Where did you learn that young man?!

January 14, 2012

It is Saturday and I do not have to be at work until 3pm.  It has finally gotten cold here and we even have snow on the ground right now.  One of my current coworkers has just moved here from California and was excited to see snow for the first time.  I wonder if she still is.  As I was driving home yesterday, I was noticing that the type of snow we have had the past two days is the kind where it comes down sideways since the wind is blowing and it kinda scatters about and does not ever end up on the front of a greeting card.  In the movies, you see the snowfall that people like, big flakes drifting down and landing softly on your tongue.  If you tried to catch the snow we had falling the past couple days on your tongue, there is a very good chance your tongue would have blown off and stuck to a pole somewhere.  Not good greeting card fodder.

Any of you who may have been around this blog for awhile may remember that my son, CJ, used to be in the Latin Club at his high school.  He joined in 8th grade while he was taking Freshman Latin and really enjoyed the club.  They did all sorts of fun things from laser tag to bonfires.  He did not enjoy the class so much as the teacher is very tough and there was no way his parents could help him learn Latin.

I was a proponent of learning Spanish as that is what I took in school and remember a few words.  Especially the important ones.  Bano-bathroom.  Bendejo-ass****. 

Actually, I just looked it up to see if I was spelling it correctly only to find that it is Pendejo, not Bendejo.  Apparently, I would not have been all that helpful if CJ had wanted to swear at his Spanish teacher.  Nice.

So CJ dropped Latin this year since he worked his pend off to get a "C" last year, and GPA does matter more than laser tag.  We figured at some point he would be very disappointed when he did not get to go on the summer Latin club trip to Italy.

Yesterday, the list came out of students that were going to make that trip this coming Summer.  He asked Beth if any of his Freshman buddies were on the list and there were a couple. 

Sidebar, the two that are going are friends of his named Ted and Graham.  Whenver they are over here I call them Teddy Graham.  For some reason, they do not come over very often.  ???

So CJ's reaction to Beth was, "Oh, that's great!"  Beth looked at him quizzically.  She said, "What is so great about that?"  He came back with, "Mom, I can be happy for other people."

Excuse me?  Where did you learn that from.  It was like when your child comes home using foul language and you find out he learned it from kids on the playground.  Or that commercial for marijuana (I think it took an anti Mary Jane stance) where, after some badgering from dad about where the teen learned how to smoke the ganja, the young man bursts out with, "FROM YOU, I LEARNED IT FROM YOU!" 

I am searching my past parenting skills to see if somewhere along the lines I taught CJ to be happy for other people.  So far I have been unsuccessful.  Maybe he learned it on the playground.