Schools Start Too Early Quotes

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

Whether they are part of a home or home is a part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer. Having taken away the dog, take away the kitchen–the smell of something good in the oven for dinner. Also the smell of washing day, of wool drying in the wooden rack. Of ashes. Of soup simmering on the stove. Take away the patient old horse waiting by the pasture fence. Take away the chores that kept him busy from the time he got home from school until they sat down to supper. Take away the early-morning mist, the sound of crows quarreling in the treetops. His work clothes are still hanging on a nail beside the door of his room, but nobody puts them on or takes them off. Nobody sleeps in his bed. Or reads the broken-back copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. Take that away too, while you are at it. Take away the pitcher and bowl, both of them dry and dusty. Take away the cow barn where the cats, sitting all in a row, wait with their mouths wide open for somebody to squirt milk down their throats. Take away the horse barn too–the smell of hay and dust and horse piss and old sweat-stained leather, and the rain beating down on the plowed field beyond the door. Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.

We may think of egoists as people who have grown sick from too much love, but in fact the opposite is the case: an egoist is someone who has not yet had their fill. Self-centredness has to have a clear run in the early years if it isn’t to haunt and ruin the later ones. The so-called narcissist is simply a benighted soul who has not had a chance to be inordinately and unreasonably admired and cared for at the start.

It's cool because business has no minimum age. If you're 13 years old and you have a great business idea, you don't have to wait until you reach a certain age or until you graduate high school or anything like that. You can be in business right now and be successful at it. Growth takes time, but it's never too early to get started.

The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher.

Your False Self is who you think you are. Your thinking does not make it true. Your False Self is almost entirely a social construct to get you started on your life journey. It is a set of agreements between your childhood and your parents, your family, your neighbors, your school chums, your partner or spouse, and your religion. It is your “container” for your separate self. 4 Jesus would call it your “wineskin,” which he points out usually cannot hold any new wine (Mark 2: 21–22). Your ego container likes to stay “contained” and hates change. Your False Self is how you define yourself outside of love, relationship, or divine union. After you have spent many years laboriously building this separate self, with all its labels and preoccupations, you are very attached to it. And why wouldn’t you be? It’s what you know and all you know. To move beyond it will always feel like losing or dying. Perhaps you have noticed that master teachers like Jesus and the Buddha, St. Francis, all the “Teresas” (Avila, Lisieux, and Calcutta), Hafiz, Kabir, and Rumi talk about dying much more than we are comfortable with. They all know that if you do not learn the art of dying and letting go early, you will hold onto your False Self far too long, until it kills you anyway.

I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse. Not just any horse, but an unrelentingly stubborn and blindingly neurotic one, a sort of equine Woody Allen, but without the entertainment value. I had imagined, of course, a My Friend Flicka scenario: my horse would see me in the distance, wiggle his ears in eager anticipation, whinny with pleasure, canter up to my side, and nuzzle my breeches for sugar or carrots. What I got instead was a wildly anxious, frequently lame, and not terribly bright creature who was terrified of snakes, people, lizards, dogs, and other horses – in short, terrified of anything that he might reasonably be expected to encounter in life – thus causing him to rear up on his hind legs and bolt madly about in completely random directions. In the clouds-and-silver-linings department, however, whenever I rode him I was generally too terrified to be depressed, and when I was manic I had no judgment anyway, so maniacal riding was well suited to the mood. Unfortunately, it was not only a crazy decision to buy a horse, it was also stupid. I may as well have saved myself the trouble of cashing my Public Health Service fellowship checks, and fed him checks directly: besides shoeing him and boarding him – with veterinary requirements that he supplement his regular diet with a kind of horsey granola that cost more than a good pear brandy – I also had to buy him special orthopedic shoes to correct, or occasionaly correct, his ongoing problems with lameness. These shoes left Guicci and Neiman-Marcus in the dust, and, after a painfully aquired but profound understanding of why people shoot horse traders, and horses, I had to acknowledge that I was a graduate student, not Dr. Dolittle; more to the point, I was neither a Mellon nor a Rockefeller. I sold my horse, as one passes along the queen of spades, and started showing up for my classes at UCLA.

Adolescents need to cocoon. Cocooning is a term coined in the early 1980s by Faith Popcorn, a social trend analyst with a bizarre and compelling name. (That’s neither here nor there, but it can’t go unsaid.) Popcorn describes cocooning as “the impulse to stay inside when the outside gets too tough and scary.” Since its introduction to our lexicon, it has come to be used regularly to describe adolescents and their relationship to their rooms. Tweens and teens cocoon because at a time when most things in their lives are changing—their bodies, brains, emotions, friends, and even their self-concepts—bedrooms are safe havens. There, they can think about any and all things ad nauseam, or push them aside and take a break from the mental turmoil of their busy minds.

Nobody has ever felt pain but you, agony is yours, make a necklace from it. Chew it. Never spit it out. You are the only one your age not having fun. You are puzzled by life because you were born one Sunday too early. You will die on the wrong day too. Try to drown more than once, preferably in the same place. Fall in love. Cut your tongue on him so many times your language starts to bleed out at the root. Reserve speech only for begging. You are supposed to want to dress like the girl at school who pulled your hair. Hating yourself is the diet for success. Let it bloat you. Be the river that is always threatening to burst. You are not special. There is no pearl under your tongue. Your heart has you by the throat. However hard you try you will never fall back in love with your life.

When Sloboda and a colleague conducted a study with students at a British boarding school that recruited from around the country—admission rested entirely on an audition—they were surprised to find that the students classified as exceptional by the school came from less musically active families compared to less accomplished students, did not start playing at a younger age, were less likely to have had an instrument in the home at a very young age, had taken fewer lessons prior to entering the school, and had simply practiced less overall before arriving—a lot less. “It seems very clear,” the psychologists wrote, “that sheer amount of lesson or practice time is not a good indicator of exceptionality.” As to structured lessons, every single one of the students who had received a large amount of structured lesson time early in development fell into the “average” skill category, and not one was in the exceptional group. “The strong implication,” the researchers wrote, is “that that too many lessons at a young age may not be helpful.

Work and family Unfortunately, the new ambitious ideals of parenting have developed at exactly the same moment as has modern capitalism. In other words, just as unprecedented demands have been made on us in our working lives, so too the parenting sphere has become more exacting than it has ever been. We are no longer expected just to show up at work in order to get a wage. Work has thrust itself forward as the intended obsession of all admirable people. We are to come to work early and stay up late. We are to take up all possibilities for labouring on weekends and travelling to remote corners to attend conferences and congresses. We are to expend every last bit of energy in reaching the top of the corporate pyramid – this at exactly the point when society has also started to expect us to be home every night to read bedtime stories and to take an intimate interest in every detail of a child’s inner life. Capitalism and childcare are at loggerheads, but neither admits as much; indeed, both sides torture us by promising that we might be able to achieve ‘work–life balance’, an ideal as sentimental and humiliating as expecting that someone manage to be simultaneously both a professional ballerina and a brain surgeon.

I went to the lectern to speak, I could barely contain my emotion. I glanced down at my prepared notes but suddenly had little interest in them. Looking up at the girls, I just began to talk, explaining that though I had come from far away, carrying this strange title of First Lady of the United States, I was more like them than they knew. That I, too, was from a working-class neighborhood, raised by a family of modest means and loving spirit, that I’d realized early on that school was where I could start defining myself—that an education was a thing worth working for, that it would help spring them forward in the world. At this point, I’d been First Lady for just over two months. In different moments, I’d felt overwhelmed by the pace, unworthy of the glamour, anxious about our children, and uncertain of my purpose. There are pieces of public life, of giving up one’s privacy to become a walking, talking symbol of a nation, that can seem specifically designed to strip away part of your identity. But here, finally, speaking to those girls, I felt something completely different and pure—an alignment of my old self with this new role. Are you good enough? Yes, you are, all of you. I told the students of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson that they’d touched my heart. I told them that they were precious, because they truly were.

Now, son, I don’t pay much mind to idle talk, never have done. But there’s a regular riptide of gossip saying you’ve got something going with that girl in the marsh.” Tate threw up his hands. “Now hold on, hold on,” Scupper continued. “I don’t believe all the stories about her; she’s probably nice. But take a care, son. You don’t want to go starting a family too early. You get my meaning, don’t you?” Keeping his voice low, Tate hissed, “First you say you don’t believe those stories about her, then you say I shouldn’t start a family, showing you do believe she’s that kind of girl. Well, let me tell you something, she’s not. She’s more pure and innocent than any of those girls you’d have me go to the dance with. Oh man, some of the girls in this town, well, let’s just say they hunt in packs, take no prisoners. And yes, I’ve been going out to see Kya some. You know why? I’m teaching her how to read because people in this town are so mean to her she couldn’t even go to school.” “That’s fine, Tate. That’s good of you. But please understand it’s my job to say things like this. It may not be pleasant and all for us to talk about, but parents have to warn their kids about things. That’s my job, so don’t get huffy about it.” “I know,” Tate mumbled while buttering a biscuit. Feeling very huffy. “Come on now. Let’s get another helping, then some of that pecan pie.” After the pie came, Scupper said, “Well, since we’ve talked about things we never mention, I might as well say something else on my mind.” Tate rolled his eyes at his pie. Scupper continued. “I want you to know, son, how proud I am of you. All on your own, you’ve studied the marsh life, done real well at school, applied for college to get a degree in science. And got accepted. I’m just not the kind to speak on such things much. But I’m mighty proud of you, son. All right?” “Yeah. All right.” Later in his room, Tate recited from his favorite poem: “Oh when shall I see the dusky Lake, And the white canoe of my dear?” •

The next school day, I went very early to school to put the letter on Lupe’s desk. I also had something special for Jason—but it wasn’t the letter I wrote him. It was something else I had picked up recently from another Chinese immigrant. When I was helping this uncle with his luggage, I had pulled too hard and got a blister on my hand. The man said he had just the thing, and gave me a little vial of Chinese medicine. It felt minty and cool on my finger, but when I reached up to tuck my bangs behind my ear, my minty finger got a little too close to my eye. I was crying in seconds. So after I set Lupe’s letter down on her desk, I practically soaked Jason’s pencils with the same stuff that had made me cry. Let’s see him twirl these suckers now! Jason did not notice the gleam on his pencils when he sat down later that morning. He was too busy bragging about Las Vegas and all the great food he ate and the luxurious suite they stayed in. “They had a pool with three pool slides! There was even a restaurant right smack in the—” “When are you going to give me my pencil back?” I asked. I wanted to cut to the chase. I couldn’t care less about his fancy pools, considering I stared at one all day. “You mean my pencil?” He shrugged. “I gave it to my dog, Wealthy. It’s probably all chewed up by now.” He would give it to his dog. And he would have a dog named Wealthy. Jason smirked, picked up one of his pencils and started twirling. He twirled it a little too close to his face and just as I predicted, the strong minty smell made his eyes water. He put the pencil down and began rubbing his eyes furiously with his menthol fingers. Big mistake. “Oh my God, Jason’s crying!” one of my classmates exclaimed. “No, I’m not!” Jason insisted, blinking furiously. But it was too late. Everyone ran over and huddled next to Jason. It wasn’t every day a kid in fifth grade started bawling—fourth grade maybe, but not fifth grade. We watched with wide eyes as Jason cried and cried. Sunlight flooded in through the tall glass windows, and Jason’s tears glistened in the warm peach glow. I couldn’t stop smiling the whole time. It was a beautiful, beautiful day. The only thing that could make that day more beautiful was the chance of Lupe forgiving me.

Alan, as per his usual routine, got up early and peeked into my rom to check on me. What he found were his teenage stepdaughter and her childhood sweetheart curled up in the same bed, sound asleep and draped all over each other. He hissed my name, alarmed: "Jenna!" "Wha-?" I sat straight up, immediately aware of what was happening and how it all looked. I clambered over Cameron, who was just coming to consciousness, and followed Alan into the kitchen. "It's nothing, I swear," I said in a whisper. If Mom wasn't up yet, I wanted to keep it that way. Alan shook his head. "It looks bad." He glanced toward my bedroom. "Was that Ethan? Tell him to come out here. I want to talk to him." "Um, it's not Ethan. It's Cameron." He put his hands to his head. "Jenna. Jenna." "I know. Is Mom awake?" "Not yet." I kept my voice low. "Can we talk by the fish tank?" He led, I followed. "He came to my window in the night," I explained. "He needed to talk. I let him in. It was me. It was my idea. It was all...nothing happened." "This isn't my area," Alan said, looking at the fish. "Your mom is supposed to do the tough stuff. We have a policy of laissez-faire when it comes to me and...this kind of thing." "Exactly. So," I said hopefully, "go make the coffee and we'll pretend nothing every happened." Cameron came into the room, his blanket wrapped around him. His hair was sticking up in the back, and his long eyelashes hooded sleepy eyes. "I just needed to talk to someone," he said to Alan. "Guess we fell asleep." "Uh-huh." Alan cast an anxious glance toward his and mom's bedroom and said, "You couldn't talk in the kitchen?" "We didn't think about it," I said. "That's how innocent it was, see?" Alan stared at us, still shaking his head. "Look, Cameron, just get out of here before Jenna's mom sees you. Okay?" He nodded. "I'll go get my boots." I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Alan." When Cameron shut my bedroom door, Alan said, "Jenna. This is the kind of situation that's very, very awkward, to say the least. If your mom were to find out, I would be in scalding hot water." "She won't. Thank you thank you thank you." "Now. I need my coffee." He shuffled off to the kitchen, ankles cracking. "I'm too old for this." Back in my room, I watched Cameron get ready to go, thinking about everything we'd talked about and what it meant. "Where do you live?" I asked. "I'll take you home." "I share a studio apartment with three other guys. It's a dump," he said, lacing up his boots. "How come you were sleeping in my car yesterday?" "Sometimes I don't want to be there." He pulled on his jacket. "I'll go straight to school, shower in the locker room. See you later." He started to open the window. "Wait," I said. "You can use the front door, you know. Just be quiet." "Okay." He paused on his way out of my room, looing back once to say, "Thanks.

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So,

But now I had a chance to do something more practical—to share what I’d learned with Hudson. Because, after starting with some of the personality traits that Hudson had apparently inherited or learned, and consequently experiencing similar problems at school, becoming clinically depressed in my early years at university and feeling isolated until meeting Rosie at thirty-nine, I had come through . I had the world’s best life. Hudson could have that, too. By knowing what I wish I’d known when I was his age.

Danny’s life strategy of not trusting himself. “His defining emotion is doubt,” said one of his former students. “And it’s very useful. Because it makes him go deeper and deeper and deeper.” Or maybe he just wanted another line of defense against anyone hoping to figure him out. In any case, he kept at a great distance the forces and events that had shaped him. He might not trust his memories, but he still had a few. For instance, he remembered the time in late 1941 or early 1942—at any rate, a year or more after the start of the German occupation of Paris—when he was caught on the streets after curfew. The new laws required him to wear the yellow Star of David on the front of his sweater. His new badge caused him such deep shame that he took to going to school half an hour early so that the other children wouldn’t see him walking into the building wearing it. After school, on the streets, he’d turn his sweater inside out. Heading home too late one evening, he saw a German soldier approaching. “He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others—the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers,” he recalled, in the autobiographical statement required of him by the Nobel Committee. “As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.” He

Daniel was a little slow getting out of the locker room afterward and was one of the last guys to head to the parking lot. He was nearly to his car when he saw Stacy emerge from the edge of the woods. “Hey,” she said. “Hey.” She hugged her books to her chest. “I don’t know if we ever officially met. I’m Stacy.” She was waiting for you. She wanted to talk to you! “I’m Baniel Dyers—Daniel. I’m Daniel Byers.” Oh, you are such an idiot! A glimmer of a smile. “I know who you are.” “I know you too.” “Really?” “Uh-huh.” “How?” “I’ve seen you around.” “Oh.” A long pause. “So.” “So,” he replied lamely. “Well, it’s good to meet you. Officially.” “Good to meet you too.” He had the sense that she would reach out to shake his hand, but instead she stared down at the ground between them for a moment, then back at him. “You played good against Spring Hill.” “You were there?” A slight eye roll. “Of course I was there.” “Not everyone comes to the games.” “I do.” “Me too.” Dude, that was the stupidest thing ever to say! “Of course you do,” she said lightly. He felt like he wanted to hide somewhere—anywhere—but when she spoke again she just did so matter-of-factly and not the least bit in a way to make him feel more put on the spot. “Um, I just wanted to wish you luck on the game. I mean, the one tomorrow night.” “Thanks.” She waited. Ask her to the dance on Saturday—at least get her number. “Um . . .” He repositioned his feet. “Say, I was wondering . . .” “Yes?” “About the game.” No, not the game, the dance— “Yes?” He took a deep breath. “So, I was . . .” Go on! “Um . . . So maybe I’ll see you there. At the game.” “Oh. Sure. So, good luck,” she repeated. “Right.” Ask her for her number. But he didn’t. And then she was saying good-bye and he was fumbling out a reply. “See you around, Stacy.” “See you around, Baniel,” she replied good-naturedly. As she stepped away he opened his mouth to call her back, but nothing came out. And then she was gone. But at least he’d talked to her. You can’t be expected to ask a girl out or get her number the first time you officially meet her, can you? Um, yeah. He climbed into his car and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. Man, you sounded like a moron! Well, talk to her tomorrow. You can still ask her. The dance was Saturday night, but at least that gave him one more day. Before starting the car, he saw a text from Kyle asking what he was up to tonight, and he texted back that he was going to be at home finishing up his homework and then head to bed early to get a good night’s sleep before game day. He didn’t bring up anything about the conversation with Stacy. It would have only made him more embarrassed if Kyle knew how he’d failed to sound like even a halfway intelligent human being talking with her. Imagine that. Daniel Byers not knowing how to talk to a girl. What else is new? That night back in his bedroom, it took him a while to write his second blog entry, the one he was going to have to read in front of Teach’s class tomorrow. Without Kyle there to help him, he felt like a guy stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no idea which direction to row toward land. Eventually he got something out, this time about hoping to send the vultures away, but it wasn’t nearly as good as if he’d had Kyle brainstorming with him. Then he went to bed, but his thoughts of Stacy kept him awake. Talk to her tomorrow at school, or at least before the game. But he also found that, just before falling asleep, his thoughts were drifting toward Nicole as well.

Berry and three other old Etonians, James Bolton, Alex Lyle and Christian De Lotbiniere, were the brains behind “Ski Bob” travel. This was a company, named after their Eton housemaster Bob Baird, which had been formed when they discovered that they were too young legally to book holidays themselves. So these young entrepreneurs started their own company and within the twenty-strong group, which mainly compromised old Etonians, the greatest accolade was to be called “Bob.” Diana was soon Bob, Bob, Bobbing along. “You’re skating on thin ice,” she yelled in her Miss Piggy voice as she skied dangerously close behind members of the group. She joined in the pillow fights, charades, and satirical singsongs. Diana was teased mercilessly about a framed photograph of Prince Charles, taken at his Investiture in 1969, which hung in her school dormitory. Not guilty, she said. It was a gift to the school. When she stayed in the Berry chalet she slept on the living-room sofa. Not that she got much sleep. Medical student, James Colthurst, liked to regale the slumbering throng with unwelcome early morning renditions of Martin Luther King’s famous “I had a dream” speech or his equally unamusing Mussolini impersonation.

What’s wrong, Seth?” I ask. I’m grinning when I answer, but it soon falls from my face. He’s quiet. Too quiet. “Seth?” I ask. “I came home from school early today,” he says, his voice a whisper. “Okay…” “And Aunt Sky was crying on the couch.” “Do you know why?” I grab my keys and start for the door. “I don’t know. It wasn’t like a little sniffle, either. She was just sobbing. Like shoulder-shaking, can’t-catch-your-breath sobbing. Do you think she has her period or something?” Her period. I snort to myself. He better not say that where she can hear him. “Where is she now?” I’m already walking down the street toward a cab. I jump in and talk to Seth the whole way to their apartment. “She said she was going to take a shower.” “Okay, let me in when I get there.” “I don’t know what to do with a crying woman,” he whispers vehemently. Neither do I, but we’ll figure it out.

DASH: Hey, baby. Is it too early to start talking about baby names? Because I think Wolverine would be a really cool name for a boy. DASH: Or Wayne. After Bruce Wayne. But not Bruce because I knew a guy in high school named Bruce and he was a dick. CHARLIE: Are you texting me about names for our child while reading a comic book on the toilet? DASH: Uhhh…no?

To counter the effects of too-early learning, here are some things you can do: Where possible, choose schools that are developmentally sensitive in their curriculum and appropriate for your child. Some kids will do really well as big fish in small ponds. It gives them the confidence to tackle the currents without being afraid of being swept away. They get to grow strong and feel strong. So what if there are bigger fish in bigger ponds? Help your children find the right curricular environments for them. Relax and take a long view, even if no one else around you is. Most kids who learn to read at five aren’t better readers at nine than those who learn to read at six or seven. Bill remembers vividly the mild panicky feeling he and Starr had when their daughter was five years old and some of her friends were starting to read. Even though they knew that kids learn to read much easier at age seven than at age five, and that pushing academics too early was harmful and produced no lasting benefit, Bill and Starr wondered if they were jeopardizing their child’s future by letting her fall behind her peers. They briefly considered pulling her out of her nonacademic kindergarten. But they stuck to their guns and left her in a school that did not push and did not give her any homework until the fourth grade. Despite an unrushed start, she received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago at the age of twenty-six and is a successful economist. Bill loves telling that story, not to brag (okay, just a little), but to emphasize that it is difficult to buck the tide even when you know the current is carrying you the wrong way. Remember that any gains from rushing development will wash out. Parents often tell Bill that their third grader is doing fourth- or fifth-grade math—but he never hears twenty-six-year-olds brag that they’re more successful than most twenty-eight-year-olds. Don’t go overboard on AP classes. You are doing your child no favors if you let her take more APs at the cost of her mental health and sleep. There’s a reason why kids get more out of Moby-Dick in college than in high school. When we consider the enormous differences in the maturation of their prefrontal cortex—and the associated development in their capacity for abstraction and emotional maturity—it should come as no surprise that the majority of students will understand and appreciate novels written for adults better when they’re older. The same is true for complex scientific theories and data, quantitative concepts, and historical themes, which are easier for most kids to grasp when they are college aged. This isn’t to say that some students aren’t ready for college-level courses when they’re fifteen. The problem is that when this becomes the default for most students (I’ll never get into college if I don’t have five AP classes) it’s destructive.

As the saying goes, "It's not who you know, but who knows you." How does that relate to getting a job? Lets look at 2 cases where "who knows you" resulted in landing the best job. Keep in mind: The great thing is that you can start right where you are right now! Case 1 In my first teaching job in Mexico in the early 1980's, we were half way through the semester, when the director called me into his office to tell me he had taken a job in Silicon Valley, California. What he said next floored me. "I'd like you to apply for my job." How could I apply to be the director of an English school when it was my first teaching job, all the teachers had more teaching experience than I did, and many of them had doctorate degrees. I only had a bachelors degree. "Don't worry," he said. "People like you, and I think you have what it takes to be a good director." The director knew me, or at least got to know me from teachers' meetings, seeing me teach, and noticing how I interacted with people. Case 2 Fast forward 3 years. After Mexico, I moved to Reno, Nevada, to work on my Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. I applied for a teaching job at the community college, and half-way into the semester, a teacher had to leave and I got the job. I impressed the director enough that she asked me to be the Testing and Placement Coordinator the next year. At the end of that year, I wrote a final report about the testing and placement program. It so impressed the college administration that when a sister university was looking for a graduate student to head up a new language assessment program for new foreign graduate teaching assistants and International faculty, I got recommended. What Does This Mean? From these two examples, you can see that when people see what you can do, you have a greater chance of being seen and being known. When people see what you are capable of doing, there is less risk in hiring you. Why? Because they've seen you be successful before. Chances are you'll be successful with them, too. But, if people don't know you and haven't seen what you can do, there is much greater risk in hiring you. In fact, you may not even be on their radar screen. Get On Their Radar Screens To get on the radar screens for the best jobs, do the best job you can where you work right now. Don't wait for the job announcement to appear in the newspaper. Don't wait for something else to happen. Right now, invest all of you and your unique talents into what you're doing. Impress people with what you can do! Do that, and see the jobs you'll get!

It starts before you can remember: you learn, as surely as you learn to walk and talk, the rules for being a girl. You are Princess. You are Daddy’s Little Girl. Are you ticklish? Give him a hug. You’re sweet, aren’t you? You’re a good little girl. You don’t remember those early days, but here’s what you do remember: You remember ballet class, the way your tummy stretched your pink leotard and your parents fretted over some future eating disorder, and then you were trying tap, or soccer, or what about a musical instrument? You remember “We just want you to be happy!” and you remember you said you were happy because you knew that’s what they wanted to hear. How long have you been saying what everyone else wants to hear? Time went on, and GIRLS CAN DO ANYTHING! So speak up, I can’t hear you! But also: Manners, young lady. A boy is bothering you at school? Stand up for yourself! A boy is bothering you at school? He’s just trying to get your attention. Do you like sparkles and unicorns and everything pink? Oh, that’s stupid now. Can you play in this game? Sorry, no girls allowed. Put a little color on your face. Shave your legs. Don’t wear too much makeup. Don’t wear short skirts. Don’t distract the boys by wearing bodysuits or spaghetti straps or kneesocks. Don’t distract the boys by having a body. Don’t distract the boys. Don’t be one of those girls who can’t eat pizza. You’re getting the milkshake too? Whoa. Have you gained weight? Don’t get so skinny your curves disappear. Don’t get so curvy you aren’t skinny. Don’t take up too much space. It’s just about your health. Be funny, but don’t hog the spotlight. Be smart, but you have a lot to learn. Don’t be a doormat, but God, don’t be bossy. Be chill. Be easygoing. Act like one of the guys. Don’t actually act like one of the guys. Be a feminist. Support the sisterhood. Wait, are you, like, gay? Maybe kiss a girl if he’s watching though—that’s hot. Put on a show. Don’t even think about putting on a show, that’s nasty. Don’t be easy. Don’t give it up. Don’t be a prude. Don’t be cold. Don’t put him in the friend zone. Don’t act desperate. Don’t let things go too far. Don’t give him the wrong idea. Don’t blame him for trying. Don’t walk alone at night. But calm down! Don’t worry so much. Smile! Remember, girl: It’s the best time in the history of the world to be you. You can do anything! You can do everything! You can be whatever you want to be! Just as long as you follow the rules. - Rules for Being a Girl

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So, I went out into the bright spring sunlight and taped a few minutes of the wren laying furious claim to his territory with song. Then I let him hear his own voice. That little bird, one- third the size of a sparrow, began to dive- bomb me and my cassette recorder, swooping back and forth, inches from the speaker. We saw a lot of that sort of behaviour, even in the absence of the tape recorder. If a larger bird ever dared to sit and rest in any of the trees near our birdhouse there was a good chance he would get knocked off his perch by a kamikaze wren.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without the written and signed permission of the author. All trademarked names are the property of their owner and are acknowledged by the proper use of capitalization throughout. OTHER ‘Game on Boys’ BOOKS Available on Amazon as eBooks or print books Game on Boys 4 can be read separately or part of a series FREE ebook Game on Boys 1:The PlayStation Playoffs(8-12) Game on Boys 2 : Minecraft Madness (8-12) Game on Boys 3 : NO Girls Allowed Game on Boys 5 : House of Horrors Game on Boys 6 : Galactic Zombie Other books by Kate Cullen FREE Diary Of a Wickedly Cool Witch : Bullies and Baddies(8-13) Boyfriend Stealer : Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch 2 (8-13) Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch 3 : Perfect Ten (8-13) Diary of a Wickedly Cool Witch 4 : Witch School for Misfits Lucy goes to the Halloween Party (Early readers) Lucy the Easter Dog (Early readers) Lucy's Merry Christmas Sammy McGann and the Secret Soup People (5-10) Follow KATE on TWITTER at Kate Cullen @ katekate5555 Or email gameonboysseries@gmail.com to receive email updates. (Copy and paste) Or visit her website for new books and giveaways Kate Cullen author website Contents 1. Wow 2. BYODD 3. Secrets 4. News 5. Brats 6. Santa 7. Wishing 8. Blocky 9. Monsters 10. Wolverine 11. Creepy. 12. Arachnophobia 13. Fartblaster 14. Superhero 15. Enderman 16. Teleporting 17. Lost 18. Potions 19. Scared 20. Spells 21. Fireworks 22. Homecoming 1. WOW You know how awesome Christmas is, and birthdays are sick as, Easter is just a big fat chocolate splurge, and even Thanksgiving is like pig-out insanity. Weekends are kinda cool too, but holidays are totally far out man. And when a new PS game comes out and they have a midnight release extravaganza at the game store, it’s like crazy time, coolness overload. All these things are the main reason I exist on this earth. Without all this stuff, life would just SUCK big time. But nothing, I repeat NOTHING comes close to the Christmas I just had. WOW! I repeat WOW! Where do I even start? This Christmas was a like a dream come true. Actually it was sort of like a nightmare too, if that makes any sense. A dream and a nightmare mixed up into one. Totally far out man. Totally gobsmacking, totally awesome, but totally freaking scary. So you’re probably thinking like I won a million bucks or something and then got mugged, or the owner of Sony PlayStation company sent me 1000 free PS games, and then the house got robbed at gunpoint. Or even better, the owner made me the new boss of the Sony PlayStation company. Yeah right! Like that will ever happen! In my dreams!! Although, after what happened, I’m thinking that absolutely anything is possible. 2. BYODD The last day at school before Christmas break was awesome. We had a BYOD day in the afternoon. The first part of the day we had to do all the boring Christmassy stuff like making soppy cards for our families, coloring pictures of Santa and doing boring word searches looking for words like (DER) ‘Santa, Christmas, present, jingle, stocking’. Like BORING. Capital ‘B’ Boring. Why can’t Christmas word finds have proper Christmas words like, console, iPhone 6, PlayStation games, Star wars, BMX, Nerf Modulous Blaster, Thunderblast, Star Wars darth vader vehicle, lego Star Wars Death star?

WHEN I GOT TO HIGH SCHOOL, A MINISTER ASKED if I wanted to write an article for a church newsletter. When he asked, it felt like somebody had finally noticed me and wondered if there was something going on in my invisible world. I doubt that’s exactly what he was doing, but that’s the way it felt to me. I spent a solid week on the article, all of four hundred words, no more than a few paragraphs. I gave it to the minister and he called and said it was good, that I was a good writer and smart. I still remember how I felt when he said the word smart. I felt a little drunk. Kind of disoriented. A pleasure chemical seeped into my brain and, without me knowing it, I’d become Pavlov’s dog. If I was smart it meant I mattered. So I wanted to be smart. When the article came out, people stopped me in the halls to say they enjoyed reading it. My mother told me she had friends calling to say they liked the article too. And that was all I needed. I had a costume and it felt great to wear it. I could be smart. I could write, and if I wrote I mattered. So for the first time I started reading books. And I kept writing. I heard a speaker quote a poem so I went home and started memorizing poems. I wrote more than a thousand poems over the next two years. And I started dreaming about writing a book. Today, when people ask why I became a writer I try to answer honestly. I’m a writer because, at an early age, I became convinced it was the one thing I could do to earn people’s respect. It’s true in the process I learned to love words and ideas and these days I actually like to get lost in the writing process. But the early fuel, the early motivation, was all about becoming a person worth loving.

I vividly remember the night Kshama was born in 1950. Tata was preparing to leave town the next day, taking his dance-drama troupe on a trip. His team was busy packing up the props and equipment. Suddenly, Amma started having labour pains. Immediately they cleared the room of all materials. They were all packed away quickly. Tata meanwhile got a midwife to come to Balavana to assist in the delivery of the baby. Amma gave birth comfortably. Early next morning Tata packed his bags and went off with his troupe. At that time this did not seem like odd behaviour to me. The baby was born at night and everybody was up and about, busy taking care of Amma. Amma had never insisted, ‘You cannot do this. I need you.’ I consider her a wife who gave complete freedom to her husband. I don’t think many women can do that. Next morning, I too went off to school happily. I said to myself, if Tata can go on his trip as planned, I too can go to school. The show must go on was the guiding principle of our lives. No matter what happened, you continue doing whatever you had to do.