“At this meeting,” my daughter began, and I interrupted:
“I hate meetings.”
“I know: be quiet. Anyway…”
This conversation was with my eldest child, who impudently told me to be quiet. In the meeting she referenced, new employees on her new job were playing a “getting to know you” game.
“I hate games,” I snarked.
“Said the chess-playing pool player,” she snapped. (I have built a cruel child.) The game she was playing with her new co-workers required each of them to say three things about themselves: two things must be true, and the third, false. Those in attendance then attempt to guess what is true and what is false, while joining hands and singing “Kumbaya.” Or, “We Are The World.” Anyway, she said this:
“I am a secret shoe hoarder; I didn’t learn to swim until I was an adult; I didn’t know my first name until I was in kindergarten.”
I don’t pretend to understand the objective of the exercise, but if all you knew of someone was her name, appearance and approximate age, which one of those three statements would you select as false?
Some critical thinking can be brought to bear: time spent hearing the woman gush over footwear would make you think, “shoe hoarder.” And African-Americans are not known as swimmers. (A popular cartoonist ran a series of panels to encourage the teaching of the skill to young African-Americans.) But an informed, intelligent and articulate speaker: how could she have not known her own name?
“First, you have to understand: my parents were hippies, and I was born in the early 70s.” Well, second, we were not hippies. The fact that we “diaper-dipped” her in the water at 6 months and did not put shoes on her until she was two did not qualify us as hippies. But we were of the generation of peace, love and freedom, and one of the things we felt free to do was make up names. We invented a name that meant “I love you,” and we gave it to our child. The name was spelled R A (infinity symbol) S H I N E. No hyphen: infinity symbol. It is pronounced “Rah ∞ Sheen,” and in 1972, after a hard night of Lamaze Prepared Childbirth natural labor, she was born. Her father went home to sleep, and when he returned to the hospital, his bride said in passing, “Your daughter has a first name: it is Lisa.” To this day, I do not know from whence cameth this name. But we never used it; it was just a thing on the birth certificate.
Fast-forward to 1978: a California family moved to Southern Indiana. A six-year old child meets an adult and is asked her name. She provides it and the adult says, “that’s a cute name; how do you spell it?” and the kid spells “R A infinity S H I N E,” and the adult says “what?” and the kid says “infinity: a mathematical symbol” and the adult walks away muttering. I suppose that a child does not have to do this for long before she demands an alternative from her parents.
“Which is when I learned that I had another name,” said Lisa.
The “Kumbaya” crew did not guess correctly, but the conversation that ensued was lively and engaged and maybe, that was the point of the exercise. But for me, the moral of the story is this: parenting is an adventure, but when we’re yelling “wheeee!” on the slide, our offspring may be stuck with “what?” at the end. So our challenge is clear:
Give ‘em “what!”