"I wanna go fast!"

And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 1Kings 19:12

I was seized with an acute perfectionist attack recently.  Details on that to follow maybe some other day.  Let’s just say that in the reviewing of this "attack," it struck me that I’m just like Ricky Bobby in the movie "Talladega Nights."  I blame my attack on a bizarre adherence to the (deeply flawed) fundamental precept of the movie:

"If you ain't first, you're last!" 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlYbpDylmUs 


Ricky's incredibly high, absentee, stock-car racing father slurred this doozy during his dramatic exit from career day at school.   Rather than take this crumb of anti-wisdom as the meaningless, drug-fueled, vacuous, metaphoric rant of a dumbass, Ricky took it to heart and built a life around it--a life that eventually unraveled.  Of course, that's when the movie gets really funny, but I digress.   


So often we take these crumbs of anti-wisdom to heart, we sensitive perfectionists and then we build giant life structures around this misinformation as if it were somehow scientifically absolute.  I'm not really interested in the why.  It's a wholly unsatisfying question, 'why?' with no real answers.  We can't fill in the gaps created in childhood (or the womb for that matter); those that make us susceptible to this kind of error-filled sophistry. We can't therapy our way to "doggone it, people like me!" either.  Trust me on that one. You can only get so far in a shrink's office.  The 100-lb. sacks of grain I have to unload await me in the back of my truck. This is a Higher Power job.  Sorry to those of you offended by the Jesus/God thing. But it's true for me.  That kind of heavy lifting cannot be done by man alone. In my case, I need a "dolly Lama," if you will. 


I'm finally (at 48) learning to first listen to the still small voice inside rather than the voice that tells me "there's a kilo of Colombian Bam-Bam taped to the undercarriage of your '69 Chevelle and I called the cops!" I wasn't always so willing to listen to that quiet, sweet voice.  The still small voice of my childhood was indistinguishable from the myriad other internal critical voices. All were asking me to do things I was too afraid, unprepared or unwilling to do.  

I was paralyzed by nearly all of them.


Reese Bobby, Ricky's dad, is the epitome of the severest, most obtuse, fickle, arbitrary, critical voice inside all of our heads.  This is the voice that will malign a sweet elementary teacher in front of her students.  The voice that belongs to a person who bestows upon his son a beautiful, vintage, muscle car--but puts a cougar in the front seat. The voice that can turn lovely family dinner conversation at Applebee's into a tear-filled run down the double yellow of a two-lane highway on a rainy night.  

When questioned by Ricky about the "first/last" comment during this very scene, Reese just looked at Ricky like he was nuts.  He said, "What are you talking about? That don't make no sense at all. Oh Ricky, I was high! You can be second, third, fourth, hell you can even be fifth!"   The protagonist's emotional scaffold crumbled in that scene.   It's cool because the background music is Steve Earle's "Valentine's Day," one of the saddest songs ever written about addiction and love and the impossibility of it all. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwk1ZqILKN0


The thing that struck me about this was that Reese Bobby changed his whole story, changed his mind, changed his ethos without so much as a backward glance or a postcard. He didn't feel compelled to inform his son.  He just let Ricky continue to believe that he had to be first and never nothin' but first so help him God.  That first/last meme burrowed into Ricky Bobby and took root.  It rearranged his molecules and made him different.  Hell, what am I talking about? That same meme burrowed into me and 95% of the women I know and about 75% of the men. The big problem is that our critical voices—like Reese Bobby's--have no conscience.  These voices are unencumbered by social convention so they can slice through a life at will, without regret or responsibility.  Worse, they drown out any contradictory input.


You'll know the critical voice because it's generally sarcastic, funny, cool and sort of alluring.  It sounds very convincing and vaguely philosophical until you actually listen closely to it and realize that it’s full of just pure unadulterated horses**t. 

And it's mean as hell.

 



(to be continued--maybe)

The Highly Sensitive Person


Funny, I Googled "highly sensitive personality type" and there were no fewer than 10 pages of reference material.  There was even a sensitivity questionnaire which was developed by a husband and wife team of psych researchers.  I scored 24/27.  Uh, I think I must be missing a few layers of epidermis or something.

http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test.htm

I don't know about you, but I actually feel bad about myself because I cannot watch violent or suspenseful movies without crying and becoming physically ill.  I thought I had a wiring problem. Apparently it's not just a wiring problem.  There is an actual clinical term for it: "Highly Sensitive." Now why they couldn't come up with something with more teeth or like a nice acronym or something, I have no idea. They need to work on it. Because if I'm going to be something, I want it to be at least cool sounding.  Hey If they can take Irritable Bowel Syndrome and turn it into IBS, then they can surely do something with Highly Sensitive. IBS sounds like it could be a multistage rocket. HS sounds like High School.   Anyway, moving on....I just thought it was "wimpy" or "lame" because I just could not watch zombies eat brains or Dexter's blood spatters or The Wire.  Ech. The mention of them just creeps me out. We Sensies don't understand why on earth people find the depiction of the degradation of other human beings "entertaining."   Hell, I can barely get through the early rounds of American Idol! 

For those similarly afflicted, it's just like watching it happen to us or somebody we love. Fo REALZ.

I've been like this as far back as I can remember.  My sister is even more sensitive, I think.  People like us (and apparently between 15-20% of the general population) have the same set of qualifying characteristics: sensitivity to noise, bright or flashing lights, strong smells, odd textures, other peoples' moods, general atmospheric or barometric shifts, vibes coming off people and even seismic activity:  http://phys.org/news189932860.html

I kid you not. Seismic activity. That is bad-ass.

The world and all of its blinky input seems overwhelming to the lot of us. The constant cold, wet, gray days here in Michigan sure don't help me.  This winter I actually experienced cold as pain.  It made me wince in visible agony.  I had never experienced that before.  It appears the older I get, the more sensitive to cold I get.  No big surprise when you look at the demographics of the state of Florida, right?  Perhaps I'm just getting comfortable with myself and not constantly trying to change myself into something I'm just not ever gonna be: Molly Mason, Tough Business Woman, Feeler of No Pain, Bearer of all discomfort. Nope. Doesn't fit. I'll never be able to just "suck it up and tough it out" unless that was a directive from God, on high, himself.  In fact, the mere mention of those two exclamations makes me bristle with a low grade rage.   To be honest, as any parent will tell you, there are those middle of the night "mom I threw up in my bed" calls that require that response. We suck it up and tough it out a lot around here lately.

In 1999 when I was going through a divorce from my first husband, I was painfully thin and experiencing the normal stress response from divorce: generalized anxiety, weight loss, stomach upset,  inability to sleep, etc. (It was NOT his fault....just for the record. Divorce just sucks the life out of you. Period).  I was working as an insurance salesperson in Miami, FL at the time. I went to my primary care doctor and he wrote me a slip for some anxiety stuff and bed rest but I was to go home to Michigan to be with my family.  I didn't want to go on bed rest or any other kind of rest. I wanted to get better.  He insisted that I needed to get out of the office and get home to my parents for a few days of relaxation before I could hit the reset button on my life.  I was painfully skinny from 2 months of chronic diarrhea (of idiopathic origin, yeah that just means stress), that I needed to go somewhere to put on some weight.  So anyway, I had to go talk to my boss with my suit pants tied up with a small bit of rope because no belt I owned had enough holes. People asked me if I had cancer. It was awful.  I mustered up the strength to go into his office, doctor's slip in hand, and just lay it on the line.  That's when he said,

"Oh, no, you can't do that, you just have to suck it up and tough it out!"

I don't think I weighed 100lbs. at that point and I'm 5'5 1/2" tall. 

My then therapist (and now friend) Gilza said to me, "Where is your indignation?!!" That and a few cuss words come in handy every now and again.  Because sometimes the people in charge of us just don't know what the friggin' hell they are doing or talking about.  It's not personal and they're not bad people. They're just projectile barfing their own insufficiency rather than actually seeing, listening or hearing anything. I quietly removed myself from his office and drove to the airport.  I sent an email to the HR director outlining my conversation with my boss and why I wouldn't be returning to work there (I had been offered another job already).  I got calls from the President and Vice President of the company while I was resting.  They were solicitous and apologetic.  Shortly thereafter, my boss was relieved of his position.  It wasn't because of me--entirely.  The guy never sold one policy the entire year he worked there and cleared $120k, basically for golfing (as well as telling people to suck it up and tough it out).  I think they even sent me a severance check and I was the one who quit.  I'm sure it was because they were afraid I would sue on the grounds of having been subjected to an insensitive boob for a boss.

According to the married psychologists that I mentioned above, the Drs. Aron,  sensitive people are generally more introverted and even neurotic. Hmm. Bet you didn't see that coming!  They may comprise only 20% of the general population but they make up way more of the clinical population.   According to the article I posted above, we looney/sensitive people do bring to the table an evolutionary advantage along with our hosts of other kookiness.  Apparently,  it's good to think, feel, consider others' feelings, and mull things over before rushing off half-cocked,  I mean, generally speaking.  Suspend that in case of kitchen fires, hand grenades and tornado sirens.

Take heart all you Sensies, my "friend" incredibly successful blogger Glennon Melton posted this a few days ago.  We are not alone!  It's hysterical.  I think I was born without a few layers of skin, but she thinks she may have been born without a left brain.  Scroll half way down.  The title is "Dharma and Craig."

http://momastery.com/blog/page/2/

Anyway, I posted this today, yes, for 1) the sensitive folks but more importantly for 2) those with normal nervous systems who have to interact or worse LIVE with us.  We can't help it.

Swearzies.

God Bless you All.  We really do wish we could watch Dark Knight Returns past the opening credits without having nightmares.

We really do.

http://socialanxietydisorder.about.com/b/2010/04/26/highly-sensitive-people-process-information-differently.htm

 Drop back, re-tool and have another run at it

I started back to school in January all note-booky and studious with an intense flourish.  Then the grind of it all set in about week number 5.  Sometime in Early February I got really depressed.  But I pressed on.

I got through midterms, papers and finals.  I aced both classes, in one of them (the most creep-inducing one) Psych of Sex, I got the highest grade out of a class of over 100 people.  I know, I know, it doesn't really count since the median age of the students was about 20.5 years.  The majority of the class thought that twins were the result of having sex two times in a row. Yeah. Scary.  Life experience and a regular dose of Cosmopolitan magazine will actually garner you AP credits in anything related to sex ed.

Unfortunately, that same concept doesn't apply to math.  You can't learn math by accident or People (the magazine, not the noun).

I hate math.  I have always hated it.  I'm not even that bad at it.  I'm reasonably logical and analytical.  But math is not language.  It's got formulas and one right answer and usually the "right way" to do things.  And you can't be sloppy or slapdash; which I have a major and a minor in, respectively.  Oh don't go getting all smug, men.  Mothers know just what I mean. If you go for perfect in everything you end up friendless, eating your hair, rocking back and forth in the corner.  Math (and its inherent perfectionism) is so unlike real life that I have nothing to compare it to except to say that if it were a person, more specifically a woman, it would be my neighbor Gladys Kravitz and the Church Lady rolled into one.

I'm going to drop my stats class.  I'm not sure I'm going to continue with the psych course of study.  I mean I did great in my first 2 classes but I absolutely hated. every. stinking. minute. 

I liked studying, I liked getting up and planning to go to school and seeing my classmates.  But I felt sick inside studying that sh*t. Hearing about child abuse, STIs.  Ugh. Sleep would sometimes elude me and be replaced by garish visions of slides--they weren't gardening slides, either.  

I just kept thinking, THIS IS NOT ENJOYABLE.  NOT IN THE LEAST. When is this going to become interesting or fun? I'll even settle for maybe tolerable?

Aren't I supposed to be fired up about my second course of study? Aren't I supposed to have passion or, crap, at the very least interest in what I'm studying? About the only thing that the classes provided was a competitive outlet.  I should take up jousting instead.  More speed, more fun, less pain. I bet Mr. T would be game! He usually doesn't get any outside help knocking me on my ass.

I wanted to do statistically based research involving qualitative data derived from peoples' stories.   People and their stories are what I love.  I love people. They bug the living shit out of me sometimes but I really love them. All of them. I love them and their struggles and their grit and their rawness and their beauty and their challenges and their weaknesses and their indomitable strength. I want to take their stories and turn their stories into usable data for scientific research.  I need to be good at math and in particular stats in order to achieve this goal.  I can't just phone it in or fake it.

Look, I got an override for this stats class. I charmed the professor.  However, even he couldn't make something appear out of thin air, namely knowledge, and put it into my head.  After all, this is a class for which one normally has at least 2-3 years of algebra under their belt.  Me, well, I thought I might be entitled to know something I actually never took the time to learn. Entitlement is a problem. It is generally, in good time, met with reality.  Today was no exception.  So, I'm going to take my humbled ass back to the algebraic drawing board and re-tool.  Drop back, re-tool and make another run at it with (not just a lance) but a shield and armor next time.   I kind of feel like that guy in the operating room in that hotel commercial. Narrator:  "Do you have 3 years of algebra to prepare yourself for this statistics class?"  Me: "No but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night and I have great muscle definition in my upper body."

It's funny (sad funny, not ha ha funny) but I'm just now getting that I can't yeehaw my way through an entire life, all biceps, balls and no brains. 

Girlfriend just got taken to school and unhorsed.   OUCH!
 
Time to drop back, re-tool and have another run at it.

Pay it Forward - Let's do it for the Possum

Hey to all my loyal posse out there this Friday April 26th.

The sun is shining in Ann Arbor.  Yes, it IS true!   Don't be cruel. We're sort of stuck here for now. Not nice to tease.

So, I need help today. Big time.  I'm trying an experiment today.   Just one day.

I'm trying to conquer darkness with light.

Here's where y'all come in.   I've been posting my butt off lately on facebook.  Every uplifting beautiful  (fully and snopesed) article I can dig up.  I'm going to all the websites with feeds about stories that inspire and bring us to that humbled, slack-jawed, tear-stained, snot-ragged place where we feel less alone and where we can see the beauty and majesty that lies within all of us.

I'm doing this in answer to the recent darkness that,  not only Boston, but the entire world has experienced.

I figure we can only conquer darkness with light.   We can't change the past but we can create the future.  We can't keep dark forces from attempting to tear us apart.  We just can't. We can't plan, prepare for, anticipate, etc. every negative thing.  If we did, that would not be living.  That would be "war" --- on the defensive, in a bunker, with armor on.  Dude, that would suck.  It does suck. What am I saying? We've basically been living that way as a nation (and a world) ever since 9/11. That's like 12 years of that crap.

No more.

What I need help with is this.  This is just an experiment to see if it really works, this whole love thing.  But I can't do it alone and I need feedback to see if there's any science to it.

What I'm asking is this: Can y'all take yourselves out there into the world and dump as much love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, beauty,  did I say love? as you can muster today? And yes I mean even to yourself when you schmutz on your clean shirt, even to the dingbat on the phone weaving in and out of her lane, and the impatient man at Starbucks and the smelly guy at the gym.

Just let it all go.

And then as soon as you see something positive online, post it. Like STAT! Email it to your friends.  Just for today, let's tell each other MORE about the inspiring stories and gossip less.

This is my theory: We conquer darkness with light.  It all starts with us. 

As a caveat to my theory (it's not just MY theory, btw) I also think we inoculate ourselves against the darkness this way.

Anyway, so here's a short little bit of homework.  

Assignment:
1) Do some random act of kindness for somebody you don't even know (pay for their coffee, tab, etc.)
2) Share an inspiring story with at least one person.
3) Forgive yourself for 1 thing you harbor against yourself and then just let that b***ch go!
4) Forgive one other person something (preferably somebody who you think really doesn't "deserve" forgiveness
5) Give me some feedback on facebook - just a line or a sentence telling me what you thought of the exercise.  You can message me privately but better to let the world see.

I mean, this is all in the name of "scientific" research.

 Now y'all --  HAVE AT IT!

Ps. I just heard that my favorite musician of all time has passed away: George the Possum No-Show Jones.  Jesus, welcome this man into your loving embrace.   Let's do it for the Possum.
 

An Exorcism of Perfectionism


Humility is a strange and wonderful thing.  Obtaining it is invariably painful as all get-out.   However, the peace that ensues (not immediately, mind you) is life-altering.

I crashed and burned on my quest to be perfectly weigh and smoke-free.   It took about 3 months, alas, I bottomed out.   It was neither terribly pretty nor fatal.  It just set me back a little.  And made me drag my head around in a bit of shame.  Shame sucks, by the way.  Just ask Brene Brown. 

Now, mind you, compulsive behaviors or obsessively thinking about things (yeah, that would be OCD) are/is (generally) triggered by something (generally) external.   My flip out, backslide, fall off the wagon or whatever you want to call it was no exception.  I came across a book and a website that triggered some deeply un-felt and un-thought things.   It took me by surprise.  After decades in a shrink's office, I thought I knew it all.  But the experience was extremely unsettling and let me tell you, my fear response looks like a rabid member of the wolverine family.  Again, not terribly pretty.  Rather than strike out for the Ohio border, I turned my angst on myself.  I'm always my favorite target (think Dobby the house elf in Harry Potter).

The precipitating event was a questionnaire I took about parenting styles.  It was very revealing, and not in a good way.  When I came to the realization that I was being unduly hard on my kids and not really enjoying them at all, I felt trapped in my own very human skin.  And when I say human, I mean that in the pejorative way not in the 'oh-she's-so-human-and-down-to-earth' humanness. But more like 'she's a damn-narcissistic-bi**h' kind of human.

No, I'm not being too hard on myself.  I was being way too hard on my kids and my husband and only to a very small degree on myself.  I needed a dose of humility and a knock upside the head.  I needed to fall from my little cage's perch.

I started this whole blog thing and a 'recovery' process without the key element: My Higher Power.  I was trying to do it all myself.  There's a great saying in 12-Step programs: Let Go and Let God.   I like my brother Peter's take on that saying better:

Let Go or Be Dragged. 

 I was dragged alright. It took me about 5 months to get some perspective and get my head out of my butt.  I had finally arrived back at the beginning of my quest: I decided to let go.   Just let God do the heavy lifting.  And to say 'Thank-you' and 'Forgive me' and 'Make and Instrument of your Peace' and 'Please Bless ____', etc. (everybody, really). And then 'Thank-you' again (and again and again). 

I am now almost magically girded with the love and support of that Crucial Element.   I've also decided that weighing myself once every two weeks or once a month is probably a pretty sane and do-able alternative to the perfectionist route. It's certainly better than twice or three times a day.

I wasn't just trying to stop weighing myself.  I was trying to stop the chronic negative self-reflection and reroute (to something more meaningful and long-lasting), the energy I was using in the misguided quest for self-approval and self-acceptance. I just forgot to buy another Map or get a GPS. Thus the concentric circles I continued to travel in.

I'm not sure I'm going to try to do that every-two-week thing with smoking.  I think smoking is a thing of the past for me.  I had a few slip-ups but all in all, I did better in the time period 5/1/12-to present in both weighing and smoking than in any other time in recent history--I probably smoked 1/15th as much as the previous year and I weighed myself 1/3 as much.

While it is statistically significant progress,  it is not perfection.

Progress, not perfection.

That is a great AA/Alanon slogan which I have to repeat to myself numerous times a day lest I wash my kitchen floor until there is no more polyurethane left on it.
 
I believe I gained a lot this past year.  I gained the ability to be vulnerable--to show people my struggle so they wouldn't feel so alone in theirs maybe? Who knows?  I became more human (in the good way).  I also learned to fail rather publicly and survive it.  Most importantly, I also gained friendships with some really nice folks.

A year of steady progress (and about a month of hanging tighter with Jesus and God).

Milestones worth celebrating.

I praise you because I am indeed fearfully and wonderfully made...Psalm 139:14

When I was in late high school and early college, I was plagued by anorexia and bulimia.  Well, really I was plagued with an incredibly low self-concept (and grossly inaccurate body image) which skulked around in that wonderful freakishly thin facade thinkin' it was all hot-n-shizz with those sexy ribs showing. 

Really that's not the case either, I just wanted to disappear.  Or as my kids sometimes say "diss-d-appear." I was so ashamed.  Who even knows why? It was the times.  We hadn't really integrated the new post-sexual revolution reality yet. The early 1980s may just as well have been the Victorian Era--especially if you look at the Gunne Sax dresses we all wore to prom.  By the way, I think dissdappear sounds better.  Very sing-songy.  Anyway, my point in saying that is things are often not even in the same zip code as they appear to be on the outside.  Because on the outside, I looked pretty okay, a little too skinny but to the untrained eye,  'okay'.  Ha.  Does anybody remember Mercywood?

Gunne Sax Tea Stained Prom Dress circa 1979-1981 - Uh, does anybody else see season 1 of "Downton Abbey"?

I spent this morning taking Elliot to have his man parts checked out.  Elliot had 2 testicular surgeries by the time he was 2 years old.  So he talks about them with the correct anatomical language as if he was talking about the his Kumon pouch and a piece of driveway chalk.  No shame. Thank you Jesus. No recognition of these parts being any different than any other parts.   The nurse commented on that fact when he swung around on on the examining table on his belly (he loved the sound of the paper crunching and tearing), looked her square in the eye and said "the one testicle on the right hurts when I squeeze it."  He didn't flinch one bit when the doctor checked him out.   He was cool with the whole business.   Totally chill.   And he's fine, by the way.

As a few of you know, I've been absent from the blog these past few months because I returned to school.  No, it wasn't in the master's program that I had originally wanted. Thank you Jesus for that, too.  Instead, I decided to get a second bachelor's in psychology and then just keep on going until somebody starts calling me Doctor Mason.   The only problem with this current term was the lack of availability of good classes.   I ended up with the Psychology of Sex and Child Psychology to resume my academic life.  Oh my.   It felt as though an elephant was resting on my chest as the topics grew more grave and sinister and began hitting rather close to home, at least with respect to children.  I started referring to these classes as "Creep" and "Cringe" respectively.  They just started freaking me out.  I had the worst case of medical student's disease ever with the Child Psych class. 

The topic that struck me the hardest and literally knocked the air out of me was "Parental Attachment." In a twist of horrific irony, that class happened to be the same day as the "abortion lecture" in my Psych of Sex class.  Attachment/Abortion.  Ech.

Of course, I came away from the one lecture thinking 'I don't think I attached to my kids properly' (and the other lecture just thankful for them).  They came at me from the cosmos/heaven with such a velocity that it was all I could do to catch and not drop them---like literally not drop them.   Somebody did give me the book "Attachment Parenting" by Drs. Sears.  But the kids were already out of diapers by then. Fat lotta good that did me!  I think I threw that damn thing across the room cussing until the chandelier lost a crystal.  File that one under, 'massive failures' and 'things I should've have known earlier.'

As for the psych of sex class, well, let's just say that yesterday was STI day and the screen at the front of the lecture hall (where I sit front row) is 25 feet wide and 20 feet tall.  Dude. Need I say more?  But a small aside here.  I saw these gnarled up private parts of people, riddled with disease, and all I could think of is that these poor parts belong to poor people who are or were somebody's babies.  That was somebody's bump in somebody's belly however long ago. All possibility and promise.  Then losses, bad parenting, drugs, bad decisions and consequences took them down a path of such sadness and despair that they ended up a case study in a epidemiological, gynecological or urological manual.  I had a sense of deep sorrow at the moment I realized that. Sorrow for those people who had been reduced to slides.  There, but for the grace of God... There must have been shame in there somewhere, I thought.  Somewhere, somehow, somebody convinced these folks that they (and their parts) weren't worth paying attention to, not even by themselves.

After the nausea wore off, I drove home sort of rocking back and forth in my seat.  I'm pretty sure that's when the PTSD set in.  But at 4 o'clock on the dot,  when the kids got off the bus (all flailing arms, backpacks, swinging lunch boxes, smiles and "Mom!s"), I was magically lifted out of my despair and trauma.  And this morning as Elliot so shame-freely stated his "ball problem" to the doctor I thought, attached or detached, the kid has no shame about the beautiful creation that he is. He and his brother think that their bodies are works of genius and art. The Hand that drew them (and all of us for that matter) drew ALL parts.   And Elliot knows that already.  File that under 'awesome.'

Previous generations regarded telling somebody they had "no shame" as the gravest of insults.  In the case of Elliot it's what I would call "mentally healthy"  or  "great self-concept."  I'm rethinking this whole "no shame" b.s.

What about you?

Grand Master Complainer

My son Henry just turned 7 a few weeks ago.  His personal history is something out of a Lifetime Movie Network special.  I think most of you all know some part of the story.   Suffice it to say that his arrival on this earth and into our arms was nothing short of a miracle. It still IS a miracle.  Too bad I forget this sometimes. I remember it now.  

Trust me, I do.

His Tae Kwon Do teacher, however, apparently considered him to be a burden and troublesome in class.  How do I know this?

Well, I pulled her aside one evening recently to say Hi and ask how she thought the kids were doing and when would they have their next belt test, etc.  It was at that point that she just melted down and said that (mostly Henry but) both my boys were horrible and unteachable. "They're disruptive and I'm afraid the other parents are going to complain soon," she continued.  My knees buckled and I caught myself as I almost fainted because there had been no indication of any problems. I've been sitting mat-side twice a week for six months.  None.  Not one word.   She asked me, “so is there something I should know?”  I said, “something you should know!? I told your husband Henry’s entire history. That’s why we joined here because he assured me that you handled children with much greater impairment than Henry's!”  
 

Indeed, I had given her husband, (the other grand master flash-drive) the entire rundown of Henry’s learning challenges and sensory processing issues before we began. The only reason we joined was because he assured me that “Master Wife works with kids with ADHD and autism all the time.”   Henry doesn’t have quite the level of impairment present in those conditions. His issues look slightly different.  He just learns more physically because he has trouble processing aural information and commands.  She said to me, “well, that would have been nice to know up front.” I looked at her in total disbelief and informed her that I had indeed shared everything relevant with her husband "up front" before signing the paperwork.  She shook her head silently while looking at the ground as if she were saying that it was my fault she didn’t know this.

She even asked if there was “something she should know about Elliot, too.” Let me tell you what, it’s times like the instant after she made that comment that it’s really good to be a Christian.  Without the guiding principles of my faith, I would have laid her (b.a.) out on her squishy little mat, black belt or no black belt, just with sheer force of indomitable motherly will and my laser-beam-shooting eyeballs.

Standing there silently in front of me with her terse lips shaking her head, she never once apologized for the interruption in communication on her side, never apologized for her inability to handle the situation, for never having pulled me aside to tell me of her challenges with him/them. Nothing.  As we spoke that evening, she regarded both of my kids with the kind of contempt one usually reserves for inmates.  Contempt. They were 6 1/2, for goodness sake.  I then asked, “So how long have you felt this way?” She replied, “pretty much from the beginning.” To which I said, “so you mean to say that you have not liked my kids for 6 months and I had to drag that information out of you?” You know what she said to that? She replied, “yep” and then turned on the heels of her little soft sole-less shoes and just huffed off like a pouty little stinkpot.

I talked to my 2 friends with kids in the same class in the days following that discussion.  They were as slack-jawed as I was. Both of them commented on how fun and nice the boys were to theirs and other kids they both said how well and quickly they came onto the mat after pulling their cards without even being asked while I parked the car. They both said they saw NOTHING at all in those six months that would have led them to believe that they were any different than the other kids.  I begged them to tell me if they saw anything that I was missing.  They reassured me that a) it wasn't them who complained and b) they thought she was on crack.  Seriously, they were as perplexed as I was by the whole story, the whole waiting-six-months-to-tell-me, the invisible disruptions, etc.  Flummoxed.

My whole point to the story is that at first I actually listened to her. Then, after I harshly reprimanded the monkeys for being, well, 6 1/2 year old monkeys, the truth of it all dawned on me. Enough, I said to myself. My job is to love my kids.  If she can’t handle them, then she’s not good enough to teach them. They go to a regular public school where they learn and grow. They go to Kumon, they take soccer, they can swim, play tennis, etc.  Yes, they are a bit on the wild side.  However, as I’ve said before, my crap-ass parenting is not their fault.  I’m doin’ my best.  They're doing their best.  We're all trying hard.  Also, their particular dynamic and the bizarre 5-month age difference that exists between them is so incredibly rare, that it is impossible to say what the effects are on their behavior and development.   But it is what it is.  That’s what we got to work with, lady. I'm not trading them in for different models so...

...Deal with it.

Listen, I didn’t want to hastily depart from this endeavor and send the message to the kids that quitting is the answer.  But in the end,  I decided that they do not have to take their marching orders from somebody who 1) doesn’t believe in them and who 2) doesn’t value them and 3) doesn’t even like them.  We have other options in town.  What I truly think is that she didn’t like me and she’s taking it out on the kids. She would sneer at me. It would visibly pain her to smile at me when I walked in there.  I have no idea why.  I was always pleasant, respectful and courteous.  Like Brene Brown's friend says, "Don't try changin' the haters. You ain't the Jackass Whisperer."

Nope, I’m not perfect at being a parent.   Hell, I’m not even good most of the time.  But you know what? We all need a champion and it should, at the very least, be our mothers.  

Happy Easter Boys! Mama loves her wild-a** monkeys. (I don't think I can cuss in the same sentence as 'Easter').  

Ps. For all you Catholics out there, don't forget to do a few Hail Marys to the one and only perfect mother.