy sessions
with him to find out where his head is at.
If he wants to go up a grade I’ll move
heaven and earth to help him.
If he wants to stay back and re-enforce his
skills, I’ll move heaven and earth to help him
I’m making a decision here that will impact
the rest of his life.
There are consequences and risks whatever
we choose to do. It is terrifying.
My husband has been scouring research
reports. Something like 69% of American high-school drop-outs have been kept
back a year at some point in their schooling. There is no quantifiable proof
that keeping a child back helps his development and academic achievement in any
way in the long term. Short-term there is a great improvement in marks, the next
year they are average and the third year they are behind again.
Where
to from here?
All of us need to make what the Chinese
call “concessions”
My ideal is this:
Let him go to Grade 2 for the first term.
If he copes fantastic first prize.
If he doesn’t we can move him in Term 2 and
it gives us the time to find a school that can accommodate him.
Or we can move him down back to Grade 1.
We could let him stay in Grade 1 for the
first term and if he exceeds expectations and the “switch” flicks he is moved
to Grade 2 in the second term.
Either way, right now I don’t need a full
scale IEP (independent curriculum). What I ask is that for the remainder of the
term he gets a little less work in class than everyone else so he can complete
the task without panicking about time.
The important thing I ask is the hardest to
give. Put your pre-conceived notions about my child away. When he achieves
something don’t say, “Well, will he remember them tomorrow?”
I love my son. However, I also know him
better than just about anyone. He is the middle child. His siblings are louder,
more extrovert and run roughshod over him. How does he get attention? He opens
those big blue eyes and plays the helpless one. Everyone rushes to comfort him.
He is manipulating the classroom
environment to get the most attention possible and it is working.
Why should he read the question when the
teacher will read it for him?
Why should he do the work, when the teacher
will give him the right answer?
He doesn’t need to be babied. He needs
direction, limits and boundaries. I don’t let him away with emotional
manipulation at home, so don’t let him do it at school. Be firm. Be strict. Be
understanding of his challenges, but empower him to find the answers, don’t
give them to him. Praise his successes so he knows that is where he’ll get
attention. Right now he gets more attention for his failures than his
successes. That’s backwards.
He has a mother. Me. I am not a teacher.
He has a teacher. You. You are not his
mother.
We are a team, but we have different roles
and responsibilities.
Don’t let him play symphonies on your
heartstrings.
