Super

When I was 5, I was Wonder Woman for Halloween.

My Daddy didn't like the Wonder Woman thing back in 1979. That was when the TV show was so popular, and I watched it religiously, before Bo and Luke Duke would soon come along.

In the store, she asked me if I was sure. I was.

My Mom's always been sort of iconoclastic, and she was confident in letting me explore my own imagination. And she always, always wins.



To me, the idea of Wonder Woman was all about the bracelets that would repel bullets, the tiara that was a potent boomerang, the lasso that made people tell the truth and that cool way Lynda Carter would spin around and magically have all her super-hero gear on, just like that, ready for action. Even more efficient than Clark Kent and his phone booth.

Sexuality is interesting at age 5. You're aware of the opposite sex. Women are provacative to you, conspicuous. Women, with their shiny long hair and their legs where the light reflect just so off their shin bones.

You have crushes on your kindergarten teachers.

You don't understand exactly why a woman is so fascinating. Wonder Woman had a deep-seated feminine appeal to my mind's eye that I wanted to emulate. When I was 5, girls weren't gross, nor did it seem that they necessarily had cooties. In fact, I kept multiple girlfriends all at once.

I had a fascination with gender. I was attracted to women at an early age. I saw them as these exotic creatures to ponder and explore, so thoroughly that I became one of them, I suppose. I truly didn't understand exactly what it meant to be a woman, or for that matter yet, a boy. I just knew I wasn't a girl.

Kindergartners have no concept of vagaries like intercourse. You just knew that pee-pees are strange things that you use to go potty, and that girls have to sit down to do it and that must really suck by comparison.

They say that there is a time in the womb where we are all proto-female; we are nothing more than human, before our code is set. The youngest of us are so close to that unspeakable wisdom, that oneness, of ceaseless curiousity, the benefit of just not knowing.

Perhaps my mom was wise in the ways of social and cultural development. Or she thought it was adorable and cute and sweet and all those things women like to say about kids that men cringe at. Or maybe she just wanted a laugh with her friends at my expense, which she was prone to do.

I think it was probably a little of all of them.

In any case, thanks for making it simple, guys.

You're super.

Problems With Math

Curriculum night is a chance for parents to sit in extremely undersized chairs and listen to the kindergarten teacher talk about what she plans on teaching the children and how she plans to do it during the course of the school year.

She talks about "pictionaries," "key words," "conflict resolution."

And she talks about working through "math problems."

Somehow, sitting in that little chair with my knees up to my chest, looking around at little apples and story-time mats, my work I.D. badge hanging from my neck and tangled with my tie, the words stick with me.

"Math problems."

And that's the way it is, isn't it?

They are problems. Problems to be solved.

Numbers that don't make sense must be made to make sense.

We humans have to figure it all out. If Pi is an infinite number, we still must measure out as far into infinity as we can go to describe the perfectness of a circle.

And we never succeed.

Look into the sky. The sun, the moon. Both appear to be perfect circles to the naked eye. Look closer -- as we will invariably do -- and we find that they aren't.

Mountains and craters, solar flares and elliptical orbits.

It's always more complicated than it looks. We must understand it. It is a problem.

I'm told kindergartners have a difficult time grasping the concept of zero. It takes a while.

1 - 1 = 0.

Perhaps the easiest equation to remember, yet their minds can't understand why it's necessary to describe nothing.

Still, they must solve the problem.

And as they try, and try,and try, the chairs become too small. And they wonder why they even bothered.

The Profile

Yeah, so they're pretty desperate for any who are willing to coach 4 and 5 year old futbol.



Basically, they'll let anyone without a criminal record (well, much of one) do it.

And they provide a book so it's not a total disaster.



Don't laugh. OK, go ahead.



Yep. Pretty much. Weren't those the days?



Pretty ... clinical, there.

Looking at that last one, too bad this book wasn't available when "this ball is lunch and you guys are hungry" was the preferred coaching strategy. Who knows how deep those psychological wounds cut ...



"Balance on the dominant foot?"

OK, whatever. That must be the one where they make an entire planetary orbit around the field before they get the ball turned around toward the right goal.

Check.



Translation: "lawsuit." Got to watch out for that one especially.



The lesson?



Make sure to let them pick their noses and suck their thumbs.

Now ... the tenuous psyches of 10 kindergartners and pre-schoolers are yours for the molding.

Go get 'em, coach!

Alex, I'd Like To Solve The Puzzle

The traditional line-up is just about as old as time (or at least just about as old as contemporary syndicated television).

"Wheel of Fortune" at 7 p.m., followed by "JEOPARDY!" at 7:30 p.m.

A weekday evening staple for those of us who'd like to find at least some success in our day before we inevitably wake up for a new one and give it yet another go.

First comes "Wheel of Fortune."





It incites the indignant know-it-all inside us.

Vanna White cheerily walks out to touch each lighted block to reveal a letter (she used to physically turn them after they lit up, and that was so much cooler then).



Money for each consonant that pops up. We have to "buy" a vowel. Pat Sajak mysteriously knows how to get the Final Spin to fall on $5,000.

And there it is. Painfully, excrutiatingly obvious. The kind of frustration that has us longing to take a flight out to California and demand a person of our superior intellect be placed on the show immediately.

"_ R _ _ _ T E
_ N _ E _ S T _ _ _ T _ R"

"It's an occupation, and the answer is PRIVATE INVESTGATOR, you mental midget! You don't need to buy any more vowels! Stop wasting your money!"

Then, they try to get cute. It's "Wheel of Fortune's" inane attempt to trip up its overconfident audience.

"On The Menu" is the subject.

"T _ R _ _ Y
M _ _ T _ _ _ _"

"TURKEY MEAT ... WRAP?"

No.

"What?! TURKEY MEAT ... LOAF?!"

Seriously, who eats meat loaf made out of turkey? Sure, there must be some people who eat meat loaf made out of turkey, but not enough to make it the answer on a freaking T.V. game show.

Nevertheless, on to the bonus round.

This is all ours.

The bravado wells inside us. She could win $25,000 or a Forerunner or a trip to France. If it were us, we'd win all three ... even though it isn't in the rules for it to be possible.

A phrase.

"_ _ N _ _
- D _ R _"

Um, what?

"HUNKY
-DORY"

We then feel a certain kinship. All is equal. We tell ourselves that no one is really smarter than anyone else. No need to be an arrogant, intellectual snob. We're all in the same boat. We win some, we lose some.

Then ... 7:30.

"This!

Is!

JEOPARDY!"

Time for the manic shift in our self-esteem, the abrupt bursting of our scholarly command of "Wheel of Fortune." It's time for the erudite, pretentious, catty host Alex Trebek, who rolls his "R's" at the slightest hint of a Spanish word.



We resent him because we were him when we were watching "Wheel of Fortune."



We answer, maybe, eight correctly ... and never "Final Jeopardy."

"JEOPARDY!" throws us a bone. Always at least one question to keep us normal folks hooked with the futile optimism that it might be our night.

One of them is, "Who wore No. 23 and lead the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships and is considered the greatest basketball player of all time?"

And even then, as we shout "Michael Jordan!," we forget to say "Who is ...?"

These contestants are gods. The guy with the weird nervous tic. The girl whose specialty is 15th Century Antartic history.

How do they know who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1941? Can they click on Google with those buzzer thingies?

Suddenly, "Wheel of Fortune" is feeling a little more in our comfort zone. And the guy who messed up ...

"Evil Dictator:
S A _ A A M
H _ S S E I N"

... well, he doesn't piss us off quite as much at the moment.

But, at the end of it all, the real question isn't, "How come I don't know who the first left-handed Rhesus monkey was to tap out Act II of 'Hamlet' in Morse Code?"

It's ... "What kind of gay story am I going to come up with when Alex wants to do a little Q&A to share a little of myself with the viewing audience?"

Still haven't figured that one out.