When You Care Enough to Do Your Very Best

Wouldn't be the first time I sounded like some sappy commercial jingle, would it?!?

Last night, after the two older boys came home from soccer practice, ate dinner, and showered, I discovered that our fifth grader still hadn't completed his homework.  (Thunder clap.)  Naturally at this point in the evening, one hour before bed time, he wanted to rush through.  Eleven math problems, twelve English questions, and a spelling test that had to be signed by one half of the parental unit.  

My attention was piqued when he was struggling aloud with the analogy "cool is to heat as soothe is to..." having to select the correct word out of twenty new spelling words for the week.  Turns out it was "excite" which is not obvious to a kid who only knows soothe in the context of putting aloe on a sunburn.  But we got past that by having him write all the verbs on a separate piece of paper so he'd have a shorter list to contemplate.  

Frustration mounted, naturally, as time grew short.  I decided to check the math problems.  One obvious error, probably due to haste, in the "place" section.  The 2 in 72,999,999 isn't the ten millions but the one millions.  Fifteen minutes before lights out, he didn't want to be corrected, so Taurus the Bull emerged.  "So what, Mom, it's only one mistake!"  Trying to explain that anything less than his best effort is not acceptable fell on deaf ears.  Sigh.  He has the brains but not the focus or patience.  Finally we moved past that with ten minutes to go.

Sign the spelling test, put everything away, take one last potty break, and under the covers.  Right?  As overheard in Sarah Palin's backyard, "Nyet!"  He's upset about getting a 95 on the test, because he's used to 100 on spelling tests.  Can't blame him for transposing the i and e in neighbor, but he may not have been doing the daily review of the weekly words.  Can't change that now, but here's the final chutzpah.  The teacher had the temerity to point out that his cursive d looks an awful lot like a c and l that are not quite joined, so she drew some very lovely cursive d examples.   Towards the bottom of the page was written:  Practice.  So I informed my son that I would sign the test after he'd done some rows of cursive d.  You'd think I asked him to saw his foot off, or something.  After some whining and grunting (on his part, not mine) he sat down and wrote several lines of near perfect lettering.  And then I gave him my autograph.

To his credit, he's also stubborn about good causes, such as sticking up for the underdog.  But I have to admit I was feeling pretty worn out before I retired for the evening.  Maybe part of that was because I had to fold laundry and make lunches after El Toro went to bed.