CIA Interrogation Techniques and Other Helpful Study Tips

Having just successfully booted yet another of my offspring out o' the house, I feel a need to do a series of posts about parenting boys through teens and into early adult years.  THIS however, would not just be a series of posts or even an entire book, but an entire ENCYCLOPEDIA series worth of posts.  So I'm gunna have to break it down a bit.

Part 1: Mangled Speech

Everyone loves how two and three year-olds wrestle with the truly complex task of verbal communication.  Think about it-- we expect our toddlers to accomplish in a few years what literally billions of years of evolution and development in the non-human animal kingdom has yet to accomplish.  Yes, yes, I know whales have complex communication systems and apes have learned ASL, but I'm saving my respect for the beastie or birdie that can tell decent Knock Knock joke.  So it's easily to be expected that a creature who has yet to manage not messing their pants might come up with beauties like "motowheezer" (lawn mower) or "wedgewant" (restaurant). 

When the confused conversicant is, however, of a double digit age, the mangling of words takes on an entirely new delightfulness.  It's generally not a massive mispronunciation of a few phonetic combinations or an added syllable, but a compete replacement of a word or phrase for one that is *almost* a synonym. But not.  

I give you "Driving To School Friday Morning."

My standard issue Mom Van is in the shop for a myriad of problems, all necessary for legal vehicle operation, none life-threatening.  Sadly.  (Except I really like not having a car payment and, as I said, it runs fine.  It just doesn't have a passenger side head light that can stay functional for more than two days or a passenger side brake like that works.  Not really decent excuses to buy a new car.  Dang it.) For this reason, we are taking the Kid Car to do morning school drop offs.  Kid Car has most recently been captained by the child who has just been booted out the door.  Owing to previous bootees not getting a car Freshman year of college, this Bootee was sent similarly un-vehicled on his way to pursue a higher education. This is not to say that said offspring took the time to clean up the Kid Car before handing it down to the next offspring.  Indeed, no, it appeared that Recent Bootee did all he could to turn the Kid Car into a full-fledged Rolling Landfill for the Future Bootee who will obtain his Learner's Permit next month.  Negotiations are being attempted at acquiring a less disgusting Kid Car.  These negotiations will fail.

Thus we were all performing our own separate archeological expeditions as we attempted to find the purported seats with which the Kid Car was said to have been equipped.  They were duly found, the worst of the garbage was lassoed and corralled into the trash can, (If you think vocabulary choices implying the trash was both alive and also moving vigorously enough on its own to require active collection are incorrect, you clearly do not have teens who drive.) and seats were taken.  As we made our way to the high school for the first drop off, further excavations were made of the items which had not immediately fallen out of the car when the doors were opened.

There was, on the dashboard, a full water bottle with a pencil in it.  It had been there all summer. I had seen it every time I had walked by the Kid Car on the way to the mailbox.  I cringed every time I saw it and told myself to unlock the car and remove the nasty looking water bottle.  Sadly, the lengthy journey across the driveway was much too long for my brain to remember a one-item to-do list and thus the Water Bottle au Pencil remained.  

As we were driving, we could not immediately throw it away.  It was therefore duly inspected.  The winner of Shot Gun gave it a look before the Back Seat claimed it.

"What the heck?"  A reasonable question.

"I have no idea, ask Jacob." I answer.

And thus the Back Seat snapped a pic of the item and sent it to his older brother via the marvel that is modern digital communication.  I expected either no answer or  something rude in response.

I was happily incorrect.

"It's a science experiment!" Back Seat exclaimed.

"What?"

"Ya, he wants to see how long it takes for the pencil to completely dissolve.  Or if it even will dissolve."

Huh.  Well, I now understand why it was on the dash board where heat and sunlight could work most effectively.  I am impressed.  Still a bit grossed out, but definitely aglow in the renewed awareness that my child is not just the collection of bodily functions and hormones he appears to be.  Granted, it still falls in the category of "Let's see if we can make this gross thing happen" that fuels most all teen boy action, but still.  There does appear to be a brain in there.

Then Shot Gun asks, "So he's just water boarding a pencil."

(Pause.)

"What?" I ask.

"He's water boarding a pencil.  You know, just seeing how much water he can get the pencil to soak up."  He says, with an air of "duh, Mom."

(Second Pause.)

"Water LOG.  He's water logging a pencil."

"Same thing."

Almost . . . but . . . no.  I am intrigued, however, by the idea of water boarding a pencil.  I can see it now . . . .

A group of frantic high school juniors are gathered in a dark basement, a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  Their eyes are blood shot from hours spent poring over Wikipedia pages and Spark Notes summaries.  Their hands are shaking from a week-long diet of Doritos and Monster drinks.  They are wearing smelly, wrinkled clothing because they have been up for two days straight, trying to cram an entire semester into 36 hours.  They are desperate and it has come to this.

In the midst of their frenetic, anxious circle is a table.  On that table is a popsicle stick held up by a couple of bent 3x5 cards pulled from an old Spanish vocab flash card set.  A Ticonderoga #2, dull and battered, is strapped to the popsicle stick with a frayed hair tie pulled from a pseudo man-bun one of the juniors has been trying to grow all year.

A female junior leans closer, her mouth open and her breath coming in short, ragged gasps.  A drop of sweat rolls down her temple as she pushes her glasses back up her nose.  She holds up a pipette, purloined from the AP Chemistry classroom.  It is full of water and her finger holds one end, stopping the fluid from rushing forth.

"You can see we're serious," her voice wavers.  "We KNOW you have the data we need."

"Do it now!" A short, plump student growls.  "Enough questions!"  She lifts in her inhaler and takes a sharp puff.

"But we don't have the information yet," another student wails, wringing his hands.  "I only have three pages done!  I NEED 800 MORE WORDS!!"  He pulls at his hair and grimaces with brace-adorned teeth.

"Calm down!" The pipette-wielder yells.  "Our friend Ticonderoga is smart," she continues in a calmer voice.  

The pencil says nothing.

"It knows tomorrow is the last day of the semester."  A tic starts to pulse under the student's left eye.  

Silence continues.

She raises her hand.  "It knows we are desperate and out of time."  

The pencil continues mute.

Her hand begins to shake.  "It knows WE know all good pencils have the secret of the Perfect Essay imbedded in their cores."  

There is no answer.

Her finger tenses.  "It WILL give us the correct answers for our scan trons!"

And she lifts her finger.

We'll be sure to let you know if the pencil gives up the goods.  Or dissolves.