Monday was the birthday of my youngest nephew, Nathaniel, who turned eight. I remember so much about him as a little kid that it's weird he's getting older now. He was the most adorable, perfectly mild-mannered three-year-old you ever met.
One of the purposes of my coming to California was to help out with Franklin, who is turning ten this week. Franklin is a hilarious kid and says all sorts of funny things. When they visited at Christmastime, he saw me wearing a Christmas sweater and coined a nickname for me: Holiday John. (The "John" was just a generic name with no meaning. I bet you can guess why "Holiday.")
For a few months, Franklin has had bad headaches, so he usually goes to school late, and going to recess and lunch exacerbates his headaches. Therefore, one of his parents will go to school with him, and I was filling in at school this week. I couldn't be a grade-school teacher, because I get super stressed out when people interrupt conversations with irrelevant/unimportant tangents.
On Wednesday, his teacher was sick, so she sent an email saying he could just stay home, since the sub was only showing the movie Goodnight Mister Tom. So we found it on YouTube and watched it. I was surprised she was showing it to the class, as many of the themes seemed a bit mature for fourth grade, including child abuse, suicide, mental illness, and theodicy. Later the teacher sent a frantic email saying that the sub had stopped it because it wasn't age-appropriate, that Franklin shouldn't watch it. Too late, he already did. But he said he didn't really pay attention.
Somehow my nephews learned that I could speak backwards, and they were very amused. Nathaniel almost seemed hurt that I had never told them before. Oh, you didn't know that either? OK. When I was in elementary school, I trained myself to speak backwards. All the words would be in the same order in the sentence, but I would pronounce them as if they were spelled backwards. I became quite fluent at it, but I've become rusty (and my brain tries to revert to French or Spanish when it's not speaking English). But it remains a hidden talent of mine. At one point they set a timer and said I could only speak backwards for fifty minutes. I slipped once when I responded "What?," but otherwise I did it. (It helped that a lot of it was just watching YouTube.)
One day in Franklin's class, their teacher instructed them to think of a person and then brainstorm facts about that person. Guess who Franklin chose?
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| He told his whole class about me speaking backwards and cooking pillows. (As a toddler, I pretended I was a baker and pretended that couch pillows were cakes, so I put them in the oven. Then my mom unknowingly preheated the oven.) |
Franklin was delighted by his early birthday gift of ear plugs, and they have been a great source of contention among his brothers, as they all want to play with them. (Preston got a toilet plunger for Christmas, and Nathaniel got a laundry basket--both gifts that they requested.)
Even though I'm in CA, I've been keeping up on Utah news. I read an article on KSL about how even though it's January, some people in Bountiful turn on their Christmas lights in the snow. The next morning I woke up and thought, "That was a vivid dream, since they wouldn't actually make a dumb article like that and publish it online." But then I was surprised to see it wasn't a dream, they really did write that dumb story! People can do what they want, but to me, Christmas lights in January are just a sad reminder that Christmas is eleven months away. (They also aren't newsworthy.)
I love my Utah (I'm even wearing my 801 beehive shirt), but it's always nice to see a new place and culture. The Berkeley area is certainly more diverse than what I'm used to. I've enjoyed trying pho and pomelos.
I also like that my brother lives within close walking distance of both Trader Joe's and See's Candies, which are very holiday-friendly stores.
I attended a Berkeley student singles ward (even though I'm not a student). I like that I can go anywhere and it all seems familiar, even if the building is different.
We took Preston and Nathaniel to the Berkeley Adventure Playground, a hippie locale where you can help build the playground, which is made of old wood scraps. You know it's a hippie locale because they have a slackline.
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| Preston. |
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| Nathaniel. Somehow I don't have any pictures of Franklin, even though he's the one I've been around the most this trip. 🤷♂️ |
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