OT: Evil Spawn, was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Oops, I forgot...

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach AEllin Olafs dotter:
>Ooh, I love that store... I discovered it when it was a block from 
>where I caught the bus home... *G*
>
>I'm a bread baker, not a sweets person, so I've mostly resisted the 
>products, but you can't help drooling... that is where I get food 
>coloring, and baking pans, and extracts, and...

I was looking for pistachio extract there yesterday, but they were 
out. Coulda gotten ground, shelled pistachios several blocks east 
(think Lexington Avenue), but it's pretty expensive. Someday when I'm 
rich I'll experiment with festicade, which is basically a period, 
pistachio marzipan...

>Oh, your Spawn has my sympathy. I was in the same boat, at his 
>age... Partly, I was sometimes understimulated (read - bored silly) 
>and partly teachers seemed to think I should understand everything 
>at a glance, and thought I was acting up if I didn't understand 
>something, or asked a question. Well, you know, I ask questions... a 
>lot of things aren't obvious to me because I see problems they 
>don't. And there really are things I do have trouble with... Oh, 
>yeah, I did stop working hard after finding that it didn't help me 
>with many of my classes... I mean, I wasn't stupid... :-\        I 
>don't really know the answer to how to fix it.  Wish I did. And you 
>therefore also have my sympathy...

It does seem that it's very hard for someone who doesn't know him 
well to gauge his ability. He's hugely above grade level in some 
areas, slightly above average in others, and just average in still 
others; teachers often make the mistake of assuming he's Thomas 
Jefferson or something, and when he doesn't perform up to those 
expectations, assume he's a dunderhead who managed to fool them once, 
but not twice. So it can be difficult for him. On the other hand, 
while we all know that high grades in a given curriculum (especially 
one as weird as that of District Two in Manhattan*) don't always 
translate into intelligence or even achievement in the real world, 
but unfortunately low grades produce a sound very like the slamming 
of doors in one's face.

[* Q: How many District Two math teachers does it take to change a 
light bulb? A: Well, there are a great many different ways of solving 
this problem, and as long as a consistently effective strategy is 
used to find the solution, no one way is better than any other way. 
As long as it works for you, it's a perfectly fine strategy. What was 
the question again???]

Well, we had an idea... it seems his cousin is getting married in 
Mexico in May, and we've already said we couldn't be sure we'd have 
the time and cash to make the trip at that time. In the mean time, 
his other cousin, the groom's sister, wanted to bring him, on the 
condition that he manages to bring his averages back up to the SP 
level.

My lady wife and I discussed this at just slightly louder than 
conversational tones, in our bedroom, which shares a common wall with 
his. Anyway, we concluded that this wasn't going to happen. We 
wouldn't mind his going, we agreed, but figured most of the time, it 
was just going to be a lot of teenage girls in bikinis and mass 
quantities of seafood, and we agreed our son, who'd just be turning 
thirteen, wouldn't have any interest in _that_. [Muffled sounds from 
other side of the wall, possibly indicating a child just realizing 
his parents are psychotic aliens.] And it was a long time to be 
without the strict supervision of his parents. And besides, he'd 
probably have to miss _at least_ a week of school. [Louder noises 
from other side of the wall, possibly stifled cheering or some kind 
of seizure...]

It seemed like a pretty well-thrown-down gauntlet. Evil Spawn (tm) 
last seen studying periodic table of elements. We'll see.

Adamantius