Mediocre McEwen

There are many shining stars in the firmament, but the majority of us must be content with the occasional twinkle.

Whilst I have many talents, I have failed to shine. [translation = resolve to practice buffing]

The trouble has always been the same one, the trouble of being a ‘good all rounder.’ I have dragged the ‘good all rounder’ label around with me, for many a long year, but that’s often the curse of the middle child.

I will share with you, a little secret. I was Christened with the name Carol Ann Madeline. Then I was a very small person and had no say in the matter. As the years passed, I grew bigger. My older sister was the svelte, mysterious beauty of the family, with the brain the size of a coconut, a role I coveted. My younger brother was the hansom, suave rogue, with a matching brain, a role I also coveted. My role was ‘piggy in the middle,’ by default. When I reached boarding school, I swapped roles and became ‘Carol the barrel,’ which did have a certain ring to it, and blended well with my former family role in the swine department.

Overall, my youthful years were unremarkable but I juggled with two alternatives; ‘could do better / a good effort’ on each termly report. [translation = semester] I think it would be fair to say, that I had the attention span of a gnat, bored easily and had no degree of patience whatsoever. As such, this was not a sound footing for later parenthood.

When parenthood came later, with my daughter, and then later still, with the next batch, I was ill prepared for the vortex. I learned early on that I was not capable of shouting over three screaming children who moved very quickly and erratically. I needed to find an alternative.

Prior to the diagnoses of the boys, I did a very strange thing. I read every parenting book that I could lay hands on. [translation = British people did not need to read parenting books] When this source of information fizzled out and failed to provide answers, I tried parenting magazines and newspaper articles, before I admitted defeat and carted them all off for an evaluation.

After the diagnoses, I burned the midnight oil whilst I occupied myself in what I would hesitantly, call research, on the web. [translation = tiny mediocre brain] During this time, I kept bumping into blogs, something which was also unknown to me. Answers were still pretty thin on the ground, but daily life continued, relentlessly. Therapies enveloped our lives, where I learned a great many useful things from observing the experts.

Sometime between then and now, I changed. I lost my stiff upper lip. I practiced being an Italian. [translation = animated face with lots of hand gestures] I changed my voice from it’s polite but sarcastic tone, into that of a cheerleader. [translation = or my best approximation] I could list for you the many changes that I’ve undergone in middle age, but that would rather miss the point. I hardly know that woman any more.

But the answer to the question about patience, lies in a lengthy learning curve. It is the ‘teachers’ that deserve the applause.

The Teachers

Mediocre McEwen

http://alien-in-a-foreign-field.blogspot.com/2007/08/mediocre-mcewen.html