“Dad, how do I do this?”

I get this question every time there is a big 4^th grade or 6^th grade project due.

I thought I had completed both of these grades back in the 1970s. I never suspected I would be made to repeat them, and certainly not after this many years.

Big Brother, now a 10^th grader, doesn’t ask my help on schoolwork anymore. Once he got to high school and settled into being a teenager, the notion struck him that he was smarter than me. This notion does not only pertain to scholarly pursuits, but also, and more importantly, to the scope of freedoms and privileges a young man should be allowed while making the most of his parents’ hospitality.

If Buster and Big Man believe they are smarter than I am, they keep dark about it. They realize the unseemliness of asking the big dumb guy to do your homework for you. For now, they let me believe I’m smarter than a 4th or 6th grader. I suppose they’ll let me know how things really stand after they don’t need me anymore.

I don’t mind helping them here and there with a difficult math problem or vocabulary word. It’s the big projects that are trouble. They are both daunted, nearly to the point of paralysis, by big school projects. They hide from the project for five and half weeks, hoping it will fade out of existence in the last three days.

At some point within the last three days, they realize it is still there. This is when the problem gets referred to Dad.

Most of their projects require the reading of a book. They may, or may not, have read the first 20 pages in the previous 39 days.

Dad’s first task is to hound them to read the book, or at least enough of it to know the main character’s name and to be able to make a wild guess as to what the major conflict could be.

That’s the easy part.

Today’s teachers aren’t satisfied with students reading a book and showing their comprehension of its themes. They want pupils to be able to do arts and crafts about it.

Buster, Big Man, and I are all creative in our own ways, but rarely does that creativity spill into the realm of arts and crafts. I read a lot of books, yet I can’t recall a time when I’d finished a novel and been inspired to fashion a paper doll in homage to the protagonist.

Perhaps I am out of touch with modern times, because it seems that every book must inspire some diorama or figurine. After stumbling through the book, this is where my boys fall flat. They fall flat on top of me, the man who waits, with his bag of popsicle sticks and Elmer’s glue, to memorialize in sculpture every book his reluctant children are forced to read.

I would be a more active blogger, but with Buster so close to junior high, I must devote my time to perfecting Play-Doh replicas of Romeo and Juliet.