Unearthing a life.....

Life is lived between the poles of comedy and tragedy. I live my life within an arm's length of comedy. President Bush appears to be living his within a foreshortened inch of tragedy. And he is accompanied on stage by a Greek chorus of similar countenance. Faces painted in surly tones, faces daubed with glowering hues, faces awash with impatience and umbrage taken. Faces of the fear-mongers who have not hit an accurate lick in the past six years and get all haughty on us and outraged if we dare to breathe a word about the Emperor's clothes.

Well, a pox on their houses, their ilk and their kin. They are not fun.

Bill was fun. Bill is still fun. I can imagine Bill being fun in the future.

George was never fun. He has the pinched look of an Ebenezer Scrooge caught out of costume. An unrepentant Scrooge who may well give us all a Christmas goose if we don't do a better job of protecting our rears.

But that's all very weary pablum and a weak grind for my word mill .... I who live an arm's length from comedy. And that's not a straight arm's length ... more of a severely bent elbow arm's length. Up close and personal with Capt. Chuckle.

Allie arrived this morning with the announcement that he was, in fact, a Slime Monster and that he did not (yet) have very good control over the slime. He also demonstrated a pair of moves .... arms crossed on the chest and a small Oriental-type bow .... which would, he warned, if delivered by me, push him over the edge and result in a great sliming of everything in sight.

So why does Allie's 'universal sliming' come out as comedy .... and when Gearge Bush does it, it comes out as tragedy? Two major reasons. When Allie does it, it is imaginary .... when George does it, people die. Lots of people. Secondly, Allie is cute and has an 'open' face. George is manic and sports a 'closed' visage.

And this completes and fulfills any and all obligations to blog for today.

Watch yourself out there and keep your seatbelt buckled.

The eyeballs of both Allie and myself are as healthy as can reasonably be expected. And while his vision is likely superior to mine, I am, by far, more of a gentleman while in the eye doctor's chair. Hands down.

Al's appointment yesterday lasted for three hours. A significant percentage of that time was due to his apparent inability to follow any order and/or suggestion that came from any adult mouth, including mine. At one point, it took two technicians and myself to put the eyedrops in to dialate his pupils (I was in charge of restraining his hands). As we walked out to the lobby to wait while the drops took effect, he remarked, "I'm a coward about eyedrops." Well, AMEN to that!

But, the doc could find nothing wrong with his eyes .... after all that. As I understood it, the impetus for doing this sprung from his pediatrician's concern when Allie's eyes did not properly 'track' an object that was being moved back and forth. The eye doctor hinted that the pediatrician may have not done it quite right.

Later, as we cruised towards the Silverdale Toys 'R Us store (as per my much earlier promise), I said to him, "Well, Al ... we got out of there alive, we're not bleeding and we'll make it home for supper ... can't have a much better day than that."

"GRANDPA! I do not want to talk about it!"

One thing I've notice about Allie since he returned to the shelter of our wing, is that he is asking a string of questions that seem to constitute a reassessment of his assumptions about reality.

Bookworm got the first one when he asked, "Is there a God?"
I would have said 'no', but Bookworm gave him the long answer that snaked through the 'a lot of people believe this and that' territory and she left out the possibilti of a plain 'no' answer.

Then, on the way home from speech therapy, he asked me, "Is Santa Claus real?"
I said, "No, he is a character that people made up to put into stories to make themselves feel better and have more fun. Like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Mamas and daddys and grandmas and grandpas are the real Santa Claus and Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. And people like to scare themselves with their stories, so they make up things like vampires and zombies. It's just story stuff."
"What about GHOSTS?" he barked at me.
"Story stuff," I said.

On the way home from Toy 'R Us, he asked, "Are you really my Mom's dad?"
"No, not really," I said. "She calls me Dad because I'm nice to her and she likes me a lot." (How's that for self-serving) "Grandma Bookworm is your Dad's Mom and I'm married to her." And where did that get me?

This morning he proclaimed that I was not part of the 'family'. But God was because God made everybody. When I protested, he thought a bit and decided that if I was married to Grandma, then I could be in the family.

It seems to me that he's tidying up his reality. He's also moving out of denial about his missing father and beginning to make occasional remarks that recognize his Dad's existence.

So life is not the same old same old.

What comes around, comes around ... last year and this year and next year. That annual week of high hopes -- the start of the school year.

Grandson Aleister is doing his second go at kindergarten. As a 'drug baby', he has always run about a year behind and we agreed with the school that he might get into a better alignment with life if he stayed back and repeated the year. I had no problem with that ... I had to do the first grade twice (1940-1942), so it seemed like a normal and natural thing to do. What doesn't seem 'normal and natural' is the fact that he will have four years of school behind him when he finally hits first grade and will be expected to perform there at a level that I did not achieve till maybe the end of second grade / beginning of third grade. It's a different world out there!

And to what end? So that he can eventually enter the frenetic American rat-race and turn his earned holiday time back in at the end of each year? But WHOA!, I'm digressing into an area too big and complex for today's subject.

So the school wanted Allie to improve and WE (Bookworm & I) wanted his experience at school to improve. We came up with three goals: 1) get him shifted to a morning class so's he be 'fresher' when he hit the classroom, 2) get him into a different class than his last year nemesis Anthony (who was also held back), and 3) get him off the Special Needs school bus and onto the regular big yellow bus so's he could feel like he was moving up in the world.

Having something of an 'in' with the principal at Allie's school, Bookworm called him and laid out our three wishes. He said he'd see to them and did what we wished on the first two points. He wasn't able to handle the busing problem as that was out of his realm of expertise .... so on day one, a small Special Needs bus showed up at our door. I went out and told the driver that we wouldn't be using her services this year and that we'd get it all straightened out by the morrow.

That afternoon DR. Bookworm was back on the phone to 'transportation' and 'special services' and by evening we got a call informing us that he should catch the big bus the following morning. All missions accomplished!

Last year, his school day started with he and I loitering about in our semi cul de sac driveway at 12:30 until this empty little bus came down the street and spirited him away - alone. Now I walk him up around the corner where he immediately joins a half dozen other boys in impromptu games and craziness. Last year he drug his feet till the last minute before taking up his backpack. This year he is hot to trot twenty minutes before bus time.

I had simply thought that being on the big bus would allow him to feel more a part of things, but I see that it goes way beyond that .... it's a quarter hour of intense socializing and whomping up those good old High Spirits. A whole social structure exists at the bus stop (i.e., the single file line-up to get on the bus is initially created with dropped backpacks). When the bus appears in the distance (8:48 am), games stop, bodies rush to backpacks and the 'line' is established and orderly, ready to file onto the bus at the driver's signal. Accomplished on their own without on-going adult instruction. And Allie immediately began to follow the 'rules' and the process.

So I have High Hopes for Allie for this coming school year. I can see that his experience is going to be much 'larger' due to the bus change. He is leaving happier. He is coming home happier. And he seems to be happier about school itself. And that makes me happier. And it makes Bookworm happier. And that's a win - win!