Genius Status

I will admit, when I was in school (a ba-zillion years ago), learning came easy to me. 

I excelled in math because there's ALWAYS an answer and if you got it, you got it. No questions. 

I also was pretty good at English/writing....which would be a huge thanks to my parents (particularly my mom's English major in college). I knew all the English words and nerdy rules that go along with them. I also could CREAM my husband in Scrabble too.

Well NONE of the above is even TRUE now. 

In Scrabble I'm STRETCHED to think of words other then "poop" or "dirt" (which neither give you many points by-the-way), and my kids don't even know how much I do NOT understand their homework.

The good thing is, THEY HAVE NO CLUE!!!!!

I have been SOOOOO sneaky about my ignorance! They still believe Brooks when he says, "Mom is actually more smart then me." BWHAHAHA.

The way I've been able to get around this is easy.  Emerson and Camden's math is in Spanish. Even though I KNOW what the directions are saying, I still have no clue how to solve it! (everything is labeled so weird now and solved differently!!!) So I say this, "Oh, it's in Spanish. Have Bronson help you when he gets home." 

and he always can. I'm sure they're thinking if it was in English, then mom would FOR SURE be able to do it.

Unfortunately for me, Bronson's math is now in English! He comes home and asks how to solve something. Thankfully Brooks was right there and I was nursing Everly so he jumped right in and explained all the variables, negatives, and all those equations for radius/circum. that I can't remember.  I slyly watch it all happen and inside I'm thinking, "YES!!!! That's RIGHT!!!!! I remember that!!!!! My husband is the BEST TEACHER EVER!!!!!" Then the next day Bronson comes home and I AM available to help because I remember what Brooks just said the day before and it all came back to me.

BOOM!

Bronson thinks I'm a genius still.

My pride is saved.

Last week he had an English project. He picked THIS book to do his project on:

He loved it and said he couldn't use it for his project though because it was non-fiction and it was hard to find onomatopoeia and hyperboles in non-fiction as easy as it is in fiction.

It sounded like a challenge to me.

I told him I KNOW I could find all those things in the book and that writing styles are found in all good writing. 

He gave me the list of all the things I needed to find......things like similes, metaphors, idioms, personifications, alliterations, onomatopoeia, hyperboles, etc.

Great. The ONLY two I knew for SURE what they were was alliteration and similes. And I couldn't look them UP when he was standing right there!!!!! 

So I asked him, "Okay,  if I'm going to help you on this, I have to make SURE that you KNOW what all of these are. So what is the difference between an idiom and an hyperbole?" etc. etc. Then I would nod, take a mental note and try to contain my sneaky-clever-mom cackles.

I read the first 3 pages one night and the next night finished the entire book. I LOVED it. I was completely fascinated by this. Embarrassingly enough, I had no idea people even TRIED to kidnap Lincoln's dead corpse!!!! I was caught up in the book so much it was HARD to stop to try to find all those English things for Bronson, but I did.

Then I handed him the paper saying "metaphor- in chapter 2, idiom- in chapter 7" etc so he had to find them too, and......

BOOM! (again)

I keep my kids CLUELESS to the fact that I'm NOT a genius like their dad insists.

Wonder how long I'll be able to keep this up though. I think my genius-status days are VERY numbered.