It came in the middle of her answering the standard question, "So.  Anything interesting happen at school today?"

I rarely get to pick my daughter up from school, mostly because I work a full time, day shift job.  Mercifully, I work a 9/80 schedule, which means that although I still work 80 hours over the course of two weeks, it is compressed into 9 days, giving me one day off every other week.  My daughter loves my days off because they mean that not only does she get to sleep until 7:00 (a decided improvement over getting up at 5:30), I generally take her to school and pick her up, which gives us time to talk and spend a few minutes together at the beginning and end of her school day.  It's only a few minutes, but we try to make those few minutes count as much as possible.  Especially considering the conversation that followed.

"So, you remember XYZ?"  I rather vaguely remember the little girl, as the same rotating group of kids has basically been together since Kindergarten.

"Yeah, sorta. Why?"

A 10-year old version of OMG enters her voice: "Well XYZ had some shorts on today, and at some point she rolled them all they way up to HERE (using her hands to indicate where the upper thigh connects to the hipbone), and she was showing a little bit in the back!  She got sent to the office, but she hurried up and rolled them back down before she got there."  At the next stop light, I turned around and looked at my daughter.  "You have GOT to be kidding me?"  "Nope.  She hangs around with a group of girls that call themselves "The Strippers". (And yes, she did the Air Quotation Marks with her fingers!)  That is NOT cool."

The light changed, and we continued running a few errands but I was floored by her story.  Understand, I am not a person to get into slut-shaming, and I believe in a woman's right to make her own choices at all times, regarding everything from what she chooses to wear, to what career she decides to embark on.  Note I said, a WOMAN's choices.  These are 9 and 10 year old girls.  In Elementary school.  Identifying with strippers, the ultimate projection of oneself for the approval of the male gaze.  This is troubling in that, while we are trying to get children to begin to imagine themselves in business or science or medicine or technology by pointing out those that have succeeded in those fields as examples, there are still those out there that are so mesmerized by the false glamour and faux wealth presented to them by music, television and movies that more reasonable voices are being drowned out.  Worse than that, however, is the loss of innocence implied by these young girls knowledge of, and desire to emulate, such an adult concept.

We can all remember a time when we were not burdened with the trials of adult life; when our concerns were Barbies, Hot Wheels, Legos, playing hide and seek or riding bikes for hours on end.  And we can all tell you when that concern turned away from our childhood fascinations, and we started becoming more interested in the opposite sex as something more than one more person to play Tag with. I find it alarming that the innocence window is shrinking every year.  Why not allow kids to be kids for as long as possible?  I know that there are products to be sold, and money to be made from those that want their children to have the latest, and most fashionable clothing and gadgets, but 7 year olds in booty shoots, boots and cut off tops (worn to school by one of Ashley's classmates a few years ago) gives one pause.  Certain clothing, worn in certain combinations, are generally meant to have the effect of gaining favorable male attention.  Of course, the flip side of that is just trying to cool off, and being on the receiving end of unwanted, and often vulgar, male attention.  Being that I live in a fairly diverse, working class urban neighborhood, I am hard-pressed to speak to which of those two scenarios was at play here.

It has become very difficult to create safe spaces for children to have full childhoods.  Especially in inner-city neighborhoods, where the rush to assume adult identities and characteristics is exacerbated by a media obsessed with a certain image of inner-city inhabitants, popular culture that celebrates and markets pornography based images of women as ideal, and parents determined to give their kids everything they didn't have as children, even at the cost of a hurried leap into adolescence.  Or emulating adult entertainment professions that in reality they should know nothing about.

I was a kid once.  I gamed my mother a couple of times by wearing one thing out of the house, then changing once I got to school. I got caught, obviously, and subsequently was closely scrutinized by my mother everyday after that to make sure I didn't do it again.  I don't fault my mother for this, as I realize now that she understood that whatever you think of yourself, people are going to perceive you based on whatever they were taught about how people present themselves.  Meaning dressing scantily to attract male attention/approval might backfire if those same males were taught to perceive scantily dressed women, not as the sexually liberated women they see themselves as, but as the loose or amoral, according to whoever raised them.  I was also 16, and a junior in high school at the time. This is not a conversation anyone should be worrying about with elementary school aged children, girl or boy.

I know I can't protect my daughter from everything.  That's impossible, and I can't even begin to try.  But I can make a small place for her to safely explore her world without having to learn to understand an adult world, and adult concepts before she is physically, mentally or emotionally ready.  It's a small thing, but the least I can do to make sure that she has a COMPLETE childhood before she is launched into the grown-up world.

 "So. Tell me a story."

My daughter was sitting on my bed, frustrated and slowly progressing to beside herself.  A draft of a report was due, and while she didn't mind doing the work, she couldn't understand her teacher's criticisms of her work, so she wasn't quite sure how to fix the issue so she could go back to getting her usual A's.

Me, being Mom, and trying to help without over-helping, and explaining at least some part of the writing process to her, so that she could become more comfortable with report writing, as the more she advances in school, the more report writing will become a huge part of her life.  Left up to her, she would do math and science all day every day, and skip all of the writing stuff.  But English, History, and Social Studies, with their associated long format, detailed answers, will begin to be a factor in a year when she begins middle school, so learning the basic, five paragraph essay format has been her quarterly project since the beginning of the 3rd grade.  Having not really learned this format until later in my high school career (shame, I know), and seeing as her current teacher also knew that I was a blogger, I was determined to help her get through The Writing with as much grace and elegance as a 4th grader could muster.  She loved the research portions of these reports, and printing pictures off of the internet or building models, but The Writing?  The Writing was like pulling bad teeth from an angry alligator.  Getting the work done without getting bit was perilous at best, and extremely hazardous to my (mental) health at worst.

I began by going over the outline the teacher had given the students,  giving them the requirements for the report,  as well as a rough idea of how to build it.  I pointed out that she had taken mostly all of the appropriate notes, so that put her ahead of the game.  All that really needed to happen was that she put the pertinent information together into clear paragraphs that supported her original point.  The words needed to flow in such a way that they were easily understood without seeming stiff, as little kids tend to write write sentences that are stand alone, and don't really lend themselves to leading to the next sentence or idea.  As I begin to explain narrative voice, her eyes glaze over, followed by a look of absolute panic.

" I am NEVER going to get finished, and even if I do, it's going to SUCK!"

I know I am going to need a way to keep her attention and still make sure she understands what I am telling her, so I grab a notepad and pen from the side of my bed, as well as an autobiography I had recently checked out from the library, but hadn't started reading yet.  I thumb through the book until I find a safe, descriptive paragraph, speaking to, of all things, a musician's songwriting process.  She read the paragraph, thought about it for a few seconds, then wailed that she would NEVER be able to write that well.

I was back at square one, and needed to save the situation before it got any worse.

"So. Tell me a story."

"Huh?  What kind of story?"

"Tell me what happened after the sitter picked you up from school today.  Tell me everything that happened between the time you got picked up, and the time you guys made it back to the daycare."

She gave me a weird look, but began to narrate what she thought were the mundane details of the daily pickup routine, punctuated by one kid messing around with the door handle, being told to stop, then doing it again anyway as soon as the van stopped, then nearly falling out of the van as soon as it got to the daycare.

I verified the details, then I sat and wrote for a few minutes.  I then handed her a paragraph filled with an exciting (I think, anyway) tale of pickups, and dramatic exchanges about homework, and a mischievous little kid and a van door.  She couldn't believe it was the same story.

This, I told her, was the essence of writing: stringing a series of facts and details together so that they were interesting and made sense to whoever was reading them. Write as if you are speaking to someone, just remembering to use your best grammar, and support everything you say with details.  And practice really does make perfect.  The more you write, the more comfortable you get with writing, hopefully the more you learn, and the better you get.

She didn't look completely convinced, but she slunk off to the living room to get back on the computer, and re-write her paragraphs.  She did end up getting a better grade than the project prior to that one, if I recall correctly, so I think it worked, at least a little.  Score one for Mom teaching.

Writing, like reading, is becoming a lost art among my daughter's contemporaries.  She has a few books that she likes, and I bring home books that I think she will like from my own childhood, but times and tastes change, and there are far more misses than hits.  She was fascinated when I finished The Corrections in 10 days, and can't understand for the life of her how I have the patience to turn off the TV and read a 300 page (or longer) book.  I tell her that if I am going to write, I need to read, and that reading calms me when the constant blare of the television gets too frenetic.  But what with the varied and non-stop lure of electronic entertainment, why should a kid pick up something as low-tech as a book?  Maybe because reading for pleasure, not just for assignments, might turn their minds to more intellectual pursuits than gaming, and the thumb typed, shortened messages that pass for writing now.  Also with reading comes a heightened ability to express yourself with more and better words, which can sometimes become a desire to write.  With more people writing, our world becomes larger as people begin to reveal their unique lives to us, painting a picture of the world colored by so many points of view, we may never be able to read them all, but somehow, it's comforting to know that there are so many stories out there, just waiting to be told.

So.  Tell me a story.

I want you to know I saw the look of distress on your face as I closed the door of the daycare this morning.

I recognized it immediately, which is why the extra hugs and kisses before I left for work.

I used to look like that too. I was the rare child that started hating school in Kindergarten, and spent every school day of the next 13 years (K-12th grade) smiling on the outside (most of the time anyway), while inwardly counting the days until it was over.  The difference between your experience of school and mine is that up until this year, you absolutely LOVED school.  You liked doing your homework, and looked forward to challenges and writing reports.  I started noticing a subtle shift the closer we got to Christmas break, though.  Assignments would slip through the cracks, here and there.  You quit putting in the same effort you did before, and getting you to work through things went from the breeze it was to a trying experience of tears and half-hearted effort.

Any inquiries as to what had changed were met with shrugs, and nearly whispered "I don't know"s.  Up until last night, when comparing an F on a random assignment with a long list of A's and B's on tests given the same week, and I realized that the two pictures didn't mesh, and I called you on it.  I told you that we could work this one of two ways:  I could go the punitive route, and just punish you for the bad grade, or we could talk about what led up to that, and see if we could find a way to stop this from happening again.  Much as I said yesterday, I can't help you fix it if you are not honest about what's going on.  Even though, after it all came out in a low defeated voice while staring at the accumulated dust at the bottom on my dresser, I don't know if this is something that can be fixed.

At the ripe old age of ten, you have begun that trip into the realm of the girls that don't want to seem too smart, lest they not have any friends.  I had so hoped you wouldn't have to go through this.  But as I watched you develop anxiety about school (the likely source of the bathroom issues and the resulting taunting which only made everything worse), I knew at some point I would hear this one admission that I wanted you to avoid.  That I thought women and girls had left behind in the 20+ years since I left school.

I purposely chose this semi-suburban environment because I wanted you to have a different academic experience than the one I had.  Inner city schools were okay for smart girls, but a great deal of support was needed to keep girls from becoming socially isolated because the other kids weren't sure what to make of them.  I aimed to not move while you went through elementary school so that you could make, and keep, the same friends, building up a set of social skills that I never really developed while we moved from place to place.  I didn't expect that to develop into kids that knew your weaknesses, and took obscene delight in pointing them out to you at every opportunity.  I figured because you were conventionally attractive, you wouldn't catch even 1/10th the hell I caught going through school for not being attractive enough.  I didn't realize until other people started pointing it out that you have a lighter version of almost my exact same face, along with the same big, coarse just barely manageable hair that does exactly as it pleases, which is usually the one thing that you DON'T want it to do.  How well I know that story.

You are a girl that loves math and science, who currently wants to be a teacher when you grow up.  I smile and tell you that this is wonderful, and you can do anything you want to do.  Internally I fight a war between encouraging you, and fiercely wanting to protect you from the rough waters that await a girl interested in STEM fields, especially as you prepare for your final year of elementary school next year, and from there prepare to navigate the far more treacherous territory of middle school.  I worry about you losing the sweet, funny, quirky nerd that you are to the jaded, outwardly tough, bravado spouting street kid that the surrounding neighborhood seems determined to turn you into.  I am divided between being awed by, and afraid of, the fact that as small and thin as you are, you really don't take any crap from any of the kids that pick on you because they are bigger than you, mostly because I told you not to.  My own experiences with being routinely bullied left me determined that my own children would never have to put up with the cruel jokes, snide remarks, and occasional physical confrontations that I was told to "ignore, and they will leave you alone"  (the biggest lie kids are told), however, in this age of strictly enforced Zero Tolerance policies, I fear your efforts to stand up for yourself will end in a flurry of suspensions that, rather than keep you from being a victim, might get you labeled as a troublemaker.  Which, by the way, is what started happening to your brother in middle school, which was so frequent by high school, that it was one of the many contributing factors to him dropping out.  Which is what I DON'T want to happen with you.

You have many more days of school to go, my darling daughter, and I will do the best I can to teach you, guide you, and help you learn how to get through them.  I can't guarantee you I will know all the right things to say and do to encourage you, and I know that as much as I would like to, I can never shield you from  all of the negativity that will come your way.  Nor should I attempt to keep you too sheltered, as you will need to learn how to deal with less than ideal people and situations.  But know that I do love you, and I am always willing to try to do whatever I can to make your journey a bit smoother (short of doing everything FOR you, but you knew that already), or at the very least, help you make sense of whatever is going on around you.  I think I can do that much.

I hope this helps.

There is nothing worse than a song that gets stuck in your head for days.  Especially if it's one of my tween daughter's sugary pop, Disney or Nickelodeon stars songs.  Then I have to find another earworm to try and cleanse my brain of the drivel that she loves so much.


I make no secret of the fact that I do not particularly enjoy my kids' tastes in music.  The fact that they play the songs TO DEATH is a guarantee that I will find myself humming the song at some random point, if only because I can't get away from it unless I barricade myself in my room with earplugs.  Having grown up listening to everything from the experimental jazz of the 60's, to the disco and hard funk of the 70's to my discovery of all things rock and roll, past and present in the 80's, generally I try to be pretty open about what I listen to.  But I can honestly say that I hate some of the sweet electropop my daughter loves more than I hate that whiny cartoon, Caillou, and that's saying a lot.

I kid, I kid.  Sort of.

Earworms are like that, though.  If it's a song you like, but maybe forgot about, having the song pop up suddenly can be a great memory of a time in your life that was free of the burdens and worries that you have now.  I love it when songs are tied to a movie I haven't seen in a long time, as it gives me a reason to go back and re-watch movies from my childhood and teen years.  It's interesting, however, when you are going through a extremely difficult or trying time in your life, and a song will suddenly pop into your head whose lyrics directly correspond to whatever it is that you are experiencing.  I've always figured that this was the universe's way of making sure you don't feel like you are going through this all alone; somebody out there gets it because they've been through it too.

I've has songs creep back into my memory that reminded of entire genres of music that I had forgotten about.  One morning I woke up with the song "Beautiful Disaster" by the group 311 playing in my head:

Up until that moment, I hadn't thought about the 90's alternative music that I used to love, much at all.  Once I looked it up on YouTube, it led me back to a lot of great artists and music that I used to love from LA radio station KROQ, until I stopped listening in the mid 90's.

These artists reminded me that I had always preferred my music with a little "bite" to it, and lyrics that actually talked about what was going on in the world, especially subjects people might overlook or take for granted.  I had always leaned more toward LA post-punk bands like X, or English punkers The Clash, more than mainstream pop.  Of course I was not totally immune to the charms of certain bands, remembering what slid under my radar and took up residence in my subconscious a couple of weeks ago:

If music really is the soundtrack of your life, per Dick Clark, the earworms I find most pleasant are the ones that develop after I've had to learn a song for one of the gospel choirs I sing with.  Don't get any big ideas; I am NOT a soloist, so much as I make a very joyful BACKGROUND noise.  These are the songs that tend to pop up in my head and stay for awhile when I'm down, or just not feeling areas of my life working out.  Songs with lyrics that are uplifting and let you know that you are definitely not all alone in your struggles.  Of course not all inspirational songs are gospel:

Sometimes a gospel-tinged vocal, mixed with a soaring jazz saxophone is all your memory needs to pull a certain song from your mental archives when needed.  

As varied as my musical background is, I find it interesting what kind of notes, lyrics, and occasionally entire albums spring into my head on a daily basis.  It rarely, if ever gets boring, and it's nice to know that the catalog in my head can pull up a song to match almost any occasion.  It makes for an interesting Facebook feed when I get post happy some nights.

And I don't hate EVERYTHING my kids listen to.  But don't tell them that.  Then I'll never get to listen to what I want while I clean the house.  And maybe plant a few earworms of my own.

Sometime around the end of January, I decided it was time to take my daughter to her first art museum.

My decision was aided by the fact that for one day each year, art museums around the city offer free admission, which was enough motivation for me to plan a trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  I had never been there and had always wanted to go, so my excitement when I first broached the subject with Ashley was matched only by her phone distracted apathy.



Me (to Ashley): How would you like to go to LACMA on the 25th?

Ashley (staring at phone): What's LACMA?

Me: It's the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  It's free that day.

Ashley (still staring at phone): What do you do at a museum?

Me: Look at paintings and sculptures and stuff. 

Ashley (looks up skeptically from phone)

If you have ever gotten the side eye from a kid when trying to convince them to do something that will separate them from their beloved technology for more than a few minutes, you will know that the next sentence in this exchange is CRUCIAL: it will mean the difference between an affirmative cultural experience with your child, or another Saturday spent watching her watch a screen.

Me: We can have lunch while we are there, and make a day of it.

Ashley (shugs, then goes back to the phone): OK, I guess.

We got up early on a Saturday morning, and started the cross town journey to the museum on the bus.  My normally talkative and observant daughter was engrossed by the games on her phone during the long ride, and I quietly wondered if she was going to get anything out of this experience.  I didn't get into art until I was a senior in high school, and Impressionism was one of the subjects I had to study for Academic Decathlon.  Up until that point, I was aware of paintings and sculpture, but only in a peripheral way.  I knew it was there, and I knew what it was, but that was about it.  I didn't understand beauty or expression, or point of view until much later.  I was determined to remedy that lack of knowledge with my son, and took him to the Getty Museum twice, so that at the very least, he could say that he had been exposed to fine art.

When we finally got off the bus in front of the museum, my daughter was immediately charmed by the hugeness of the structure.  To my surprise, she decided to use the phone on her camera to take pictures of whatever we saw on our walk through the museum.  We got in line to get whatever free tickets, passes and maps we needed for the day, and started our walk in the gallery closest to the ticket boot which featured a display of Chinese and Japanese art and artifacts.  After warnings not to get to close to anything, and definitely not to touch anything, and encouraging her to read the small letter board displays at each piece, I allowed her to lead the way as we explored the first exhibit.  She just looked at paintings and took pictures for a couple of minutes, until she stopped and pondered a wooden sculpture of a horse decked out in fine livery.  She stared for a full two minutes, before I asked her what she was thinking.  

"This looks like the horse from "Mulan".

A couple near us heard her, and gave me the pressed lip smile that let me know that they thought it was funny, but they didn't want to discourage her.  I smiled back.  You gotta start somewhere.

We finished that particular exhibit in about 30 minutes, and by then, she was ready for lunch.  While we were eating, Ashley took the map from me, and started looking at the names and description of the other exhibits, and talking about what SHE wanted to see that day.  I was happy to let her lead.  This day was about her, and exposing her to something she might not otherwise see, so I fell back, and let her pick what sounded interesting to her.

We next went to a Latin Art exhibit, where she saw paintings by Diego Rivera for the first time, as did I.  We also got to see some of the early film work of a pioneering Latin filmmaker, which started freaking her out a bit because of the early 20th century special effects, so we had to move on.  As we were exiting the Latin art exhibit and about to make our way into the next pavilion, we came across what looked to me like giant spaghetti, drying on a rack:

This was one of the many outdoor art installations that invited visitors to experience art through play.   It made me dizzy, but she thoroughly enjoyed twirling herself around in the long strings.  She was having a great time with other kids in the long spaghetti, but we eventually moved into the next pavilion where we settled, after looking at four entire floors worth of choices, on European art.  When we walked into the room where the impressionist paintings and sculptures were, and she immediately looked for a bench and sat down.  I asked her if she was starting to get tired.  We had been there for two and a half hours, and in all honesty, I was up to my ears in culture by now.

"Well yeah.  And all this stuff is starting to get a little inappropriate."

She pointed behind me, to the sculpture Eternal Spring by Auguste Rodin.  She had this same reaction to other partial nude paintings in other parts of the gallery.  I had forgotten to explain to her that artists throughout history have viewed the human body as a work of art, and painted and sculpted it regularly.  The only way she is used to seeing the human body portrayed is on television or in movies, and then only in a sexual way, so what else would she think?  Even as I explained about the human body as the subject of art work, I could see her really starting to consider the human body as more than a sexual object.  Maybe this visit was paying off in ways I hadn't thought about...

Our last exhibit for the day was a room with art from Southeast Asia and India.  Ashley was quickly burning out, and spent as much time looking for someplace to sit as she did looking at the stunning art pieces.  While I was fascinated looking at the hindu gods and goddesses, Ashley mostly looked at doors and archways:

Occasionally, I can take a hint.  We made our way out of the pavilion, down into the sculpture garden, into a beautiful light installation, then out into the street.  Ashley asked me right away when we could come back to see the rest of it.  She figured we already saw part of it, we might as well see the rest.  A small part of me thinks she was also more than a little fascinated by being exposed to something outside of her everyday experience, and eager to continue the adventure.  I asked her if maybe next time we could go to the Getty instead.  I immediately threw in the fact that they had beautiful outdoor gardens, and we could have lunch there as well.  She asked if she could bring her phone.  Just to take pictures of course.

I'll be planning that trip for later in the spring.

My daughter used to love my days off. 

On every other Friday, she could sleep a little later than her usual 5:30am wake up time, and I would walk her to school.  Those were times when she and I could talk candidly without the input of her older brother.  Since the loss of our car  a little over a week ago,  what was once a bi-weekly ritual is now a daily necessity, as now my daughter and I are back where we were three years ago: walking down the street in the pre-dawn hours in order to get the bus to her daycare so I can go to work.  Now, we also walk to her gymnastics class at a local park.  Yesterday, we walked just under a mile in the waning heat of early fall in the late afternoon in Southern California.  I don't know if she was tired, or if maybe the heat was getting to her, but there was a different feeling I got from her as we made our way quickly over to the park.

Although there are times when she is quite conversational, lately she has been quiet and seems to be more introspective.  Never make the mistake of thinking that kids don't have thoughts that have little to do with what you think they are concerned about.  Especially around this transitional age of 9-12.  Children are far more perceptive and intelligent than adults give them credit for, and I think if given a glimpse inside the mind of my daughter yesterday afternoon, I would have heard something like this:

My name is Ashley, and I'm 9 years old.


I have a lot of Hello Kitty stuff that Mommy and other people get me, and I like to watch Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.

"Are we still going to have a sleepover for my birthday?"

I have a few friends, but I spend a lot of time by myself.  I get upset a lot and scream sometimes, and grownups and kids don't understand it, so I just play by myself, or play with the babies at daycare or watch tv when I'm at home.  And then sometimes I feel like running around for no reason, and I start thinking a lot of stuff at once, and I just start talking all at the same time.  Teachers don't like that.  That's why I put my patch on in the morning.  I calm down, and I don't get in as much trouble.  That's also why Mommy won't let me eat candy a lot.

"Can we get water from AM/PM before we get to the park?  I'm HOT!"

We haven't done this much walking in a long time.  It's cold in the morning, hot in the afternoon and I really miss riding in a car.  My backpack is heavy in the morning, and I see Mommy looking at it, but I told her I don't want a backpack with wheels.  Too big and not cool.  I'm glad we went home first and dropped it off.  She keeps saying that it won't be like this for long, and I keep telling her that it's okay, but I hope we don't have to keep doing this.

"How much you wanna bet he changed the tv already?"

I love my brother but he is kinda annoying.  He got mad because he was watching TV when we got back from school, and Mommy wanted the tv off so I could to do my homework before we left again.  He started saying stuff, and Mommy almost got mad back at him.  She told him to go in his room or do something else.  He got on the computer and started playing music HE liked.   He hogs EVERYTHING, including Mommy's attention.  I wish he would get his act together, whatever that means.  That's what Mommy keeps telling him, and maybe they wouldn't argue so much.  I get tired of getting sent in Mommy's room so they can talk.

"Those people in front of us are walking sloooooowwwww."

Mommy laughed a little when I said that.  YAY!  I like her laugh, even the little ones.  She thinks we don't see her making sad faces and mad faces when she talks about money with Auntie and Nana.  When she goes in her room to talk on the phone, we turn down the TV so we can hear.  We want to know what she's talking about.  Mommy told my aunt that she doesn't like surprises.  We don't either.  I like it when she tells me that something is going to happen, or not gonna happen.  I feel better when I know, and I don't get all upset, and then Mommy doesn't get all upset with me.  That's why I try not to ask her for stuff.  I know we don't have money, she says it all the time, but sometimes I ask for little stuff anyway.  And sometimes I actually get it!

"Can I play around a little bit, or do I have to go straight to class?"

The other class is still there, so me and Mommy are sitting at a table, waiting.  I'm hungry and I don't want to tell her because she told me to eat something before we left home, and I only ate a little bit.  Maybe I can get something on the way home?  I'm feeling a little bouncy, and Mommy is starting to get that worried look she gets when I start feeling bouncy, and now she is looking at the door to the room where I do gymnastics.  Now she is gonna be watching me like that the whole time.  She thinks I play around too much, but teachers have only said that a couple of times.  OK.  The little kids are out.  Time for class.

I did stop and get her a snack on the walk back from the park.  I am not completely oblivious to her needs.  Preoccupied, definitely, but I can catch a hint when I listen hard enough. Today, I did.