"Mom!" J said excitedly a few weeks back while waving a fluorescent piece of paper in front of my face.
"We have to reserve a copy of the Purple Wimpy Kid Book, NOW, if we are going to be able to get it!!!"
Squinting at the paper, like looking into the sun without sunglasses, I read the note from school. "Hmmm... "I said as I looked at how important it was to RESERVE our copy of the wimpy book because printing copies around the world might cease to work.
To be honest, I'd seen kids reading it, knew somewhat of the premise, but had not actually picked up the book, (c'mon, I am reading QUALITY literature here!)
Either had J.
"Do you really want to start this late in the game? This is book 100. Shouldn't we start at 1"
"Mooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!1" The child went limp-like and begging.
"Okay, okay." I signed my Johnny Hancock to the note and told him that he didn't even need it in until weeks later. Not one to procrastinate on matters such as this, we placed the fluorescent bulb into his plaid back pack and reserved our copy.
A few weeks later, his Aunt,
B. BEE, (J with B. BEE)
bought the movie.
Great, I thought. Being one of those staunch wanna-be parents that make their kids read the book first as incentive to get to watch the movie. This died with the Harry Potter movies.
So for Friday date night with J, we watched the stick figure come to life. In tears we both cried into each other's shoulders, our stomachs straining from the muscles being pulled better than any crunch work out Coach Guilford could ever give in Weight class.
We choked on popcorn. We choked up at Rowley's innocence (right of photo)
and loyalty to his friend.
(okay, maybe just me.) Afterward, J pulled out his Journal, a .97 cent notebook from Wal-Mart and wrote: Diary of a Wimpy Kid on the front. He turned to a new page and started his story. He started to draw cartoons.
November 9th rolled around and he came home with highlighted papers and leaves flying around him like a dust bowl. Somewhere in that blur of orange, math papers, and unlegalized sized papers was a purple smudge.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid was being waved in the air like a medal and J proudly presenting it to me like a masculine Ice Skater who took out a Russian in the Olympics. (Evan L.)
Shout out to Evan: We honestly didn't think that a man could go from hockey to figure skating and make it look, well manly, but oh, man you did! Kudos for astonishing the world that America could knock the Russians off the summit of the podium. You unwimpified the men's figure skating, (even though it is probably brutal training, some of us were non-believers, forgiveness, please!) and make it look so HOT in Ralph Lauren!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Crawling on the couch (J not Evan)next to me he opened the new Scholastic order and began to read. Each of us engrossed and grossed out!
Laughing at Kinney's comics, imagining the horror of some of Greg's mishaps and living the awkward, embarrassing, and mind shaping years of middle school.
Teaching at the Jr. High lately makes each entry solidified and re-enforces shuddering wimpy moments. I am referring to mine. This ritual rite of passage into HS is has Hitler undertones, I say!
All my paper carrying days, that I thought made me so tough, didn't prepare me for the Moment of initiation: When a short, stalky 8th grader with a mouth that knew all the right places to insert cuss words. Thanks to my gene pool, so did I but when Chel, Becca and I rounded the corner of the east end of the school to walk home I lost the gift of tongues.
Waiting like a wolf, was Jo's older sister.
Looking over the top of her black hair at my comrades huddling together and obviously not willing to gang up 3 to 1, I looked back down on my opponent.
as they listened to what I'd "done" to this girl's brother on the school yards, gave me the assurance that I was in this fight by myself they and the Wolf were surprised by my left hook.
My fist hanging in the air in front of me and the negotiating plea: "Truce?" brought a hush over the scene and a smirk to the wolf's lips.
With her hands still on her hips she looked down at my fist and metaphorically spat with her eyes on them.
This was a pivotal moment in my Wimpyfying future.
I don't know if we walked home in silence, if Chel and Becca talked about how intimidating that 8th grader was, or tsk, tsk-ed and thanked heaven it wasn't them that had shouted out to Jo, her younger bro., a teasing comment that was reciprocated every day in Mrs. Wifley's 4th hour reading class.
I decided then and there, never, ever, under ANY circumstances again to: "Truce."
The rest of the way I was berated myself for not recalling all the battles and brawls with The Torment, the papers I'd carried through the snow and wind. Had I known any better, she could have unleashed a Grizzly, but I had to live disgraced that I didn't open a can on her.
I had "turned the other cheek". Out of fear, I totally pulled a blank as to my strength and what to do and the thought of those glasses smashed up or otherwise knocked off my head, well, I cowarded back to the end of the pack.
However, what happened afterward call for a letter of Thanks.
Dear 8th grader,
you made me a stronger gal. Thank you! After you scared the sam holy hill outta me,I hit the weights, signed up for track at the end of 7th grade year and From there went on to play volleyball. Because of you, well you started it,I became a machine of physical prowess! However I blame you for the Jr. High making me throw the shot put and because I took first or something, they made me keep doing that embarrassing track and field event. I wanted to be a cool Sprinter! Shot Put was sullying my popularity track record! While my team was practicing the baton hand off for the 4 x 400, I was making craters in the grass close to our encounter.
By HS, wolf, I benched 135 and was showing the boys how to do "cleans" in Coach G's weight class.
You will be happy to know that it happened. The humbling. The giveth, and taketh right before state championships my Sr. year. Back injury. Our undefeated season, the hurdles I'd made and worked for ALL those years since The Truce, for seemingly NOTHING!
However, I did get to locker Sr. year to The 8th who wanted to pound me to a pulp. You were finishing up your Super Sr. year, remember? I loved going to my locker every day just to see you, really.
Love,
The Sevie
*
That injury literally ground me to a halt. I couldn't walk. Physical therapy and shots the size of straws stuck into my spine helped me get walking again, but not serving or playing like I used to.
And to top it off I had the humiliating task of going to state at the end of the year in Shot Put. Great. Not the legacy I was looking to leave.
So the other day when I finished taking roll for Ms. B's P.E. class and they were hurling dodge balls at each other, I lifted. I'd railed the kids in one weight class to have a spotter every time they lifted, but here I was, taking on the 45 bar by myself.
One side wobbled precariously to the right after I'd heaved it over the lip of the holding spot.
I truly had become wimpy. My right leg up under me on the bench the left in the air- I pushed the bar up in the air and heaved a rep of 10, locked my arms and let it clang back into its holding spot.
Grateful there were dividers separating me and the bullets the kids were throwing at each other I was humbled more than the back injury.
Thankfully, class ended another started and a sweet boy asked me to dress down and come play Dodge ball with them.
Feeling that I'd won the little rascals over that week as their sub, mentor and now admired leader, I dressed down.
Putting on my hot pink Adidas shorts my white legs flew up the stairs to the weight room for some boys against girls dodge ball. Except my aide, Max was on the girls side and the boys had me.
After being pelted by a girl that could obviously be a shot putter or soft ball catcher (it was the latter) I realized that I was the bait for these boys to take the attention off of them so they could nail Max and this extremely accurate thrower on the softball team.
Letting them revel in a few of my screams I imposed some wimpy rules: My aide couldn't hit me, I could enter enemy territory to get the colorful bullets and call time out whenever I wanted.
After three hours of this and hiding every time I had to suck on my inhaler, I decided that middle school was brilliantly displayed in Kinney's book. That he nails the ups and downs like a Dodge ball genius serves up a blow that knocks you to your feet.
His books may make some teachers mad, English or otherwise, but I have seen my son start to LOVE reading that much more. He is drawing comics.
And it has made me laugh so hard that I think some muscles are starting to appear on my stomach again. (notice J's concern about plagiarism?? I explained we are only wimpyfying ourselves and that the author, Kinney, would be so proud. )
But my wimpy pride still stings a bit from those truce moments with myself. Yesterday as I sat at Biolife and they put the blood pressure cuff on my arm to deem my veins worthy I waited for a double check on the left arm.
Warren told me that their needles are the size of toothpicks.
I've had catheters and tubes the size of shake straws in this vein, buddy. Yours don't scare me. I thought to myself as I sat on the brown recliner bed. Another tech came over and felt my vein with a blue glove on. "They are too small."
"That's it?" you can't pull plasma from the left side?"
"No, sorry. come back in a month and see if it is better."
"A MONTH?" I asked stunned in front of all the donors happily reading as red blood cells were filtered out of their blood from the clear hoses hooked up to the plasmashperis (sp? don't care if it's wrong!)machines.
Defeated I walked out of the pristine, white walled BioTech; passed the white lab coat wearing staff and half listened to Walter, Warren, or who-ever.
" Try drinking a lot of fluids before you come next time. And lift weights. Even if it's just a five pound dumb bell, lift that and see if the veins pop up."
Feeling like I was carrying the swine flu or leprosy I nodded to Walrus and thought about three of the Gatorades, water and protein drinks I had consummed the day before.
As I drove in my cold van a warm feeling came over me. Like the Grinch, whose heart increases inside, something happened to me. I did what I should have a long time ago: Make truce with my wimpy veins. Someone else can donate plasma!
W. , thanks for being nice about the whole ordeal. You did great. Bio-Life looks really impressive.
J, I want my Shot Put medal back.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment