Dude, that bible story rocks!

Last weekend, Tim served as a counselor on the youth retreat that the twins attended, so our house was the location for Owen and Mama's Weekend of Fun.
I had forgotten, though, that Tim always covers the bedtime shift, which around here includes the bedtime reading session.
So my 6-year-old and I snuggled together the first night to read a section from The Beginner's Bible, a cartoon-illustrated compilation of Bible stories given to Owen by our church when he was about 3. It's really well done, with each story titled and written in plain language so kids can easily grasp the meaning.
Well, mostly it's written in plain language. Friday night I opened the book to the marked page and jumped right in with my most impressive read-aloud voice: "The Lame Man."
In the second I took to gather my breath for the story itself, Owen burst out laughing.
"The lame man? Why would they say that?!" he asked. I realized immediately how much influence his older brothers actually have on him.
"Well, it's a different kind of lame," I began. Still, Owen giggled into his blankie.
"It's not 'lame,' like, 'Dude, that is so lame,'" I said, but the surfer voice I chose to use only sent him into a wiggly, giggly fit. Not the state of mind you want at bedtime.
"That is so lame," he started saying. "Dude, you are so lame! Ha ha ha ha!"
"No, he's lame because he can't walk. 'Lame' also means you can't walk."
"Bwa hah ahaha. Dude, you can't walk. You are so lame," Owen said. At this point, I'm not sure even Peter and John could have gotten him to listen.
Finally, to calm him down I just kept reading until the next story when Saul sees the bright light and becomes Paul. It worked because there just wasn't much funny about that.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column.

Remember the Ns, Ss and Es on your elementary school report card? Well, the whole process has gotten a bit more complicated.

Before you pull out into traffic...

Thrice in the past week (yeah, I said "thrice")I have had close calls with other drivers in MY OWN neighborhood.
I've been driving along after dropping off Owen at school or on my way back from Kroger and I've had to pull WAY over to avoid an oncoming car because the other driver was still going through their cockpit checklist.
They were either turning on their phone, looking for sunglasses, or fixing their hair in the mirror. Two of the times, the driver didn't see me until I was on them and I honked.
I've heard a lot about how hazardous distracted drivers are and saw a statistic that 40% of "accidents" are caused by them. Based on my personal experience, it's getting worse.
It's tempting to think of driving as an automatic body function, but it's not. We all could use a return to awareness, especially those of us who've been driving for a few decades. We think we've got it down. I also think a lot of folks don't consider neighborhood streets to be worth the same level of caution as "city" streets. So they think nothing of hopping in the car and pulling out, using the "slow" drive to save time while they check phone messages, fish out their wallets, or check makeup.
Another danger zone for distracted drivers is near the fast-food drive-thru. I was making my way out of the Kroger parking lot this morning when a woman who had just left the Chik-fil-A in the same shopping center nearly T-boned me while searching the bag for her Chik'n Minis. I'm telling you, she never saw me. She almost had her head down in the bag as she drove past, and then she turned around to hand something to a kid in the back seat. Completely clueless.
All I'm saying is take a second to finish your business before you start driving again, people. It won't make you that much later if you pull over after you leave the drive-thru and use two hands, both eyes and your whole brain to get the food distributed, then you can use them for driving.
We need to be less concerned with saving time and more concerned with saving lives.

Oops

As a matter of fact, I DID write a new column for Brentwood Home Page this week. I just forgot to link to it here. So now you can read about what rejection feels like.

You won't find us where the wild things are

We are not big puppet people around here. My husband and I both have always found puppet shows particularly cringeworthy, and it looks like that aversion has passed down to our kids, especially Owen.
Well, the twins weren't morally opposed to puppets the way Owen is. They at least would watch Sesame Street, and I have always given credit to Sesame Street for teaching them letters and numbers as well as, you guessed it, cooperation.
Owen, on the other hand, gets pissed if you try to leave the TV on a program with puppets. His unexplained opposition to this kind of kid's show is legendary around here, so we're usually watching the History Channel, the Military Channel, Discovery or House Hunters, which teaches a surprising amount of geography. I guess his one exception is Phineas and Ferb, which is hilarious enough for adults but has no snotty twins calling people "loser."
So I wasn't too concerned about hitting Fandango to get tickets for Where the Wild Things Are. Though it's a classic, we don't even own the book. Owen said he had seen that book at preschool, then went back to playing Star Wars. Tim brought it home from the library because, of course, neither of us had read it since childhood.
You know what? I thought it was a terrible kids' book. I really could not believe that Maurice Sendak would start a book and then just stop writing in the middle when it's getting good. I guess when it came out it was a fun idea to think about kids going to their wild place. But I much prefer The Salamander Room for imagination.
My interest in the movie version of the wild things piqued when I heard it was directed by Spike Jonze. Still, I'll stick with what I think are Jonze's most important contributions to date, which are showing us that Christopher Walken can, in fact, dance like a mofo and introducing us to his spoof with the Torrance Community Dance Group performing to the Fatboy Slim song Praise You.
There be genius, and it won't depress my kids.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Read about a first-timer's experience at the Susan Komen Race for the Cure.

This week's Brentwood Home Page column

Read about why I'm not nervous around old cemeteries anymore.

My Spell-Check is gonna hate this one

I have this weird fascination with how people choose their children's names. It had been a latent obsession until I saw the show Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC and noticed the high percentage of kid pageant contestants who have "misspelled" names.
How can someone's name be misspelled?, you ask. It's their name; can't it be spelled however their mama chooses? Yes, of course, but most of these names are just otherwise normal names that have been spelled almost phonetically, which, to me, is misspelling.
A pageant mom probably won't name her daughter "Brittany." She'll name her "Bryttanee." A most recent example straight from a T&T episode is Sparkal Queenz. I swear, I did not make that up. And I am not the only one who has noticed this. One person who really dislikes this trend has a blog called "I Hate Your Kid's Name." It is hi-larious, but it does not tippy-toe around the subject.
Another way odd names have popped into my life is on school worksheets. I remember when the twins were still in elementary school, the politically correct compulsion to use as many multicultural names as possible got out of hand. Just trying to fill in the blanks on a vocabulary sheet was like trying to read a chapter in the Old Testament. The boys would get tripped up by these out-of-the-blue names like, "If Akbar has two apples and he gives one to Elodie, how many does he have left?" Dick and Jane must be too old school.
I doubt Japanese students who are kicking our butts in math are reading worksheets that say, “Madisyn has five shelves that can hold eight paint cans each. How many cans do the shelves hold in all?”
In full disclosure, I must admit that in second grade I tried to change the spelling of my name and signed all my school papers, "Jyll."