The Joy of Proficiency

For past two springs, the mailman has brought a copy of a copy of a copy of a letter from the local school system.

The original names and dates on it are always whited out and the new ones are scrawled in by hand, but each time the message is always the same:

Your daughter needs to go to summer school.

That letter won't come this year, though, because according to Thing 1's last report card her reading skills are now, and I quote, "proficient."

It's been a long struggle for my little girl. It's been even more of a struggle for me.

Reading and writing, for whatever reason, came quite easily for me as a child (though poor typing, lazy spelling and the difficulty of proofing my own work continue to do me in as an adult). It shouldn't have, according to today's parenting experts, because I seem to recall spending most of my preschool days watching Gilligan and Maxwell Smart, wearing knees out on my pants from playing Hot Wheels and sitting in a beauty parlor for hours every week, drinking tea with too much Coffee-Mate in it while my Mom got her hair done.

So flash forward three decades or so and there's me, lying in bed next to Thing 1, getting verbally and physically exasperated. We'd read the same book every night for a week and every night, she'd read some word like "going" on the first line of a page, then struggle to pronounce it the next six times it appeared in the story.

We tried flash cards. Hit and miss.

We tried Hooked on Phonics. This drove us both nuts with the annoying repetitive songs and whatnot. After a few tries, we hide it in the living room closet. (However, it may work for you! Buy it used from me now on Amazon -- kindergarten and first-grade editions!)

Eventually, she was sent to summer school. Three hours a day for four weeks. Thing 1 told me that they talked a lot about feelings and civic responsibility in class. The school assures me that was part of the curriculum and that she was not accidentally mixed into a juvenile delinquent rehab class. I still have doubts.

The turning point came last year in second grade, for several reasons I think.

One, she had a couple of her best buds in class to share the pain of learning. For whatever reason, she ended up with only one of the 25 kids from her kindergarten class in first grade. Given her shyness around new people, that just added to battle. The bully who wouldn't assign her a role in the playground pretend games didn't help either. (Ed. Note: Thing 1 says she now handles this boy by chasing him around the playground threatening to kiss him.)

Two, her second-grade teacher was a good one who had a firm hand on the class. She needed it with a couple of those kids, whom I had to physically stop from trying to maim a squirrel with their bare hands on a field trip once.

Third, we hired one of the other teachers at school to tutor Thing 1 once a week. I think the extra attention -- alone with an adult who knows how to teach as opposed to a dad who, at this point, knows mostly how to go "Aarrrrrrgh! Why don't you get this?" -- helped her turn the corner.

And now, she is "proficient."

Papa's proud of you, girl.

Though he's also glad you're not that much better at reading, given the incident I'm posting about Tuesday on Dadcentric.com. See y'all there.

Fame - Is It Any Wonder

Two weeks ago, my first biweekly column for the local newspaper ran in print and on the Web. It had the immediate impact on the public that I expected. I think the term, used in most media circles, is "meh." 

Several of you read it out of a sense of loyalty, curiosity or, most likely, the same bizarre impulse that makes one continually use their tongue to probe a painful canker sore. I appreciate your obvious lunacy and how well technology has taught people to click with Pavlovian reliability on any link sent to them via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter (because I did all three -- I'm that desperate for attention). Now, can I interest you in some herbal Viagra?

Meanwhile, the reaction of the rest of the world whom I didn't cajole or bribe, well, mmm … let me give you two examples of how fame (or even infamy) did not reach these parts. 

First, there's the Mother of All Uncoolness. In the roughly 10 years I worked as a reporter for a daily newspaper, I'm not sure she ever once commented on anything I wrote with the exception of an interview I had with actor Kirk Douglas (whom, you should know, was 4-foot-7 and frail in real life but still gave off an air that he'd kick your ass if your questioning got out of line). To date, she still won't let me have back the autographed photo his publicist sent of the two of us. 

So, in an experiment, nobody told the Mother of All Uncoolness about my column appearing. Two days passed. I called her. 

"Hi, Mom -- so, did you read the newspaper Friday?" 

"Yes, I read it every day." 

"Even the editorial pages?" 

"Oh, yes. I always scan the pictures to see if I know anybody." 

"So you're saying you didn't recognize your own son!" 

"What!?" (I realized that The Mother of All Uncoolness, being quite hard of hearing, might have thought I said "obituary pages.") 

"My photo was on the EDITORIAL page. Right below the cartoon. I have a column now." 

"You were on there? Well, you should come over and visit more often."

She called back later to say she fished the newspaper out of the recycling bin and found my column. That was it. Two weeks later and she still hasn't told me if she liked it or not. And, yes, I have stopped by and seen her since. Twice.

The real test, though, was going to be my neighbor -- a retired lawyer whose wife told me that he not only reads the paper cover to cover, word for word, but even reads the week's worth of back issues he has waiting for him whenever they return from vacation. The three times in the past year I either had something I've written or written about me appear in print, he has always made mention of it the next time we've seen each other around the neighborhood.

A few days after the column ran, I was walking the dog home after escorting the Things to school when my neighbor drives up the street and pulls his immaculately clean and shiny black sedan over next to me. Yeeees! 

"Hey!" he yells across the front seat through the rolled-down passenger window. "What year did you graduate?" 

An odd way to start a conversation about how brilliant my piece was. Well, the column was about mandated standardized testing in schools, so maybe he's going to give me his thoughtful analysis of academic expectations of children during his era, mine and today. 

"You were salutatorian of your high school class, right?" 

"Uh, yeah," I said. "How did you know that?"

"There's a plaque up in the front hall of the school listing all the valedictorians and salutatorians. I was reading it before the basketball game the other night and saw your name," he said. "You know, you're a lot smarter than you look."

Well, apparently not.

Everywhere at Once; Nowhere at All

Yes, that's me at the bar last week. I'm again waiting for the others to show for our monthly Blog 'n' Grog. For the second time since January 1, I appear to be the only one in attendance.

It's 45 minutes past the start. I decide to finish my stout then return home.

Then this tall but doughy guy slurs his way up to me and asks if the stool next to mine is taken. At least that's what I think. It's loud and crowded in the bar and my hearing is notoriously spotty in these situations.

He offers to buy me another beer. That's like offering Keith Richards a little taste of smack.

He has the barmaid set me up.

Then he gives her a $20 bill and asks for tens in return. She turns to the register and he starts making unintelligible grunts that, by his gestures and body language, I interpret as being in reference to the barmaid's rather fetching rear compartment.

When she presents him with the tens, he hands her another $20 bill and asks for two more tens. She turns, he leers and slobbers, she gives him the change and then he hands her another twenty.

He does this another two times.

I'm simultaneously in awe that I have never thought of this ploy before while guilt-racked over being in awe because I was raised to lust far more discreetly and privately than this.

Shortly thereafter, the drunk guy with all the tens made from his twenties starts to come on to me. Very heavily.

He continues to do so even after Beth, one of my best blogging buddies who is not really a blogger but owner of the greatest day spa in all the county, shows up.

"Doesn't this bother you?" she asks when his attention goes momentarily elsewhere.

"No," I say. "This is actually the most attention anyone -- male or female -- has ever paid to me in a bar."

Which leads me to pimp my fitting review of the Paul Rudd/Jason Segel "bromance" I Love You, Man on DadCentric today.

Which then leads me to pimp my answers to questions on sex, romance and parenting on Hot Dads yesterday.

Which makes me realize I get be a whore and a pimp in the same post.

Awesome.

Shedding Extra Light on Your Seasonal Demise

Daylight Saving Time has been with us for almost two weeks and I'm happy to report that you, dear reader, are not dead. That's not a clever metaphor because I'm neither that smart nor that literate. Oh, I might have been at one time. But:

• 2,340 readings of "Go, Dog, Go!",
• about 6,208 games of "Candyland" (most of which I lost -- a pox on you, Mr. Mint!), and
• a few million viewings of "The Sonny Suite House of iWizard Montana"

have killed the few remaining brain cells the alcohol imbibed during my four years of "higher learning" had pickled and preserved for later use. 

There are good reasons why moving the clock an hour ahead makes me fear for your life. Unless, of course, you live in Hawaii. Residents in our tropical island state do not observe Daylight Saving Time. This is because federally mandated residency requirements for mai tai consumption, surfboard waxing and suntan-oil slathering makes it impossible to get a good grip on those tiny watch knobs. Frickin' socialist Democratic Congress! (Conversely, even though most of Arizona does not "spring forward" with the rest of us, I AM extremely concerned about those residents. You should be, too. Clearly, something is not right with people who willingly live in a desert without the express written consent of God via a burning bush.) 

To start with, I'm afraid you could have a massive coronary. This fear comes from doctors in Sweden who, during a break from their usual research into perfecting penis-enlargement pumps, analyzed the death rates of their fellow citizens. They found the incidence of heart attack is significantly higher in the first three days following the switch to Daylight Saving Time. Poor dead Swedes -- at least they made it long enough to enjoy a final Feast of St. Prinskorvblodpaltkroppkakor, which celebrates the end of winter with one last massive meal of pork-filling dumplings and blood sausage in a delicate triple-cheese sauce. 

Medical science also tells us that, according to a study of Australian death statistics from 1971 to 2001, men in the land of "shrimp on the barbie" (a phrase that never fails to make me think of little people tag-teaming a buxom plastic doll) kill themselves in droves during the first few weeks following the advancing of the clocks. Some will say this has to do with the time change messing with the body's circadian rhythms, thus adding stress to the body and mind. I, however, theorize that the real culprit here is bad Aussie pop music. How else to explain that the rate of self-inflicted deaths reached its zenith in 1988 right around the chart peak of Kyle Minogue's "The Loco-motion"? Further investigation into possible links to the pre-"Jessie's Girl" singles of Rick Springfield is now underway.

Wait, you say, there must be something good about Daylight Saving Time? Doesn't that extra hour of exposure to sun help combat seasonal affective disorder and let our bodies produce some vital vitamin D? Doesn't the added light at rush hour help prevent traffic accidents? Well, of course, it does! It also gives us all a greater chance of developing skin cancer. In scientific terminology, this is known as "a wash."

She's Not Testy Over Standardized Tests

Some people have test anxiety. My daughter, however, sees it as opportunity to indulge in her favorite pastime -- mass accumulation of stuff.

I learned this the other day when, upon the drive home from school, Thing 1 pledged her love to the Connecticut Mastery Test. The CMT, for those of you out of state and/or without children, is the major standardized test for elementary and middle school students in the Nutmeg State, a nickname for Connecticut that most kids don't know today because it won't appear in the form of a question on the CMTs. This is good because, frankly, it's a stupid nickname. "The Place in the Northeast Where the Natives Don't Have a Funny Accent State" -- now at least that would makes sense.

How well a school district's students do on the CMT forms the basis of its educational reputation. Fairly or not, this partially explains why in some circles our town's public schools are thought of as highly as those "how to operate your remote control" channels on cable and DirecTV. To make matters worse, schools that don't improve their test scores can eventually lose important federal funding because, darn it, this is America -- we can only support so many flawed industries and lost causes. Besides, when was the last time your kid donated to a re-election campaign, huh?

All school year, my third-grader has deluged me with reams of notices from school explaining the CMT, offering test-taking strategies and inviting me to forums explaining why I should pay attention to these notices telling me to pay attention. Naturally, I round-filed them all, instead opting to convince Thing 1 to shut off yet another "Hannah Montana" rerun and study her vocabulary words so, for once, she could ace her weekly spelling test.

My priorities, not surprisingly, were all wrong.

A teacher told me that even though the CMT now has a section requiring a written essay, the two things test evaluators don't take into account are spelling and handwriting. These people obviously had the same rigorous training as the ones who gave me a passing grade on the scrawl known as my 20th Century American History final in college, which was taken with a raging Jägermeister-and-Keystone-induced hangover. (Ed. note: Excessive drinking is not a state-approved CMT study strategy for students, but it is optional for teachers, administrators and parents once testing concludes.)

Anyway, I'm sure she'll do OK. Thing 1 been fed a steady diet of CMT strategies since kindergarten. For example, the walls of her school are lined with vaguely Orwellian slogans such as "Show what you know," "Rename = Title; Brief = Short" and "No. 2 pencils good; No. 4 pencils bad." Also, knowing my girl, I am pretty sure she viewed hours of filling in bubbles on an optical scan sheet as something akin to a government-sanctioned art class.

"Why are you so happy about taking the CMTs?" I asked.

"We have no homework for the whole two weeks during the test," she said. "And every day before the test, I get a new pencil and eraser!"

My expectations are now set. Test evaluators, if you are reading this, be kind. Her answers may be wrong, but they will be done in the neatest, blackest, most precisely filled-in bubbles in the state.

Moreover, please note how, when you look at them from afar, they form a perfect smiley face.

First Day. Rest of Life. Blah, Blah, Blah.

If you drifted over from my column debuting today in The Advocate of Stamford, Norwalk and the far wealthier suburbs: Welcome! Has anyone told you lately that you're technologically well-endowed?

If you're one of my regulars, God save you! How may I suck up to you today?

Embarking on a new, albeit part-time, career as a newspaper columnist has always been one of those dreams … that other people have always thought I should have.

COLLEGE GIRLFRIEND: You're a funny writer. You should be the next Dave Barry!

ME: No, I'm going to be the next Hemingway! Listen: "The night was cold. We drank absinthe. A bull gored the matador's buttocks like the Great Cal Ripken Jr. smacking a line drive through the Spanish mountains under the tall trees into the snowy valleys of the lioness's soft bits. We left Piscataway at daybreak."

We broke up. My novel turned into a novella that turned into a short story that is being revised for my upcoming Twitter showdown with Shaquille O'Neal. Eh ... so it goes.

Then there's My Love (that's my wife for those joining the program already in progress):

MY LOVE: I think you'd be a great columnist. You'd be the next Dave Barry.

ME: You know, after Dave Barry became successful he divorced his first wife and got hitched to a cutie sports columnist at his newspaper who was nearly 20 years his junior.

MY LOVE: Dave Barry sucks.

My Love can rest easy. The sports staff at The Advocate is all male. And around my age. And kinda hairy.

Then there's my biggest fan, The Mother of All Uncoolness (uh, that's my mom):

MAU: I told you to take some classes in broadcasting. Such a nice voice and face. You haven't shaved since Tuesday have you?

ME: But, Mom, everyone says I could be the next Dave Barry.

MAU: Dave Barry sucks. Look at that nice Nick Gregory who does the Ch. 5 weather … mmm! Must use a Mach 3 and hot lather.

I did end up working at a newspaper -- The Advocate's hoity-but-less-so-toity sister, Greenwich Time. First, I was a "stringer," which is newspaper talk for one who works cheaply and without medical coverage therefore requiring DIY surgery utilizing packaging twine. I worked my way up to part-time reporter (a stringer on salary, still without medical coverage but now with access to the newspaper's supply of Scotch tape and staples); then full-time reporter (wage slave who lives on free office "coffee"); and, finally, ended as a features reporter/copy editor (wage slave who lays out the horoscope page when not reporting on the latest fad diets).

That ended when My Love got a better job (yea for marrying people with ambition and marketable skills!) and we left Stamford for Texas 11 years ago.

In the Lone Star State, I did PR for a year … for law firms. You can come up with your own similes for that line of work but let me start you off: It was like trying to con Rush Limbaugh into being grand marshal for a "legalize marijuana" parade sponsored by anorexic gay Black Panthers sporting Randall Cunningham jerseys.

Afterward, I managed employee communications for a Fortune 500 company for almost nine years. About five years back, we moved back here, to my hometown, and I telecommuted until I was laid off in 2007.

That's right -- laid off in 2007. This is only fad of which I can lay claim to being an early adopter.

So here I am today, kinda back where I started in so many ways, working in an industry not-quite-dead but extremely cold, clammy and pale.

On Friday the 13th no less!

I think the philosopher Linus Van Pelt said it best:

"What are you talking about?" My Love interjected when I first mentioned this chronological coincidence. "The best thing that has ever happened to you was on a Friday the 13th."

It took a few seconds to register.

She was referring to the day we first met.

You know, maybe I'm going make it after all.

(What? Where's the music video of me tossing my Bridgeport Bluefish cap up in front of the Stamford Town Center? No budget? Pfft -- welcome to my frickin' world.)