Story of the Day 1/ 26/ 2009

I thought wrong.
I thought that the theme for yesterday was gift certificates, but that is wrong. Gift certificates are the theme for today.

Today , Aaron got a gift certificate. From a woman.

She had helped him with his order. Well, with his messed up order. She got him a refund. And then she gave him a gift certificate with some money on it, because of all the trouble he went through. The trouble was the hour she spent with him trying to get the order fixed.
Aaron was a bit relieved it was from a woman.
I know this because he didn’t try to give the gift certificate to me.

Of course, that might also be because this certificate was for a bookstore.

Then, my husband got an apology in the mail.
Land’s End apologized that his order was shipped late and didn’t get to him by December 25th. So, they enclosed a gift certificate to make it up to him.
Of course, my husband didn’t really care if the shirt arrived before December 25th, which has no significance to us. But then, they couldn’t see his kippah when he placed his order over the internet.

He also didn’t’ offer his gift certificate to me.

I must be losing my touch.

Story of the Day 1/ 25/ 2009

My son is special.
That isn’t even a reference to his being in Special Ed.
Of course, in the context of our family,. We don’t’ really notice it,. But when we venture out into public....

My son went to Target, today.
He was dressed in his usual style.
Well, he did wear pants. Often, it is pajama pants or shorts, even in sub zero weather, but he must have been feeling especially conservative, today, and he wore pants.
And his rainbow hat.
And he was buying himself a pull up bar. One of those bars you put over your doorway and use to do pull ups.
And a movie.
The movie was in a pink DVD cover with rhinestone letters and pictures of three cute girly girls.
When he went to check out, the total was $40.11.

He told the guy working the cash register, “I have $40, can I give you that and put the rest on my ATM card?”
The guy handed him a card. A gift card, and told him to slide it through.
Aaron slid it through.
Then the total was $39.11, and Aaron gave him the $40. The guy gave him the change. And told him to keep the card, since it still had $5 on it.

Aaron is not sure if he should feel, guilty, embarrassed, or flattered.
His sister told him there might have been a bonus for buying the pull up bar.

After hearing that, Aaron is hoping that is true. He told me that it is the 4th and best option.
Feeling relieved.

Story of the Day 1/ 23/ 2009

I was in art class.
Well, it isn’t class. There is no teacher. There are no students.
It is “open studio”. We all pay some money so that there will be a model.
And there is coffee.

Coffee is important.
There was also some gingerbread cake, but that is because I brought it. It was not nearly as important as the coffee.

And I was early enough to get a good horse.
In art, horses are things you sit on. They don’t’ smell or poop or anything interesting, but they are very useful - wooden benches that hold you and your drawing board.
I was there early enough to grab a good one.
Well, to grab the one I like.
Actually, I don’t’ give a shit which one it is , as long as I don’t’ get splinters in my legs or butt, but I am picky about where it is. I like to be on the west side of the room, center, and scooted back.

Yes, it is kind of like religious services.
At religious services, I sit in the second pew behind the bima ( reader’s platform), in the second seat. And if someone is in my seat when I arrive, I sit somewhere else, but I am NOT happy. I do, however, try not to make mean faces.
Try. I don’t’ always succeed.
Working against me is the fact that I find it hard to get to services on time. Services start at 8:30. AM. I would say that 8:30 AM is for crazy people, but my husband goes at 8:30 AM, and he might read this.

Anyhow, my idea of on time is about 9:15 or 9:30. Not late enough to have missed anything important, but not so early that I can’t stay seated long enough to get past the devar (sermon) before I take my bathroom break.
Bathroom breaks are important.
They are important because I drink coffee.
And coffee is important.
And they (bathroom breaks) are important because they get me out of services.

I almost always take the long route back from them. I walk through the social hall and look for someone to waste 5 minutes with. All in an effort to make the remaining time I sit in services bearable. Bearable as in not too long. Hey, life is short and so is my attention span, but at least I am honest about it.

In our old building, some of the older guys would time the devar. If the rabbi went over 10 minutes, there was grumbling. If he went over 11, there were comments from the floor. Um, okay, they still do this in the new building, I was just being…polite. Or oblivious, or something.

Anyhow, it is a bit like that, kind of , sort of. My place was free, and I grabbed it.

On Fridays, Dick usually sits to my right. That is his “place.”
He also usually grabs a horse. The other option is an easel.
I am not an easel person. I am too lazy. I like to sit.

I will say, Dick is a lot nicer than I am. Either that or he hides his possessive streak better than I do, because, today, someone else grabbed his spot. And it was an easel person, not a horse person.

The easel guy seemed friendly enough, and vaguely familiar, but since I never remember anyone, who knows.
Since we were early, he asked me some sort of a question, and I realized that I had met him before, probably in a different open studio.

Then, he said, “ I was listening to NPR, and they have this new announcer with this very distinct lisp. I mean, why would they hire that person to announce?”

And I said, “Actually, my son announces news, on some evenings, for 89.1, and he is deaf. His speech is more distinctive than a lisp.”

Needless to say, that killed the conversation.

I think he would have preferred to have Dick glaring at him.
And he wasn’t even in my space.

Story of the Day 1/ 19/ 2009

This is an old story, but it keeps coming up- but my apologies if you have heard it before.
At any rate, it came up at lunch , today.
At lunch , my daughter Sarah was carrying on about IQ tests.
Now, I have a very personal belief that IQ tests are good for two things, looking for learning disabilities and getting qualified for special education services.
They don’t’ tell how smart or dumb a person is, although, sometimes, they do say something about their personality……
Somewhere in the midst of the discussion, my son asks me if he got to be in honors classes because he did well on his IQ test…..
Well, actually, his IQ tests did measure intelligence. Just not his.

You see, when he was little, not quite 3 years old, he was being “evaluated” to transition into school services. He was deaf, which qualified him, but in order to assess his needs , they did a whole bunch of tests, including an OT (occupational therapy) and a PT (Physical therapy) evaluation, and an IQ test.
The woman who tested him asked me if it would be okay to do the longer test. Apparently, it is not popular with parents, and she wanted the opportunity to do it .
Before she started, I asked her if she had any familiarity with testing children with hearing loss.
“No.” I then suggested that she speak with my son’s audiologist, before testing him, since I thought she should have some insight.
She told me she would.
Then, she did the test, which largely amounted to asking me pages and pages of similar questions like, “How many words does he use in a sentence?” “Does he use proper word order when he uses an adjective?”
I interrupted a few times to tell her she really needed to speak with my son’s audiologist, and she assured me she would before she finalized her report.

A few weeks later, she came out to the house to give me the results of her testing.
My son was “mildly mentally retarded.”

Of course, my son is not mildly mentally retarded, and this theoretically well-educated woman hadn’t bothered to find out anything about testing children with hearing loss either from my son’s audiologist or from anywhere else.
I did however, as a result of this , learn that her intelligence was impaired.
Over the years, I have seen her slated as speaking at this function or that function, and I always get a laugh. Her name is Patty Martin-Brown. If you ever see that’s he is speaking anywhere, I do not recommend that you attend.

So, I tell my son this story, and then I explain how well he had done in such a short number of years.
Okay, he didn’t’ do all that well at signing. But that isn’t’ my fault, I did try.
But, when he started taking off with his spoken English, I remember his speech therapist explaining very carefully to me, that even though he was making great progress, I should not expect his language skills – either signing or speaking- to catch up to that of Hearing children. He ‘d had much too late of a start to catch up.
He was probably about 4, when she told me this.
By the time he was 7, she was telling me that she thought he might someday actually catch up., She didn’t’ want to promise, but.
By the time he was in 5th grade, he had essentially caught up.
That doesn’t’ mean that he spoke the same as a Hearing child would- his speech is still a little special. In a very nice way, or that he heard what was going on around him, but he was doing well enough that he had straight A’s , all year. Straight A’s doing the same course work as all of the other students in his general ed class. That meant doing papers and writing answers and even giving speeches. Although that is another story.
So, imagine my surprise, when he started Middle School and I found out that they had placed him into remedial classes.
I complained.
Well, you knew I would.
And I was told that they were concerned how he would handle having multiple teachers, and these classes had less teachers and more tiem to focus on et students.
I still complained. The work was beneath what he had been doing the year before.
I was told that eh could be moved at the end of the first quarter, assuming he had doen all-right.
Well all right was straight As.
But they didn’t’ move him.
And , yes, (you knew it was coming) I complained.

On my way out of an absolutely frustrating and unproductive meeting, a staff member pulled me aside and told me to have him retested. His IQ retested.
“But why?”
Because it was low, so this administrator was judging him on the test from when he was not quite 3, and not on anything he had accomplished since then.
I tried to tell her that an IQ test doesn’t mean anything, and she told me to “just do it!” Because its administrator would not understand anything else.

So I did.
I requested that he be retested.
A month later, he was moved into all honors classes, and for the next 2 ½ years, every time I ran into that administrator, she would tell me how brilliant my son was.
And I would think, “And you are incredibly stupid.”So, I suppose that an IQ test can measure intelligence, although, not necessarily of the person taking it.

I will also tell you an important detail.
Back when my son was getting ready to turn 3, and Ms. Martin-Brown presented me with this evidence of his mental retardation, my response was, "Do we get more services?"

I have always been pragmatic.

Story of the Day 1/ 15/ 2009

It is 10:49 AM. I have already had too much excitement for one day.

There was a two hour school delay, so, because I wanted to make sure my 14 year old got safely onto her bus, I left for the Art Center, late.
When I arrived, I found that they had cancelled classes.
This might sound bad.
I mean, I drag my butt out of the house in -10 degree weather and drive to work, and then get told I didn’t’ have to come, but work is a grand total of 8 minutes from my house. And that is if there is traffic and I hit red lights. And if f I hadn’t gone, I would still be in my raggedy pajamas.

That is because Friday is bathroom cleaning day- and I am a loyal follower of the Kamikaze method of bathroom cleaning.
And when I am done, I am both filthy and coated with ammonia fumes, so I head to the shower.
So why would I shower and get dressed before doing this, also?

So, here I am , dressed, moderately bright eyed, and ready for the day.
Sound good? The problem is that I am not even cslightly ready for THIS particular day; I just don't know it, yet.

I start cleaning my house.
Cleaning my house means tackling…paper piles.
In my house paper piles reach ungodly heights and can threaten ones health if they get disturbed. Don’t’ laugh. Getting hit by a collapsing pile of papers that is over your head can be deadly.
So, I tackled a paper pile, and found a piece of mail from yesterday.
And I opened it.
My checking account is overdrawn and they have also stuck me with a $25 overdraft fee.
Overdrawn?
I go to the computer desk and search through that paper pile.
Only a day ago, someone from the bank called. All friendly. She wants us to deposit more money.
In a CD, in a money market fund, in anything.

Getting cold calls from the bank? I wonder if I can check to see if our bank is about to go under?
But I took the lady’s name and number- so, now I call her.
She looks up the account.
I explain that, yes , I wrote a large check that was withdrawn on Jan.9, but that I had made an equally large deposit on Jan 2. At 10:20 AM.
I read her the deposit slip information.

The bank has no record of it.

They want me to fax them a copy of the deposit slip.
This is the same bank that couldn’t’ give us new checks , when our house burnt down. Oh, we had identification, and money in our account that we could have used to buy shoes, food, maybe even rent an apartment and get off our friends’ sofas, but the bank just happened, at that time, to not have a bank manager- so they couldn’t issue us checks.
This is also the same bank that lost our safe deposit box, although, they did eventually find it.
Okay, it was broken, and it was only lost for a very short while. So, that isn't too bad. And, eventually, they got us one that wasn't broken.
That eventually was several years.
Thsi is also teh same bank that totally messed up my son's account. And then woudlnt' return my husband's many phone calls.

Back to the deposit.
Someone at the bank is sent to research it. He does and it is eventually resolved.
As in fixed. Considering the fact that the fix came today, I can say that this bank is improving.

Then, I had to call the police.
Yes, of course it involved the Deaf School, and I can’t say anything more about it, at this moment- except that it did not inspire confidence. Well, it alsowasnt' quite as bad as it sounds, read in this very brief "and then I had to...", but that also doesn't mean that it was a positive experience.

So now it is 11:17 AM. And I have already had too much excitement for one day.
I think I will go back to bed.
Even though I am dressed and ready to face ...a different day.

Story of the Day 12/25/2009

Part 1

My son is a working stiff.

He works at a local movie theater that is about 15 minutes away from our home.
It is perfect for a variety of reasons.
He has a friend who works there- who has worked there for a while. A very nice guy named Adam.
It is always nice to have a friendly face at work.
The pay is decent for a high school student. Not if you have to support a family and not if you have to pay rent, but for a guy who needs some spending money for the good things in life, like graphic novels and posters, it is perfect.

And there are freebies.

He can go see movies for free. He can take a few friends in with him for free.
He can eat popcorn and drink pop, when he is at work, for free.
And he can even have his immediate family come and watch a movies while he is working, for free.

Okay, there are also some not so perfect things about these freebies.

First of all, shortly after starting the job he found out why it is not good to drink that much soda pop in one day.
Wired. Very , very wired, and peeing . And, oh the stomach ache from the caramel corn!
And, the movies at this theater are not captioned- which means that , they may be free, but he has no idea what he is watching. Except that the visual effect are either good or bad.
And his family can come and watch a movie for free, while he is working.

That, is obviously the worst thing.

Oh, not so bad that his two cute sisters came, but his mother…who gushed at how cute he was standing behind the concession stand counter- and had to take a couple of photos of him.
“Aaron, look at me! Smile! Aaron, smile!”

The poor guy is still trying to recover.


Part 2

So, we arrived a little early.
My son told us that we had to sign in to get in to see the movie for free.
Of course, this was not just Indianapolis, this was a movie theater in a not so popular location (hey, it is near my house, this isn’t a put down, it is a reality) and it was Christmas Day.
So, with no wait, we came in, the paper was given to us to fill out (names, related to…) and we were given our tickets. We got to skip the entire waiting in line thing.

In other words, we got to go ahead of the other two people.

We had come to see a new release. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
I had never seen any of the trailers or heard the hype, but I was vaguely familiar with the story. I had read it somewhere in the Dark Ages of man. I mean, late high school or possibly my first semester of college. Since I have grey hair and my children will tell you that I cackle, that qualifies as the Dark Ages. Oh, yeah, only the Hearing one will tell you that I cackle.

There were more people in the theater that I expected. Of course, it was one of their larger theaters. They must have been expected a crowd. And it was a new film.

There were a good seven of us. Sarah counted.

We found a nice empty row. There were a couple of teen girls about 2 rows in front of us, but no one else near enough to obstruct our view.
Esther went and got a cup of water from Aaron, and, Sarah picked the seat in the middle.
Every now and then, I would do my motherly thing and sign something to let Sarah know what was going on.
Remember, this theater doesn’t show captioned films.
And, each time, she would tell me to stop it, because Esther had signed it to her.
The theater was pretty dark (that is kind of the idea), but I gradually realized that Esther was sitting on the other side of Sarah signing the entire movie to her.

What in the hell had happened?

This is the girl who wouldn’t even sign hello or the time of day to Sarah, just couple of years ago.
My God! She has stopped being a teenager and become nice.
I would have fainted and slid down to the floor, but the fear of what was stuck on the theater floor managed to keep me upright and even semi-conscious.

It was a good movie.
I am teased, sometimes, by my family, because I have a tendency to cry at films. And I did get a little teary at two points. I was slightly nervous that one of my girls would tease me about it, so, at the end, when Esther asked me if I had cried, I hesitantly admitted to my two small displays.

Instead of teasing me, Esther told me that Sarah had cried FIVE times. Sarah watched this discussion, and then broke in, “No, ten, I cried 10 times.”
This is my daughter Sarah, the same Sarah who NEVER cries at a movie.

I was very well behaved and didn’t tease her.

Of course, I still managed to not be quite socially acceptable. Apparently, I was supposed to figure out who the starring actor was. But I had no idea, so, at the end of the movie, Esther, disappointed in my lack of cultural knowledge, let me in on that secret.
How am I supposed to recognize the guy? He never starred in any Star Trek episodes.

Story of the day 12/ 19/ 2008

My husband gets a huge number of calls, at work, but mercifully the nurses and clerical staff handle most of them. A tiny percentage of the total onslaught gets forwarded to his voice mail.
He was surprised when he received a message from a reporter at the New York Times who wanted to interview him.

Between the time he got that voice mail, and the time he actually connected with her, he had tried unsuccessfully to guess what the NY Times could be calling about, but each of his guesses were wrong.

The reporter was interested in pens; drug company pens, the free pens that are a staple of doctors and dentists offices, of nursing stations and ER rooms across the country.
You see, in just another few days, those pens will become extinct.
They will still be there- for a while. The old ones haven’t yet drawn their last inky breathe, but there will be no replacements, so their days are numbered.
You see, drug companies have decided that these ubiquitous advertisements for Viagra, Claritin, Hismanil, etc…well, it is too blatant a bribe, or some-such- and the drug companies will no longer distribute them.

What does this mean for you, the consumer? It means that the fun purple pen that you accidentally put in your pocket the last time you were at the internist may be the very last time that the doctor’s office leaves them lying around so freely.

Other than that? Well, I am not sure it means much- other than being the end of an era.

And why did this reporter from New York City want to speak with Dr. Larry Greenbaum of Indianapolis, Indiana?
For his Midwestern perspective on this issue?

Well, not exactly.
You see, in researching the topic, she came across an article written specifically on drug company pens. This article was published in a British medical journal named The Lancet.

The Lancet didn’t’ have any biographical information about the author, but she was able to Google this British writer and found out that he practiced medicine in one of the colonies…well, at any rate, in Indianapolis. Hence, the call.

In the end, my husband and she connected and had a lovely talk about drug company pens, socks, umbrellas, and a host of other odd items. And we are eager to see him in print, our very own drug company pen expert.

Now, despite his strong Midwestern accent (not), my husband is originally from new York. In fact, his parents and his sister and brother-in-law are still New Yorkers.
Every Sunday, my husband calls his parents to chat. This Sunday, he figured he had something interesting to share with them.

“Mom, Dad, I had a phone call from the New York Times, on Friday.”
After hearing this, my startled mother-in-law wanted to know why they had called him, all the way out in Indianapolis, about the problems she is having with her subscription!