Posting #100

Okay so this is going to be my second blog in a month after not writing for over a year. As may have been obvious from the entry I just posted, I didn’t really know where I was going with it. That’s not unusual in and of itself. Often I’m not sure where an idea will take me. Mathematical concepts are an easy fallback and I found myself thinking about the idea of 6 degrees of separation, which is where the whole calculation about how much time it could potentially take to collect and share ideas from 7 billion people came from. Anyway you slice it, though, there wasn’t much said in that essay.

I just put the boys to bed after watching the 1953 version of Peter Pan with them. There was a fair amount of general sadness afterwards, nothing to do with Pan but rather with Mama not being present for bedtime. This was the first week back to school for both boys, so understandable there would be a little bit of angst.

Because of said angst, I delivered on my promise to tell an extra bedtime story after lights out. I asked if they wanted a giraffe story. Starting a couple of years ago I developed a whole Serengeti world replete with a four-member Giraffe family, Old Elephant and Baby Kale, Young Lion, Wise Baboon, Mama Hippo and Baby Amanzi (which means water in Zulu), and several others. I was tired and a giraffe story, like a blog about math, would have been an easy fallback. But Felix didn’t want a giraffe story. He wanted a story from when I was little boy.

Felix asked, wasn’t there a story about a mean teacher you had? I had to think about that and was drawing a blank, fortunately most of my grade school teachers were pretty kind, until he reminded me that I’d told them about a time when I was so afraid of our computer lab teacher in early grade school that I’d wet my pants rather than ask to use the bathroom. I can still remember that. I can still remember the surprise I felt at how much pee there was, still remember pretending to feel sick and going down to the principal’s office and asking for my mom and her coming to get me, and I can still remember my principle, Mr. Koopman, giving me the benefit of the doubt and commenting on how rainy and wet it was outside, that was obviously how I’d gotten so wet. Mr. Koopman was kind. That can make all the difference.

I didn’t, however, revisit that story, beyond acknowledging it. Instead I told them about third grade, when I really wanted to be an author, and the stories I used to write. I told them about my third grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson-Lamb, whose husband was a real life auctioneer. I figured it might make them laugh if I tried to imitate an auctioneer.

Then Felix asked, Dada why did you decide to become a doctor, instead of an author, if that was what you really wanted to be?

And I said that I became a doctor because I really wanted to help people, which is true, but that also some part of me still wants to be an author, and Sam asked which part, and I said my left knee and we laughed. And then I said that maybe I still will be an author someday, I’ll keep being a doctor but I’ll be an author too, because it’s possible to be more than one thing, like how you both want to be musician welders. Or welder musicians. I forget which and sometimes the order is very important, to my four- and six-year-old.

Maybe someday I will be an author. A doctor author, or an author doctor. Right now the order isn’t so important, to me as a forty-something-year-old. Can I be three things? A dad doctor author? Really, if I had to choose just one right now, that would be it. A dad.