Week of January 31st, 2014

If you hadn't heard, Chinese New Year fell on January 31st this year.  I won't rehash last years treatise on the twisted mechanics of CNY, but will say that it is the Year of the Horse in the year 4649.  Or 4710...or 4711...or 104, depending on which one of their bizarre pagan rituals you care to follow.  With all of these calendars and how the dates of things change every year, how they get it straight and keep the buses running on time does help explain their alleged superiority in math. 

This year, I am the room parent for Carolyn's 5th grade class.  When I was contemplating volunteering, Betty convinced me by saying that this would be the last chance I'd have to do something like this, which was pretty sage advise.  There is not a lot to do as the kids are old enough to stage their own events, but my job is to ensure that the three yearly parties are organized with the parents properly...one of which was the Chinese New Year party.  We split the 8 classes into 2 groups, and each of those 4 classes in our group chose and activity (either a game or craft) and we rotated the 4 classes through each before we got back together to eat.  They wanted me to do a craft in our class, but as I am the only male room parent, and after explaining to them that I was far more gamey than crafty, they allowed me to do a game. 

Side note, one of the biggest drawbacks of living somewhere where they do not speak your native tongue is that jokes, the turn of a phrase, even basic sarcasm is totally lost in translation.  I thought the crafty/gamey thing was relatively clever on the fly, and the other Western room parent laughed, but the look from all the Chinese moms of "what the fuck are you talking about" is one that I see far too often. 

We came up with a game where we split the boys and girls into two teams, had each group chose a team leader and then each classmate would pick a Chinese zodiac animal from a hat.  The team leader would then have to place the animals in their correct zodialogical order based on the Chinese tradition.  The trick was the kids couldn't use words or sounds and had to act out their animals much like in charades.  I had never learned about why the "year of" animals are in the order that they are, but learned about it...a short version can be found here.  Did you know that a cat was in the mix but was outsmarted by the rat, which became the reason for the cats animosity towards them? 

Probably shouldn't have been, but was surprised that all of the kids knew the story and order...even Carolyn.  Not sure if I approve of her learning about all this black magic stuff at school,  but there you go.  We played the game with each class a couple of times using variations, and very unsurprisingly, the girls teams one every time.  Certainly in the 5th grade, girls are far more cooperative and aren't the squirrely  little shit know-it-alls the boys are at that age.

Afterwards, we had a little pot luck in class that seemed to go well.  Was a bit nervous as most pot lucks I've been asked to organize have been that you smoke a lot of pot and are lucky if you get anything to eat, but everyone seemed to survive it.  And I juggled as entertainment.

 

 

 

As I was watching the girls dissect the boys at these cooperation games, got me thinking about them and wondering at what point do they start to turn on each other.  A generalization of course, but females are known for catty, backstabbing, mean girlness in their teens.  As I am thinking about this, someone posted this essay by Andy Rooney on women over 40 and a part of it talks about how, "A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her."  Andy Rooney didn't really write this, but it has been around the Internet block many times and think there is something to it.  So what happens to these women between 13 and 40?.

 

A little while back, Carolyn's grade had their "Health Week"...or as she referred to it, the Puberty Unit (tell me Puberty Unit isn't a fantastic name for a band).  Was hesitant to ask for details and Carolyn didn't offer many other than how awkward it was to have the class with the boys.  Betty was trying to tell me that I should start talking to her about periods and feminine napkins and I said, "you have got to be kidding, right?"  I think we can all agree that the tendency towards being a mean girl (see Urban Dictionary definition here) coincides with the advent and denouement of the menstrual cycle, but the question as a man involved with the raising of a young lady is, how to guide them mentally to avoid this ugliness when it seems driven by parts other than the brain?  There needs to be a book, or at least a snarky web based tutorial, on this.