Cussing

“I know four words that have swear words in them,” Hannah says as we drive to school.  She is fascinated by profanity these days.  I’ve overheard her trading curse words with her friends like Pokemon cards.  What’s incredibly satisfying to me, though, is that they really only have about three cards among them.

I find it remarkable that Hannah has made it to second grade and is still so naive about cussing.  This is the result of sending her to a school where language is taken seriously.  Never once, in two years of dropping her off and picking her up at school, have I heard a kid swear or — more important to me — call someone gay or fag.

“Do you, now?” I say.

“Yup,” she says with satisfaction.  I wait.

“HELena,” she says.  ”HELen.  DAMage.  And ASphalt.”

Ooh, she’s bad.  That’s my girl.

New math, old math

Hannah loves math, and I love that she loves math.  She knows that some people think girls aren’t good at math just because they’re girls.  ”DUMBHEADS!” she says to that one.  She carries around her math notebook — a notebook that she uses, partly, to dream up math problems and partly to draw pictures of superheroes of her own devising, like Invisible Woman and Miss Fantastic.  On the math pages, she scribbles problems to herself, like:

1,684,653,456,345,865,843,532,474,570,056,211

+ 45,729,354,679,573,496,449,687,345

Ever since I showed her how to carry the 1, she’s had no end of fun.  She loves addition and is champing at the bit to do division, but subtraction has proved more vexing.  So, from time to time, I spin out subtraction problems for her.

“What’s 12-9, Hanner?” I say as we drive home.

“Three.”

“9-5?”

“Four.”

“You got it.  It’s like you’ve been doing this your whole life.”

“I have,” she says.

“Well, not exactly when you were a baby,” I say.

“Yes I have.  What’s one scream plus one scream?”

“You’re right,” I say.  ”You have.”