Sometimes, it's the little things

My son, Robo, just called me out of breath and excited. After getting a couple tries at an explanation I could understand, I finally managed to get that he was calling me at work to tell me that he was excited because tonight he had achieved the status of neighborhood driveway basketball champ among his friends on our block.

And my daughter is at the State Speech and Debate championships tonight with her Oral Interpetation of Drama group. I got a text message earlier letting me know that they made finals. So they are at the highest level now competing tonight with a narrowed group of the best few in the state in this category. Very exciting for her.

And they want to share it with their Dad as soon as they can. That's a very cool thing.

Robo also decided to honor his mother last weekend when she brought home a rented copy of the latest Harry Potter movie. He went right in and made her a "cool points" chart. He's taken two special things that she's done for him and assigned a cool points value to them as a reward. For bringing home a Sobe for him she got 10 points, but the movie earned her 30! He told me, with a wry smile, that when she reaches 1000 she will officially be a super cool mom!

In other news, Kitten had a little victory in her English class this week. Earlier this quarter she had suffered a bit of a reality check with a term paper that counted as a very substantial part of her total class grade. She had let her deadline creep up on her a bit and when she was down to the wire printing and turning in her paper, her typed bibliography evaporated off her disk. Consequently, she could only turn it in with a handwritten one to show she did the work, but the previously established parameters had stated that this would be docked. And so it was. She was a bit devastated when she got a grade substantially below what she is capable of. Even the teacher told her the content was very strong and she was only hampered by this technicality.

But this last week she had an assignment where she was supposed to write a sonnet as part of their Shakespeare unit. When she got this paper back, her teacher was so impressed that she gave Kitten a better than perfect score. That was enough to restore a little self confidence.

This is the sonnet she wrote:

INNOCENCE

Her hair was of the golden sunlight rays

Her eyes the silver pale of the moon's sweet beams

She'd dance in the quiet flower fields by day

By night would sleep beside the quiet streams

The sky and earth protected maiden pure

And kept her from the lusting eyes of men

No pain or fear or hurt should she endure

As played she with the Elves and Fairy kin

But pain and fear come quickly in the night

Hiding in the forest shadows deep

With evil thoughts and weapons clean in sight

They came to where maiden lie sound in sleep

The blade and river water now stained red

Where purest maiden ever lay her head

Kind of intense little submission from my little Pollyanna, who tries so desperately to cheer her friends whenever they are having a down day. But this comes from that little paradoxical Russian novelist side of her personality. Keeps things interesting, I must say.

When she had me read it she was taken off guard at the discomfort I felt at such a harsh tragic tale. I assured her that the craft was well executed, but it is a disquieting account. Later my wife came to me and told me that Kitten had quietly gone down to her room a bit sad. I went down and found her in her in the dark curled up under her blankets, still in her school clothes. She had gotten a bit teary. Aparently she had the thought that she may have freaked her dad out and was concerned that there was maybe now a part of her that I found unpleasant.

We had a good talk about how that was not even possible. She felt better after that. It's funny. She likes our talks because they make her feel better. The thing she maybe doesn't know so well, is that our little talks have the reverse effect too, of making me feel like a better dad.

You gotta love the little things.