Lucky #12

I really like learning stuff and I like when kids learn stuff and tell it back to you and sound smart. That's probably my favorite part. Sounding smart. So, when my daughter told me all about Paul Revere and taxation without representation, I was really psyched. Because she sounded so smart. Then I went to her classroom and saw how they have learned all about Democracy and the Greeks and things that quite possibly I would not know upon standardized (or any other) test. So you can imagine my elation when I was told that by the end of the year she would be expected to write 5 paragraph essays.

So if you went to grade school with me, you'd probably remember that I'm not super coordinated. I'm not a freak but I've never been, shall we say, a sportswoman. When people flick their fingers toward me I do blink excessively, when I'm challenged to go to a new place I can seldom find it because of a small issue with telling right from left. I was on the tennis team in high school so you can imagine the confusion when I closed my eyes when the ball flew at me, my coach yelled "run right" and I ran left. Anyway, it's not very cute.

So at the Parent Night at school, I was leaning back on the kids mailboxes for a little relax and fell backwards as easily predicted but never anticipated. A parent was busy asking some ridiculous question about band practice so I'm not sure how many people noticed but as I pulled myself up I looked at the mailbox and was struck. I was struck hard. The mailboxes were numbered 1-17. Every night, my daughter places the number 12 on her paper. I had thought it was just one of those bizarre things that kids do like making a heart or smily faced dot above their lower case "i" but as it turns out, she is #12. She is literally a number. And it is 12.

Now, she has tried to explain this to me before but I didn't think it could be true. I mean, she's learned a ton of little cool facts about the ancient greeks in only 3 weeks! I think that she is learning a lot about the tea party and proper paragraph structure and even some math. She's sounding smarter and more grown up by the day!

One time, when I was 15 I went abroad for the summer. My father who loves Brussel Sprouts, along with the rest of my family, took me to the airport and walked me to the gate (ahhh - a different time and place). While we were waiting, I could see my father becoming more and more anxious. Finally he collapsed on the floor, grabbed my ankles and yelled "don't leave me, Baby!!!" while my mortified Mother scooped up my sister and walked away in an attempt to pretend at being a mere passersby.

So perhaps you can tell that being an individual has never bothered me - clumsy with a side of parental humiliation has a way of making you ever more confident. I suppose that time will tell how #12 feels but I sure hope that she always knows she's special and unique and, well, much much more than a number.