Sometimes I think I must have the coolest family around.
This past weekend, I played a lot of music. I'm in a horror punk band, where I play keyboards and saxophone. I also have this solo side project playing live electronic horror music. The band had two shows this weekend and I opened one of them with my solo project. It's lots of fun, too, because I get to play dress-up all the time. My alternate persona for the electronic project is named Doktor Steamly and he is a mad scientist. The Goddess dressed as the bride of Frankenstein for the Saturday show, so we had lots of fun together.
The kids play dress-up on a daily basis. It's normal for me to come home and see one of them dressed as Mario (from Mario Bros.), Spider Man, Foxy (from Five Nights at Freddy's), or Kitty Kat Girl (an original character created by the seven-year-old). When I got home from work on Friday, the seven-year-old was dressed as a "rock singer," complete with neon spandex, rhinestones, and fingerless gloves.
We crashed with the Goddess' mother on Saturday night, because my show was in her town. She is an artist and a really amazing costume designer. She did the Foxy costume for the eleven-year-old and an Annabelle (the cursed doll) dress for the seven-year-old. They've both won contests with them. Last year she designed a Chucky costume for the Monkey, who was just eleven-months-old at the time. (We're big on cursed dolls, apparently.) She did my mad scientist lab coat, too. Sunday morning, she was working on a Weeping Angel costume for the Goddess. (For the uninitiated, the Weeping Angels are one of the recurring monsters/villains on Doctor Who. They look like angel statues and only move when you aren't looking at them. If they touch you, they can send you back in time and they suck the life force from you. They're super creepy.) She'd made foam wings and gray dress; she still had to finish the gloves designed to look like stone arms. It's pretty effing spectacular.
The Goddess and I had a long talk on the drive back from her mom's. It was a beautiful autumn day and we talked -- like we do most of the time -- about the kids. We talked a lot about school. We were thinking about some of the things the teachers said to us last week.
One of the things they kept saying was that the eleven-year-old draws too much. He won't focus on his schoolwork -- all he wants to do is draw. He later told us that Mrs. T., his English teacher, won't even let him draw after he's completed all of his work.
The Goddess talked about how excited he was making videos. He'd just done one where he took a miniature of the TARDIS from Doctor Who and made it disappear, complete with sound effects. She said it was really good -- he got it to fade gradually and she didn't know how he had done it. When he is working on his art or his movies, he is so focused. You can barely even get him to eat.
The thing is, I know these teachers. Or I know ones like them. They're the type who'll say, "If I could get you to concentrate on your English assignment like you do drawing monsters, you'd be a successful student." They seem to miss an important part of the equation: school is really, really boring.
I mean, it doesn't have to be. There are teachers who bring learning to life. But these aren't them. They want to reward compliant children and punish non-compliant ones. They see a kid drawing and think it's a waste of time.
We got home and I started unloading gear in the basement when the eleven-year-old came running downstairs. He wanted to show me -- his mom had landed him a tweed jacket and bow tie at the Goodwill store and he was toting his sonic screwdriver. He was spot-on for the eleventh doctor. He started talking about the video he was going to make.
I don't want a different kid. I want this kid. I mean, yeah, I want him to be nice to others and learn that sometimes he has to complete work that he doesn't enjoy. But he's not lazy. He's not stupid. I don't want school to break his spirit and I get alternately saddened and angered when I imagine how they could completely crush him. Who are these adults who can't see how creative this kid is? Why can they only see failure where I see real brilliance?
We watched an episode with the eleventh doctor while we ate dinner. The eleven-year-old asked all kinds of questions about how I thought the TARDIS worked and what would really happen if you went back in time. It's easy to see the appeal of stories like these to kids like him. I can see the wheels turning in his mind, imagining what it would be like to have a TARDIS, to get away from everyone who is on his back, away from school, from English class, from Mrs. T., and maybe from parents who just don't understand -- all those Weeping Angels who just can't wait to get their hands on him to suck his life force -- and live a life of adventure and saving the world.
I wouldn't mind going with him, honestly.
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