The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Community Service Meets the Teen

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Community Service Meets the Teen

Report cards came Friday afternoon. So after spending most of Friday evening "discussing" the importance of doing school work and not spending so much time with video/myspace involvement with my two boys, we decided (meaning I came up with the idea and they silently disagreed) they needed to do more community service. Christopher is still trying to come up with what he wants to do; Philip opted to be a volunteer waiter at a veterans' pre holiday luncheon. He thought it would be a quick and easy way to salvage his weekend plans.

Of course first I had to explain to him the importance of veterans, how his grandfathers and uncles and cousins had all served in various wars. He gave me the "OMG, will she ever stop look," then went off to what he thought, I think, would be a pizza party.

I should say here that Philip is a really sensory kid: he has trouble looking at the "subnormal" folk who frequent certain Walmarts, and any shows involving childbirth or poxes or deformity cause him to lurch from the television. He was the kind of baby who couldn't stand seams in his socks or the touch of wool. Very little has changed in that department over the years.

Ten minutes into the holiday luncheon, I get this text:

MOM SAY I'M SICK COME PICK ME UP FROM HERE

I had his brother calmly text back:

MOM SAYS U HAVE 2 STICK IT OUT

The next SOS came:

I HAVE A BAD HEADAKE

I didn't anwer; I figured I'd tell him the veterans had to stick it out once, too.

When I picked him up, he was flushed and exhausted.

"They're like old pirates," he said, "Oh my God. You have no idea. No idea."

"What happened?" I asked.

"First of all, most of them were missing something. Like an arm or something."

"Right. They were in a war."

Sigh. "And every time I asked them what they wanted to drink, they said, 'how 'bout a Scotch and soda?' Like every one of them and they laughed each time. And they only had soda or water or coffee."

"Okay."

"Then this guy says to me, 'Son, straighten that flag."

"What did you do?"

"I straightened the flag. Then he says, 'Now set me up with those sausages just like you would your best girlfriend.' So I go, What does THAT mean?"

"I think he wanted something extra, right?"

"He winked at me. God. And he had this scooter thing."

"Your sister loves her scooter. What's wrong with that?"

"No, Mom, he had this scooter thing INSTEAD OF LEGS."

He didn't say much after that. I pretty much left him alone and let him spend a few hours cruising myspace.

I think serving that lunch allowed him to learn a whole lot more a whole lot faster than anything he does in school.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: I think all kids and especialy teenagers should have to do community service like this as part of school and I am surprised its not required. It should be. I agree with you that he learned alot while he spent time with the veterans.; Tuesday, 18 November, 2008
Jacqui said...: I love your definition of "we decided." Very familiar...; Tuesday, 18 November, 2008
Tabitha said...: I am sure he learned so much that he will carry that day with him forever. :) Or at least for a very, very long time. :) Good for you!; Tuesday, 18 November, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: Some schools do require community service, Alice, but if they don't, I think it's up to the parents to make them aware of other folks in their commuinty.

Yes, Jacqui, you know all that advice the pediatricians offer about shared decision making? Sometimes dictators have the right approach.

Yes, Tabitha. Philip reports that he has learned to do library service like his older brother picked.
I think he is still recovering from what he may not have told me about.; Thursday, 20 November, 2008
Mary Witzl said...: Once again, you've said it all for me! We're going through such similar experiences now, you and I -- and, I suspect, the other parents of teens out there who are trying to do things right. My girls would have flipped out too, but good for you for not rushing to bail your kid out -- he did learn a lot.

My mother set me up with one of the worst babysitting jobs of my life when I was only 14. I was caring for the kids of a single working mother who could barely make ends meet. Her kids were a handful and her life was hellish. No words could have made me less inclined to marry in haste and repent at leisure; that experience no doubt kept me single -- and childless -- for a good long time. I now encourage both of my daughters to babysit, and I'm always thrilled when they end up with real brats.

And you do teenspeak so well!; Thursday, 20 November, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: I just want them to develop a broader awareness that they are part of something larger than myspace, texting and hair straightening (yes, the boys, too)

The teenspeak is easy - I just type what they say!; Friday, 21 November, 2008
Mary Witzl said...: I read this to my three just now and they really enjoyed it -- especially the part about the scooter. (Poor guy, though.); Monday, 24 November, 2008
Anne Spollen said...: Real teenagers! I'm glad they enjoyed it. I get the feeling our kids would get along...; Wednesday, 03 December, 2008

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***