Throwback Thursday: Tweedle Dum Dum's A REPOST

It's a Throwback Thursday REPOST form 2011!

Today's post is especially poignant as tomorrow we all travel to North Carolina to bring Frack to begin his freshman year in college. I hope he remembers this moment, as my son the college student, is indeed a smart man. 
This Post was lovingly debuted on Tuesday, Nov 8, 2011

So, we get home from NYC Sunday night and Frack and his grandfather arrive home from the Pats/Giants debacle, along with my bestest and oldest friend in the world, Danny, at just about the same time. Frack jumps right to his homework. He's got an algebra test the next day and since I received a not-so-glowing email from his math teacher two days earlier, Frack knows his ass is grass and I'm the lawn mower if he doesn't up his game.

My Guy, Danny and I go sit in the family room to chat while Frack is studying in the kitchen. We were having a grand old time bitching about the sucky Patriots game and such, discussing this and that and about two hours breezes by. My Guy announces that he is going off to bed, says his good nights and leaves us girls to it. About 15 minutes later, I hear Frack's voice in the kitchen meekly say, "mom.." I provide the usual response, a slightly annoyed ,"ya" cuz I'm thinking he wants me to get him a drink or something. God forbid he rises the 5 yards over to the fridge to get it himself.

"can you come ere?" he says.

After a deep breath in, cuz I'm tired, I get up and go to the kitchen with Danny right behind me. What I find there literally broke a mother's heart. My son is sitting in front of his notebook with papers scattered about with a look of pain on his face that cut right through me. He looked at me and said, "Mom, I'm so screwed. I can't figure any of this out."

Now I know he's screwed because math is not a resume piece of mine and I pull my stomach off the floor, which has just dropped down there with this realization. I quickly look at Danny, hoping for some math mojo, and she announces, "I used to be really good at Algebra. It used to be my best subject," then she adds, "but I couldn't do it now. No way." Frick, math student extraordinaire, and My Guy are asleep and I was, of course, ABSENT that day, so Frack is as he said; screwed.

But the look on my kid's face sprung me right to action. Tweedle Dum 1, me, takes the iPad in my hand and asks, "Can't we Google this?" Tweedle Dum 2, Danny, says, "yeah, just type 'solve' and then plug in the equation." This leads us to a million different places all of which we find a whole lot of nothing. Frack is now arguing with Tweedle Dum 1, me, whoes trying to help him, that he's never going to figure this out and let's just forget it. Tweedle Dum 2, Danny, is now reading the results, clicking and we stumble upon this site called mathops.com. It's got the order of operations for quadratic equations right there and Frack begrudgingly looks at it. And looks at it. And looks at it some more.

Then the most amazing thing happened. It was TRULY like a light bulb went off in his head and the moment was quite memorable. "Wait a second," he said. "I think I get it." Frack then clears the table and starts working on the blank practice test. The teacher had given them the correct answers to the practice test but not the order of operations to get there, and Frack starts rattling off the correct answers in succession. The Tweedle Dum Dum's are high fiving each other like crazy after every correct answer and the energy in Frack changed instantaneously to that of serious student. Danny left for home and I stayed up with Frack for a bit longer. He got stumped a few more times but he then found a site on youtube called your. teacher.com with 3-5 minute video tutorials on every math problem you could imagine.

I was so proud of him and he used these wonderful resources to breakthrough his mental block. These videos are how HE learns and it was like a magic math elixir. Frack got an email from his math teacher last night announcing his B+ on his math test and a congrats on stepping up his effort like she knew he could. I told him I couldn't be prouder. We all learned something valuable, the Tweedle Dum Dum's included.

I told Frack that being smart isn't always about knowing all the answers.

A smart man know where to look to find the answers.

Throwback Thursday

This post, originally published on Candy's Daily Dandy on Thursday, June 10, 2010, was entitled, "Little Miss Smarty Pants."

So I read somewhere, that children can increase their IQ by one point if they watch Good Morning America. Of course, when I Googled it this morning I couldn't find any evidence of this fact, but I swear I read it and that's not really the point here this morning, anyway...

If this is to be true, I wondered what this says about me and my Intelligence Quotient?

I was raised on Gilligan's Island and by Mike and Carol Brady. If mom says don't play ball in the house, you don't play ball in the house. We were the TV generation, the first to really experience the benefits of syndication. Growing up in the early seventies, we were still innocent enough to experience part of the culture of the sixties as a small child. Wholesome shows like Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch and The Monkees were syndication smash hits, airing during our prime TV viewing time. The hours from after school to the dinner hour.

So how did these shows, including some of my very best friends, Looney Tunes Cartoons, aid in developing my IQ?

Let's take the Brady's shall we? From Mike and Carol I learned about the taboo(at the time) inner workings of blended families, and how a mother and a father can love and parent a child not of their own until the lines between them are gone. Sibling rivalry? I learned that we all don't have to play nice all the time and that sometimes even a black wig wont hide your true identity. Consequences. Yes, we watched the Brady kids stumble through adolescence and be held responsible. Mike and Carol had some seriously therapeutic talks with the kids in Mike's drafting den. All the while being groovy...I also learned that moms could be milf's and dad's could wear the latest fashions and look good.

Then there's Gilligan. The Skipper too. Coconut cream pie never looked so good and the ingenuity of a group of castaways that made their life bearable on the island they called home. From Gilligan's Island I learned that the class system exists within a deserted island. That Thurston and Lovey were catered to mostly because they had a bag stuffed with useless cash with them. I learned that Hollywood beauty can be achieved anywhere and that designer couture fashions can last for years and still look good. I also know that if I ever take a chartered boat anywhere remote, I'm taking an MIT professor with me and not some daft ship hand.

From Looney tunes, I learned that Monster's can be so very interesting and to make sure to excuse myself when moving through a row in a movie theatre. I learned that beach babe's don't like scrawny little men, they like big strong men and to stay away from any package marked ACME. I learned not to mess with any sweet little parakeet's namedTweety and that Bugs will always live to see another day because even though he's constantly being hunted, he's smarter than your average rabbit. Savvy and smart equals survival.

As I look back at these things, I think about the mature content of the messages I received as a child and how I translated them into my intelligence.

Despite it all, I think I still turned out alright.