Years ago, when I was visiting my family in Connecticut, my brother explained a little bit about his parenting style. At the time, his two sons were very young and his attitude about raising them could only be described as laissez faire. He wasn't a bad dad, in fact he took very good care of his kids, but they could get pretty wild.
His light discipline was his way to prevent them from feeling bad. He revealed he was constantly reminded of times that were embarrassing or demoralizing for him and he didn't want his boys to feel the same way. I knew exactly what he meant; I suffer from the same ailment.
One episode that continually burbles from my memory at odd times was when I was in Mrs. Griswold's second grade class. As I look back now, we were probably doing a segment on the five senses. We had a guest speaker who would ask for volunteers. Being an eager child back then, I would raise my hand each time but was denied the chance to shine. We reached the fifth and final sense and she asked for volunteers. Undaunted, I raised my hand again and was lucky enough to be selected.
My luck further improved when I saw her reveal a cookie brought from the cafeteria. I was going to get a treat, too! She asked my name and then the loaded question, "How can you tell this is a good cookie?"
Instead of defining "good" as either "delicious" or "pleasing," I decided to take the tack of "not evil."
"You should break it apart to see if there are any pins in it," I replied.
I like to think my answer was influenced because Halloween was approaching and we were drilled to be careful of the candy we eat after Trick-o-Treating. We were warned there were sickos out there who could put things in candy to hurt little kids. Even as an eight-year old, I refused to become a statistic.
What followed were gales of laughter and I can still see clearly in my mind's eye Jeffrey Simmons putting his head in his hands in the front row. It gets worse.
“Okay. But how can you tell if this is a good cookie,” she tried again. Rather than changing my answer, I assumed she didn’t hear me the first time (ironic as we were learning about the senses) and gave the same answer. Seeing as this line of questioning was going nowhere, she then whispered "taste."
I realized then what my mistake was and affected a look of epiphany and triumphantly exclaimed, “TASTE!” She invited me to taste the cookie and I took a bite. I nodded my approval. "It's good." And pin-free. I ate the rest of the cookie at my desk.
To this day, peanut butter cookies taste like failure.
I see this episode through two lenses - one, as a Goetz, with all the emotional trauma that title entails, and two, as a teacher, who recognizes the need for those "teachable" growth moments. Your answer was amazingly deep, and understandable, given our upbringing. It was Platonic, in a way - the cookie was "good" insofar as it was not "evil" and harmful. But, goddammit, that cookie was good because it tasted good, and you should have figured that shit out, given the context.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the only thing Mrs. Griswold taught me was that sailboats were blue. And that turned out to be a fucking lie, too.
Thanks, Sis! I can always rely on family members to raise me up while at the same time cutting me off at the knees.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mrs. Griswold probably dialed down those "teachable" moments between when I was in her class and when you were.
I always go back to Nietzsche: "Only the painful is truly memorable."
ReplyDeleteI find that most of my memories are fading into the mist, except for the moments of deep embarrassment or emotional trauma. Those are still of searing crystalline quality.
And my parenting style has failed - the boys are already scarred for life, mostly by times I yelled at them. So it goes.
My memory of Griswold (jeez, we all had her?) was that I was Golden Boy in her class until she had the bright idea to sit me next to the troublemaker so my goodness would rub of on him. It does not take a genius to guess what came next: his badness rubbed off on me, and I started to get in trouble. It was my first experience of Teacher Disappointed Face.