Other People

I’ve had a fucker of a week. Nothing terrible, knock wood, but just so many trying things. Like not being able to make my schedule work, having to rely on my parents more than usual to help me with things at home while I am doing other things outside of home.

And then the whole Other People thing. Other people can be so taxing. Like my son has a tutor who has been working with him since September. And I’m not sure about the Tutor. Because on the one hand, he’s helping my kid, so that’s great, but on the other hand, whenever he explains to me what they’re doing, I don’t really understand it. And he speaks in English, so it’s not a language barrier, but it’s the kind of explanation where I zone out immediately. It’s filled with paradigm and context and some other wordicles.

So generally speaking they go over some of Young Ladrinka’s homework assignments and discuss essay structure and things like thesis sentence and zzzzzz, but this past week, instead of doing homework, they discussed ways in which Young Ladrinka could do his homework more efficiently.

From what I understand, the Tutor asked Young Ladrinka if he had any distractions when he was doing his homework, because those are apparently not good for homework concentration, and I imagine that Young Ladrinka sighed heavily and confessed that yes, yes, he did have a few distractions, thank goodness someone noticed and the Tutor probably leaned in and said “you can tell me.”

And Young Ladrinka did. Because the thing that has been standing between him and a Rhodes Scholarship is, ready? The fact that his mother yells at people all the time and it’s really distracting. WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS THAT?

So first of all, this is pure and unadulterated bullshit and a defamatory lie. My people are drafting papers against Young Ladrinka as I type. Second of all, how does that work, exactly? Am I yelling at people who are inside the apartment, which at the most is my daughter and Husbandrinka, or am I leaning out the 11th floor window, yelling at passersby like a loon? (By the way I’m using loon here as short for lunatic, not to refer to birds, who may or may not yell at passersby.)

And what does the Tutor do with this information? Instead of saying “honor thy mother, fool!” he probably nods sympathetically and suggests, ready for this? He suggests that Young Ladrinka get a whiteboard, hang it outside his door and write “Shh! I’m studying!” on it.

This is pure madness.

Because if I were the sort of person to yell at people, I would not canvas the whole apartment in advance of my yelling session to make sure no one had a prohibition against unnecessary noise posted on their door.

Fortunately Young Ladrinka had other items on his list of things that are interfering with his academic development. Like the fact that he is always hungry, and it’s so hard, so very hard, to concentrate when one’s stomach is empty. And the Tutor suggested that he talk to Mom about delicious and nutritious brain-power boosting snacks.

I’m lucky Children’s Services haven’t stopped by yet. Although it’s possible they did and I just didn’t hear them knocking over all my yelling.

And the crazy thing is, this isn’t even the story I was going to tell you today. But I had to get that one out. As fucking prologue.

Now, shhh! Young Ladrinka is studying.

One year ago ...

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