The danger here is that if I speak of anything that is not family news, I start veering sharply into a rant against what I see happening around me in society. Just today, for instance, I have written and erased three separate drafts of this blog post.
But this is where I think out loud. Sometimes one must write and write and write in order to find out what one thinks and how to state it clearly, logically, and concisely. The alternative is to talk and talk and talk, and no one wants to listen to me long enough for me to clearly formulate my argument.
Before I go there, however, I wanted to share something I thought was funny at work.
It has taken a while, as I am a middle-aged woman in a faculty made up of young men, to really find my place in the group. (My boss just turned 35 a few days ago, and I'm literally old enough to be a couple of the other teachers' mother.) They are never unkind or dismissive of me, and they are always telling me how grateful they are to have me there because, fortunately, I am competent at my job; but I haven't been able to fully mesh with them socially yet. They are a different generation, and I am not all that interesting in their eyes. I get it, of course. I was young like them once, too, and old people weren't exactly fascinating to me, either.
But today, I think I found my place. I am the mom. It's now official.
What happened was this: this morning, I handed each of them lists of the students in each of their classes and noted which students were not yet enrolled in the online classes. For the two classes that had complete student enrollment in their online classes, I jokingly graded them like a test, with exclamation points and happy faces.
The guys got the joke. They started arguing with each other over who had the most exclamation points (they know that I don't believe in using more than one exclamation point, so using multiple exclamation points is a bit of an in-joke).
"Mom likes me best!" crowed Skyler, who got three exclamation points.
"No, Mom likes me best! I got a happy face!" retorted Neil.
There was much laughter.
At lunch, Skyler came to me with the mending kit and said, "Can you be my mom and sew on the button that came off my cuff? I can't do it." As I sewed it on, I explained what I was doing because he asked me questions about the process. When I was done, he was grateful. "Thanks, Mom," he said with a grin.
Is it weird that this makes me more relaxed with them? I know how to be a mom. I do not know how to connect with them the way their generation connects with each other. But I can be more myself if I'm the mom.
Huh! Look at that! I have a Zoom meeting with my Relief Society presidency and I don't have time to rant. You're so lucky!
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