Thanks Mom!!!

I don't talk much about Firstborn in my blogs, because most of the time, I'm not sure what to say... He's a walking case of tween hormones, perpetually perturbed, never available, emotionally volatile and basically your average, normal 12 year old boy. And he lives a pretty routine life, except for the fact that it takes a piledriver in his face to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum on ANYTHING.

So I thought it funny when he came to me today and announced

"MOM!!! I got a 94 on my Science Fair Project!!!"

Well, You're welcome, baby. Don't mention it.

Now, I think it's pretty universally known that the annual science fair project is mainly homework hell for parents and if truth be known, to avoid utter ruin at the water cooler and in front of the PTA, many parents end up, well, taking over for the poor kid. It's just easier that way.

We, however, chose the HARD way.

I was bound and damned determined he was going to do the bloody thing himself - even if it ended up we hated each other for life (and then some.) I think if Firstborn had put as much energy into actually completing the project as he did in fighting doing it correctly the FIRST time, he could have cut his time by three quarters, and used the spare time to scratch his butt and work on a perfect burp (both of which have myteriously appeared as favorite activities in his repertoire of stuff he WANTS to do...) Here was the original opening sentence for his project introduction (un-censored so for those parents who are faint of heart, please stop reading now):

My project is about how music affects plants. That's pretty much what my project is about.

Um, maybe I'm asking too much, but I believe the correct description of the sentence (in a nutshell) is "half-ass."

You would have thought I'd asked him to memorize the entire unabridged version of Crime and Punishment when I asked him to please re-write that introduction (which, incidentally, didn't get any better from the first sentence...) Then came the tears, and the I hate you forever looks, etc and so on. It took an HOUR to get him to write a 250 words or less introduction suitable for public consumption. Then another hour (same process) to write the Analysis, then another for the Discussion, yet a-nother for the Title page (no kidding) etc.... He'd write, we'd send him back to re-write. Over, and over and over and over and over and over and over....

We helped him put his graphs together, but he had to design them. We helped him print the pictures, but he had to write the descriptions. And so on. My husband and I had to tag team the process - when one would get tired, the other would take over.

Aside from the 3 weeks of analysis on the plants - it took over 3 DAYS to drag the kid through completing what is now known as "the project never to be mentioned again" in our house.
You'd have thought from all the arguing and tears and threatening and begging and bribing one of us would have snapped (oh yeah, I forgot, I already did...) This kid was going to do MOST to ALL of this project over somebody's dead body. And I was pretty convinced it might be HIS the way he acted through the whole thing.

The icing on the cake: The project had to be turned in on Friday morning and the weather was a lovely freezing rain mixed with just the right amount of knock you down wind. I got out of the car to help him take his poster in (did I mention the poster was like, 6 by 4 feet in dimension?), since his arms were full and I didn't want the blessed pictures to get ruined in the weather.

You would have thought I proposed to walk into his class, strip naked, and proceed to belly dance in front of his class from his reaction. The unmentionable horror of having your (CHOKE! GASP!) mother HELP you take your stuff to class was more than he could bear. The look of sheer terror on his face was both maddening and priceless. I didn't know whether to smack him hard or just hug him to death.

Upon his announcement of success, I asked him if all the pain and suffering was worth the grade...

His reaction? Totally priceless.

"Um, I don't know what you're talking about... when's dinner?"

Please. Somebody. Tell me we're going to live through the next few years....

**********

p.s. His project was to prove if classical music would improve plant growth. Oddly enough, he had three subjects exposed to different variables: a) no music b) rock music c) classical. Call it weird, or lucky, but the classical music plant out grew the other plants by 2cm and actually started out .5 to 1 cm smaller than the other two plants at the beginning of the project. Who knew??