Thursday, February 07, 2008

Gotta Love the Kitty Love


I actually got to drive to work today. That was very different. We've been in car hell for so long, I'm just glad I remember how to drive. Especially a standard.

I was about to pull out this morning and in the Easley's yard I thought I saw Pickle. I looked hard and realized that it was Pickle's sister Nova. Nova escaped some months ago after moving back up here from San Antonio. She looks good. Her coat looks good and thick and she looks like she has put back on the weight she lost while hiding under the cedar chest. We've seen her a few times and she has apparently adopted a family near by. That's a good thing. It was good to see her. She's always been a free spirit. Somewhere I have a picture of her in the holly bush out front when she was a kitten. She was lounging in the bush trying to look like a panther but she kept losing her balance and falling out. It was pretty funny.

One of my new students (I got her on Tuesday) admitted that she has a 3 month old daughter. (I go check the enrollment information and find out that this is a 16 year old freshman) I told her that she needed to talk to her baby as much as she can (to make her smarter) and "mom" said "She don't know what I'm saying." I told her that she should talk to her anyway, that it was making the baby's brain grow. She tells me "My baby is a ghetto baby." I ask her if that is what she wants and she says yes. She's just a baby herself. I wonder if her mother is even 30 yet. Here I am with my grown children hoping that I'll get a grandbaby some day hopefully in the next ten years and I see children with children who have grandmothers who are younger than I am.

How can I reach this child? She's too ignorant to know that the bigger boobs she got from having a baby and the expensive jeans she's wearing are not the best things available in life.

Am I missing something?

This just frightens me because I see it so much. I have four freshmen girls in the same class and 3/4 have been or are pregnant. All they seem to share is ethnicity and the hood. We want to impact our community, but what will impact THEM will have to come from their own community, they don't want to hear it from teachers (I HATE teachers, they make me sick to quote the woman at 7-11).

I'm just frightened that these kids are so racist. They are afraid. I don't blame them, if I was raised to be so ignorant as to get pregnant in 8th grade I'd be afraid of a lot. They don't want to listen and they don't want to hear from anyone who isn't like them. I try to be kind. I don't put up with crap. I want so badly to tell them things that will make their life better but they don't buy into the whole "education is your freedom" thing. They don't buy into "bonding with your baby" thing. This girl today told me her 3 month old was "bad." Holy crap!!!

I have another girl (for the third year this year) and she has a 5 month old. I went to the hospital to see her beautiful boy. She's looked tired the last week and I sat down to "counsel" with her. It ended up being a discussion about teething. The baby has been drooling a lot and real crabby the last week. His last checkup was fine and he weighs 18 lbs. She says he's trying to chew on everything and really likes that frozen thing she got him. I told her to beware those sharp new baby teeth that can draw blood. Every one of my children bit the crap out of me at some point. I asked my student if she talked to her baby and she said that she talks to him all the time in two languages. She said everyone talks to him in two languages. The boy's daddy discusses sports with him. She said that she was really tired and that AP history was hard. I'm so proud of her for taking AP classes I could just crow.

I want to look in on those two babies in five years, in ten years, in fifteen years.

I'm afraid I will see another pregnant fifteen year old, and I'm hopeful that I will see a fully bilingual smart kid who wants to be a doctor or lawyer or president.

What did I see this evening? I saw a Gordito in my lap. He's my daughter's other cat who came back to us last May before she moved across the pond. The last two weeks he's taken to coming in my room and hanging out more. It's kind of confusing because he looks so much like his mother who is in here all the time. They are like Siamese bookends. The last week, he's gotten up on my bed with the other kitty people. Tonight he was being all cute and funny and rolling around on his back inviting tummy rubs and then attacking the tummy rubber. Not like my baby
<<<Lalique who is a belly slut who will stretch out full length and croon for more.

About a half hour ago, Gordito "aka Ditto" molests my lap and settles in. I have to look closely to see that it is not his mother Algebra. It's not, it's the DITTO himself. I feel honored.

I look over toward my pillow and curled up there is Maude Lebowski. If I stay up too late she will come fuss at me and tell me to come to bed. It's almost midnight, perhaps I should go. . . .