Do You Really Hate It?

Or Is It Just Hard?

It was a rare quiet afternoon in my house. The toddler was outside digging in the dirt with Daddy, the oldest was at camp, and it was just me and the middle. “What can we do that we can’t do when the baby’s around?” I asked.

“Card game!” said the kid.

Personally, I was hoping for Battleship or Monopoly. (Okay, not Monopoly because I’ve never played it and, after making it this long, I’m now in a contest with myself to see how long I can well and truly go without ever playing it at all. And no, that My Little Pony Monopoly Jr. sitting on the shelf over there doesn’t count.) But I will allow a good game of cards.

I played a lot of cards growing up. When I was a couple years younger than my daughter, I got a deck of Mickey Mouse cards at Disney World, and after that I played all kinds of games. Various kinds of solitaire, mostly (I was an only child, after all), but occasionally I’d have a partner that would teach me a new game. Rummy was a classic, and when I got older I played Hearts and Spades and even Texas Hold ’Em.

She’s a bright kid, so I whatever game we picked, I knew she’d catch on quickly.

Rummy, we decided.

Remembering how to play a game you haven’t played in over two decades is hard enough; simultaneously teaching a nine-year-old how to play it ratchets up the difficulty level by at least an order of magnitude. Do you have to discard? Can you play off someone else’s set? Is an ace worth one point or 15? All things I had to dredge up from the depths of my brain while she got progressively more impatient.

“I hate this game!” she said when, after approximately 46 seconds, she hadn’t yet made a set.

“Dude, you haven’t even finished a hand yet,” I said.

“What’s a hand?!” she said.

Sigh.

We finished that hand, and played another, but it got me thinking about how damn easy things are for kids these days. How easy I’ve made things for my kids, probably. I’m a teacher who likes having answers, and so when my kids ask questions I tend to just answer them. I want my children to know things, so I teach them what I know rather than having them figure it out themselves.

And when things get tough, rather than sticking it out and persevering, they just stop. Most of the time, I don’t have the energy to push them, and so I let up, too. Gymnastics and rock climbing, piano and violin, chess and softball: They’ll try it for awhile, but when they’re not immediately gifted, they don’t want to continue. Rather than letting the competition inspire them to keep at it, they let it intimidate them into turning the other way.

“I hate it!” they’ll say. But really, they can see the hard work it’s going to take to get good and they’ve made the calculation that it’s not worth it. Whether they don’t know if they’ll love it enough to make the effort pay off, or they would rather not suck in front of other people, the outcome is the same. They try something for a month or two and then stop and never go back to it.

As a serial do-everything-er, I can’t stand this. But I guess it’s the monster I’ve created.

*Note: There’s also the opposite effect, where you suffer through something for a million years, only to find you don’t actually enjoy it. I actually can’t think of a thing in my life that fits into that category, but I wonder if you can.

Can you identify with my kids? With me as the cause of my kids’ apathy? Do you have something on the opposite end of the spectrum that you got really good at but don’t really love? Whoever you are, leave your note in the comments.

Updates

Novel is done. Submissions are out to the agents with whom I’ll be meeting in just a few short weeks. I rewrote the synopsis, as I mentioned last week, and I think it’s really good (then again, I always do). I revamped the cover letter, which as anticipated took only a bit of time. Now all there’s to do is wait. What I don’t have to wait for is a reply from the small publisher who requested the manuscript a month or so ago: they responded yesterday that the book has great ideas but isn’t quite the right fit for them (too much sci-fi, which - definitely fair, but just one more nudge in the direction of self-publishing). Fingers crossed for some good meetings at York!

What’s Entertaining Me?

Blown Away on Netflix. The glass blowing competition is back with its third full season, which I’m halfway through. The circus episode showcased some amazing talent, and this is one of those things I feel like I could work at for 10,000 hours and hate doing it, but I love watching other people do it. Incredible.

What’s Enlightening Me?

This is going to be a little off the reservation, but it is something I’ve been thinking about this week - and really it goes along with one of the themes of the novel: implicit bias in the rules and laws our society imposes on its members. I’m running out of real estate here, but I’ll give two brief examples: A few years back there was a story in the news around here about a school that did not allow two Black sisters to wear their hear in braided extensions, citing it was against their dress code. This is one of many dress code rules I’ve come across in decades of working in schools that (intentionally or not) singles out students of color, who are more likely to wear braids, extensions, or head scarves. I can’t find a followup to this particular story, but I do know that my former school removed restrictions on scarves and wraps after students advocated against the rule. Schools are agile in that way; they can change their policies relatively quickly based on student and parent input.

Now consider a historically white town that has regulations prohibiting in-law apartments, for example. Immigrants from South and East Asian countries - cultures that value intergenerational living - move to the town. They’re not allowed to build housing for themselves that supports their customs. Were these laws put on the books explicitly to discriminate against folks from different cultural backgrounds? Maybe not. But that’s the effect. And, in such a case, maybe the town should take a critical look at how “the way it’s always been” is affecting folks that haven’t always been there.

Something to chew on. Until we’re aware that this kind of unconscious or unintentional bias exists, we can’t notice it, and until we notice it, we can’t do anything about it.

To open eyes.

Until next time,

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