I’m still studying for my medical boards recertification which is in three weeks.  I’m re-reviewing material I’ve mostly forgotten since the beginning of the year, like spent spells in a wizard’s repertoire.  [Warning!  Nerd alert!  Geek overload!]  Per 1st edition Dungeon & Dragon rules, one has to memorize that stuff over and over again.  It gets easier with time and experience though (a Staff of the Magi wouldn’t hurt either).

It’s taking its toll on my constitution.  Lately, I wake up with medical facts bouncing around in my head from the night before.   Sometimes I can’t sleep and my heart races [intermittent fast heart rate, hypertension, flushing = pheochromocytoma].   This afternoon my throat was on fire.  [Reflux -> Barrett's esophagus -> esophageal cancer.]  That’s what I get for eating after a midnight shift and crashing.  [High grade esophagus dysplasia = needs esophagectomy.]  My head was pounding too.  The differential diagnosis includes:

1) too little sleep,

2) too much stress,

3) too much studying,

4) too much caffeine or

5) not enough caffeine.

Coming down with a cough too.  [Dry cough + aches + bad X-ray + pharyngitis = mycoplasma or chamydophila.]  Yesterday I woke up just in time to pick the kids up at school.

My eyes were sore from lack of sleep [eye pain = optic neuritis = sign of early multiple sclerosis], but I spied Sun Su walking down the school steps.  He seemed so much older with his bag slung over his shoulder.  [Winged scapula = thoracic nerve injury.]  Little Ooseung followed at his side, her chin up to face a world slightly bigger than she is.  [Inability to look down = progressive supranuclear palsy.]

I acquiesced to their request to go on the playground.  Brain and body were too fatigued to resist.  My mood has become dark with the number of times I’ve had to tell them, “No, I can’t, I have to study,” these past couple months.  Supreme knowledge is a demanding, vengeful, and costly pursuit, isn’t it, Raistlin?  ["Gold" skin and pupils + psychiatric illness + weakened heart and liver = Wilson's Disease.]

Musical notes drifted strangely through the breezy air as my son led the trek to the playground.  [Auditory hallucinations = schizophrenia or stroke in temporal lobe.]  An afterschool child was playing on a mounted tube instrument like a novice bard.  Sun Su precariously climbed to the top of the monkey bar dome and smiled at me.

“Careful,” I said.  [Traumatic hyperextension of neck = Hangman's fracture, C-2 vertebra = death.]

Ooseung eyed the sandbox next to us, but then she ran over to the swings instead.  I was relieved.  [Sandbox = animal feces = tapeworm, intestinal parasite.]

“Look, Baby, a squirrel!”  Sun Su scouted, pointing at nothing that I could see.  [Rabies = rare in squirrels.]

“YAAAAAHHH!!  SQUIRRRRRELLL!!” she yelled out with berserker rage as she chased it down for dear life.

I shadowed my party of halflings into the woodlands behind the school.  “Adventure!” Sun Su exclaimed as he rangerly maneuvered around branches and slippery slopes.  Hmm, I didn’t teach him that word.  Treasure abounded – a bottle cap, a Baskin Robbins cup, a rotting apple with ants, a basketball, and a box of Cheez-its.

Our little leader scavenged two sticks strong enough to break other sticks among the fallen branches and trees.  He gave the big one to his little sister and engaged a sapling tree in swordplay, stopping only to point out another squirrel.  “SQUIRRELL!!  A BIG ONE!  A BIG ONE!!”  Ooseung went on the rampage again.  While ducking branches with soft earth underfoot, I felt a cool kiss on the cheek from what must have been a wind fairy.  I remembered these half-real, half-imaginary worlds from childhood.

Then I heard the sound of a child crying, not mine.  He was standing alone against the back wall of the school farther away.

“Do you know that kid?” I asked Sun Su.

“No.  Don’t go,” he cautioned.

I walked a little closer, but stayed a fair distance away so as not to scare the boy, “Hey!  Are you okay?  Are you lost?”

He stopped and looked at me.  “No.  I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” I yelled back, before he disappeared around the corner.

“Let’s see what’s going on over there,” I told my young ranger and tiny barbarian.

We walked down a natural tunnel with webby school windows on one side and overarching trees on the other.  (Of course my iPhone batteries were dead at this point – hence, no pics here.)

“I hear voices,” I said.  Ooseung gripped my hand.  I looked around the corner.

It was another playground filled with more kids and several moms.  The crying boy was there too, playing, no hint of crying.  I suspect he was probably sent to The Wall in the first place by his mom (or a teacher) for misbehaving on the playground.  I forgot they used to do that back in elementary school.

“Appah, there’s no more squirrels!  UHNG!” Ooseung made her usual angry grunt.

“They’re probably all hiding from a little girl with a giant voice who says YAHHH!”

My little girl giggled,

“I just wanted to pet their soft fur.”

“Ready to go home?”

“Yeah,” then she boomed out, “SUN SU, WE’RE GOING !!”  Just like her ummah.  Sun Su emerged from his woods exploration with a disappointed sigh,

“Aww, do we have to?”

Back to reality and my spell books.

[Stimulation of oxytocin and vasopressin, psychological attachment, warmth = LOVE.]

“Four… five ….”

“What are you doing over there?”  Sun Su asked from over his bed.

“Sit ups,” I answered, “Seven….”

“Why don’t you go to sleep like me?”

“It’s not my bedtime and you asked me to stay in your room. You need to start going to sleep by yourself, young sir.”

“Noooo.  Don’t go.”

“Fine.  Nine….  Aren’t you excited?  First day of school tomorrow.”

“Maybe a little.”

“First day of school is fun!  New things to learn.  New desks, books, teachers.  Everyone’s so nice.”

“Why do we have to go to school so much?  It’s like half of our life.”

“So you get smarter and learn new things.  And understand new things.  So you get a good job and do things you want to do.  Otherwise you’ll grow up all wild like an animal and not know anything.”

“What if I got sick and missed school for three days?”

“Then you’d make up the work when you get back.”

“What if I missed school for three years?”

“Then all your friends would be smarter than you and you’d have to go in the little kids class.  Don’t get any ideas.”

“Hmph.”

“Seven-hundred and eight.  Seven-hundred and nine.”

“All you do is work, study, eat, exercise.  What else do you do, appah?”

“Games, well, not that much lately.  I play with you guys too,” I added.

“Not that much anymore, appah,” my boy corrected me.

I stopped.  Flat and floored.

“I know, Sun Su.  I just have to study a lot until my test next month.  October 21.  After that, I won’t have to study.  We’ll play a lot more after that, okay?  I’m almost done.”

“…”

“APPAH!  When are you coming to my room?!” my little girl called from her room across the hall.

“Be right there, Baby,” I answered.

“I have to tuck Ooseung in.  You’ll have a lot of fun tomorrow.  I love you.  Go to sleep,” I kissed him on the forehead.

“I can’t sleep.  The crickets… they’re… bothering … me….”

Then he was out.

I walked over to my little girl’s room.  She was in her bed, lying crooked as usual, smiling at me upside-down in the dark like a Cheshire cat.

“I can’t wait to go to school tomorrow!”

[Title from the old SchoolHouseRock video, Figure Eight, a strangely pretty but melancholy song.]

My boy turned eight this week.  Corean overcrowding began around 1 PM, which is around 1:45 PM in Corean Time.

By the way, no children were emotionally scarred or yelled at on this day.  In case you were wondering.

A few of the neighborhood kids weren’t actually invited, but Sun Su invited them anyways (as updated on my Facebook).  It was not a problem (unless their parents realized later why they got such short notice from their children).  Renting a giant inflatable jumpy thing in your backyard is kind of a tractor beam for younglings.

Luckily my brother and his beautiful family (above) left before two kids got bitten by another (this Twilight thing has gone too far!).  Words were spoken (when the mom tried to blame the other kids somehow, as usual), and the biter’s mom left in a huff, vowing never to return.  That was a birthday present just for me.

The day after was my boy’s real birthday, or the after-party party.  Small cake, big wishes.

________________________________________

NEW RODENTS ON THE BLOCK

Also last week, unrelated to the birthday party, Amy went out and bought a “black bear hamster.”  I was honestly surprised, since she has repeatedly stated she doesn’t want another pet that pees, poops, and sheds all over the house (like … The LIGER! did in his final year or two, unfortunately.  Cats get Alzheimer’s too!).  Well, guess what this little creature does every time you pick it up.  Hint: gloves.

“And the best thing is, it only lives for two or three years,” Amy said.  Now that’s the girl I married.  *LUB-DUB*

Amy does the hamster cleaning since I firmly state I only want a cat and will only clean up after a cat.  Can we get a cat?

“What do you guys want to name it?”

“Baby Black!”

“Oh.  That’s … good.  What else you got?”

“Bugsly!”

“From that Bedtime Stories movie we’ve seen seven times.  Baby Black it is then!”

Say hello to my little friend — Baby Black!

“Look, I’m not the baby of the family anymore.”  — our little girl

]]> http://www.medeasmemoirs.com/2010/05/22/one-times-eight-is-eight/feed/ 10 http://www.medeasmemoirs.com/2010/05/10/bullies/ http://www.medeasmemoirs.com/2010/05/10/bullies/#comments Tue, 11 May 2010 04:24:22 +0000 scott http://www.medeasmemoirs.com/?p=1810

A week ago.  The day started out nice.  Sun Su and Ooseung were playing with the other neighborhood kids while I sat in the driveway studying review books.

“Tell me I’m fat,” Billy the Bully said to my six-year old girl.

“What?” she looked at him funny.

“Just tell me I’m fat, Ooseung.”

“… You’re fat?”

“I know you are but what am I,” Billy rode off laughing on his bike.  Ooseung ignored it as if he were speaking a foreign language.

Billy’s always been the neighborhood bully, in size and demeanor, ever since he was five (he’s ten now).  I figured maybe his parents had taught him a new defense to use at school, in case he was picked on by the older kids, and he was just practicing it.  My little girl didn’t seem to be bothered either way.

No harm, no foul.

The kids had wandered over to the neighborhood dog, a playful orange retriever.  Billy was showing them how to “shake hands” with the dog.  It was the first time Sun Su saw a dog raise his paw like that, and his laughter was the loudest.  It was music to my ears since he rarely laughs like that.

“You laugh loud,” Billy said.  “Look I’m Sun Su, HAR HAR HAR HAR!  HAR HAR HAR HAR!”

He repeated this three more times.

The other younger kids including Sun Su laughed along, not quite realizing what I realized as my blood began to boil.  I remembered myself as a boy, laughing at the big kids’ jokes at the bus stop because I thought they liked me too.  They all made fun of me for laughing too much.  So I stopped, for many many years.  The things we never forget.  In comics, this is how supervillains are born.

Maybe this was Billy’s misguided way of making friends.  Maybe my own childhood bitterness was clouding my perception.  Honestly though, I just didn’t have the heart to stop my sweet boy’s laughter and tell him he was being teased.

That was strike one.

I looked up from my studies occasionally to see the kids riding their bikes around the island in the center of the cul-de-sac.  Sun Su zipped up and down the sidewalk with joy, occasionally slowing down for one of the littler boys to catch up.

“Sun Su, you’re so cool,” Billy said riding behind him, “You’re so cooool!”

My attention perked up to see where this was going.  Maybe he was trying to make up for teasing him earlier, I squinted.

“You’re cool, aren’t you, Sun Su?” Billy kept asking him.

“I don’t know,” Sun Su answered.

“Say you’re cool then.”

Eventually Sun Su innocently replied, “I’m a little cold right now.”

Cracked me up.

“Sun Su’s COOL everybody!”

Something about Billy’s tone didn’t seem right.

Then I heard another one of the kids explain the opposites game they were playing, “If you say you’re a JERK, then you are really COOL.  If you say someone’s COOL, then that means they’re really a JERK.”

“Sun Su’s such a coooool guy,” Billy said again.

Strike two.

Sun Su just rode away from Billy.  One thing I admire about him is that he doesn’t feel the need to follow Billy or other kids.   I loosened my grip on the lawn chair and let things pass for the moment, while still keeping my eye on them.

Billy’s gaze continued to follow Sun Su as he rode up closer to him.  It wasn’t an inviting or smiling gaze.  It was more calculating and quiet.  Then Billy swooped in so close that he ran Sun Su off the street and he crashed.

Strike three.

“GODDAMMIT!!!”  I shouted, as the spine of my book cracked on the concrete.

I could see Sun Su was already getting back on his bike, but that didn’t change anything at this point.  I marched right up to Billy’s excuse-popping face.

“You fucker, Billy!  I saw what you did!”

“It was an accident.  I didn’t even touch–”

“You lying little shit!  I saw you make him crash!  I’ve been watching you all day!”

“No.  I–”

“I know you were teasing him with your fucking opposites game – you’re so COOL, Billy!  I heard you making fun of his laugh!  Is that supposed to be funny?  AM I FUCKING LAUGHING?!!”

I half expected other fathers to rush out of their houses and attack the raging lunatic in the street (me).  I couldn’t blame them for trying, but right or wrong, and I was probably wrong, I was ready for them.  For everyone.  I had never been so mad.

I walked back to my lawn chair undisturbed, the pounding of my heart could have killed a small animal up close.  I picked up my bent-up review book, and pretended to read like nothing just happened.  I looked up, still seething.  Billy was already inside his house.  My sweet Sun Su rode his bike in slow autistic circles, ignoring the calls of his friends, and my heart sank.  Either he was frightened by the area effect of my rage, or he realized, from what I said, that Billy had been making fun of him all day long.  I went inside the house to remove my darkness from his light.

“I kind of went crazy on Billy,” I began telling Amy, still upset.  Our little girl perched next to her.

“I would have got him for teaching them the word ‘jerk,’” she said.  Then there was a knock at the door.

Ooseung checked and reported in pretend spy-mode, “It’s Billy’s parents!”

“Don’t get mad,” Amy said as she chased me to the door, “Don’t get mad.”

Billy’s mom.

“Hi.  Billy’s kind of rattled.  I just want to find out what happened,” she said.

I took some deep breaths, “Sorry, I’m still … pretty emotional about the whole thing,” and started explaining.  She took it surprisingly well.  It’s got to be hard not taking your child’s side, but he’s been on the wrong side so many times before, they almost assume it.  She slyly reminded me that even though Billy looks 12-14 years old because of his size and attitude, he’s still just ten.  And with great parental effort, he has gotten better this year, which I absolutely agreed with, except when it came to my kids.  She admitted it has been a challenge with him though, especially with a house full of teenaged daughters too.

“I’m sorry.  I… uh… overreacted.”

“No, I understand.  It’s your child.  Billy needs to get rattled like this.  Maybe he’ll change.  If he acts like that again, go ahead and overreact.”

Later, Sun Su came inside.  He had been having fun with friends again.  He seemed fine.  I came up behind him and gave him a gentle over-under hug and didn’t let go.  He put his little hand over mine.

That evening.

“Appah, what does deluxe mean?” he pointed to my new Batman and Robin graphic novel.

“It means special.  This a hard cover special deluxe edition Batman and Robin.”

“Robin looks different,” he noted on the cover.

“In this storyline, the original Batman is dead, and Nightwing, that long-haired guy, becomes the new Batman.  This new Robin is just a kid, but he’s really angry and messed up.  Batman is the nice one this time, and he tries to teach Robin how to be patient and good and not kill all the badguys.  It’s kind of funny,” I chuckled, then thought better of it.

“Appah.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s play chess.”

“Okay.”