suburban kamikaze

In which Shakespeare's birthday party comes apart over a penny and doesn't end well

It was much ado about nothing, according to the boy. But of course, he would say that. He's the one who threw the penny, which may or may not have struck his sister in the eye.

At 14, the girl is a stage veteran who does not pass up an opportunity for ado, which included a tempest of tears and an impressive selection of 21st century oaths. In lieu of an apology, the boy offered his opinion that 1. The penny had struck nowhere near her eye. 2. He hadn't meant to hit her, and 3. it was all just theater anyway.

Even so, there was still the possibility that Shakespeare Night 2012 could be salvaged.

If Beatrice and Benedick could set aside their squabbling in the face of so much turmoil, surely we could get to the end of one Shakespearean comedy without another scene.

But you don't have to be a theater major to know what comes next. Because it's not truly Shakespearean until a second pair of combatants is drawn into the fray.

And so it went. My position was that 1. It was irrelevant where she was struck. 2. The boy's aim had produced four water polo goals from three times the distance an hour earlier, and 3. The girl was playing the scene for all it was worth, but that is what you get when you pick a fight with an actor.

I was for kicking the boy out of the room. He had zero interest in whether Benedick would renounce his commitment to lifelong bachelorhood or whether Keanu Reeves was going to take his shirt off again. The boy was there for no other reason than to try to foil our plans to find out. Which is why he was throwing coins in the first place. Duh.    

Mr. Kamikaze was of the opinion that the girl's performance should go unrewarded even if that meant insisting that Boy, Esq. stay in the room watching a romantic farce in which he had already declared his complete lack of interest. This is what is known in parenting terms as "ruining the evening to make a point."

Also "family night."

The End

from the Shakespearean archives:

A Midsummer Night's Drama Queen

All's Well that Ends Mostly Well

The first cut is the D list

I am prepared to swallow my pride and accept that a part-time career as a journalist and shallow humor writer does not qualify me as a literary critic. Still it stings when the Macbeth paper I edit for my son's 10th grade English class is returned with a D.

In my defense, it was honors English and I've never read Macbeth, so probably that works out to more like a C+ when you factor that in. Or rather, when in you factor that.  (Or is it "whom?" I can never keep those straight.)

My point is, I'd like to see his English teacher try to write a coherent story in 15 minutes with an editor standing over his shoulder screaming "15 minutes ago, lame ass," and the ballots are not even all counted! and the phone is ringing with a call he has to take or he won't be able to finish his other story which is due seven minutes after the first one and the only thing he's had to eat all day is Cheez-Its.

Whatever. I am prepared to cede the point when it comes to Shakespeare.

But the next assignment? A parody of a news story. And  I don't like to brag, but I have been writing news parodies for decades, sir. Sometimes even on purpose.

I pass on to my son a bit of the craft, the word play, the deft substitution of the ridiculous for the absurd. His piece, in which House Republicans draft a proposal to repel health care, makes me laugh. It's good, I tell him. But what do I know? 

It comes back with the word "repel" repeatedly crossed out. Above the first one, the teacher has written "repeal" in red ink.

Now my son is convinced that his mother could not even pass tenth grade English.

"Honors English," I say.  Because how hard could the other class be?

 

From the literary archives: A Stapler of One's Own, All's well that ends mostly well, Portrait of the agent as a young man

A midsummer night's drama queen

The girl was ready. She had just a couple of questions.

What happens if they go to stir the oxygen cannisters and there is an explosion?

That was Apollo 13, I tell her. Not a flight to New York.

Snakes on a plane? she wants to know. I have to be honest with you, I say. That is always a possibility. Do you remember how to suck the venom out?

I have no cinematic analogy for what I am feeling. I don't think I will be able to breathe for the next two hours. She has never flown without me.  She's only playing the disaster scenarios for laughs.  I am the one scared to death. She can't wait to get to New York, where she will spend the next five days taking over the town with her very best co-conspirator.

For two days she has been leaving little goodbye notes for me all over the house. I wish you were coming with me, she says. Do not die while I am gone. She tells me I must sleep with her two stuffed rabbits while she is away. She wants the whole family to accompany her to the airport.  She is positively Shakespearean in her efforts to manufacture the most dramatic send-off possible.

Where does the little dramatist spend her first night in New York?  Shakespeare in the Park, naturally, where she watches Twelfth Night and gets to have her picture taken with "Viola," who happens also to be the star of a movie every 11-year-old girl in the country has seen at least twice. 

Guess where I am now? she asks me later. I am in Times Square!  She is out of breath with excitement. Could it get any better? I ask her.

It probably could, she says. 

She is not missing me at all.

Photo:  Three drama queens in Central Park by Rick McCawley. 

All's well that ends mostly well

Shakespeare's Birthday 2009: The announcement is greeted with much skepticism and not a few groans.

"Your mother hath a most excellent idea," I say. "Tonight, good children, we will celebrate the birthday of the world's most celebrated playwright.

"If it please you," I continue, "I have a selection of videos featuring the plays of William Shakespeare, who was born 445 years ago this week."

"Oh god," says the teenager. "I am watching SportsCenter."

"Such carping is not commendable," I say. "I pray you, whine not. Besides," I say, "did you know that Mayor Richard Daley issued a proclamation establishing today 'Speak Like Shakespeare Day' throughout the city?"

Then I roll out my best hope for engaging his interest: "The vendors at Wrigley Field were calling out 'to drink or not to drink'.  And the Cubs' loss to the Reds was declared a tragedy."

But he only rolls his eyes. It is the same reaction I get every Wednesday since establishing  "Cooking with the New York Times Dining Section Night."  Which my family likes to call "beets and goat cheese night." But that is another story.

Tonight's exercise in unappreciation and futility (love's labor's lost?) is cultural, not culinary.

Stand I condemn'd for my effort to establish one night a week in which the children are not eating Arby's in front of an episode of Family Guy? Usually, yes.

But on this occasion, as on so many others, my efforts are rescued by the boundless enthusiasm of a fifth-grade girl, who reads along from the text while watching Romeo and Juliet, and who, it turns out, has a fifth-grade girl's appreciation for Leonardo DiCaprio and a knack for Elizabethan English.

"I bite my thumb at you sir," she tells me when I interrupt once too often with an unnecessary translation.

Later she offers this observation of Juliet's decision-making skills: "She's known him for like two days!"

I am well pleased.

Photo: Romeo, Romeo.