A problem with authority, mom says. I wonder where he got that, I say back. she laughs. But he's got it worse than I did, she says -- sassier and sooner. True. A teacher, in passing, asked her had she thought of this school for troubled kids. Tahija said the name like everyone knew about it and it was a bad place.
I remember the Caribbean woman who talked to me after a reading at Manhattan's 15th Street meeting. Get him out of that school, she said.
But his parents don't want to split them up, and . . .
Get him out now. Or you'll lose him. Is he mine to lose, to "save"? Can I live there again, walk with him as I walked with his mother, whose age he is fast approaching? Can the book ever do much more than pay for more books so the tour can keep on awhile longer? It's hard to imagine it earning enough to pay for even one private school tuition, but after next year I doubt any better school would take him. He'll have such a bad behavior record.
Good news though about Tahija's own education. The BA classes at U of Phoenix were rumoured to be harder, more intense, than the AA, but she's doing ok so far - into the 2nd class, ethics. For the AA, classes ran ten weeks but now they run five. I'm very impressed with that U of Phoenix. When baseball is over they can come up. That's mid-July. Oh, and there's problems with baseball, with the head coach and the ump. But at least they're playing, except Damear might have gotten kicked off the team the one night Tahija wasn't there to keep him in line. More on that soon.
