Dear Reader, what is important to you? Please don't let it be an occupation or a job, and in the case that it is, please tell me you do not want children. Hi, my name is Jenny, and I am the daughter of a job-addict. I experience symptoms like over-independence because at times, I am nearly parent-less, then a squashed because I am "not yet 18."
Today, after school, I mustered all my courage with the intention of noting to my math teacher how there were two grades that needed updating in SPAN, but then asked some lame question because I couldn't bare to tell one of my favorite teachers how she screwed up. Instead, I asked something about grading and she answered quite concisely. After that, she asked if I had retrieved a "green sheet" from the stool during class today. Upon responding that I had not, she thrust three pages of material into my empty hands. I thanked her for her time and wished her a well weekend. Dashing down the stairs, I looked at the pages that I was grasping. AP STATISTICS was confidently pasted on the page, followed by two more that detailed what I suppose is everything anyone would ever need to know about AP Stat without taking one day of the class.
I carefully weaved through the words, collecting an impression of this mathematics course that I will be taking starting August 25, 2011, unless any circumstance forbids it. Moments later, a friend from before Sanderson bumped into me and needed help finding something. As I dragged my feet through the halls (literally, for whatever reason it feels much better to slide in the boots I was wearing than pick up my feet), I passed a teacher I had last semester. He once said he believed As should be earned, therefore they should be 96s and higher. I came out of that honors class (which he used as excuse to manipulate us for whatever reason on multiple occassions, such as refilling his water bottle or doing a 36 page note packet the day before the final exam....) with a 96.7. Looks like I did pass even your way too high standards, you slimy, disorganized teacher. While I politely acknowledged him, which I would not have done if there were more people in the hall so I could pretend to be distracted, I realized how well I did do in his class. Though I received a 77 on an essay on The Cause of World War 3, because I am too "hypothetical" and it "sounded like a novel," I worked extremely hard to achieve the grade I did.
I continued drudging through the halls, listening to my friend chatter, and more than happily obliging to the mindless searching of a small trinket. Eventually, we parted, as she intended on going to sing in the choir room, and I am less musically gifted than a pillow. I went outside to the carpool line and stood with some friends, being questioned by one friend about this guy who has a crush on me ("So... yall are really cute and should totes go out"), numbly responding. As I then saw my parent in the line that strings around like a laptop cable, in the most unconventional strand, I peered around for the MOST ANNOYING boy that I, JOYOUSLY, carpool with....nope, not there....uh-uh, nor near the benches. Then I dashed out of that trap, forcing me to say something about this guy and then have it manipulated so it appears that I really do like him. I scoured everywhere I could think of in two minutes for my LOVELY, WONDERFUL, PERFECT creation of a carpool who SITS BEHIND ME AND TALKS LOUDLY IN MY EAR EVEN THOUGH I INCLUDED "please" IN MY REQUEST FOR SILENCE. DID YOU HEAR ME SAY I HAVE A HEADACHE?! or were you deafened by your own obnoxious voice? Makes two of us. After a pretty lame attempt (it's effort that counts!) to find my carpool (PEACE, LOVE AND HAPPINESS :) :) :)), I just darted down the stairs, eager at a shot at riding home in silence. Loading into the car, with my heart shouting "GO! GO! GO!" the way people do at swim meets, I reported to my dad my results on searching for the such-a-fabulous-communicator and responsible carpool I have. He walks home sometime anyhow, was the obvious thought in my dad's mind, clearly expressed by his indecisive facial expression. Next thing I knew, the car is accelerating and I can feel wind blowing through the driver's side window. Bye-bye old friend, scratch that. Old enemy.
I held my AP Stat papers tightly enough that they would have been totally pulverized had they been crackers. The drive home flew, and my dad sped into the space off to the side of the carport, his parking spot. I hopped out of the car and upstairs to my room, surfing the Web for a few minutes, and forgetting totally how I was still gripping my Precious Papers. They had become an extension of me, a part of my phalanges.
Deciding I needed to do something with them, I remembered how my teacher had said that parents must sign some paper allowing a student's placement in AP, and therefore needed to be aware of the expectations (discussed in part of the Bible of Statistics Without Taking Statistics that was sitting on my palm, expectant of my next move). Arriving at my dad's desk (No-No number one), I handed him the sheets that were matted together from my hand sweating (go ahead, ewwww). He examined them and I scurried away to the kitchen to eat a carrot cupcake...isn't that the stupidest food ever invented? If you want to taste carrots, go eat a carrot! Basically two bites and I was sold.........sold on never eating carrot cake again in my life. Then, as I came to my senses and out of the faze of feeling disgusting that the carrot cupcake placed on me, I called out (No-No number two) to my dad and asked if he'd read the papers, afraid already of the reply.
"You're taking it next year right?"
"Right."
"Then I don't have time to read something that doesn't even matter now."
And there it was. I don't have time, for you, my daughter. I don't have time to even complicate my life with the things you are so proud of, my youngest. I don't have a split second to even think about anything that spins outside my egocentric atmosphere. I don't have an ounce of time to even comprehend that my daughter is taking a higher-level math class than I ever took. And why? Maybe because she just wants your attention. Maybe because she wants to actually be told, for once, that I'm proud of her. But wait, that takes a total of ten seconds to contemplate, and remember, she only can have the square root of a tenth of a second. She can only occupy my brain as much as a grain of sand would.
She can sit here, over-achieving and spending more time in math extra-help than with me. She can slowly but surely grow and become a stronger student, she can prepare herself for the world so she'll never come back.
Remember, she's as close to obtaining an actual job as you are to retiring. Memento, one day, you'll be old and frail, retired and alone, and children will be all you have. But one of them won't even really know you anymore, she won't have an ounce of time for you even, because you taught her well.
I'll sit here and study, I'll sit here and take notes from the best on how to not even have a penny worth of care for another individual, not to mention my own offspring. One day, I'll fly away without looking twice. I'll supply myself in every way I can, and become more self-sufficient day by day. I'll be old with kids of my own one day, and they'll ask about my daddy. I'll say I didn't know him well, I'll say that he was too consumed by his own interests.
Then I'll return to dust one day, stomping ground for the next generation. All that will be left of me will be my descendants, because even my achievements will become a shade of murky gray. I'll just be part of a Family Tree Project, my name and birth-date all that is prevalent after the years. My name will follow my father's, our names connected by a thin line, a branch in the family tree. And little will they know, that will have been all that connected us, a thin line, a crevice, a crack, one that cannot be mended, one that will be overlooked and forgotten, one that completely defined our relationship.
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