Tag Archives: Things I have learned

Pumbled

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 4, 2012 - 6:54 pm |
4 Comments

Jackson is a remarkably articulate 10-year-old, in my not-even-trying-to-be-unbiased opinion, but he still stumbles over words occasionally. Naturally, the way he stumbles reveals a deeper genius. I’m not saying I’m responsible for his genius, I’m just saying I’ve noticed it.

I think what happened was he was telling me about how someone in one of his video games pummeled someone else, but he didn’t say pummeled, he said pumbled. And I was all, does that mean he was pummeled and humbled at the same time? He was pumbled? Because that kind of makes sense.

Not that everyone who gets pummeled gets humbled; I think a certain type of person would see a pummeling as an opportunity to become a great, big asshole. But another type might say: “Wow, you know what? I need to make some changes.” That person has been pumbled.

(Urban Dictionary gives an alt.def. as someone who has been pummeled and tumbled. We are the world, we are the children.)

Day Thirty

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 30, 2011 - 11:39 pm |
20 Comments

Today I had the strange pleasure of going in for jury duty. I’ve been on call since Monday and I got to that irrationally casual mindset where I thought the whole week would sail by without me getting to sit in a fluorescent-lit room with a bunch of other registered voters and licensed drivers. Then this morning, when I called in to the jury hotline, they told me my number was up and to be there at 12:30 p.m., which was right in the middle of lunchtime at Jackson’s school where I was helping to fill bowls with udon noodles and baking sheets with almond cookies. (It was fancy. Jackson hated it. He is not a “soup person.”)

I was late to the juror orientation but I got there just in time for the video. The last time I got this far in the jury selection process was before Jackson was born so I don’t remember the orientation video being so relentlessly upbeat about what it means to serve on a jury. It’s not all just crime scene photos and night terrors! No, it’s seeing the judicial process at work, helping to make decisions that no one person should have the power to make alone, looking deep inside yourself to find the truth, and making lifelong friends with other jurors. It’s like criminal justice summer camp. (Or business deals gone terribly wrong summer camp, or one long let’s-just-cut-this-baby-in-half high school reunion.)

Then the judge came in. He wasn’t wearing robes, he was in a nice dark suit with a yellow tie and he seemed very kind and wise and I liked him right away. He thanked us all for the sacrifices we’d made to come there, but apparently the sight of all of us potential jurors gathering had made someone on the prosecution or the defense realize that shit was getting real, that their case was actually going to trial, and they decided to settle. The judge said that this sort of thing happens a lot. He said he was glad to see so many happy faces reacting to his news, then he apologized to those who were looking forward to serving on a jury, then he said he was open for Q & A and everyone laughed, and then he wished us happy holidays and we all applauded.

But after watching the video (and discovering I had no idea I was so susceptible to woodenly-acted government-produced films) and listening to the judge (who I suddenly wished were my uncle), I actually was a little disappointed. Not that my life needs to be upended by a trial at the moment, but I feel like a seed was planted in me that hopes someday, before my mind gives out completely, I will be on a jury. But not for something awful; and not for some squabble about property. I think my ideal trial would be if someone famous did something funny and then somebody who was watching it died laughing, but the person who died was really old and so they died perfectly happy, and the dead person’s relatives were all very nice but they felt the needed to sue the famous person so that the dead person’s widow wouldn’t lose her house or something, and at first the famous person is all NO WAY because everyone always wants a piece of her or him, but then s/he sees that it’s the right thing to do and accepts the verdict gracefully. So, some sort of feel-good comedy civil suit. I’m just putting it out there, universe.

And thus ends our regularly-scheduled National Blog Posting Month. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have, which is to say intermittently and with sudden unpredictable spurts of commitment to keeping track of my life and my thoughts. You’re welcome, posterity.

Day Fourteen

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 14, 2011 - 12:18 pm | ,
11 Comments

The second day of Camp Mighty I looked into the skill sessions. (I’m not sure what happened to me during the Friday skill sessions, but it seemed more important to black out for a couple of hours in a cozy, cozy hotel bed.) The session devoted to sabering open champagne bottles got cancelled because of the rain, so I went into the tent by the pool and discovered a man named Adam furiously making balloon animals. I was kind of like, Hmm, this doesn’t really interest me but no one else is here and I don’t want him to feel bad, so I stuck around. I watched him make a brown balloon monkey holding onto a yellow balloon banana:

When enough people had gathered around, he started handing out balloons and explaining some basics. Always twist with your dominant hand; always twist in the same direction because if you start twisting away from yourself and then halfway through switch to twisting toward yourself, your twists will come undone. Don’t be afraid of the balloon popping, go ahead and just twist the hell out of it. (It’s worth the extra couple of dollars to get the good balloons, though, as the cheap ones don’t hold up under serious twisting.)

I made a dog. Then I figured that if I were really going to learn to do this I should practice a little more, so I made what ended up being a sort of hyper-masculine poodle:

But what I really learned from spending fifteen minutes doing this is that so many skills that look odd or unattainable or mysterious can be broken down into a few simple steps, and that after you practice them and gain some confidence with your materials and with your body, you can do almost anything. Or make a motorcycle.

I thanked Adam and then decided not to go over to the How to Throw a Punch session because I already knew how to break a board with my hand.

I walked over to a small yurt where the How to Give a Great Neck Massage session was happening. There I learned several more things.

  1. “Pull the meat off the bone” is the key to Thai massage in general, but deltoid massage in particular
  2. There are a string of pressure points along the scapula that, when pressed even slightly, will make a person say, “OW” followed quickly by “YES, RIGHT THERE” and “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T STOP”
  3. You can press with all your might on someone’s head with your finger pads like you’re trying to squish their brains out their ears and it won’t actually hurt them, it will feel good
  4. Don’t massage anyone’s neck arteries or you’ll obstruct the flow of blood to their brain and they’ll pass out

I was gingerly trying to find Cameron’s deltoid muscle when the massage therapist came around, put her hands over mine, and showed me how to lift and gently pull them toward me, and the confidence of her touch transferred into my hands and I got it. It was like when a golf pro wraps their arms around you to teach you how to swing, except not as creepy.

So again: learn some techniques+ get comfortable with the motions + practice = enviable skill that your family and friends will enjoy, plus it will help put an anxious, talkative child to sleep after you’ve been away for three days.