AIDS

It is high time, I start looking for some smiles in my life.

So, let's just cut to the chase and start with AIDS. Now, AIDS is no laughing matter. I clearly remember being introduced to the possibility while sitting in Mr. Cattani's classroom in junior high. The school had television sets installed in every classroom, which was a very big deal. Part of the television contract at the time, included Channel One. Our school was supposed to listen to Channel One every day in exchange for all those TVs. Channel One is how I learned about Magic Johnson becoming infected with HIV.


My general "look" at about jr high age, notice hair scrunchie; I remember feeling my dress was scandalously low-cut

My son came home one day and out of the complete blue, approached me and asked if I had AIDS. Apparently, he had watched a film about AIDS (I am sure I was sent an email beforehand but I confess to major communication overload at the end of the school year).

Surprisingly, this conversation went back and forth a number of rounds. He seemed convinced I had AIDS. Finally, he asked if my mom had AIDS because "you know" I could have gotten it from her and passed it along to my children. I told him "No", yet another time and he then asked, "How do you know?" and I disrespectfully answered, "Because she would be dead."

There may be some truth to this: This past school year has been interesting in the way of girls for my boy. He was generally annoyed with girls last year. When he found out that the church name for girls who turn 12 in our congregation is, "Beehives", he incredulously asked, "is that because they sting you and buzz in your ear?" But, after a few weeks of school, I was happy to hear him announce, "some of the girls are actually pretty cool."

Triumph of Trevor Truelove - Papa

Middle School Miracle: each student checks out a laptop at the beginning of the year (in junior high). It is a pretty high tech gadget to trust an 11 year old. The school claims the laptops are worth $500 which would be the cost of replacement should the laptop need to be replaced. My son came home two days before laptop-turn-in-day saying, "Mom, I think I lost my laptop." I couldn't believe it. We went over every place he'd been at school. I even drove him to school early the next morning to retrace steps.

That evening, we determined his laptop must have been stolen. He dutifully wrote down three or four names of kids who could possibly be interested in stealing his laptop. That night, around 10:30 pm I got an email from a girl who sits across the table from him asking if we were missing a laptop. Hallelujah! It was like manna from heaven. I couldn't believe the laptop had been found.

Last Day of School - Island Sorbet Celebration

More end-of-school madness: on the last night before the last day of school, I was notified by my son that he had made a big plan with a "bunch" of other kids to ride their bikes "up" to school. My house is literally all downhill from the junior high so the kids were definitely planning to go up. They made their plan to leave at 6 a.m., giving them plenty of time to make it before the first bell at 7:45. I didn't think any kids would actually show up at the meeting place that early in the morning so I followed along and sure enough, one other boy was there, ready to ride. And, off the boys went happily arriving at the school around 7 a.m. giving them plenty of time to loiter. They had a blast.

Lastly, the ways my now twelve year old son have made me smile, just today are when he says things like answering my query of what his body would look like if I let him sit in the car while I ran inside the store: "a turkey carcass".