Yes!
At 7:00 this morning, we got an email from Dylan’s algebra teacher.
“Good Morning!” she starts off happily. “Dylan’s effort over the past few weeks has been great. He has totally turned it around.”
It’s the most enthusiastic this teacher has been in months. Reading it, I am already thrilled.
“With the retakes he completed he was able to pull his grade up to a ‘C’!!!” (The extra exclamation points are hers.)
She continues: “He also did fabulous on his exam… 85%!!”
At this point, I mutter out loud: “Oh. My. God.” (Shane doesn’t like me to use the Lord’s name in vain, but I am still working on this.)
Dylan hears my gasp and calls from the breakfast table, “What?”
I walk in to see Dylan. For him, it is still an ordinary day.
Because I can’t be a positive, upbeat, encouraging mom, I say, “There’s good news and bad news. First, you got a ‘B’ on your English exam. And you got a ‘B’ on your social studies exam.”
He is unphased by this. I pause for dramatic effect.
“But…” (I wait for the proverbial drum roll.) “You got an 85% on your algebra exam!”
Dylan leaps from his chair, waves a fist in the air and yells, “YES!” Then he throws himself onto the floor in the next room, thundering like a fallen elephant.
Again squashing any chance of real positive reinforcement, I tell Dylan to be quiet so he doesn’t wake up Shane.
Realizing my error, I try again. “Come and see the email!” I say. Dylan reads it, looks up at me with his eyes shining, then goes back to the table and beams all through breakfast.
He says, “Now can I get Uvu?” Or maybe he said Ubu, Ooloo. I don’t know.
“What’s Uvu?” I ask.
“It’s a program I wanted to download and you said to ask you after exams.”
“Is that the one where the age requirement is 18?” I ask.
“No, that was Kik,” he says.
“You can get Uvu,” I say. I have no idea what Uvu is. But he’s a pretty good kid, I think, and I can probably trust him to be safe with it – whatever it is.
Then I rush him out the door to the bus, which he almost misses because he was so late in coming to breakfast, and because of all the algebra hoopla.
It’s a glorious day in the Hawkins household.