Terminated

You might know that I tutor a first-grader named Collin every day at 4 o'clock. Sometimes I hate the kid, but a lot of the time he's pretty cool, and I love, love, LOVE watching him improve in reading. He's such a real little person. It's great.

I've been gone a lot recently, what with Italy and the senior beach trip, and I totally missed the little guy. The week between Italy and the beach was a ton of fun with him, because he'd missed me too. He was extra good and fun and gave me pictures of my favorite animal {white tiger}. I was happy when I drove to his house on Monday at 3:55.

His mom answered the door, I complimented her new haircut, and she said,

"Thanks! Collin actually doesn't have homework."

"Oh," I said, surprised. "Well, cool." I'll just go home and continue to unpack my bloated suitcase.

"He made his reading goal," Mrs. Deanna continued. "and they don't have homework for the rest of the year."

"Oh." My mind stopped and focused on the moment. "Wait. Oh. Oh, he doesn't have any homework...ever...?"

Mrs. Deanna nodded, smiling. "Yep, he's good. He still has to read three times a week to keep up the skill level, but no more homework."

"Well, that's awesome!" I said, smiling. "How cool. You must be glad."

She nodded. "The peace around the house has been great."

"Awesome," I repeated. "So, you want me to come three times a week?"

"Nope," Mrs. Deanna shook her head. "No, we've got it. He's doing great with us now."

"Oh. That's great!" I shifted my weight. "I'll just see you guys on Sundays then."

"Sounds good. Thanks so much, Stephanie!"

"No problem..."

She called the dog back inside and shut the door as I got into the Kia, turned my music back on, and maneuvered down their driveway.

Today hasn't been that great for me emotionally. I haven't been crying or anything, and nothing awful has happened, but I've been scared out of my mind and finding it difficult to breathe.

I'm about to leave my entire life behind me, whether physically if I get into Wake Forest, or symbolically if I end up getting a job and ceasing to be a child.

I cleaned my room today and almost flipped out. Just seeing normal things puts me on the edge of an emotional abyss of...void. I'm trying to hold on to things that are constant, like my family and...I mean, and God...and...well, I've been having trouble coming up with things that are solid.

It never occurred to me that I'd be losing my tutoring before school was out. I knew the end was near, but I didn't think I'd run right into it. I didn't realize I was about to hit a cement wall of k-thanks-bye.

Mrs. Deanna was very nice about it, and it wasn't as if I were getting FIRED or something. Losing that job is difficult and sad because I owe my parents $100 a month for being a dumbass and getting in a car wreck, and tutoring was my only source of income.

But the money isn't what hit me the hardest. It was driving down their driveway for the last time. It was saying "bye" to their poodle for the last time. It was knowing I'd never have to be home by 3:55pm again. It was knowing I'd never hear Collin say, "Ooh, that was ninja E" or "NO PEEKING" or "Is that gonna be your new favorite book?" again.

I'm gonna miss Collin the Demon Seed. I'm gonna miss pretty much everything about it, I realize now. The challenge of making him get things correctly, the joy of watching him understand, the fun of having lightsaber duels when we finished early, even the tantrums and days when it takes him an hour and a half to spell six words.

I'm gonna miss him, but the worst part was the abruptness. I had no idea his homework didn't continue up til the last day of school. Yesterday I had a steady income and a kid's education in my hands. Today all I have is an empty wallet and a hole in my chest.

One of the last few things I could count on has been yanked out from under me. I don't like this whole "growing up" thing.

~Stephanie

Eat My Salt

<<<<< Hm?

I tutor a first-grader named Collin. Sometimes he likes to stall and take maybe three or four minutes to get his butt to the kitchen table.

I don't really care. I usually just end a text conversations or look through pictures on my phone or read whatever junk is on the table until he comes down.

Yesterday, though, he took a lot longer. I waited.

His house is big. It's expensive. It's that kind of semi-awkward quiet where you're not sure if people are REALLY in other parts of the house, or if they're just lurking around.

I started thinking about The Sound of Music.

Have you ever seen The Sound of Music? There's a part where Maria comes to the Von Trapp family's house for the first time. Their house is big and expensive and awkward-quiet. The housekeeper tells Maria "Wait here, please" and goes to get Captain Von Trapp.

Of course, no one in movies ever "waits there," and Maria ends up in the ballroom, dancing around, only to get discovered by a none-to-happy Captain Von Trapp.

Then there's the part in Princess Diaries when Mia is waiting for the Queen to come downstairs, and she lifts the lid off a random glass container. Of course it makes a loud clatter when she puts the lid back.

Those movie scenes flitted briefly through my head without any real processing. People are stupid, I thought. You know how that is. You think about it, but you don't really THINK about it.

So I kept killing time. I checked my phone, I looked over Collin's spelling test, I centered the centerpiece, I looked at the salt and pepper shakers. They were sort of people-shaped. Maybe. Hm. What were they?

I turned one of the shakers around, expecting to see a face or something decorative, but there was nothing to see. What a boring salt shaker. Or maybe it was a pepper shaker.

Which was it?

Sense of judgement = blank.

*tips shaker over*

*ten thousand tiny white grains spill everywhere*

"Oh, sh't." It was a salt-shaker apparently. With especially large holes.

*hears footsteps coming*

O_O

Here I'd been, judging Maria for wandering into another room, and Mia Thermopolis for peeking into a dish, and what do I do?

I dump salt everywhere.

I'm not proud to say that I just brushed the crap onto the floor and hoped it would disperse enough that it wouldn't be noticed. I'm pretty sure it worked.

*sigh* Moral of the story: Don't judge characters so harshly. Chances are you're every bit as dumb.

~Stephanie

P.S. The next day, they had moved the salt and pepper shakers from the table :3 They probably thought one of their kids did it. Little do they know that on occasion, and eighteen-year-old can be just as childish as a first-grader XD

Re: I Tutor Satan

I dreaded going to Collin's house yesterday. It takes me two minutes to drive to his house. But I usually leave at like 3:50, because the sooner we start, the sooner we get finished. {One of the simple, grown-up logics that does not translate to seven-year-olds.}

However, yesterday I left the house at 3:59, and the childlike logic of Oh-How-About-I-Actually-Just-Put-It-Off suddenly made sense.

I walked into his house...he wouldn't tell me where his backpack was, insisting that I already knew. {Turns out it was on the floor in front of me.} Once he got the backpack, he wouldn't sit down for a little while. But eventually he did.

He'd forgotten to bring home a book from school to read, so we got one of his old favorites, "No, David!" that he can read in about five minutes.

We set the timer.

2 minutes and 24 seconds. Bam.

Then it was time for spelling. I braced myself, but refused to let him see that I was just as reluctant as he was.

In Collin's class, the kids are given a spelling test every Monday with about twenty words on it. The teacher highlights the words that he misses and sends the list home with him so he can practice the missed words. He tests again on Thursdays and Fridays, only having to write the words he missed.

This week, his missed words were what, back, snack, prism, and pyramid. In past weeks, Collin has never improved. The words he misses on Monday, he continues to miss all week, mostly--if not entirely--because he's a stubborn brat. Yesterday, I was expecting no different.

But he pulled out his list...AND ONLY PRISM AND PYRAMID WERE STILL HIGHLIGHTED.

:O O.O WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!

He got three more words! Our practice and my refusal to let him cop out even when he hated me paid off! I was through the roof with excitement!

"Collin! Great job! Look at that! You got THREE MORE WORDS! That's awesome! Don't you feel great? You should be so proud of yourself. I'm so proud of you!"

But I knew we still had to practice prism and pyramid. Things were sure to go down hill then.

He resisted the practice, as usual. Refusing to sit up, moaning, not holding the pencil.

But then.

He stopped. He sat up and sounded out pyramid.

He got it.

"Great job!" I said, high-fiving him. "Alright, now let's try for prism. Sound it out; say it slow for me." He did. "This word is kind of tricky, because it sounds like it has a Z in it, doesn't it? But it--"

"I know," he said, looking me straight in the eye. "It's an S, like in was."

*blink*

"Ah, yes. Yes, it is EXACTLY like that. Good job."

And he wrote the word.

:DDDDDDDDDDDD

*victory dance including screaming, beaming, jumping, etc.*

What do you freaking know? Tuesday's afternoon of holy flaming Hell paid off! He gets the words! He listens to me! He doesn't hate me! This is GREAT. I feel like a rockstar, and he does too, which is even more important. Yay :D

Wonder how long this'll last...

~Stephanie

I Tutor Satan

The awkward moment when you want to murder a seven-year-old.

No seriously.

Every weekday afternoon at 4pm, I drive 2 minutes to the house of this first-grader named Collin to help him with his homework. Collin is blonde-haired and blue-eyed and--upon first glance--reasonably cute.

I have known Collin since he was one year old, and as long as I've known him, I've disliked him. Mostly it's his parents' fault. In their eyes, he can do no wrong. Spitting? Adorable. Screaming? Adorable. Kicking? Adorable.

Now that he's in first grade with homework, his parents are starting to realize that Oh, Hey, This Isn't Adorable. Their solution? Hire me to be a parent for them five hours a week.

In my mind, it's not quite Collin's fault he's a holy terror. He couldn't speak coherently until he was six because he was spoken to with baby talk until he went to kindergarten--where he stayed for three years. Everywhere he went, it was all about him. No one ever made him tow the line. No one ever told him no. No one ever expected him to play fair.

Until I came along.

I was not raised like Collin. I was taught to say "please" and "thank you" and form sentences consisting of the correct words, in the correct order, with the correct pronunciation. I was taught that you treat others the way you want to be treated, that the world does not revolve around you, and that the quickest way to Nowhere is to be a brat.

Needless to say, Collin and I are on different wavelengths.

Despite that, we actually got along very well for the first six months of his grade-school career. I ran the show differently, yes, but Collin seemed to like the structure. He liked the way I didn't assume he was an idiot. He liked the way I told him no.

I taught him all kinds of reading tricks, like "O-U says OW, like when you hit your knee on something" and "A-Y at the end of the word says AY" and "See the E that's separated from the A by just one letter? That's a ninja E. It's quiet, but it makes the A say its name."

I started to enjoy tutoring Collin, and I think he liked it himself. His grades went up and he became second in his class. I was working hard, but so was he. HE was doing well. HE was learning to read. HE was improving. It was great.

And if the story ended there, it really would be great. But it doesn't, and it's not.

This semester marks the beginning of Collin's spelling tests. That means he has to know how to spell five words a week. It's not even that big a deal, and he could spell them if he tried. But for God knows why, spelling has turned him into a completely different--and infinitely more hellacious--child.

If he just sat there saying "No, I won't," I wouldn't care. If he sat there SCREAMING "No, I won't," I could handle it. But he does more than that.

He won't sit in his chair. He gets up even after I've told him multiple times not to.

He throws things. And then either A) accuses me of doing it, and goes off on a long, loud tirade about "WHY'D YOU DO THAT? GOSH, STEPHANIE!" or B) demands to be allowed to go pick up whatever it is he threw. So he can chuck it again.

He snatches things, be it the book, the pencil, the paper, or anything else not attached to the table. He's especially fond of trying to rip the homework from my hands while screaming, "YOU'RE GONNA RIP IT! STOPPPPPPP!"

He thinks it's all a joke. He laughs. He smiles. He thinks he's adorable. That's not completely his fault, seeing as how it's been practically drilled into his platinum blonde head since he was born. But I have news: he's not adorable.

He's Satan.

He makes up his own rules. "In MY world, I don't tell lies and you have to let me go play." "Well, you said you would read this page for me." "We always take turns doing spelling words." "You promised me you'd let me get juice." We're not in your world; no, I didn't; no, we don't; and how dumb do you think I am?

He's stubborn. And not the silent type of stubborn. He does all of the above relentlessly, and today he wouldn't stay in his chair no matter what I said. So, I sat beside him and put my arm around him. Not going anywhere now, are you? That pissed him off. Insert twenty minutes of us sitting like that, him repeating--among other things--"Well, until you let go of me I'm not gonna be ready to write the words. I'm not gonna write the words til you let go of me. Too bad we're gonna be here for like three days."

Twenty.

Effing.

Minutes.

This is AFTER I'd gone through an hour and a half of the aforementioned Hell.

The only way I kept myself sane was by breathing slowly and forcing myself to smile and keep my voice even.

He thinks HE'S stubborn? I had news for the kid: He was pitting himself against the WRONG GIRL if he was hoping to out-stubborn me. He was looking at the girl who, as a child, sat in a kitchen chair for two hours because she didn't want to take a vitamin. He was looking at the girl who beat her FATHER in a verbal head-butting battle at age nine. He was looking at the girl who won Mock Trial, conquered chemistry, saved a playground and became a general in an all-boys playground army.

WHO IS HE TO CHALLENGE ME?!

Turns out pretty close to my match. But not quite. Yeah, I outlasted him and we wrote the spelling words. But holy mother.

I don't know what changed when January first hit, but I hope we get over this bump in the road quickly. I don't know how much longer I can keep myself from shoving a pencil up the little demon seed's nose.

Pray for me. I have to go again tomorrow.

~Stephanie