"Teach Your Parents Well"

Some children understand that their parents are more than just big housemates - that parents need to be nurtured and guided and patiently, carefully educated.

Amy's academic semester has been underway for some time, and she is proving quite the reluctant scholar.  Ian decided some months ago that he was going to issue her some kind of study guide to prepare her for first a homework assignment, and ultimately perhaps an exam, in the subject of Pokemon.  He painstakingly wrote out the curriculum himself, with ink and copy paper, and he handed it to her to study, internalize, assimilate.

Ian believes that Amy hasn't progressed much in her Pokemon studies, and I'm afraid I think he might be right.  From time to time, he asks me to get after her about it.  The other night, he reiterated to me that he needs me to get Mom to finish her Pokemon homework, and apparently I didn't show sufficient zeal in embracing this indispensable task:  he  told me something like, "You just don't want her to do it, because you know you're next."  In other words, Ian is accusing me of reluctance to guide Mommy toward academic achievement and the completion of her assignment, because I know that I'm the next student designated to take the course once she completes it.  Of course, the allegations are false.

Meanwhile, Ian has been campaigning for days to get me to draw a picture of the gerbils.  He already began one, and I think he did a really good job.  His gerbil drawing is quite cute, and the subjects look like the rodents in our tank downstairs.

But I'm a terrible drawer, so I didn't rush into this endeavor.  But tonight, the line was drawn in the sand:  Ian insisted that I go straight downstairs, after putting him to bed, and complete my gerbil-drawing assignment.  Of course, I did just that.  He even gave me some useful advice:  that I might do better if i look at the gerbils while drawing them.  It would seem that Professor Ian is closer, in his sympathies, to the impressionists than to the expressionists.

In any case, the drawing of the gerbils is by the window in his room, waiting for him to praise it or trash it when he wakes up tomorrow.  This task served to get me away from him long enough that he could get to sleep.  This is a wonderful development:  if I had lain down next to him, he would have likely gone on much longer talking about Pokemon before, but my brief gerbil-drawing got me away from Ian's room long enough that he could nod off to sleep, rather than being kept awake indefinitely by the excitement of the topic of Pokemon.

(October 25, 20130