Heidi+Math+History=Failure

I was never very good at math. Alternatively, my brother graduated with a degree in chemical engineering and went on for a master’s degree in fuel science, so yeah, he’s pretty good at math.


When I was in about 4th grade, my dad noticed my math skills were lackluster and needed a boost. So he bought a math workbook from the book section in our local grocery store. Then he bought another one.

Eventually, he had to start buying them at the local teachers’ supply store because we had exhausted the grocery store’s supply. And even when that wasn’t enough, for one whole summer vacation, I’d wake up and sit down for breakfast only to see a yellow. legal. tablet. Two to three pages of hand-scrawled math problems that my dad created while drinking his morning coffee.

And his excessive good parenting didn’t stop there.

For years, my parents would load all three of us up every Saturday to visit my grandparents who lived about 45 minutes away. My dad would pass a box to my brother, as sneakily as a high-roller palming the doorman a tip, and say, “Here. Practice with Heidi.” And my brother would be doomed to spend 45 minutes quizzing me on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division flashcards in the back of the station wagon.

Now, aside from the fact that my brother is a supergenius, he’s also 5 years older than I am. So imagine a 14-year-old quizzing a 9-year-old on basic math when he’s doing high school, honors-level algebra. Yikes.
As if that wasn’t enough torture for either of us, my dad also noticed I couldn’t grasp the concept of counting money. Which meant…when we’d load up in the station wagon, he’d palm my brother some dollar bills and a handful of change and say, “Here. Practice making change with Heidi.”

After a few years and dozens of trips to Dra and Pop’s, thankfully I eventually got the hang of it.

Then I started bringing home unacceptable grades in social studies (a C-, if anyone is curious), which warranted long talks about how I wasn’t “reaching my potential.” Ironically enough, my sister is now a social studies TEACHER, so back in the day, I wasn’t getting any sympathy from my parents or sister about how hard social studies was either.

Fearing another dreadful family intervention, I attempted to take it in my own hands and try to study with the most patient person in the house.

I’d bring home my social studies book and, while my mom folded laundry, I’d whisper, “Mom? Can you help me study for my test tomorrow?”, hoping against hope that my dad in the next room wouldn’t overhear and step in.

And time after time, my mom would yell, “JOHN! Heidi needs help studying.”

Throwing me to the dogs, just like that.

And so, an hour of pure torture would start. My dad would find the chapter and start reading aloud. From the first word to the last word of the chapter, he’d read. Would I be taking copious notes? Suddenly absorbing information that previously hadn’t stuck in my head? No. I’d be counting the keys on our piano. Playing with the tassels on the rug. Noticing how many sentences it took before my dad cleared his throat in a serious of three eh-eh-HEM coughs.

I vividly remember looking longingly at my mom and her giant laundry piles, pleading with my eyes to make this stop. She’d wink and be off, free, walking around the house without being shackled to this stupid history book.

The worst part is that, inevitably, my dad would come to the end of the chapter and see the review questions.

I should note that unlike my dad, I don’t have a nearly-photographic memory. Hearing something or reading it once is never enough. I need to read, repeat, understand, and find meaning to what I’ve read. I need to use pneumonic devices and memory tricks to remember names/dates/places/terms. Alternately, if you ask me about a conversation we had 8 years ago, I can tell you what was said and what you were wearing. But that’s hardly helpful on a 4th grade social studies test.

So it would go that my dad would ask me a question, I’d stare dumbly like a goat, and after some insistent prodding, shrug my shoulders and say dejectedly, “I dunno.” Then my dad would say, “Heidi…I just READ IT TO YOU. ” Then he’d go back, reread the paragraph, I’d zone out again, and the cycle would continue until I’d end up crying and running to my room saying, “I DON’T KNOW, DAD!”

Years later, I asked my mom, a terrible student herself, about it and she said, “Oh Heidi! I had no idea how to study! To pick out the terms and ask you about them. To go through the questions at the end and find where they related to the text, that was completely beyond me. I’m so sorry. I’d hear you in the other room with dad and I’d just cringe because I couldn’t remember what he just read either!”

Luckily, spelling and English were my saving graces. I’d bring home my spelling words and ask my mom to review them with me, which she would. Looking back, I have to laugh because she’s an even worse speller than she is a student of social studies, so who knows how many I actually got right.

Moral of the story, try to have kids consecutively smarter than the last one so THEY can tutor each other. Or so that you think you’re just doing a really, really great job contributing to the gene pool.

An Ode to Granny B

My 95-year-old grandmother passed away on New Year’s Day. And in the typical, laughter-through-tears style of my family, my mom called to say, “Heidi, Granny partied a little too hard last night.”

We had services on Saturday and my sister and I took turns telling stories about our beloved Granny B. The strange thing was that I had to tell stories about Granny during the first half of my life, rather than the most recent half because during my college years, Granny started losing it.

And again, rather than be sad about it, we all just laughed and shrugged to say, “Well, that’s Granny for you.” But rather than tell them at a memorial service, where people may not understand the love we had for her even when she did things that didn’t make too much sense, I’ll share them here.

• Granny, the Nurse: As a nurse in the ’30s and ’40s, she was taught that a healthy digestive system resulted in 3 healthy bowel movements a day. Therefore, she checked on and actively assisted with patients’ stool production. This led to two generations (my mom and my siblings) being chased around by my grandmother trying to give them an enema. Thankfully, this never happened to me.
• Granny, the Con Artist: The thing about Granny was that she sounded compleletely lucid. When you asked about her day and what she ate, she answered you with very reasonable responses. However, sometimes they were completely fabricated. The nursing staff at her care facility would ask what she did during the weekend and she would say she took the car out for a drive (which had been sold 10 years earlier) and had seen her sister (who had already passed away). She also told the nursing staff about her lovely cruise to Sweden (she had never been on one). For a bit they thought she had been misdiagnosed, until my mom assured them none of those things had happened. They may have also caught on when she told them about her nursing days when she assisted with the first brain transplant and had undergone a uterus transplant.
• Easter Basket full of Mischief: One Easter, my college roommate Spank visited with us along with Granny B. Same Easter my parents’ hot water heater broke and leaked all over our very-packed-with-junk basement. My brother and I ran to evacuate all the sopping rugs/toys/junk when we heard a “thunk” above us. Turns out Granny had fallen off one of our dining room benches. When we arrived on the scene, she was on the floor, blue hands reaching up for help. Yes, blue. She had steadfastedly been dyeing 2, maybe 3 dozen eggs robin’s-egg-blue in our absence.
• Granny’s Nude Scene: When my grandfather was still alive and my gramma had all her senses, they used to take me on lots of camping trips. One such trip, we trekked to the bathhouse and Granny went into one of the shower stalls only to find the shower head didn’t work. So she very nakedly walked out into a crowd of fellow naked camping grannies and walked into a few stalls before finding one that worked.
• Depression-Era Granny: As a product of The Great Depression, my grandmother kept reserves. When we moved her from her house into her first care facility, we found boxes and boxes of Jell-O (which she used to make her infamous “Jell-O salad”) and canned goods. Around the same time, she started hiding her checkbook. In cereal boxes, in the toilet tank, in the freezer, etc. You gotta give it to her, those are great hiding places.
• Granny the Inquisitor: Since I was largely single for most of my grandmother’s life, she always asked about my dating life. More specifically she’d ask, “How’s your boyfriend? What’s his name?” After saying repeatedly, “Granny, I don’t have a boyfriend” and feeling depressed, my mom suggested I just play along and make up boyfriends so I would have an answer for her. So I did. Every 15 minutes. She’d ask about what their major was, how old they were, if they came from a good family, and more importantly if they went to church. She also gave me two nuggets of advice: “Don’t get married so young. Date. And remember, safety in numbers,” and “Look for a guy who is motivated and has a sense of humor. It doesn’t matter if he’s attractive.” Noted.
• Hootin’ Nanny Granny: She used to sleep over at my parents house occassionally so she wouldn’t get lonely. One night, as I slept soundly in the room next to hers, I awoke to what sounded like some sort of Great Horned Owl. I went running to fetch my mom and she calmed me down saying, “It’s ok, it’s ok, just Granny. She hoots in her sleep.”
• Granny, the Sweettooth: My mom visited my grandmother a lot when she was in a care facility. She’d decorate her door and room with seasonal items, so Granny would know what time of year it was and what holidays were coming up. Once for Valentines’ Day, my mom dropped off a two-pound box of chocolate only to visit a few days later and the entire thing was gone. When my mom asked her what happened to the chocolate, Granny replied, “I guess I ate it!” One of my favorite moments was turning a corner at my parents’ house to see Granny leaning over the candy dish, hand on fist, thinking about which piece of candy she wanted to take.  
• Granny Clause: After my grandpa died, Granny slowly started to become, well, like Aunt Bethany from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” She’d wrap her groceries, like corn muffin mix and Jell-O that expired two years before, and give them to us so we’d have something to open (along with a check or gift certificates sometimes). The kicker is that in my family, we are required to write thank-you cards. So I’d have to write Granny a nicely worded thank-you card saying how much I love to bake and how much I enjoyed making the corn muffins.
• Granny Everlasting: Despite my concerns and warnings about sending Granny into cardiac arrest, several years ago my mom threw her a surprise 80th birthday party. And when we asked Granny, “How does it feel to be 80?” she replied, “I’m not 80! I’m 75!” Throughout the party we asked her how old she was and she’d say a different number each time, which just proves age is just a number.

I’m grateful to have known and loved Granny for as long as I did. And I was always happy to answer her “How’d I get such good looking grandkids?” with, “Granny, I look just like you when you were younger, so I must get it from you!”

A Tearful New Year's Eve

This weekend I played host to four friends (new and old). The cast of characters included:

• Spank - my college roommate through all 4 years; one of my closest friends
• Jess - a college friend; one of my closest friends
• Fe - Jess’ cousin, ergo my adopted cousin
• Cassie - Jess’ roommate’s cousin/Jess’ friend, ergo my friend

Having 5 girls under one roof and traipsing all around Boston is kind of like herding cats. Very long-haired cats (I vacuumed before everyone arrived, and yet had Texas-sized tumbleweeds rolling through my house last night).

In September we set the plans in motion to attend a legit New Year’s Eve ball. Having said that, I think New Year’s Eve is the perfect holiday for 5 girls to be together. It requires alcohol, pretty dresses, makeup, fun accessories, cute shoes, dancing, and champagne. The only thing better would be a national holiday dedicated to cosmopolitans, and the opening night of “Sex and the City” came pretty close to that.