<p>My New Yorker desk diary’s cartoon of the week features a mom and her daughter standing by the washing machine. Mom says, “We want you to have fun, as long as it’s fun that enchances a college-admission application.”</p>
<p>Thought of y’all. :)</p>
<p>aries:</p>
<p>And like many other ECs, the washing machine duty will be ditched once she gets into college! :)</p>
<p>And, I gave my 15 year old daughter a subscription to the New Yorker to help build her vocab! Hope she sees the cartoon somewhere!</p>
<p>ariesathena, what a great find! It brought a big snicker from my cynical self, I’ll admit.</p>
<p>I just finished Bode Miller’s autobiography (some writing assistance provided) entitled “Go fast, be good, have fun”…for our mother son book group which is meeting to discuss said book in 1 hour… I cannot tell a lie, I enjoyed his story very much… the reason I am bothering to post on this thread is that I have played around with his title to see if any rearrangement works:
Be good, go fast, have fun
Have fun, be good, go fast
Be good, have fun, go fast
Have fun, go fast, be good
Go fast, have fun, be good</p>
<p>And I have decided that I like his priorities… fast is what makes him unique, be good trumps fun, but fun is in the equation. He addresses fun as happiness and claims that Thomas Jefferson put it into the Declaration of Independence because of its importance in our well being. </p>
<p>I guess the right mix for a HS student is
“Be smart, always good, have fun” or
“Be smart, always good, have some fun!!”</p>
<p>Maineparent:</p>
<p>Alas, after his performance at the Olympics, his formula may not win him many fans!</p>
<p>Marite,
well, I am back from our discussion…our group has 11, 6 boys 5 moms, (1 set of twins) and the overall sense of Bode from having read the book was that to him ski racing is about World Cup…racing to race…not to “win”… and that World Cup is generally of more interest to Bode because it takes ability to persevere over a longer period of time…vs the Olympics. It is an interesting read…his family and upbringing are so out of the norm. Not one of the boys envied Bode’s total freedom as a child. The funniest thing that happened today is a contrast btwn one mom from the group and Bode’s life…one of the boys in the group was missing in action this afternoon for a bit…mom called around to a few of us, had we seen her son…she did find him in time for book group… but, Bode ends his book with a few different riffs…including a tirade against the endless drug tests. Getting into trouble for not being home in July when they show up at his house unannounced. Apparently he was at his girlfriend’s. The ski doping group gives the skiers a hard time about this…Bode’s reaction is “if my mother didn’t need to know where I was growing up, why does Dick Pound (who runs the drug test program) need to know?” I, in turn, teased my girlfriend about not having actually read the book or she wouldn’t have been dialing around for her son earlier that day. She really laughed cause it turns out he was sleeping in his bed at home while she was dialing around. (too long to connect that dot? sorry)</p>
<p>One of the things in Bode’s book is his comment that he finally started to shrug off some of the more incessant questions about “winning” because there are so many variables, and that reporters didn’t really listen to his answers anyway. They wanted “sound bites” and that is just not something Bode does. I still think the guy peaked a year early in winning the World Cup…not sure that there was any way to stop the media buildup for the Olympics…anyway…the discussion lasted for over an hour…it was a successful choice… we have now done about 23 books…my original goal was 10/yr… we started in April/May of 2003…so we are off by about 7…the biggest obstacle is finding a day/time slot to get together to discuss…all active boys and moms with a lot going on…circling back to the point of this thread… having too much fun to talk about books!!</p>
<p>Maineparent:</p>
<p>Thanks for the description of your book group. Sounds like fun! I read about Bode in the NYT Sunday magazine before the Olympics. The problem is that he is a free spirit who also wants to take part in competitions. Not an easy combination.</p>
<p>Have fun, go fast, fall down, used to be good?</p>
<p>cute NJres…</p>
<p>I always encouraged D to take the washer for a spin. At one point, we actually had a formal introduction: D, this is the washing machine and this is the dryer. Washing machine, dryer, this is D. </p>
<p>As a reader of fantasy, I suspect that she had a deeply rooted sense that clothes being cleaned was a function of magic. (“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!” I can hear her saying now.)</p>
<p>TheDad:</p>
<p>Well, I do think it’s magic: There’s the mom (the magician who makes all good things happen); there’s the magic potion (aka the detergent); there’s the magic gesture (aka pushing the button). Of the three ingredients, the most important is missing once kids get into college and live away from home. No wonder laundry is reserved for when they get home and the all-important magician can make clothes clean again.</p>
<p>We had an introduction to the dishwasher last week during spring break. They didn’t like each other :(</p>
<p>Bandit:</p>
<p>The dishwasher works in reverse to the laundry. With laundry, you take it home and it magically becomes clean. In college, you leave it on the floor and it remains dirty. With dishes, In college, you make dirty dishes disappear by putting them on a conveyor belt. At home, you put them in the sink, and they remain there, in all their dirty glory. :(</p>
<p>For as long as I remember, my D would not wear any jeans or other clothing more than once. That made for a lot of laundry with at least a couple of clothing changes/day. Now that she is in college that has ended. First month in college and she had a contest with a friend to see who could go the longest without doing laundry. I don’t want to know who “won.”</p>
<p>I had a friend who would not do laundry until all her underwear was gone and she was wearing bikini bottoms under her jeans.</p>