This simply cannot possibly be true.
It is.
School is almost o-ver!!!!
In my home I'm uncertain who is more excited, my kids or me.
My 16-year old son, who scores so high on his tests but forgets to do his homework, is facing five weeks of hard labor: intense summer school in English and World History.
He has promised us Bs from the summer forward. He will need to if he hopes to get into a decent college.
"You know you're going to be one of those kids left behind and you're way too smart. So just do your homework, please?"
Mimi, my seven-year old, enjoys taunting her older brother that she does not have to go to summer school.
"You're in second grade. There's time. Just wait."
"Jay," I admonish.
The day after Jay gets out of school we are leaving for vacation in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We will fly into Salt Lake City, I'm still unsure why, and then drive into nature.
My husband knows that I do not camp. I hotel. So he has booked some nice lodges.
Then in early August the kids and I will leave for a week to see my family in Connecticut and we'll visit New York City and Boston. I'm taking my kids and niece and nephews to see the play, Hair. They don't know the ending. But the sun will definitely be shining in. It will be their first Broadway play and I'm excited to share it with them.
We'll catch fireflies at dusk and watch them light up Mason jars with their light bulb-like backs and then set them free. During the mornings we'll take long walks down Martha Stewartesque country roads. I'll laugh with my sisters. And probably fight a bit, too. The cousins we'll also laugh. And probably argue as well. This is why my husband stays home. He is not used to the noise. I grew up with it. To me it's just ambient sounds.
In between there is camp for Mimi three days a week and play dates on the other two. I sense this is going to be a beautiful summer. We'll see old friends and hang out with our neighbors.
The opportunity to slow down, reflect and enjoy is that for which I hope. The reality, I know, is more likely my son will forget to do his homework and my daughter will say -- just as she does about school -- that she doesn't want to go to camp.
Still, I look forward to the respite. Even if it's only in my imagination.
By Dawn Yun
Labels: Boston, By Dawn Yun, College, Connecticut, English cucumber, Grand Tetons, homework, New York, school is over, school vacation, summer camps, summer school, World History, Yellowstone
Stumble This Post
It was three a.m. and my pager awakened me, like fingernails down a blackboard. It was the emergency room, again. I rounded up the gaggle of medical students (a.k.a. the EBUs ─ ego building units) for an educational experience, because that’s what medical school memories are made of: late night trips to the E.R. with a bitchy resident. Conveniently, all three were named Steve (OK, I named them that, so convenient for me). Off I went, the Steve’s trailing after me like a comet tail.
“She said she’ll only see the gynecologist,” the emergency room attending smirked. The Steves quaked. What kind of patient would have that bravado, to raise the chief resident from her slumber? Like waking the Kraken. I rolled my eyes and grabbed the chart.
As I performed the exam one of the Steves hit the ground. I couldn’t tell if it was because he saw his first real-live vagina or because of what I’d pulled out of it: a cucumber, a peeled cucumber. Not an English cucumber of course (now that would be something), more like a pickled cuke.
I stepped over Steve # 3 and moved closer to the bedside. It is always a delicate situation. Do you go about your business and make like you haven’t just pulled a peeled cucumber out of some girl’s vagina, or do you ask, “Was it peeled when it went in?”
Perhaps there is a special skill involved, like tying a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue?
Most doctors would say nothing. but it is three a.m., and I am not like most doctors.
And so, the discussion began. . .
By Jennifer Gunter
Labels: bitchy resident, cherry stem, cucumber, cumumber, E.R., emergency room, English cucumber, Jennifer Gunter, peeled cucumber
Stumble This Post
