Elementry, My Dear Watson

My son is exceptionally smart. Luckily, the school he goes to has allowances for this… Not only does he go to smart kid classes, but he does extra testing in the media center for extra points towards some rewards of some kind. He gets bored with tests easily. Usually.

Today, he was telling me about a test he took that was frustrating because the question was poorly worded. It was as follows:

4) John has 10 dinner bowls. How many dogs does he have?

• 4
• 7
• 10
• 13

Well, the number of bowls does not necessarily denote the number of dogs. They could share bowls. they could have special needs or any number of other factors. But the tester obviously was looking for the number 10, so he selected it and got it right. Next question:

5)

•  
• 9
• 100
• 43

Um, okay, so the question is broken. and ” ” was not the right answer. Move on:

6) Tony has 10 yo-yo’s. How many friends does he have?

• 4
• 9
• 18
• 7

My child was also frustrated at the logic of this one. But he guessed 9… 1 for Tony left 9 for 9 other friends. And he got it wrong. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the “right” answer. I would love to know what it is. And now for the one that decidedly told my Brilliance that the test was broken:

8) 10 + ____ = 11

• 4
• 6
• 13
• 9

Yup. Broken. But that’s not what pissed him off. The final question is the “challenge” question, worth extra points, and supposedly the hardest. The question is as follows:

10) 10 – _____ = 2

• 4
• 7
• 8
• 12

And why was he upset about this one? Because he got it right. The test was not broken here, he got it right, and IT’S THE EASIEST QUESTION ON THE TEST!!!

I think my child is starting to lose faith in schools. Luckily, we have already had the talk about schools being more of an exercise in societal situations and following authority and getting the same information as everyone else, and not necessarily about challenging yourself. That part is up to you.

Then my son explained to me about how division and subtraction were so similar… that subtraction was seperating individuals from one group, and that division was about seperating one group into groups. then he and I talked about division and fractions, and by golly he got it. he understood reducing a fraction, and was able to tell me that 5 divided by 40 was 5/40 or 1/8th.

He did a few more (without paper, BTW. We were in the car at the time), and then he proclaimed “I love fractions!”

I want to keep that love of learning alive for him. And he does go to a really super good school… but I worry that the boredom will eventually hold him back. I fear that my kid isn’t dumb enough for school.

Ah well. No child left behind.Technorati Tags: school, education, fractions, boredom, challenge, test, no child left behind, math, error

Uptown Girl/ she’s been living in her white bread world…

The past few weeks have been busy as hell. It’s been leaving me feeling unattractive. But I’ve been too busy to notice…

Moving: I moved. I had help from good friends. I had much help from my brother. I did a crapton on my own. Over the course of two weeks, all my stuff is out of St. Paul an into uptown Mpls. I’m still living mostly out of boxes. I have coffee… the rest can wait.

Job: After 4+ years at Internet Broadcasting, I will soon be leaving. I was offered and accepted a job at Allied Health Center, working with medical and health stuff through the UofM. Since they have scholarships that cover most of the expence, I am contemplating going back to school as well. But mostly, I am excited for the opportunity to grow in my career path. I get to play with more hardware! Hot damn!

But I am going to miss the hell out of IB. A lot.

RenFest: Has been an amazing season. Seriously. I have played hard this year and owned my thing, which is amazing considering I hardly prepared at all. Vil has been a blast, patrons have been wonderful, and my kid is bloody fucking brilliant…

Earlier, he dodged a puff of smoke and said “I just evaded 50% of that”. I said “are you sure? What if it was 51%? What if it was 49%? What if it was 43%? What if it was 57%? What if it was ..” and he said “what if.. You just be quiet?”

Hell yeah. My kid is sassy. I love it.

Birthday: I am celebrating my 1^st annual 29^th this year. I have some 29 year projects to accomplish. I will let you all know what they are as soon as I set them up.

I still have so much more to say that I am not finding words for. For now, I will leave you with a thousand of them wrapped up in a picture:

Tell me I’m pretty!!!

Monster Fringe Post

We opened Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead today for 170 some people. The most important of which was my son, but other people whose opinions I respect were there. I admit, there was a tiny piece of me that was “afeared” that our somewhat Shakespeare soaked performance wouldn’t be able to keep an audience, but when the audience started laughing, it was honest laughter. Gut laughter. Laughter that makes the world go ‘round. And they didn’t stop. They laughed for the intelligent witicisms and the stupid jokes alike. It was HOT. 

So far, the only critisisms I’ve heard are that it’s a pretty geeky show, and I don’t think that was so much a critisism as it was a fact. I mean, the title pretty much tells it all. Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead. No title has been more straight forward about the contents of the show since Snakes on a Plane. There will be Shakespeare. There will be zombies. If you are surprised by either one of these events occuring, it may lead to me defriending you on one of seventeen social networking sites. And I don’t mean Myspace either. I mean somewhere you would notice and/or care.

The other complaint I heard was from my son, who didn’t think I was very manly. He said it was the hair that tipped him off. Come judge for yourself. U of M Rarig Center Thrust on these dates:

Sat., Aug. 2 @ 1:00 p.m
Sun., Aug. 3 @ 5:30 p.m
Tue., Aug. 5 @ 10:00 p.m
Wed., Aug. 6 @ 7:00 p.m
Sun., Aug. 10 @ 7:00 p.m 

If you would like to read a couple of reviews, there are some on the right-hand side at Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead page at the Fringe Festival site. We have been rated 4 1/2 kitties. This has us sitting pretty with An Inconvenient Squirrel, Mortem Capiendum, and An Intimate Evening with Fotis: Part Two, which are a couple of shows that come up under the “Users Also Scheduled” area that seem to have connected followings.

A review forwarded to me: http://nattienatnat.livejournal.com/57374.html

I admit it. I read reviews to see if someone is going to call me out on not being a man. I expect to read something along the lines of “SLotD was an absolutlely brilliant masterpiece of a performance, except for the chick trying to be a dude.” My Brilliance is probably right. It’s the hair.

I was invited to see 21 Fringe shows this year. I don’t have a pass because our cast is huge, so I will not be seeing any of them. I do not have $250 or at least 42 hours out of the next 168 that isn’t already dedicated elsewhere. I am sorry to all of you who invited me… had I the ability, I would see them all.

*Last night, my child beat a large group of adults in a game called werewolf, where logic and bluffing are used to sway popular opinion. I have a feeling one or two adults may have figured him out and let it slide. I goaded the crowed into taking me out right away because I was pretty sure that he was a werewolf, and I am a mom first and foremost. Getting taken out early meant that I was available for him to talk to about strategy, and wouldn’t have to out my own son. But he didn’t really seem to need advice. I was Hella Proud of my boy’s game last night.*

Tags: hair, chick, dude, Fringe, MN+Fringe, Shakespeare, Zombie, Brilliance, review, laughter, games, cross-dressing, werewolf, Shakespeare’s+Land+of+the+Dead, Myspace, wit, Land+of+the+Dead

One Man’s Trash

I promised you two cute kid stories last night, but only posted one. I got really tired and started dozing off…

Yesterday, after the baby shower, my child and I made a quick trip to Target to pick up some essentials for moving (and living. I mean, being out of toilet paper is a real pain in the ass). I looked at plastic tubs… when did those things get so damn expensive? Seriously. I think I’m just going to keep using boxes until I have some REAL disposable income. $20 for a decent sized bin… And I had just missed a sale on bins– half the shelving was empty.

While we were shopping, I was showing my off spring how to compare prices for the best value. We had a field day in the paper towel aisle. If this 12 pack costs $15 and this 6 pack costs $8.50, which is the better deal? We got it narrowed down to two packs– a 6 pack for $6.29, or an 8 pack for $5.99. My brilliance told me that the 8 pack was a better deal, but just to mess with him, I said “but the rolls in the 6 pack look bigger.

Don’t say that to an analytical 8 year old if you want to leave the store in a timely fashion. You will end up figuring out the total square footage of paper towel in a pack to determine which pack is the better value.

So we figured out that it’s the 8 pack that is in fact a better deal as far as quantity (quality will be another lesson later on). We put the 8 pack in the cart, and then my child sits on the shelf where the 8 pack used to be and says “Mama– buy me.”
I say “for $5.99?”
He says “No, Mom, you have to read the tag. The $5.99 is for the paper towels, not me.”
“But I don’t see a tag for you. how much are you?”
And my brilliance says, with a huge grin on his face “Mama– I’m priceless.”

Yes, my love. Yes you are.

Tags: Brilliance, shopping, paper+towel, calculations, priceless, target

Not helpful.

I have two cute kid stories for you… both stories about my own. Because he IS cute, and damned if I’m going to let that kind of opportunity slip by me.

We went to a Baby Shower today. After things wrapped up, it was my little boy playing with the children of one of the hostesses. Since no one else had need of them, the coolers became toys, and water got splashed and ice got thrown.

For those of you who have not met my son, I will tell you right now… sometimes, he is a bit of a pansy. And kind of a cry baby. This is the boy who swore off goldfish crackers for two weeks because he felt guilty for eating them after he had assigned personalities to them and played with them a bit. He was so guilty over this, he cried for about half an hour straight. He is slowly toughening up enough to where he may be able to function in society if he should so choose. But he is still an absolute wimp when it comes to pain.

So my recently turned 8 year old got clocked in the head with a large piece of ice. It hurt. A lot. He cried. A LOT. (Ice is a bitch to get hit with, so I get it. But still) Tears streaming down his face, he comes to me, and I check him for blood and feel to see if any bumps are forming. Not that I expect there to be any but it is reassuring for him. It usually helps when I can do something that should make it all better…

Every parent has this moment. It’s the moment where they feel like they should have their parenting rights taken away. They fight it, but the urge takes overe, and there is nothing to be done…

There we were, my brilliance in tears, me looking for a way to reassure him, me going through the list of things that I could do for my poor child’s bonked but not bleeding, probably-not-even-going-to-get a-bump head, and then I start laughing. I keep going, which doesn’t help. People are looking at me funny, my child’s tears continue, and I am laughing. I sober up enough to offer the one thing I could think to do for a head that had gotten hit by a flying projecile and could possibly cause a bump…

“Jared, *snicker* would you like some ice for your head?”

I really hope I didn’t scar him for life with that. I know the ice didn’t.

Tags: ice, parenting, brilliance, my+son, bump, sensitive, pain, cry+baby, cry

0110100110100101011101001011101000101001110101001

A couple weeks ago, my son asked me about binary. And I explained to him about how in our counting system, when we get to 10, we go to double digits, and 100 (10×10) is when we go to three digits… and then I explained about how in binary there is only 1 and 0, and that once you got to 2, that was when it went t0 double digit. Then I counted up to 8 for him, and explained it all out, and he got it (in his words “11 is the new 3”). Then I explained how computers only understood on and off, or 1 and 0. And how programming languages got interpreted to binary. Like, to a computer, what we see as the letter A, it will recognize as a couple of 0s and 1s.

There is about a 5 minute pause in conversation.

Then my child starts up “Mama, letters and numbers are just symbols we use to tell ideas. And lets say there are a bunch of letters in a row. That makes a word which tells us an idea. and a bunch of words together are sentences, that make up an idea. And a bunch of sentences make a paragraph, and that’s an even bigger idea.” And I agreed, and asked if all ideas were the same or not. And he said “No, or we wouldn’t fight.” Then we talked about my dog analogy… that we can both picture dogs, and both be right, but have two different dogs in out heads. eventually he got bored, but he brought it up again with his father later.

Because my kid is bloody fucking BRILLIANT. He is seriously wicked smart, and he gives me joy. He is my Brilliance.

Tags: binary, code, computers, son, brilliance, words, symbols, letters, idea, concept

My Brilliance

http://www.merriam-webster.com/

Brilliance: (n) the quality or state of being brilliant.

Brilliant: (adj) 1. very bright, 2. distinguished by unusual mental keenness or alertness.

I call my son My Brillilance. A part of that is because I love wordplay, and he is my son, and the sun in the sky is bright, or brilliant… No! Wait! Don’t walk away! It gets better, I promise.

The main reason I call him My Brilliance is because he is just that. Brilliant. And I don’t just mean the fact that he is a super genius. Though he is. They did standardized testing the other week, and it turns out my second grader has the math and reading apptitude of a jr. high school student.

That’s right; my 7 year old is puberty smart. I never thought I’d get to use the phrase “puberty smart.” No, YER and oxy-Moron…

So this has led to the school scrambling around to further assess him and place him correctly, making us parents fill out paperwork that doesn’t always make sense.

NOTE: The following conversation is a simplified one, paraphrased to better get the meaning and feel across. My so used much bigger words, and his parents aren’t quite as dumb as I make them out to be (or are we?)

(mark if often applies) “your child is very imaginative, and often loses touch with reality”

Me: This doesn’t make sense

Topher (my son’s father): This doesn’t make sense.

Me: That’s what I said.

My Brilliance: It’s a logic trap. One does not have to lead to the other; they are putting two seperate points in that sentance. Since they are not both true, the statement is false.

Me: I knew that.

Topher: Me too.

The intelligence is certainly a part of what makes my son brilliant What really matters is not how smart he is, but who he is as a person.. the make up of his character. My Brilliance is a very thoughtful and playful person. He understands how to tease, he is sympathetic, he owns himself and his actions. He gets the meaning and intent of a situation seemingly by instinct, and he does not use this against people or for himself. Rather, he tries to find the best situation for everyone involved. He is loving and compassionate, and strong in himself.

He is my brightness on a dreary day. He is My Brilliance.

Dear Readers, what is it that brightens your day simply by being what it is?

Tags: sun, son, brilliance, smart, intelligence, logic, school, Topher, character, wordplay