When Dylan auditioned for his spring musical, it was just before the second semester contract took effect. He had a ton of missing assignments, many of which he couldn’t make up, and he was failing more than one class.
One of the classes he was failing was AP English – and his AP English teacher is also the director of the spring musical.
So Dylan auditioned in January.
“How did it go?” I asked after his audition.
“I totally bombed,” Dylan said. “I messed up the dance moves and I stuttered through the whole monologue. The only thing I did well was the singing.”
Dylan is a wonderful singer. Last year, he had the lead in the spring musical – and did a beautiful job. In fact, Dylan has had a lead role in every musical since he started participating in musicals in 7th grade.
This year, though, his AP English teacher auditioned him. His chorus/piano teacher – who has known him for three tumultuous years – assisted with the audition process. They both knew that Dylan was failing multiple classes – and students need a 2.0 and no failing grades in order to participate in extracurricular activities.
They’d seen last year’s musical, and they knew Dylan could do the job well. But, given the circumstances, they determined that Dylan was “not dependable,” and they gave him a part that could be easily cut – just in case his academic issues knocked him out of the play. (We learned this later, after he didn’t get a lead role.)
So he got a nameless role in the ensemble, which included one solo singing line and plenty of back-up singing and dancing.
Dylan had an absolute blast performing in the ensemble. While it was every bit as stressful during rehearsals, he took the role very seriously. He memorized the dance moves, he knew where he was supposed to be – and when – on stage. He didn’t lag behind (like he does in the classroom) and he always changed into the appropriate costumes beautifully.
He was enthusiastic and funny, dancing with grace and strength, and smiling through every scene. He smiled and smiled and smiled, like he did when he was little – like he did from the time he was six weeks old, until about the second month of sixth grade.
He was a shining star among shining stars. And the play itself, with its varying lead characters, was one of the funniest and best I’ve seen at any school.
After opening night, Dylan’s AP English teacher/play director called him aside.
“Dylan,” she said.
Uh-oh, he thought. He was sure he’d done something wrong.
“Someone just pulled me aside and asked me about you,” the director said. “She wanted to know who the guy with the long hair was, because he was doing such a great job in the ensemble.”
Dylan breathed a sigh of relief.
“I don’t know what you’re doing out there,” said the director. “But whatever it is, keep doing it!”
And he did. It may have been the best play experience he ever had.
While Dylan was taking SAT tests and doing fun stuff at home, Shane went away for the weekend to a Christian convention at the beach.
The group – including Bill, who chaperoned and drove – left right after school on Friday. Everyone stayed up until at least midnight while they were there. Shane slept on the floor in a sleeping bag – and he didn’t sleep much.
But Bill sent me pictures and videos as the weekend progressed, and texted me with updates.
The overwhelming tone of every message was: Shane is having a great time.
Shane was hanging out with his friends, and enjoying every minute. They went to enormous whole-convention events, with thousands of teenagers. At 14, Shane was one of the youngest participants in this teen-focused event. The schedule included a blazing, EDM- and rock-inspired concert first thing in the morning, and hooting-hollering comedy acts that started well past Shane’s bedtime.
In all the photos I received, Shane’s eyes were beat red. He was utterly exhausted. But he was awake and gazing at all of the excitement around him, and having so much fun with two of his good friends that he didn’t even realize how tired he felt.
It was a great experience for Shane, whose idea of a good time is – usually – to be wildly entertained without doing too much. If given the option, I think he would spend the entire day either watching YouTube or TV, interspersed only with breaks for junk food and posting stuff on Instagram.
So he summarily dismissed the idea of the convention when I asked if he wanted to go. It wasn’t until he found out that his friends were going that he even considered it.
When Shane was sick a couple of weeks ago, the electricity briefly went off. He was on the couch, with nothing to do, since the TV had gone off and he was still sick.
“How did people live before electricity?” he asked me, baffled.
I didn’t bother explaining that people had to forage for their own food every day. I knew he was just bored. So I told him, “Reading has been a nice past time for the last few thousand years.”
Shane was not deterred. “I can’t do anything except think! It’s only been 20 minutes without electricity, and I’ve already been thinking so much that I decided that Adam and Eve can’t be real because they were both white.”
I didn’t disagree, although I have no clue if Adam and Eve were white. I didn’t personally know either of them.
“Why does that mean they can’t be real?” I asked him.
“Because if they were both white, how could they be responsible for all the other races in the world?”
Hm.
Shane likes to keep the electricity on, so that he doesn’t have to face such things. As quiet as he is, his brain is always moving – unless he’s stimulated by some wonderful outside experience.
And over the weekend, the whole world was electric. That convention kept him so busy, and so focused on fun and good stuff, that he didn’t have time to think at all.
He could just be himself, and enjoy life.
Today there was a nationwide walkout to protest the never-changing gun laws in this country. Started by the teenage survivors from Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, the walkout included 17 minutes of silence at 10:00 in the morning – one minute for every victim of the Valentine’s Day shooting spree.
Here in the Hawkins household, this was a rather controversial event – but not for the reason you might think.
First of all, we still have a postcard from Sandy Hook Elementary School displayed on the front of our refrigerator. It reminds me every day of the tragic event that occurred there in 2012.
The postcard is a thank you letter from the school for the snowflakes we made and sent to the survivors of that tragedy. When the students returned to Sandy Hook, it was festively decorated with snowflakes from all over the world, letting the kids know that they were not alone in their suffering.
It was the least we could do. And it was the only thing that was done.
No one did anything to stop it from happening again – and again and again and again.
So when the opportunity came up for this walkout, which invited high schools all over the country to participate, our entire family was on board. I made sure I had the day off of work, so that I could transport Dylan down to Washington, DC, where thousands of kids would be congregating. And Shane’s middle school organized their own walkout – to the tennis courts behind the school – where they observed the 17 minutes of silence in their way, even though they were only in middle school.
Dylan, however, decided to go to school. He didn’t want to miss his play rehearsal, which happened after school. The administration said that if kids were absent it would be unexcused – meaning that any work could not be made up – and they were not allowed to return to campus for any extracurriculars, including play practice during the most important rehearsal week of the year.
The play opens in two days.
So Dylan went to school. Seven hundred kids – nearly half of the school population – was not there, but Dylan was.
He texted kids in other schools, and got Snap Chats of kids who were at the DC march. He knew he was missing something important, but he had weighed the consequences, like an adult. He was only missing one walkout, in favor of something that was also important to him.
In addition, he knew that our family is already registered for the larger, possibly more impactful “March for Our Lives” protest march that will take place next Saturday. There is an additional walkout planned for April 20 – the anniversary of the Columbine shooting – one of the “first” school massacres – which happened before Dylan was even born.
That’s how long nothing has been done.
I reminded Dylan of this, via text, as we were chatting about the importance of changing the gun laws.
“We can’t just let it die out,” he texted back. He is ready to march.
And he is right.
This time, please God, let’s do something.
Dylan took the SAT test for the first time on Saturday.
As far as I know, he didn’t prepare at all. It’s really easy to prepare these days, with Kahn Academy’s self-directed test practice, but I never saw him access that site. In spite of my begging him for two years to practice for it, and then pleading for the past six months, and then – finally – on my knees asking him to just work for half an hour a day for one week… he didn’t bother.
Since he didn’t practice this past summer for half an hour a week (like I suggested), I showed him something that I read that said his test scores could go up by 90 points if he would practice for just six hours. He said, “I did,” whenever I asked him, but I never saw him put down his cell phone long enough to do any practice.
So two days before the test, while Dylan was playing games on his PS4 and face-timing his friends, I stopped sleeping. I kept worrying that I wouldn’t hear my alarm on test day, and then Dylan (who has four alarms of his own) wouldn’t get to the test. I had suddenly realized that my husband would be out of town with Shane – and on regular school days, I counted on Shane to be my “back-up” alarm.
Of course, Shane never wakes me up. In fact, I never sleep through my alarm. I start waking up around 4:30 in the morning on days when I am worried, and if I do get back to sleep, I always hear my alarm anyway. But I panicked for two days.
Things weren’t going smoothly for Dylan. He lost his $110 graphing calculator. Coincidentally, Shane lost his $110 graphing calculator, too. So, two days before the test, I ordered a brand new (now only $70!) graphing calculator for Dylan to use, with overnight delivery.
It arrived mere hours before the test, and Dylan told me that it’s a terrible idea to use a new calculator for the SAT (as if he knew something I didn’t). “I’ve never seen one like this before,” he said – at 10:00 the night before the test.
“Learn how to use it tonight,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t listen.
Then he plugged it in, and threw the batteries in the recycling pile. I am not sure how the calculator works, but it seems like it might need batteries.
So on the morning of the SAT, I put in the batteries. I’d been up for half an hour, and Dylan’s room was still dark. There was no sound, no movement. Nothing was happening.
I remembered the day that he slept through his alarms and didn’t take his learner’s permit test. That was fine – there were other chances – but was he really going to do it again for the most important test of his life?
I’d asked him to put some brain-healthy snacks in a bag – but he didn’t do that, either. So, while I was working on his breakfast and watching the clock – and still hearing nothing upstairs – I put together a bag of fruit, nuts and peanut butter crackers. I put in an iced espresso and pineapple juice. I filled up his giant water bottle.
And I stared at the clock.
I wondered: do I wake him up, on the day he’s most supposed to act like an adult?
When the clock hit 7:30 and he was supposed to be downstairs, I still heard no sound.
I zippered his lunch bag and sighed. I slowly turned – and there, suddenly dressed and ready, was Dylan.
I got an email from Shane’s school, announcing upcoming events this week, including the induction of all the 8th grade National Junior Honor Society members.
The induction is taking place? I thought. Shouldn’t Shane be eligible for that?
I looked it up. From what I could gather, Shane would need at least a B average, and would need to earn at least 25 hours of community service per year.
Shane has well above a B average. And in addition to his dog rescue work and other volunteer positions, Shane gets community service hours from being on the school’s Morning Show. He has so many community service hours, in fact, that – if service hours were the only requirement – he would have been eligible to graduate from high school in the middle of 7th grade.
So I asked Shane. “Did you get invited to join the National Junior Honor Society?”
He was playing Germs.io on the computer. “Yeah,” he said.
“You did?” I asked, incredulous. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“It’s a very big deal!” I wailed.
“Well it didn’t seem like it. And I didn’t want to fill out all the papers just to join some club.”
“You didn’t want to fill out the papers.”
“Yeah,” he said, not even looking up from his video game. “It just seemed like more work.”
“Son,” I said, trying to remain calm, “It’s an honor to be invited to join the National Junior Honor Society. The word ‘honor’ might have given you a clue.”
He still didn’t look up. “Well practically everyone in the school got invited,” he said, likely referring to all of his close friends, who happen to be hard working, intelligent students like Shane. “It didn’t seem like any big honor.”
“It is a big honor,” I said. “And next time you get invited to join anything, please let me know – particularly if the word ‘honor’ is in it, and even if it doesn’t sound like a big deal.”‘
“Okay,” he said, and continued playing his video game.
The induction went ahead as scheduled, without my honorable son.
In addition to substitute teaching, I teach kids who are temporarily not able to attend public school.
The program is formerly known as “Home and Hospital Teaching.” Because I prefer to teach younger kids, I teach a lot of sick elementary school children. Once in awhile, though, I branch out and teach someone who’s a little older.
Recently, I chose to teach a child in 8th grade. Shane’s in 8th grade, so that seemed like something I could handle.
The paperwork said my 8th grade student had “severe school anxiety.” He had abruptly left school in mid-7th-grade. Nearly a year later, my job was to sit with him for an hour a week, inside the school, to get him re-acclimated. I was also supposed to give him work from the 8th grade curriculum.
So I did. I met with him several times, in the school environment, along with his mother.
As we walked through the halls, he would yell to his friends, “Hey, Bobby! How ya doin’?” and “What’s up?” and “Yo! How’s it goin’?”
Hm. This did not look like a student with “severe school anxiety.”
Then, when we’d get situated in our private room in the back of the library, this student refused to do any work. I tried a multitude of different tactics: easy worksheets, simple assignments, more complex assignments….
“I can’t understand this,” he would say without looking at it.
“Can you just read the paper out loud?” I would say. “Then I will know what parts are confusing to you.”
“No,” he said. “That won’t help.”
I examined all the possibilities. His reading levels were exceptional. His testing scores were good. He had no learning disabilities at all. He found math to be easy.
He just didn’t like work.
I tried to keep him going through one simple assignment: “Pick a book,” I said. “Any book will do. I just want you to let me know the name of your book by next week.”
And the following week, he claimed that he couldn’t think of anything he’d want to read.
“I went to the library for him,” his mother said. “But without him, I didn’t know what to get!”
A light bulb went on in my head.
“You went without him to the library?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “He just didn’t want to go.”
So I asked my student, point-blank, during one of our useless sessions: “What do you do at home all day?”
“Mostly I just watch videos and chat with my friends and stuff,” he said.
“Aren’t your friends at school?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But they come over when school is over and we just play video games and stuff.”
His mother allows him to do whatever he wants, I thought. There are no consequences at home for his refusal to do school work. In fact, she lets him stay home all day, every day, and do whatever he wants, seven days a week.
“It’s a struggle,” she told me. “He just doesn’t want to do anything.”
So my student did no work. He didn’t pick out a book, or turn a page, or read aloud, or write an answer to a single question.
This went on for three months.
Finally, after hearing from his other teachers, for whom he also did no work, and after several in-school meetings with parents and administrators, the student was dropped from the program, and did not plan to return to public school.
I can only imagine what he will do with his life.
This morning, Shane was dumping his leftover cereal and milk down the sink. At 14 years old, he finally knows to run the garbage disposal when there are large chunks floating around.
He ran the disposal for half a second. The large chunks went down the drain and, most likely (although we couldn’t see them), sat in the sink where they would rot all day until someone else ran the garbage disposal.
“Try running it a little longer,” I said.
He turned it on again, for two seconds. “Like that?” he said.
“Much better,” I said.
Then I realized that he wouldn’t learn “why” unless I explained the reasoning behind running it longer. I said that the big chunks would be stuck if they didn’t get sufficiently broken up and pushed through the pipes.
“Look, I’ll show you,” I said, opening the cabinet to show him what was under the sink.
“There’s something under there?” he asked, genuinely surprised but not terribly interested.
“Yes, there’s something under there,” I said.
I knew Shane wasn’t joking around, not knowing what was under the sink. I didn’t know there were pipes under there until well into my marriage, when my husband got under there to fix something.
I remember being genuinely surprised at the size of the contraption that was our garbage disposal. I remember being curious about where the pipes led. I remember questioning the entire sewage and water department, and I still wonder how those cereal chunks don’t end up in our drinking water.
But I was decades older than Shane when I learned about those pipes.
I’m the type of person who likes to learn only if I must learn. I could go the rest of my life without understanding anything new, and be perfectly content.
It never occurred to me that there was anything odd about this way of life, until I met my husband. While I spent my childhood walking around in awe, staring but not really caring, he was taking apart everything he could find, whether or not he could get it back together. He wanted to see what made it go.
But I still remember when I was admiring someone’s car one day, watching the water beads run down across the hood, sparkling in the sunlight. I thought it was just spectacular – those little droplets of water carrying so many colors.
“Do you know why that happens?” the car owner asked me.
I was in my mid-twenties at the time. “No,” I said. “I don’t know why it happens, and I don’t really care. I just know it’s beautiful.”
I think Shane has the preferential ignorance gene, too.
Schools are closed today.
About a week ago, school was canceled for the prediction of ice. It wasn’t icy. In fact, there was one day when our driveway was so icy, we couldn’t get out of it to go to school. But school was not canceled that day. We couldn’t get there, but it wasn’t canceled.
So instead, they canceled school when it was supposed to be icy, and wasn’t.
As a result, our school year was extended by a day – meaning that now the kids have to go to school an extra day this summer.
That was irritating. But this is worse.
Today, it is supposed to be very windy.
My husband, who is a big fan of all things weather-related, told me last night that they were calling for high gusts of wind today.
“What am I supposed to do with that information?” I asked, genuinely curious. How was my day going to change if the wind is blowing? Should I stay indoors more? Oh wait, I am already indoors for everything….
“Well, I just want you to be mindful of it,” he said.
So I became mindful.
Today, I woke up and got ready for the gym. I had just enough time to get there before going to work. I thought about my kids, who both had colds, and considered keeping everyone home.
But not for wind. I wasn’t going to keep them home for blowing air.
I realize that it might be bad wind. Some buildings have already lost power. Maybe it will be the worst disaster the D.C. area has seen in years, with school buildings being crushed by trucks that are thrown from the highway onto a third grade classroom.
But maybe it will just be another day of summer that we don’t have, because of a day off where we could just sit inside and watch the tree branches flail.
This morning, I left a copy of Dylan’s semester contract on the breakfast table. I highlighted the part that said, “Be downstairs at 6:45 – not 6:50.”
A few minutes after he came downstairs (still five minutes late), Dylan said, “Stop being so smart!”
I wasn’t talking. I was making his lunch and had my back to him. “I didn’t do anything!” I wailed. “And I’m not all that smart.”
“Yeah, but on here you were,” he said. I turned around, and he was pointing to his contract.
“Oh good,” I said. “I like to be smart.”
“I don’t like it, but everything you said on here was true,” Dylan answered. “The first time I read this, I didn’t even pay attention to the part about consequences. But now that I’m looking at it again, I realize that everything you said has already happened.”
“You mean, now that you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, things have changed?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“So what does it say?”
Dylan read:
You will be labeled “dependable” again. You will be considered “mature” and “responsible” (even if you are still your regular, playful self). Teachers will develop a new respect for you and your intelligence. People will start to recognize the kind, funny, genuine person you are, and your attitude toward people could improve. You will recognize your own self-worth. You will realize how much you can do, once you decide it’s worthwhile to actually do it. You will realize the Tortoise had it right, and the Hare … maybe not so much.
Your stress levels will actually drop. Your grades will improve. Your GPA will go up. You may even find a teacher by the end of the year who is willing to write you a letter of recommendation for college. And you might even turn around the beliefs of your drama director, who could give you a larger role in the musical next spring. You will prove to them what we always knew: that you can do it all, if you take it one step at a time.
“And all of that has happened already!” Dylan said, with genuine surprise.
“That’s awesome,” I said. “And you’ve only been doing this for a few weeks. Imagine what will happen if you do this until the end of the year!”
There was a flicker in Dylan’s eyes that made me realize I was pushing my luck.
But hopefully, he’ll keep going anyway. It’s amazingly wonderful to see.
Shane started playing league ping pong a few weeks ago. I watched while he was in a match with a much younger boy.
I didn’t like what I saw.
Shane made a shot and the kid slammed it back, completely missing the table. “That’s my point,” the kid said. “It hit the table.”
“What?” Shane asked, perplexed.
“It was my point,” the kid said again. “The ball hit the table.”
“Okay,” Shane said.
That ball never hit the table, I thought.
They played another point. Shane hit the ball back and it hit the net, then fell onto the other side of the table. As unlucky as it was for Shane’s opponent, legally Shane should have had the point. But…
“That shouldn’t have gone over,” said the kid. “I get that point.”
This went on and on and on. Shane kept shrugging, confused, but accepting the kid’s word as if Shane had no idea how to play ping pong.
He’d never met a cheater before. And though Shane was five years older than his opponent, he had no worldly wisdom on which to draw. He simply gave away point after point after point, until the kid had won the match.
Afterward, the boys had to write down their scores.
“He cheated!” I said, looking at Shane – but loudly enough for both boys to hear. The kid looked at me guiltily. “You cheated!” I shrieked. I started to nitpick about each point that the kid had stolen from Shane.
The kid’s dad came rushing over. He didn’t look at me. “You won the game,” he said to his son. “You won the game so you write that down.”
“He cheated the entire time!” I shrieked.
The father ignored me. He didn’t defend the boy’s actions – but he certainly condoned them.
Ten minutes later, that same dad was watching his daughter play ping pong. He was berating her for every point she lost. She was older than her brother, and cringing at every word he said. In fact, it looked as though she didn’t want to play the game at all. She struggled through, clearly not wanting to play, and lost the match.
I realized quite suddenly that their dad was the problem – even more so than the cheating child. He was raising kids to win at any cost. And as a result, he was raising a cheater and a quitter.
I was disappointed that Shane didn’t stand up for himself. We talked later about how to do that. But I was proud that he hadn’t sunk to the boy’s level, tried to steal points, or given up on himself.
Shane was raised to be kind at all times. The Golden Rule is still the most important one we have.
And Shane lives by it, wholly and well, every day and in every activity. And while he may have lost that ping pong match, he will go much farther in life, and be much happier, than that cheating ping pong player – or the cheater’s father – ever will.
