Don't worry, there's also the Potty Pass

"Mom, don't worry," my son reassured me last night. "There's also the Potty Pass."

"YOU are DEPENDING on THAT to pull up your Biology grade in FRESHMAN year?" asks his sister, her jaw hitting our limestone floor. "Mom, your son won't graduate from high school and that's that!"

My daughter, the drama and dance queen, is back after her first quarter at Northwestern University. Her AP BIO grades in high school wouldn't have got her the Nobel but, wait a minute, we're talking about bombing freshman year.
She always refers only to her Freshman and Sophomore years.

"In Freshman year, you can't get anything but A's."
"In Freshman year, which idiot bombs Biology?"
"10th grade math, Trig Honors, is such a joke. It's for babies."
"Sophomore English? I slept through it."

But when I say, "Sweetie pie, come here, let's talk about 11th grade," she's nowhere to be seen. Has she apparated to Chicago? Because I've been looking and I can't find the broom.

In our home, subjects like grades spark spontaneous combustion and allergic reactions. Sometimes they bring on the flu–or, as in my daughter's case, the floo powder. And at most Indian-American homes–assuming we're talking about the sane, everyday-fare Indian–the day begins and ends with looking at something called THE ONLINE GRADING SYSTEM.

At most high schools, parents have access to their kid's grades through the school website. The access to the system is password protected. This is typically accessible to parents until 11th grade at which point your kid will go in and keep switching the password on you many times over exactly around the time the progress report is due to come out.

The online grading system is how I power up and end my day. My morning cup of French Roast from Cupertino's potent Roasted Coffee Bean in hand, I turn on THE SYSTEM. I don't need breathing exercises from my Art of Living workshop any more. My son's grades keep me in shape. I inhale sharply as I type in my password, hold for around 30 seconds and release when I see that the grades are on the other side of the B mountain.

Of all his numbers, his Biology grades give me the hot flashes month after month. The labs seem low on oxygen. When the marker for his labs points to zero again and again, I tell my son I'm feeling the onset of the Vaso-Vagal syndrome.

He's concerned, he's such a good boy. "Mom, don't worry. I forgot to put the date. You get a zero until you put the date back in. I'll handle it."

Another time he ponders the situation as if he were Gregor Mendel. "Mmm...it must be a technicality. I may have forgotten to write my name on the top right hand corner of the paper. So I'm sure my paper's in the "No-name" bin. I'll handle it right away."

Ye another time, he muses: "There's something wrong with the Scantron system. Look how I'm acing the essays."

And that's how, as we inch towards the end of the semester mark, our son has begun to bet on the proper functioning of his urethra: if he doesn't take a bathroom break, he will get an additional 10 points. (And that's not forgetting the Kleenex points: if you bring a box of tissues, add 10 more points to your Diffusion lab)

But look at the bright side, friends. When your biology grade depends on holding your bladder for eighteen straight weeks, you know your career choice likely lies in Economics, Chemistry, French, Music, Math, English or Physics. Or Driver's Ed.

High school is about finding what you want to do in your life. The potty pass is taking us closer than ever before to finding the truth.

Thinking too much never helped anyone get an A in English

My 14-year-old son is now confronting a new problem in high school. He is, according to his English teacher, “thinking too much”.

He came home last week with an 84 out of 100 in a vocabulary test because he, unfortunately, has been thinking too much about words and their contextual, non-contextual and metaphysical meanings.

Why won’t my son think straight? Does he want to be left behind at school?

And with this event blotting the joy from our November holidays, I offer the following points of advice for my son so he won’t languish in high school and embarrass his high-achieving Indian American parents who, like all other Indian American parents, have very specific dreams for where their son will be going to college in 2012 even though they themselves have attended questionable community colleges and state universities.

1. Don’t read between the lines. Stop wondering WHAT is in a name.

Did I ask you to plough through Kafka on the shore during the holidays?
Haruki Marukumi’s work is not for the wimpy and it does you little to tax your brains to solve riddles. Even though Wikipedia may offer some other explanations, "Kafka" is really just a proper noun. That's all.

2. Will you stop reading comics?

Yes, I know Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer winning Maus is wondrous but you shouldn’t read artwork and writings about the holocaust anyway because it’s amassing knowledge that, once again, will cause you to start thinking about things which is precisely what we’re trying to avoid doing. Ditto with your fondness for Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

3. Consider your other media options, honey

I’d rather you spent some time in other media, sweetie. Too much reading is why you’re reading too much into everything and ending up with shameful grades like 84 on 100. Your ancestors never settled for anything other than a 100 on 100 and they often went after the extra-credit 4 points by demonstrating that they had memorized meanings word for word in the same order that they were given them. And, honey, I’d rather you arm yourself with some sleight of hand for the challenges of the next generation. Playing Halo may teach you to worm your way through a burning 5-star hotel, a priceless skill in these troubled times.

4. Stay left-brain-centric. Where did right-brain get us anyway?

Don’t trust everything Daniel Pink says in his work ‘A Whole New Mind’ about why right-brainers will rule the future. Mr. Pink says folks like your dad are passé. He says your mother will rule the future. We know who brought in the green in this family so far and who will bring more of it in the future. Let’s not kid ourselves here because I need to use our family credit card for that gorgeous pair of Blahniks that I'm buying at Nordstrom this Christmas season.

Keeping that in mind, make a decision by the end of 9th grade on whether you’ll concentrate on computer science or bio-medical engineering. Everything else is fluff, son, that won’t bring in the moola. No, not economics or investment banking, please.

5. Don’t look up the word

Are you looking up a word in the dictionary as you read? Yet again? Munchkins, I told you it’s such a waste of time because it interrupts the flow of your reading and it’ll get you thinking which, as you know, is risky. What did the teacher say was the meaning of that word? THAT is the meaning and nothing else. No, no, looking up “Rotogravure” in the dictionary is pointless. How many times are you going to encounter this word again anyway?

6. Sweetheart, the classics are overrated

You’re nuts to go through with this crazy plan of yours to finish all the classics of English and American literature before you’re done with high school. I’ve analyzed Canterbury Tales, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Mill on the Floss in the days when there were no Cliff Notes and Wikipedia. It hasn't helped me any. Why should you care what happens to Michael Henchard in Mayor of Casterbridge? Has it shaped anything in you other than, say, your resolve to not lie or drink? But, son, what am I here for? I could tell you that in one-tenth the time it takes you to read these books.

Finally, dear, I’ll leave you with this thought about which, again, I don’t want you to think too hard. Just remember that when English poet Alexander Pope wrote these famous lines in the 17th Century,
“A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”,
he didn’t have access to Google and Wikipedia.

Late to school? AGAIN?

How do I explain to my son’s high school office that being marked tardy several times in a row for the same English class is really quite unfair to a family with exceptional values? Being one minute late to class shouldn’t really have to matter in the big scheme of things.

“Mr. So and So,” I would say, “Let’s look at the cultural issues at hand.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And look at what your own Evelyn Waugh said about this trait: punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”

“Are you trying to say I’m in a dead-end job?”

“No, just that Indian Americans and their children operate by a different clock.”

“Really? And what kind of clock is that? I bet it’s from Ikea.”

I don’t know how he knows that most Indian Americans shop at Ikea but I bought mine at Costco on clearance. I’m certainly not going to tell him that since it’s not in my culture and, certainly not to my advantage, to tell others about good deals. The early bird gets the worm and the rest simply squirm.

But what I would like to tell Mr. So and So is that like the Americans who seem to exercise their privilege to switch their clocks back and forth twice a year, Indian Americans like to change their clocks everyday. So if it’s school, we may be a few minutes behind. If it’s a daylong picnic, we will–likely–stroll in by lunchtime. If it’s a party, our clocks are running close to an hour late; for a 7PM party, do always invite us at 6PM, won’t you?

I will remind him about how much Indian Americans have accomplished here in the United States and gently urge him to look up the roster of past valedictorian and salutatorian names, many of which start or end in “Ram”. I will suggest that while punctuality may be considered a virtue on the North American continent, everywhere else, including Europe–except in Switzerland where their hands were tied to the hands of their clocks–it’s not even a concept for which, I’m sorry to have to use the dreadful word, the time has come. Now let’s look at just one of the things my ancestors in India have done, despite this one fetal flaw, Mr. So and So. In the 5th Century AD, an Indian invented the number Zero and also came up with an approximation for Pi. You must realize that had it not been for an Indian who lived many thousand years ago, you may not even have a school bell.

“So, given our background, would you forgive that one micro-chink in our armor, Mr. So and So, and reconsider dropping one of the tardies so my son doesn’t get Saturday detention before this semester ends?”

And, if Mr. So and So does, I promise to buy him a cuckoo clock from Switzerland for Teacher’s Day after setting it to five minutes behind the school bell.