MY Daddy!!!

While we were finishing up grad school, I was a stay-at-home dad for a bit with Adrianna. I loved it despite the real or just perceived stigma occasionally associated then with being a male at home with a toddler. At some point, however, it became apparent that Adri needed to be socializing with other kids, something that’s hard to do in an apartment complex.

In a moment of synchronicity, that very moment I saw a job listing for a substitute teacher for a local day care chain which had about five locations throughout Austin. I thought this would be perfect, since it wasn’t every day and one of the perks was that I would be allowed to take Adrianna with me and they wouldn’t charge me for the time she was there. Win-win.

I did this for a few weeks and it was great. I would have hated it when I was a child to be at a different school every day with different kids, but Adri was not me. Where I was and still am an introvert, she was an extrovert and big people person. She relished seeing new kids each day; it was everything she wanted and needed.

Within a few weeks the sub position morphed into a computer instruction position. Instead of subbing for teachers, I’d go from school to school and teach a supplemental computer class to those kids who paid extra for the privilege. This was better for me because it was a much more useful fodder for the ol’ resume, but also it provided much more consistency. I knew each day where I’d be and could plan accordingly. Adri still get free day care.

At some point they discontinued the computer classes (it was expensive buying new software every few months, and the two or three Apple IIe computers required at each school were not cheap, either) so I transitioned into first the assistant and then lead after-school teacher. These were the kids who’d go to primary school and then come to the day care when school got out because they’re parents worked until 5 or 6. Part of the job was driving a bus and picking up the kiddos at the various schools, which was actually kind of fun.

Because of this Adrianna finally had a full-time classroom that she went to every day, the two-year-old room at the Far West Blvd location right off MoPac. It was great to see her all the time and still be pulling in (very little) money.

Since my kids didn’t arrive until 3:30 or so, in the mornings I’d fill in for other teachers when they needed to be out of the classroom in order to keep the room in legal student-teacher ratio as required by DHS. Lunches, phone calls, if they were out sick, etc. Occasionally I’d have to be in Adri’s room, though we tried to keep that to a minimum.

All the kiddos of course knew that I was Adri’s dad (“Mr. Hank” as I was called, like I was a hairstylist or something.) She was kind of territorial of me, like many kids can be, and often jealously guarded our relationship from the other kids. I couldn’t just spend time with her, of course. Often, especially at the beginning when she was still getting used to the situation, if I was with another group of kids in say the Lego center she’d get jealous and want me to come see what she was doing.

Or, and this would make me laugh though I tried really hard not to do so, she’d casually walk over to the group that I was interacting with and make contact with each kid before glancing at me and state, with all the authority that a two-year-old could muster,

“MY daddy!”

Just so they were all clear who I belonged to.

However, there was a girl in the class who noticed this and sensed a potential weakness, a soft spot, a chink in Adri’s armor that could be used against her, because this girl, who we’ll call Erin mostly because that was her name, realized that this relationship was very important to Adri.

Therefor, just to get under Adri’s skin, just to exhibit some dominance, just to show that she was someone not to be trifled with in the two-year-old classroom, occasionally Erin would walk up to Adri when she was doing something minding her own business. She’d get really close to Adri, all up in her face before pointing to me and whispering into Adri’s ear,

“MY daddy.”

What can only be described as an evil grin would then slowly form on Erin’s face as Adri would FLIP OUT and start screaming,

“NO!!! NO!!! He’s MY DADDY!!! MYYYYYY DADDDDDYYYY!!”

At which point Erin would laugh and walk away, her job done.

I didn’t even have to be in the room. Sometimes when all the classrooms were outside and I’d walk near the section that was portioned off for the two-year-olds Erin would run up to the fence and then look for Adri, and after confirming that she was watching would state for all to hear,

“My daddy.”

At which point Adri would scream and gnash her teeth and have a meltdown.

Not great behavior from either of them, but truthfully, I always found it funny and touching that Erin’s behavior could bother Adri so much. But I also found it disconcerting that Erin would know what buttons to push and decide to push them, with glee, at just two years of age.

I often wonder if she was a little sociopath in the making, but she could have gone either way with such behavior, I guess.

For all I know she runs a successful PR firm now. You never know.

Here's a short clip from 1990 of her playing outside at the daycare, with a "MY daddy!!!" at the end:

 

D Minus

The lowest grade I ever received for actual work submitted (not counting zeros or what have you for not doing an assignment) was a D- (D minus), for an essay in 11th grade honor's English on A.E. Housman's poem, "To An Athlete Dying Young". In this class, taught by Mrs. Dedman, we'd often read a poem in class and then have to write an essay, right then and there, on what the poem "meant." Mrs Dedman was of the belief that a poem had one and only one correct meaning, and that she knew what that correct meaning was.

This bothered many of us, since we liked to think that the meaning of a poem or short story might be open to interpretation, and that sometimes a poem was a poem, with no hidden allegories to ancient Greece, or no cryptic jumbling of proper names that when correctly re-jumbled would refer to the author's gay lover. Or what have you. Sometimes, like a cigar, a poem is just a poem. We all went round and round about this all semester, but Mrs. Dedman was not swayed.

Anyway, and to continue after this bit of background, we all read the Housman poem in question and couldn't make head nor tails of it, other than what is spelled out in the poem's title. You could not stretch out the title, however, into a three or four page five-paragraph expository essay, with intro, three paragraphs of points, and conclusion. We all complained. We all gnashed our teeth. I just seethed.

So she said, "Go!" and most people began writing. You could hear the scratch-scratch-scratch of pen on paper fill the classroom; it reminded me of the squeak-squeak-squeak of basketball player's shoes on a highly-polished parquet floor when the announcers are quiet. I did no writing, however. I just sat there, thinking. And seething. Finally, with about 10 minutes to go in the period, I started writing. Oh, I was sarcastic and bitter.

I wrote something like, "A.E. Housman's poem has a theme that you'd think only AE Housman would know, or maybe one that could be determined and analyzed by many people, each coming to a different conclusion based on their life experiences... but you'd be wrong. No, it is only the high school English teacher that has the gift of analysis... She, alone, is bequeathed with the author's true intent like manna from heaven"... etc. It went on in that vein, because I didn't care anymore. With about two minutes to go I threw in something about "planting the stiff" and forgotten races and turned the paper in, without making eye contact, and leaving the classroom with the speed of an athlete dying young.

Several days later Mrs Dedman returned our now graded essays. But before she did so she read a bit from one of them, one talking about "planting the stiff" and overbearing 11th grade English teachers. The class laughed. When I got the paper back and saw the D - I seethed some more. However, it turned out that was one of the better grades. Some of my classmates had received the dreaded F- - (F minus MINUS); we didn't even know such a grade existed. I mean, if you failed, you failed... what is this minus stuff? And minus minus? WTF?

No one could believe I wrote what I actually wrote, and had the guts to turn it in, but if those grades had been curved, I'd have had an A, so who was the fool now? Eh?

We had to return our papers that same day, since we were not allowed to keep the essays we wrote in class (or any essay we wrote at home, for that matter, but theoretically we could have had a copy of take-home essays at least) out of fear that we'd give these essays to some future student. I really, really, wanted my essays, however... especially the D - one, so I asked Mrs Dedman at the end of the year if I could have them.

"No," she said, "we have to keep them. They weren't very good, anyway".

Oh, that Mrs Dedman: How I loved her.