Lost in Translation

I went to translate.google.com and translated my post "Nine-year-old Teenager" from English to Chinese, then Chinese to Swahili, and so on. After about ten translations, this is the result:

Mr. Myers recently Mopey. He returned to school, sneaking in your room or climb the steps in front of the door, just sit down.Sometimes, wearing his headset. As a teenager he was.Yesterday, tight to him, and tried to talk about it. People ask me all the usual questions: What is a good school or a girl break your heart, you have enough fiber. Trying to find a pencil, and the way his head in his backpack. "I'm fine," he shouted. "There is nothing wrong with me!"

"It is obvious" I said, "You is not nothing wrong package in your head your screaming. "

A few minutes later, Elliott is a country, so Laura and I found a bag of the church, said: "Here, put your head here, shouted: There is nothing wrong with me!" Ailiaote not, then throw the head with a smile. Sometime in the next few hours, this is not his position. In the afternoon, but it was a" mixed "in his words, negative emotions, usually after some chicken stomach. Laura asks, do not agree with her, very well, and Ailiaote said, in tears, I say. And I do not want to have a bag on my head. This is weird. "

We all laughed, except for a few miles. Go board, board (a state) on the forehead and tell us to stop laughing.

Griffin leaned over to me asked quietly: "¿I can not give him a bag"

A Bop on the Head

[I wrote this for my mom for Mother's Day. I hope she doesn't mind if I share it here for everyone. She's a cool lady. Love ya mom!]

I think it was second grade. It was definitely at Uintah Elementary. Every week we would sit cross-legged in the common area near the library and a different parent would talk to us about their career. One dad was a surgeon, and he showed us how artificial hips were made. He poured some bluish, rubbery goo into a mold and all of us started hacking and gagging. There was an acrid, burning smell that lingered in the school for weeks.

My favorite parent demonstration was the week when mom showed up. She had a table lined up with all sorts of porcelain dolls and pickle heads, and a table with several molds and giant bottles of porcelain slip. All the girls, of course, loved the homemade outfits on the dolls. The boys were more interested in the plaster molds. Or, more specifically, the giant rubber bands that held the molds together. Where could we get our hands on rubber bands like that?

Mom taught us all about the process of making dolls, from pouring the porcelain to securing the wigs and eyeballs. The most dramatic part of the presentation came after mom poured the porcelain slip into the mold and let it set for a few minutes. She removed the giant rubber band (all of us eye-balling it, waiting for her to drop it on the floor), pulled the mold apart, and then delicately removed the little gray porcelain head.

Mom invited my friend Sidney up and told her to give the head a little “bop.” Sidney hesitated, but then did as mom instructed. She made a fist and lightly bopped the top of the doll head, and everyone gasped and squealed and laughed as the head broke into several pieces. Mom let us come up and feel the broken shards. They were cold and crumbled with the slightest pressure.

That was the first moment when I really appreciated the skill and difficulty involved in working with porcelain. I was amazed that my mother could create these dolls out of something so delicate.

For several years after that morning, even into junior high before we moved to Sun Valley, my classmates would bring up Mom’s presentation, and they would fondly recount that moment when with a gentle “bop” the perfect little porcelain head shattered into pieces.

I loved watching mom make her dolls. I loved the kilns and the basement shelves lined with plaster molds and the dismembered limbs and half-sewn bodies and little plastic cases with different sized eyeballs and tiny wigs in different colors and the hum of the sewing machine as half-naked dolls awaited their new outfits. I loved watching mom hold the doll heads as she painted eyebrows and gave color to their cheeks. I loved watching all the parts come together into these magnificent, perfectly-dressed dolls that looked like they could be auctioned at Sotheby’s.

Until I moved out, when friends would come to our house for the first time, the grand tour always included mom’s doll collection. It was impossible for any of my friends, even the ones pretending to be macho, to stand in front of the book case full of mini pickle-heads and not be amazed.

Shortly after I got married, I took up water-painting. I went to the art store, bought a bunch of paints and brushes and supplies (all on mom’s dime, I might add) and then started painting. I was OK. But the point isn’t whether or not I was good, it was that I had all the confidence in the world that if I wanted to be a painter, I could be a painter. How could I doubt it? I had grown up watching my mom turn globs of porcelain slip and scraps of fabric into porcelain doll masterpieces.

Even though I gave up on painting, I think most of my confidence continues to stem from growing up in a house with a mother always in the midst of learning and mastering new things. As I played in the basement on Woodland Drive, the heat would roll off the kilns and white dust form the plaster molds would stick to my fingers and my clothes. I would use slip bottles as towers and fortresses for my Transformers and I would use tufts of batting as snow. Mom’s creative process was everywhere. As I played throughout the house, little scraps of fabric and discarded thread would cling to my socks. I was always mindful not to disturb the porcelain body parts on the table and counters, or the miniature clothing patterns or the drying paint brushes. I never saw these things as “in the way.” They were a part of our home, part of our daily life. It’s hard to imagine growing up in a home without them.

The kilns and plaster molds are gone now, and I haven’t seen a bottle of slip in decades. But the memory of mom making her dolls will always stay with me. Whenever I see a porcelain doll in a store, I always think, “My mom could do that. But probably better.”

Nine-Year-Old Teenager

Miles has been Mr. Mopey lately. When he comes home from school, he slinks off to his room or crawls under the front-door steps and just sits there. Sometimes he wears his headphones. He’s like a teenager. Yesterday, I cornered him and tried to get him to talk about it. I asked him all the usual questions: is everything okay at school, did some girl break your heart, are you getting enough fiber. He was trying to find a pencil and had his head all the way inside his backpack. “I’m fine,” he yelled. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”

“Clearly there is,” I said. “You’ve got your head in a backpack screaming that there’s nothing wrong with you.”

A few minutes later, Elliot was upset about something, so I grabbed Laura’s church bag and said, “Here, stick your head in here and yell, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’” Elliot did it, and then pulled her head out laughing. She did this a few more times over the next hour whenever something upset her. At dinner, however, she got “embarrassed”—her word for any negative emotion, usually anger—after she gagged on some chicken. Laura asked her if she was okay, being truly sympathetic, and Elliot said, between sobs, “I’m fine. And I don’t want to put my head in a bag anymore. It’s weird.”

Everyone laughed, except Miles. He pushed his plate away, set his forehead on the table (with a thud), and told us to stop making fun of him.

Griffin leaned toward me and asked quietly, “Should I get him his bag?”

Boys

One of the downsides of never having played team sports growing up is that when Miles brought me his jockstrap and cup before his game tonight, I had no idea what to tell him. I did a Google search, making sure the boys weren’t looking at the monitor, because you never know what will pop up when you type, “How to wear a jockstrap.” After reading a few contradictory testimonials, Miles, Griffin, and I went to the boys’ room and discussed our options. Miles tried a few variations: cup inside jock strap over tighty-whities; jock strap under tighty-whities; jockstrap with no tighty-whities; cup pointing up; cup pointing down.

I can’t remember what we finally settled on, but Miles stood proudly with his fists on his hips like Superman. Griffin knelt down and went to punch him, but he stopped. “Wait,” he said. “Can I?”

“Go ahead,” said Miles. “Punch away.”

Griffin punched him in the cup several times, and Miles declared that it worked. But a few minutes later, in his full uniform, he danced and fidgeted and complained that the cup had slid up the other side and was wedged in his crack.

Poor Grandma

Within hours of arriving at our house, my mother-in-law, Marie, slipped on our stairs and broke her ankle in three places. I was standing in the kitchen, achy and fever-ridden, having slept fitfully for only an hour after my ten-hour shift, telling Laura that I didn’t want to go to the doctor despite all the evidence pointing to strep throat, when I heard the thump and yelp and then Marie declaring she had broken her ankle.

We expressed due concern. I finished making my breakfast burrito and then stood over her, being careful not to drip ketchup, and told her if she was in that much pain, then it probably wasn’t broken. Sprains are more painful than breaks—that much I remember from my first-aid merit badge class.

We propped her up on the couch and I gave her a pair of white pants I needed hemmed, but after an hour she insisted that it was getting worse, so Larry and I carted her to Wentworth-Douglas Hospital where, in fact, the doctor agreed it was broken and she would need surgery.

So I left to take the kids swimming at the hotel where my folks were staying while Laura took second shift with Marie at the emergency room. The remainder of the afternoon can be summarized in two lessons we all learned the hard way that day. First, don’t pick at a hangnail while sitting in a Holiday Inn hot tub unless you want an extremely painful staff infection the next day. And second, a little morphine is all it takes to make Marie flirt unabashedly with male nurses.

Marie put off the surgery a few days so she could attend Griffin’s baptism. We wheeled her into the church, and despite everything she still gave a talk at the service. She was a bit teary eyed toward the end, but in the hallway I overheard her tell Larry her leg was sore.

We couldn’t decide if Marie should have the surgery here and recover on our couch or fly home and have the surgery in Boise. My main concern was that our house isn’t very disabled-friendly. There are stairs everywhere, and it was scary enough just the few days Marie was with us. She wasn’t the most graceful character on crutches. She would dope up on Percocet and then hobble and sway and rock and clomp and fall as she made her way through our house. Larry had to catch her on several occasions. But sometimes he missed, and we would flinch and close our eyes and hope she landed on a chair or ottoman or, at least, on nothing sharp.

We would be sitting in the kitchen and hear a slow and deep whump, click, whump, click, whump, click. “Oh no,” Miles would say, “Grandma’s coming!” And for five minutes we would listen to the whump-click grow, like a wounded but determined Terminator clawing its way forward. She would finally round the corner, en route to the bathroom, out of breath, drenched in sweat, being careful not to bump her leg.

Larry tried out the crutches and was racing all over the house, hot-dogging his way up the stairs, ya-hooing and yee-hawing while the kids squealed and followed behind.

Post-script: Marie made it home and had her surgery this morning. She proposed to three nurses before going completely under. My strep and staff infection have mostly cleared up thanks to antibiotics and a strict regimen of peanut-butter cookies. And my mom and sister, who both flew out to the baptism despite their many ailments, are resting comfortably at home now too. And thanks to everyone, sick or healthy, who took the time this weekend to support Griffin!

Office Remodel

A pipe burst down the hall from my office last week, which was a great excuse to take the whole week off. I had a couple meetings, but I canceled them. Turns out, “Sorry, I have to cancel our appointment today, a pipe burst next to my office,” is a great way to get out of just about anything. People seemed more sympathetic to that than if I had told them I was sick or dealing with a family tragedy. “A burst pipe? How awful!”

When I got to campus yesterday, it looked like a scene form E.T. There were wires and tubes coming out of doors and windows, plastic tent-like structures blocking the hallways, caution tape and barricades everywhere, and several overweight men holding clipboards and coffee mugs standing around looking at nothing in particular. A news van was parked on the sidewalk, and as I walked by a guy holding a microphone said, “You want to be on TV?” A fat kid behind me who looked like he was wearing his little sister’s UNH sweatshirt said, “Sure!”

Fortunately, my office was unaffected, except for a nice musty aroma. I’m sure in a few days my books will be curled at the edges and caked in mold. I stopped by the graduate director’s office to ask for money for my upcoming research conference. His office was one of the four that were ruined, so he set up a make-shift office on the second floor. He was slouching in a wooden chair staring out the window, arms dangling at his side, hands almost touching the floor, with several boxes of soggy books at his feet. He apologized that he hadn’t gotten around to my funding request and pointed with his thumb, still staring out the window, to the desk behind him piled high in paper. “As you can see,” he said. “I’m operating old school here.”

I told him I had heard about the flooding and that all the computers were ruined.

“I don’t care about that,” he said. He lightly kicked a box. “It’s all of this. I would love to just throw these books away, but some of them were first editions. Some were signed by my friends who are dead now.”

I sat a moment and stared at the boxes of books. I tried to think of something sympathetic to say, but all I could muster was, “So...should I resubmit the funding request?”

Goodbye, South

My junior high burned down today. My brother and I joked about it when we found out, but as the night rolls on, I’m starting to feel the loss.

I’d have to double-check this, but I think South Ogden Junior High is the only school that all of my brothers and sisters attended, and I was always living in their shadows. My science teacher asked me on the first day of class which brother or sister I was going to be like. Thankfully, I said Tracy, which turned out to be the correct answer. It took Ms. Bertleson, the crusty old history & adolescence teacher, several weeks to realize who I was. She had encouraged me to join the yearbook committee, but then one day she caught me doodling on my desk with a pen. She snatched the pen from my hand, and as she used it to fill out a detention slip, she said, “You’re Jeff's brother.”

From then on, I didn’t hide my joyful derision when she would mispronounce the word puberty. “Today,” she would say, "We’re going to learn about poo-berty.”

I only attended South for two years, which has left me a little bitter, since I never got to experience having a locker in the coveted ninth-grade hall. But, looking back, I don’t know why it was so coveted. The seventh graders had much better real-estate on the second floor—the entire second floor, in fact, including the “lounge” at the top of the stairwell, which had built-in carpeted benches along the wall. Even though the skaters and stoners took over the lounge after the first few weeks of class, it was still a source of pride to know that no other grade had anything like it.

The eighth graders resided in the nether-regions of the school: that weird strip of mismatched lockers between the cafeteria and the wood shop. It was a high-traffic area, not just for students, but for teachers and staff, since this was also where history hall and English hall converged. I was perpetually late for class due to severe traffic jams. Merging into the fray was easy enough, but then it became a mosh pit. Sometimes this was just fine, depending on who I was smooshed against. But most days, by the time I got to my locker, I was missing a shoe and feeling violated.

Ninth-grade hall, really, was just a slightly smaller version of seventh-grade hall, directly beneath it on the first floor. It had its advantages, I suppose. It was darker, since there were no windows, and there were fewer classrooms, which resulted in fewer teachers milling around. And the bathroom had full-length mirrors. I always used this bathroom, even though it often required a lengthy detour, so I could make sure my pegged acid-wash jeans and neon-green T-shirt were working for me before sauntering out, clutching my Trapper Keeper, to rub elbows with the ninth-graders. I couldn’t get over how grown-up they were. These were the big dogs. The boys had muscles and facial hair. And the girls. The girls! They were practically women. My twelve-year-old heart could barely take it: bangs two-feet high, black eye-liner, and purses—not just backpacks, but purses. And they all smelled so nice, like perfume and body spray, not like the seventh-grade girls who smelled the same as they did a few months ago in elementary school, like strawberry lip balm and jelly shoes.

But I never made it to my glory days as a ninth grader at South. I moved to Sun Valley and spent my ninth-grade year as low-man on the totem pole at the high school.

As I look at the burned-up shell of South Ogden Junior High, I wonder where all of those teachers have gone. The middle-aged ones are probably retired now. The old ones are probably dead (except, of course, for Ms. Bertleson, who—I’m sure—is in her nineties, sitting on a front porch somewhere yelling at every neighborhood kid that walks by.”You don’t fool me!” She’s saying, “I know who your father is!”). I think most of all I wonder where Mr. Lewis is. He was still young when he taught my eighth-grade English class, probably in his 30s, and I saw him occasionally at the local gym, where he worked as a weight trainer and wore leopard-print Hammer pants and a purple tank top. He had hair like Uncle Jesse from Full House, and he would stand, unashamed, in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom of ninth-grade hall, flexing his biceps and running his fingers through his hair (I always wondered who he was trying to impress—Ms. Bertleson?). One day when he was calling role in class, a certain kid, I think his name was Eric, wasn’t there, and Mr. Lewis took advantage of the moment to make fun of Eric’s lisp, thinking it would make us laugh or make him seem cool. “Oh no,” he said. “I hope Eric’th not thick.” We all looked at each other, silently, wondering what in the world he was thinking, and his face flushed. From the back of the class, someone whispered, “That’s not right.”

What has become of you, Mr. Lewis, and where will you go now that your school is gone? Have you lost your hair? Are you on part-time disability with a bad back and a pot-belly? Do you still make fun of eighth-graders with speech impediments?