Thursday, July 17, 2008

It's Exam Time at Chez Shenoy!

Ah, what chaos! Mother and son are yelling away at each other. Mother is trying to reason with son that writing is essential. How is the teacher going to figure out how smart you are? Why can't you write things neatly? Tell me, what are Apogee and Perigee? (Son nearly gets a grievous injury because of smart aleck answer "They are sons of Gandhiji"). And so on.

Son is a thinking man. He evades as long as possible but when things start looking threatening (mother is moving a motion to ban going downstairs and playing football), decides that it is better to lose a battle than the war. Ok, Ok, I'll write, he says. What should I write now?

A formal invitation.

He writes one

The Management and Staff of Blah Blah School
cordially invite you to
the investiture ceremony of Blah Blah as School Prefect
Mr. Albert Einstein,
CEO of Chandrakant Textiles Pvt. Ltd.
has kindly agreed to preside over the function.
Time 3:00 pm Date 26 January 1925

Mother shows it to me. I trip over the "Chandrakant Textiles"! Where in the world did you get that name? And why do they need Einstein to be their CEO? I ask him, but he is too busy arguing a technical point with Mother that he doesn't have to practice the diagrams because they're not going to be asked in the exam.

All this is younger son, of course. He is in seventh grade. Elder son, in the ninth, is the picture of sincerity and has nose firmly inside book. This year I haven't even had to factorize anything for him. He did ask me something about prepositions but my evident ignorance about the subject led him to conduct his search for knowledge elsewhere. A textbook, to be precise.

Now Mother enters our bedroom. The kids have finally gone to sleep. She has the look of a General who is fighting against guerrillas. Harrassed. Weeps a little, then laughs when she remembers the apogee thing. Then weeps a little again, because she remembers the apogee thing. I do more or less the same thing that the UN does when things start going wrong in some country. Pat that country's leader on the head and make sympathetic clucking noises.

Somehow, that little sign of commiseration doesn't seem to be working.




17 comments:

maxdavinci said...

Ah I remm those pamphlet writing excecises. CBSE hasn't changed much!

Anonymous said...

Kids can drive a mother insane. *sigh. My sympathies lie with Mrs. S

you? You ought to take a stand and yell at the boys occ. You may wink at 'em later, but yell when the mom's watching. She may just not weep at all. :\

Nandini Vishwanath said...

Aaah, don't tell your kids, but tell your wife, there is no point in studying all that, really ;)

KD. K Bodhi said...

I can see that young blot on the landscape have inherited their sense of humor from their old man.

Apogeee is the son of Gandhijii. He should be standup comedian:).

Anonymous said...

lol, so is being witty hereditary? Brilliant!

And yeah, seems like CBSE hasn't changed much!

Prats said...

Gosh!!! These kids...but i'm sure the men will never understand the dilemna of the mother...I'm fighting the same battles with my 7th grader...who thinks i'm a nerd if I answer any of his doubts...now how do I proceed after that???
But have to say, the Apogee was brilliant...

Anonymous said...

ha ha.. same scene being enacted here as well...except that mom does not think any of the son's arguments/answers are funny...

... and dad gets blamed for "spoiling" him..

Anonymous said...

Non-sequitur as ever..

Apogee reminded me of our schol boy ditty

Dadabhai Naoroji
Chappal leke maroji.

Narendra shenoy said...

@max - They go to a state board school, the same one that I went to. And most of the teachers still recognize me, though they're very nice and haven't told the boys all the nasty things that their father was upto back then.

@rads - You must be a clairvoyant! I do that quite often. I have a good yelling voice, but unfortunately missus has seen through that and it has lost its power as a peacekeeping weapon.

@nandini - She gets worked up because the other parents are so hyper. Actually, the brats are doing quite well. They manage to finish in the top three or four, but Sheela's argument is they could do better. The elder one is now giving it a try. The younger one has the obedience of a Che Guevara.

Narendra shenoy said...

@ok - The younger one is too much into standup comedy. He keeps wisecracking all the time. Usually, it is irritating ("Are you hungry?" "No I'm gautham") but sometimes he can be quite funny. Especially when he is not intending to be funny.

@grad - Sheela does not think it funny at all. Neither father not son are in the least funny, if you ask her.

@prats - I think you moms are too stressed out. I tell this to Sheela every now and then and get an angry lecture in return.

@vijay - True! I shoulder most of the blame when all thiis is happening. "All your genes"

@10yrs - HaHaHa! Nice one.

Cynic in Wonderland said...

heheheh your son is a complete rockstar. gandhijis son was killer.

Shruti said...

LOL wicked smart funny kids :P:P

Lavanya said...

ROFL @ apogee!
Chandrakant Textiles was a stroke of genius. lol. The missus must be so proud.

Solitaire said...

Hahahahahahahahaha!!
Sorry but cannot help laughing.

KD. K Bodhi said...

I forgot to mention. If keeps at it he is going to be real popular with the girls in class.

My only claim to fame in a largely undistinguished career were the few laughs I managed to generate in class with my very very poor jokes. Much like the "Arre.." joke of Gautam.

atul said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
atul said...

Ha! I remember writing those silly invitation letters too! But Chandrakant Textiles with Einstein as their CEO is still making me laugh :D