I have been chugging home made ayurvedic smoothies… almonds dates milk honey, oh and some frozen peaches and strawberries and the odd blob of yogurt. Almonds and dates especially are good for sick people. Well, for me anyway. I’m a big fan of the placebo effect, if nothing else.
So I had a little left in the fridge and took it out to swig while I made the guys some melty ham and cheesey wraps. And my youngest looked at my glass of smoothie and said “Can I have a taste?” and I said “no, I have a sore throat, don’t drink after me.”
Mainly I didn’t want to share, so guilty of being stingy, I felt I had to come up with something good. I made a face and “Anyway,” I said “It tastes a little like old bananas.”
“Old men?” he asked, and nodded. He seemed perfectly satisfied with that as a reason he wouldn’t like the taste. I realized he didn’t hear what I really said, so I said, “no, old bananas,” and made my face. Again.
So as I finished up cooking the wraps and my beverage, I thought about that. Obviously I’ve been trying to apply some kind of teacherly behavior to my interaction with the boy. But mostly I wondered what he’d come up with!
“What exactly do old men smoothies taste like, Mr. C?” I asked.
He looked a little thoughtful and replied, “Oh, you know, green stuff, ear wax, and pimples.”
In other news, I finished Chapter 6 – having spent all day on it. I have possibly renounced my ADHD self-and-other-experts-diagnosis with the even more accurate and psychiatrist diagnosed LD … the Chapter was on Learners with Learning Disabilities and it’s childhood-me to a tee… spacey, makes people uncomfortable, (as in, behaves in bizarre, “I think I’m a pony, so I’ll gallop around the bases and toss my mane while we play kickball, that’ll teach you to pick me last,” ways) social-emotional problems, completely devoid of self regulation, learned helplessness, memory problems, inattentive if I’m not really interested or you aren’t teaching reading, blah de blah de blah. Oh. Meh. Gawd. That poor child.
So what. I failed math for 12 years. It took till I was 30 to stand on my own two feet socially. I’m still here.