The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Are You Smarter Than MY Fifth Grader?

Friday, July 24, 2009

Are You Smarter Than MY Fifth Grader?

I am a television grump: I can't stand most tv, and I'm always nagging my kids not to watch it. I say subtle things like, "Do you want to maintain ANY kind of visual imagination?" and I point to ditch diggers on 90+ degree days and say, "He used to watch hours of television and now..." The kids roll their eyes and say things like, "Right, mom,'cause it's not like he was dumb to start with." They are so sarcastic -- just like their father.

Anyway, I was on the couch recently, and I wanted to read, but I couldn't focus enough from the a) pain and b) the pain killers. So I watched tv, at least for a little while. And my kids showed me some of their favorite shows:

16 and Pregnant

SpongeBob

South Park

Family Guy

I sort of liked the first two since the first was scary and the second was actually funny sometimes. The other shows just seemed mean and uninspired. They reminded me of jokes I heard when I used to supervise a time out room in a terrible high school.

Then Emma, a fifth grader, put on the show, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? I, thinking the obvious, said to her, "Are these questions you get asked in school?" She started laughing. "No, Mom, they're so easy. It's the adults who are dumb." I didn't believe her. Then I watched it. Is it possible to be given a drivers license and not know there are seven continents? I mean, could there be nine? Or did one melt? Good Lord.

Since I live with a fifth grader, here are Emma's two latest questions that she asked during a long car trip:

What shape is the universe?

She has not been able to accept Dad's answer that it has no shape. We are at a loss on this one.

The other is this:

Since I'm here now, where was I before I was born? Was I a spirit? Not after I die, but before I was born, what was I doing? And WHAT was I?

That's the show I want to see.

11 comments:

Elizabeth Bradley said...: My son is 18 and he's not much of a TV watcher. He never was. When his sister, (she's a mere 18 mos older) would be engrossed with the TV when they were little he would always get her to leave the TV to go play with him. I digress, anyway he was watching Family Guy a few months ago and I sat down to see why he was laffin and laffin. That's a cartoon show? The episode we watched was full of stuff that shocked me. I mean, that's a cartoon show? It's a far cry from The Flintstones of my youth.; Friday, 24 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: I know -- Family Guy is high school boy humor (not Emma's show -she can repeat lines from SpongeBob though) It's mean spirited and not particularly witty. It's more of an animated show, I think, than an actual cartoon. South Park can be even worse.; Friday, 24 July, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: Know any Buddhist Lamas? Emma could have a fantastic conversation with a Tibetan Buddhist...; Saturday, 25 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Lol, Christy.

I think fifth grade must be the onset of those kind of questions --maybe, but I don't think I ever wondered about the shape of the universe in my life, though.; Saturday, 25 July, 2009
Adrienne said...: One of my son's classmates was in the original cast of Are You Smarter..., so we kind of had to watch the first season. I'd rather ponder your fifth grader's questions, though.

I do like SpongeBob - that porous yellow one is pretty funny.; Sunday, 26 July, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: My husband has taught fifth grade. If you ask him why some stars are more twinkly than others, he can give you a totally scientific answer in seconds -- I am seriously in awe of him. If everybody just learned the fifth grade curriculum, there would be a LOT fewer dumb people in the world.

As for Emma's second question, I'm waiting to find the answer to that one myself. I'm betting it's going to be good: they save the best for the last.; Monday, 27 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Wow, you knew someone on tv. Emma would have gone crazy if she knew someone. And I think everyone loves Sponge Bob. My 56 year old brother laughs at him along with my ten year old. Pretty successful humor there.

The REAL fifth grade curriuculum is pretty neat, Mary. I think that's where they first put in critical thinking skills. But it's just weird and sort of sad that the ADULTS can't name all the planets or continents or spell simple words. It must be staged; it has to be.; Tuesday, 28 July, 2009
Unknown said...: I enjoy quizzes but with the years , I'm not answering right!! I enjoy the 'Are you smarter than a 5th grader' on and off. Have to hand it to the kids :); Wednesday, 29 July, 2009
Stephanie J. Blake said...: Hope you are starting to feel better. We watch a lot of Spongebob here. And the 17 year old watches Family Guy. Don't like any of it.; Thursday, 30 July, 2009
Nora MacFarlane said...: Okay. I googled the question "What shape is the universe" and came up with this!

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=62; Thursday, 30 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Hey, KTSG, welcome! I don't worry about not answering quizzes; I worry much more about not being able to find my keys...

I know, CW. Family Guy is just offensive. I will never understand why my 17 year old thinks it is so funny. Guy humor?

Thanks, Nora! I am going to show Emma this page. I knew someone would come up with something sooner or later.; Saturday, 01 August, 2009

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.

***