Shane is finally getting a little education back into his life. With the schools now closed for another month, we’re not sure how much of this we’ll have in the near future.
But today, Shane participated in an AP class – online. The College Board (responsible for things like AP tests and SATs) has decided to allow kids taking AP classes to take the AP exams for those classes. In other words, they can still get college credit.
Only a few weeks ago, we had no idea if the AP and IB kids would get credit, even though they worked all year long with that goal in mind.
This year, Shane is taking AP Government. He has loved both of his teachers, and he’s learning a lot. Sometimes he even talks about it at home, which is when I learn something, too.
Today’s class was through the College Board’s (new?) You Tube channel. Shane was doing a jigsaw puzzle and missed the first few minutes of class, but we (I) quickly got him signed on when we (I) realized what time it was.
There were nearly 8,000 other AP Government students “in” his class.
“Even if you went to Virginia Tech,” I told him, “you wouldn’t have this many students in your class.”
While he was sitting at the computer, and the teacher gave an overview of our voting system – the topic for today – I noticed that Shane wasn’t looking at the screen. The teacher was using visual aids and Shane was twirling a stick instead of looking at the screen. At one point, he was completely backwards in his chair.
I noticed – but tried so stay quiet. When he was literally not facing the screen, though, I got suddenly frustrated.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked.
Shane stopped twirling his stick and looked at me. “I’m listening,” he said.
And I remembered: he really was listening. In kindergarten, Shane was the kid who would be lying on his face, not looking at the teacher, and yelling out the correct response to every question. Part of it was his vision processing disorder. Another part of it was just … Shane.
I corrected myself pretty quickly. “Sorry, Shane,” I said. “I forgot you can listen without looking like you’re listening.”
“This is a review of stuff we’ve already learned anyway,” he said.
“Oh good!” I said. “So this is actually going to help you study for the exam!”
“Well I have my notes,” he said. “But yeah I guess.”
The mere fact that Shane knew the material – even a little – excited me. Since the College Board has decided to only test on Units 1 through 3 in this particular class, I was afraid they might be teaching him new material. Fortunately for everyone, they’re just reviewing.
The reviews will be helpful. If nothing else, they will give Shane a chance to regain a tiny sense of normalcy in tumultuous times.
Once a week, for 45 minutes, he can study the U.S. government. And that is something. It may not be wildly entertaining or even helpful. But it brings with it the sense that, on the other side of all this abnormal life, we will continue.
A lot of people seem to have “come down with” OCD lately; it’s a joke on social media everywhere. All this hand-washing is essential! they say. I must have OCD!
Even though Shane really does have OCD, and I probably do, too, the jokes really don’t bother me. In fact, it’s kind of nice that people know how it feels to be obsessed with avoiding germs.
Shane and I both wash our hands ridiculously often, and we have since long before we heard the term “coronavirus.”
The other day, Bill was – quite seriously – trying to tell me how to get gas from the pump, that I should use hand sanitizer before and after touching the pump. If he hadn’t been so dead serious, I would have laughed. I’ve been using hand sanitizer three or four times during the course of getting gas, and using my sleeve to open my car door, for as long as I can remember.
But Shane doesn’t have “typical” OCD.
Shane’s disorder, in fact, is Responsibility OCD. Basically it tells him that his thoughts can trigger tragic or catastrophic events: anything from the death of a loved one to the end of the world.
It’s akin to when I was a child, with my own OCD symptoms. I constantly looked down at the ground when I walked, partially to avoid stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk.
This was because I once heard, “Step on a crack, break your mama’s back” – and I didn’t want to hurt my mother. So I didn’t step on a crack for about ten years.
When I finally did, around age 23, my mom’s back was fine. Go figure!
But here we are, having a global pandemic. And Shane has Responsibility OCD, where he sometimes feels responsible for catastrophic things that are entirely out of his control.
The world is (hopefully) as close to ending as it will be in our lifetimes and less than a year ago, Shane was overwhelmed by the feeling that he was able to cause horrible things to happen, just by thinking random thoughts.
I didn’t want to mention this to Shane, because he’s been doing well in therapy and he has been pretty good at taking care of his own problems. But sometimes he doesn’t talk when he really should.
So, finally, I asked Shane if he felt like the pandemic was his fault.
“What do you mean?” he asked. There was a slight flicker in his eyes.
“Do you think you caused this with your thoughts?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all.” And since Shane doesn’t lie, I believe him.
Then, before even a minute had passed, I started to worry that, with my question, I’d caused Shane to believe that he caused the pandemic.
And a few days later, I was still worried about it. I had to write Shane a note, to make sure he knew that there’s no way he could have caused anything to happen with his thoughts, let alone a global pandemic.
Which one of us has the worst case of OCD, I wonder?
Day five of self-induced seclusion: starting to look like all the other days of seclusion.
I sleep in – way in. Shane and I both get up around 10:00. Dylan sleeps in until well past lunchtime. We’ve talked to him about that, but he doesn’t seem to care that we’d like him to get up in the morning.
We eat. We are fortunate to have enough food to last us a month. None of us want to cook, except Bill, who has made chili, steaks, tacos and stew. We’re always happy when Bill cooks, but we complain about it anyway.
We play board games: Monopoly, Uno, Stratego. I beg to play Labyrinth and Zootopia but no one will play those with me. They say they take too long. What do we have, if not time?
Yesterday, Dylan figured out a way to play online games with people in other areas. It didn’t work well, but it did work. We’ve mastered FaceTime and Skype, and are learning WhatsApp. This will come in handy when the kids actually get to travel overseas – although Dylan’s trip to study in Italy has finally been canceled.
We do stuff on the computer. Dylan is still choosing classes for fall, which is great fun for me. Shane is preparing to be an election judge when the primaries roll around – although the primaries in our state have now been postponed until June.
Shane has lots of time to do his online training. He’s also got some school work he can do. But he doesn’t do it. He plays video games and watches YouTube and puts stuff on Instagram.
We walk the dog. He gets two or three walks a day now, since everyone wants to go outside.
We watch some TV. I don’t know why we don’t watch movies or read more books. We got several dozen of each at the library, just in case.
We talk. We spend time together at meals, during games. It’s the best part of the whole pandemic. If there is a good part of a pandemic.
I go to bed around midnight. I dream that I stumble into large crowds, anxiously trying to get away from the sweating, spitting bodies.
I wake up in the middle of the night, every night, and can’t get back to sleep for an hour or more. I toss and turn and think about coronavirus. It’s why I sleep until 10:00.
Every day looks like every other day. Doctors, dentists, oil changes and orthodonture: all canceled. We don’t even get takeout from our local restaurants. We just stay home. We avoid the large crowds that I dream about, but I still dream about them.
Down the street is a park with basketball courts, baseball fields, picnic tables and a playground. I’d love to say that it’s deserted, that our efforts are worthwhile – but in real life, every day those parks are packed with people, playing ball and sliding and swinging and running. No two people stay six feet apart.
I want to run screaming into the park, “Go home! Go home!” but I know they won’t listen to me. Apparently they won’t listen to anyone.
I stay home. I wait. I pray a lot. I hope. And then I wait some more.
I don’t often order from Amazon anymore, since they became a company that ships mostly out of China and can’t be trusted with regard to expiration dates on food, sizes on clothing, or quality on ANY items. In fact, I try not to use Amazon at all.
Given that we are now in a nationwide crisis, I’m sure I will loosen the reigns on my self-imposed “rule” about this. And actually, I recently succumbed to the lure.
This wasn’t a good idea.
I ordered five things. Most importantly, I wanted a specific type of lip balm, which I can’t find in any of my local stores. In order to get the free shipping, I had to find $35 worth of stuff to order. (I canceled my Prime account years ago, when I realized that Amazon was deteriorating.) Looking back, I should have ordered $35 of lip balm.
Five days later, I got a note: “Good news! Your items have shipped!”
In the good old days, my items would have shipped within a few hours of my placing the order. This is no longer the case. First, I wait until someone decides to actually ship my items; then I can start counting the days for my order to arrive.
Several days after that, four things arrived in a HUGE envelope – a DVD for an upcoming road trip (now canceled), and makeup that Shane wanted for his play (indefinitely postponed).
The website said I had to wait an additional week for the lip balm.
Among Shane’s makeup items, the eye shadow cracked, which meant that the other three items were completely covered in black soot when I opened the envelope. I had to contact customer service, who assured me that they would take care of the packaging problem and send me replacements right away.
I told them the DVD would be fine, since it was sealed in plastic.
So they said they would send new makeup, packaged properly.
The next day – the very next day! – I got the exact same huge envelope, with the exact same makeup inside – this time, unbroken. There was no new packaging, and the fact that the eye shadow wasn’t cracked this time was just dumb luck.
Meanwhile, my lips were cracked and sore. Two weeks had passed.
I went on a trip to visit Dylan without the lip balm. While I was gone, Bill told me I got a package from Amazon.
“Finally!” I told him. “It’s lip balm; feel free to open it.”
Bill opened it. It was not lip balm. It was a black-and-white flannel dress, with a matching flannel belt.
“I didn’t order that; it must be a gift!” I said. I called my parents and asked Dylan – but none of them had sent me a gift.
Three days later, I returned home to find the dress and tried it on, still utterly baffled. And still waiting for the lip balm. It had been three weeks.
Like most of Amazon’s stuff, the dress was made in China and didn’t fit. So I looked carefully at the envelope to see who it was from: AmericaRX.
I looked back at my Amazon account. The name of the company sending the lip balm? AmericaRX. They’d sent me a flannel dress instead of lip balm.
I won’t bore you with the details of my conversation with the Amazon rep. Amazon couldn’t replace my lip balm, but they refunded my $5.63.
So I have $30 worth of makeup and a DVD, and a flannel dress.
After waiting three weeks, I bought the lip balm at our local car wash.
It’s scary.
It’s really, really scary.
Except for some people, it’s not. Some people are still out. They are hanging out in stores and restaurants, having parties with their friends. Schools are closed, so they’re playing basketball and tennis and going to the playgrounds with their toddlers. They’re having picnics in the park. They’re swarming the bars and standing oh-so-close.
Dylan sent me a video of a Tennessee gathering in the streets. It looked like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. There were people as far as the eye could see, crammed together and drinking, while the music blared from huge speakers somewhere. I have no idea what it was. But I thought: Do they really think this is a time to party?
I am an ostrich, most of the time. I like to stick my head in the sand and not read the news. I don’t want to hear about Trump’s Tweets or the murder-suicide of a local family. I basically try not to listen.
But in this case, there’s just so much evidence to which we need to pay attention – and there’s only one simple message: STAY HOME.
My kids hate it. My husband, who works in the healthcare system, hates it. And I hate it. But if we would ALL stay home, we could STOP this crisis from killing thousands and thousands of people!
Yet, thousands and thousands of people are still out there, tempting fate. They must be ostriches, too. Or they don’t believe what they read, hear, and see. They don’t believe the irrefutable evidence.
Thankfully, we have a governor who is insisting on things closing down. He closed the schools, canceled all large gatherings. He’s ordering a shutdown of the bars and restaurants, starting tonight at 5 p.m. A handful of drive-thru’s will remain open.
I know it’s hard. And it’s scary. But I have pulled my head out of the sand for this.
I want to help, to do my part, to stay home as much as is humanly possible. I don’t want to be part of the problem.
I want to help save the world.
And by trying, I am teaching my kids to do the same.
Today is the last day of school for Shane, at least for awhile.
It’s the last of a lot of things, I think, at least for awhile. I mean, heck, they shut down Disney World.
The governor has declared that there be no gatherings of groups of 250 or more – which means our plans for the weekend no longer exist. The concert Dylan was attending is postponed. The show we were all attending is also postponed.
Activity centers are closed, so my dad won’t have his senior sports activities anymore. All recreation centers are closing, in fact, as are libraries, sports events, theme parks and indoor swimming pools.
Restaurants are staying open, but I can’t imagine how they will fare. As one accustomed to frequenting movies, restaurants and parks, I see only parks in my immediate future.
I wasn’t sure what to do when I realized we’d be hunkering down for a month or so. But in spite of my general food hoarding tendencies, I knew I could use some more eggs and milk.
So I went to Costco last night, not in an urgent-despair mode, but just because I wanted a handful of things. And I got some of them. Pasta, however, was no longer on the shelves. And where was the sliced cheddar? No whitefish salad, either.
A lot of things were no longer on the shelves. In fact, Costco was a madhouse. My mom and I were just trying to make a quick trip, and it became an unforgettable adventure.
The lines for the cashiers started at the front of the store and went down the center aisle, three deep, all the way to the back wall. On the far side of the store, another two lines snaked to the back wall.
The back wall is about a mile from the cashiers.
The aisles were blocked by abandoned grocery carts, reminiscent of an apocalyptic horror movie. Because of the masses of people in line with their loaded carts, it was tough to navigate the store. We squeezed through the people, browsed one aisle, then squeezed back out the way we came to go to the next aisle.
We tried to find pasta but the pasta was gone. As is the case with stores everywhere, the toilet paper and bottled water was gone. Odd foods were gone, like bagels and cakes. Bananas and bread were gone – except Cinnamon Raisin. There was a whole bunch of Cinnamon Raisin bread. Costco should probably stop selling that.
Costco sells more food and drinks than anywhere I’ve ever seen – but the shelves were virtually bare. Empty boxes were strewn about; there were empty wooden crates and platforms in every aisle. And there was an air of desperation. No one smiled.
But I wasn’t feeling desperate. I felt more … intrigued. I am scared, but in a confused way.
It feels like I am preparing for a tsunami to hit – but living 500 miles away from the shore. I know that serious – even catastrophic – trouble is ahead, but I don’t know exactly how it’s going to affect my family.
So I bought my nitrate-free Canadian bacon, red pepper hummus and two-percent milk. When I got home, I ordered a ridiculous amount of cereal online, and another month’s worth of dog food. And then I sat back to wait, along with everyone else, for that tsunami.
Dylan’s college has extended spring break. He will get another week! Unfortunately, Belmont is canceling his Easter break. And there are other changes in store, too.
After his extended spring break, Dylan will be doing classes online until April – as much as possible. He is taking voice lessons and a P.E. class called “Group Games.” I’m not sure how those will be handled.
This is, of course, all thanks to the coronavirus. Colleges are making the same kinds of decisions all over the country.
While I am not in panic mode (yet) – even as a worrier – I think it’s a good idea to have him home. Dylan’s campus was ravaged by the flu in January, and Dylan ended up bedridden for three days, alone, with no one to help. The thought of him lying in that bed again agonizes me.
And Dylan – who isn’t the least bit concerned for himself – has Reactive Airways Disease. That means that a disease that attacks his lungs – like, say, COVID-19 – would be more deadly for Dylan than most people.
This terrifies me. I remember Dylan standing at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night – a three-foot-tall toddler in the dark. He was trying to wake me up, to say “Mommy?” but it came out in a clogged, raspy gasp – and he couldn’t form an actual word.
Dylan couldn’t breathe.
I called 9-1-1 and we raced him to the hospital. He had a cold.
So I’m in no hurry for Dylan to contract this particular virus, even if Dylan thinks – and declares loudly – “I will be fine!”
In early April, Dylan and the rest of the Belmont students are scheduled to return to campus. This, I think, is nuts. I’m pretty sure Belmont thinks it’s nuts, too, because why would you send the kids back to school when the epidemic will be at full-force?
Shane, of course, is being fairly careful. The OCD is amazingly helpful in this situation. Shane’s hands are raw from all the washing, and they were like that months ago.
But he’s still in public school, and the school district is “monitoring” the situation – which, given our current numbers, is probably wise.
For now, they are thoroughly cleaning the schools. One school district closed for a whole day, just to clean up. How is that helpful? The virus only lives for two hours on an inanimate object. Every night, the virus dies all by itself. And the teachers had to do the cleaning!
In addition, Shane’s spring break is coming – but the Grand Gesture college road trip that I’d planned for Shane is now indefinitely postponed. We were traveling through Nashville to pick up Dylan during his Easter break – who now won’t be able to travel with us. And how would Shane get a feel for the colleges if there are no students on the campuses?
So the world is shutting down, temporarily I hope. And we’re taking it one step at a time. I am worried, but trying not to be a crazy person.
We’re washing our hands like crazy people, maybe. And I have enough vitamins, supplements, medications, bottled water, food and dog food to easily last two months.
To be fair, I always have that much crap in my house. But now, I might actually use it.
I drove to Nashville on my own. Bill and Shane didn’t want to make the trip to see Dylan’s band, since 22 hours of driving in three days is a rather long jaunt. Plus, I’d been planning on spending some special time with my college-bound son anyway, and I wanted to spend some of that time with him alone.
Traveling alone is fun. Sure, it can be tedious, and driving can be a bore – but I was able to stop whenever I wanted, eat whatever I wanted, and listen to books on tape that only I liked – for all 22 hours.
Best of all, though, is that I arrived in time to spend time with Dylan. We had a late lunch (for him) since he’d gotten out of bed at 2 p.m. And we had a nice, long talk over our grilled cheese sandwiches.
Then he had to get ready to perform, which was overwhelmingly exciting – for me. Dylan took it in stride – changed his shirt and brushed his hair, probably at my insistence – and then wandered over to the record store for mic check.
I was not allowed at mic check.
But when I arrived in the tiny venue, with no seating and standing room only for about 50 people, Dylan and his band were belting out a song. I was afraid they’d started early, but they hadn’t. They finished quickly and disappeared “backstage.” Dylan’s friend and I waited for about 10 minutes, until the band finally emerged and went on.
It was my baby’s first gig. And since it happened on Homecoming night – the biggest basketball game and dance of the year – a whopping seven people were in the crowd.
And oh MY. It was loud. They sang about half an hour’s worth of music, all of which I filmed and put on YouTube for anyone who really, really, really likes metal.
I am not particularly a fan of metal.
But it was so much fun watching Dylan. Listening to Dylan. Even with ear plugs in – which were essential – I could hear that booming voice. While I longed for the days of Willy Wonka and Frank Sinatra, Dylan was obviously having a blast.
It transported me right back to when I was his age – a teenage groupie, hanging out in my boyfriend’s garage to hear his band practice. I thought I was the coolest girl on the planet – which is interesting, thinking back, because not only was I not cool, but I’m not sure how I determined that I was cool just because I was sitting there watching – but I felt exactly that cool again, at the age of 55, watching Dylan’s band blow the roof off the place.
By association – somehow – just being there made me cool. And all those geeks at the Homecoming game, well, they missed out.
After the show, another band played, and I watched Dylan and his college friends bounce around in a makeshift mosh pit, as if they were part of a 10,000-person crowd.
It was awesome.
Dylan is having a rough time in Sociology – a really, really rough time.
Unlike Dylan, his professor is exceptionally detail-oriented. She has provided enough detail on his syllabus to make it eight pages, including “tips” like “bring a pencil” and “use the bathroom before class.”
For Dylan, who prefers getting the gist of things and moving on… he can hardly see straight, trying to read this syllabus. He can’t figure out what’s due when, or what’s essential homework versus what’s just a suggestion.
In addition, she’s provided dozens of “extra” handouts and links (many broken) so that students can learn more about the concepts they’re exploring in the class. These aren’t for the test – they’re just for “fun.”
For Dylan, these extras are just confusing. Why are they there if he doesn’t really need them? His head has been reeling all semester.
After missing two homework assignments (“I really just didn’t see them!”) and getting D’s on his first two exams (“Why is it so hard for me?”) – Dylan had an epiphany.
Dylan started doing the things he should have done right out of the gate: he got his student support services documents, he texted the members of his Sociology project group, he got a mini-syllabus (from me) with the extraneous crap deleted.
Then he texted me: “What else can I do?”
This was not a whine. It meant – “I’m on a roll! What else can I do?” He was doing everything he could to put his life back together and be hopeful, even in Sociology.
I asked Dylan about his change of heart – his mature, adult response to this horrible situation.
He texted back: “My worry depletes rapidly when I do the next right thing instead of worrying about the last wrong thing.”
WOW, I thought. That is an utterly brilliant statement.
I told Dylan it was brilliant. I said that I thought that would make a great bumper sticker, and that seriously everyone should hear it. But Dylan (correctly) pointed out that it’s much too long for a bumper sticker.
Then my sister said she wanted to use it as wallpaper for her daughter’s wall. And I said, “I think I will have t-shirts made!”
Then I remembered: My next door neighbor makes t-shirts.
So, I went out and had Dylan’s entire quotation emblazoned onto t-shirts for my whole family. And when Dylan arrived home for spring break, I gave him one.
“Did I really say it just like this?” he asked.
“Verbatim,” I said.
“If I’d known you were going to make t-shirts,” he said, “I would have been more concise.”
Fortunately, I put the inscription on the backs of the shirts, and Dylan has long hair. Under his hair is the crux of the quote:
Do the next right thing instead of worrying about the last wrong thing.
It’s a motto by which I will try to live.
Shane is having trouble in math.
I don’t mean, really, Shane is having trouble with math. He is good at math, and doing okay with the concepts. He gets it. He knows how to study. But he’s having trouble in math – in the classroom, in the room itself.
His teacher isn’t teaching.
Shane told me a month ago that his teacher puts up problems on the board and “mumbles some stuff” and then he sits down and tells them all to do their homework.
But they don’t know how to do their homework, because five minutes at the board isn’t exactly “explanatory” and certainly isn’t sufficient for students who know nothing about what’s being presented.
New concepts come and go, and Shane does his best to figure it out. He spends lunchtimes with his former math teacher – the one who actually teaches her students – and she teaches Shane how to do all the things he should have learned in math class.
So… I’ve started seeking “help” for Shane, at his request.
A month ago, I followed the conventional methods: I contacted the counselor and begged for another teacher. The counselor assured me that there would be no switching classes due to teacher preference. When I explained that another teacher was teaching Shane at lunchtime, the counselor seemed fine with that. She said it was expected that all math teachers would “back up” other math teachers.
The counselor suggested that I contact the math resource person – the head of the department – so I wrote a detailed email to him. He never responded.
Finally, yesterday I wrote to the principal. The principal talked to Shane and emailed me to say that the math teacher would be calling me.
The math teacher called me. We talked. I told him Shane wasn’t understanding anything he said in class. He told me that Shane was doing fine. He said that Shane is welcome to come in at lunch and see him if he needs help.
Shane, of course, learns nothing from this math teacher.
“He came to see me one morning,” said the math teacher. “And he hasn’t come to see me since.”
Oh, surprise! He didn’t LEARN anything from you. Why would he go back?
“He doesn’t understand you,” I said.
I wanted to say: You are not helping him because you are not teaching him because you don’t care about your students and you don’t know how to teach!
Instead, I told the math teacher that Shane is seeing another teacher at lunch, because she is actually teaching the material. He understands her. Shane’s current math teacher assured me that Shane is doing fine.
Shane is getting a B in the non-honors math class. This is not “fine” for Shane.
I texted Dylan, who has had this teacher three times. Dylan said, “I just taught myself how to do it. That’s literally all you can do.”
After all that, Shane is no further ahead than he was at the beginning of the semester, begging for a different teacher – one who teaches.
So today, I will send out a follow-up email. And then I will wait again.
Meanwhile, I will worry that all I am doing is aggravating the teacher who can’t teach, and that he will take it out on Shane. But I simply can’t sit back and do nothing – not with Shane pleading for help.
So, here we go again.
