The Lighter Side of Homework

Freestone came home from school the other day and said, "I was the only person in my whole class who got 100% on the French homework." I said, "Wow, that's great! Why do you think you were the only one?"

 He shrugged and said, "I dunno. I guess I was the only one who BOTHERED to have their mom write down the answers and then copy them."

 I loved the emphasis he placed on the word "bothered." My first thought was, "Yes! I was right!" And then: "Oh, wait...is that...cheating?..." But this was the day Freestone was using Google Translate to type in his horribly misspelled French words, hoping Google would spit out the correct spelling. He needed help! 

This morning, Xanthe's reading log question was, "Describe the character's motivation and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events." She looked at me expectantly. I looked at her expectantly. Then we both burst into laughter. We laughed five minutes straight. First I was laughing because it was such an absurd thing to ask Xanthe to articulate. Then I was laughing because Xanthe's laugh is so adorable. Then I was laughing because WHO CARES?! It's Diary of a Wimpy Kid! Nobody is going to write their dissertation on it!

 We decided that the character, Greg, decides he wants to have a really fun summer. So he gets a haircut. I thought it was a non sequitur, but Xanthe was very pleased with the answer. OK. I would probably start a fun summer with a haircut, too. In fact, that's exactly what I did last June. I wonder what my motivation was, and if that haircut drove the sequence of events of that summer, such as dying my hair pink and driving across the country. Or if those events in turn will lead to me taking my kids out of the public school system and driving to Mexico.

 Which reminds me of Ari's story problem last night: "Miguel says he has 325 baseball cards and 272 football cards. He SAYS he has a total of 597. Do you think he is right?" Um, you know, we wouldn't have to wonder about Miguel's integrity OR his math skills if we just used MATH to figure out the total. But by the time actual math comes into play, if it ever does, I won't know about it. I'll be cooking fresh fish out of my VW bus on the Gulf of California, and I won't give a darn about how the fish will influence the sequence of events  The only time I'll use math is to number the stars I'm sleeping under with my grubby, wild children. 

Or, we'll just stay here, because I like electricity and indoor plumbing.