Clown School

Juliana was born with a workbook in one hand and a sharpened pencil in the other. She started “playing school” when she was old enough to sit up. She had the most educated dolls on the block. By first grade her favorite place to be was snuggled in the corner with a Magic Tree House book.

Then came Holt.

Lest I think even one grain of Juliana’s marvelous love for learning is my doing, I have been given the most glorious gift of homeschooling a comedian. All the things about Holt that I adore and that make for such laughter throughout my day are the same things that make me want to pull my hair out when it comes to educating him.

Every morning we hop into the big recliner in my room and I listen to him read. This morning when I hollered at him to meet me back there, he showed up wearing this old terry cloth headband that he had pulled around his neck and then back up over his ears, shoving all his hair straight up in what can only be described as “Olivia Newton-John in the eighties”. I did a quick rendition of Let’s Get Physical (really just couldn’t help it) as Juliana gave me That Look from the corner of her eye. You know the one. She’s not used to seeing me hop around with quite that much enthusiasm.

But trying to get him to be serious enough to “do school” is exhausting. Every time we turn a page, he insists on making up a funny (and intricate) story to go with the picture. Then halfway through the page he will break out into song. It’s usually pretty good and it always tells a story, but that’s not really the point. Then when his song is over (or I have cut him off) he’ll get back to the business at hand.

He also has this pretty spot-on Georgia redneck accent he likes to use when being forced to read. It's sometimes hard to tell if he's misread the word or if I'm not translating correctly.

Today he has a new trick. Because he gets bored reading the normal way, he will start to mix the words from different lines. He’ll read the first two words from one line, skip to the next and pick up a couple, and then finish back on the line he started. This is a wonderful new delight for him. It is a bit of a frustration for me.

And because he is (I can’t deny it) drawn to numbers, he likes to simply “read” the page numbers at the bottom of the page and say “finished” when I turn each page and ask him to read.

Someone told me a long time ago to never pray for patience. I don’t recall that I’ve done this recently, but just in case, I will now be praying for God to enlarge my sense of humor. Or for a large bottle of Valium to fall from the sky every morning around reading time.