Category: Geeklet Stories

You Mean You Don’t Have A Shakespeare Cookie Cutter?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Another school year draws to a close and we continue to be a Fortune’s fools as my oldest geeklet literally still hasn’t finished Romeo and Juliet yet.  Amazing.  She’ll be finishing the play, in theory, on her very last day of that class. She does, however, love the teacher.  And she thought it would be a great idea if she brought in Shakespeare cookies for the last day of class.  Because, of course, we have a Shakespeare cookie cutter.  Doesn’t everybody?

But, here’s the thing. My daughter is a) a total nerd who will jump at extra credit any chance she gets, and b) painfully shy.  So she’s excited about the idea and totally wants to do it, but also thinks that other kids will think that it’s lame and call her a nerd.  She asks what I think.

“I think,” I tell her, “That it would be completely in character.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re not the Shakespeare geek, and your teacher and classmates know that. You’re the girl whose dad is a Shakespeare geek.  So you bring in some Shakespeare cookies and say, I made these because of course my dad is such a geek he has a Shakespeare cookie cutter. Your teacher will love it because he knows that you’re the kind of student that does extra things like that, and your fellow students love it because free cookies. Everybody knows I’m totally the kind of person that has a Shakespeare cookie cutter.  I’m glad to have the opportunity to use it.”

Being the parent, though, my opinion only counts for so much.  So she starts texting her friends asking whether they think it’s a good idea, or it’s lame.  One of her friends writes back, “I think the teacher will love it and absolutely you should do it.”  I like her. She also knows she gets cookies out of the deal.

Is that playdough they used?

So we knocked out a dozen Shakespeare cookies.  It’s a big shape, and hard to transfer from work surface to baking sheet, so each one of them came out just a little bit warped.  My daughter’s running commentary the entire way, performing surgery as necessary. I’m tempted to start making Earl of Oxford jokes but I know she won’t get them.  So instead I say, “Make sure you let the kids know that these are Chandos cookies, and not the more well known Droeshout.”

“You say weird things,” she tells me.

“I know,” I reply.  “I do that on purpose.  Everybody already knows me as a geek, right? Everybody assumes that when the subject comes up I’m going to use words that people don’t know? I embrace that and run with it and make sure that’s true.  It’s entertaining for me. Always be true to who you are, you end up much happier for it.”

She’s bringing them in Monday morning, which I guess is when you’ll see this post.  I’ll report back with an update when I find out how they went over!

 

 

Wherefore Did I Fail

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

I’m a horrible father.

My oldest, as I may have mentioned, is studying Romeo and Juliet in school. Today while driving her to school we were discussing Shakespeare and I’d joked about the possibility of creating a “Name That Shakespeare” game along the lines of “Name That Tune.”  You know, “I can name that Shakespeare play in 3 words!” sort of thing.  (More on that in a future post!)

To which she responds, “That would be impossible.” Thinks about it and adds, “Well, I suppose some would be easy. Where art thou.”

Not taking my eyes off the road I ask, “What’s that one from?”

“Romeo and Juliet,” she replies.

I immediately begin hitting the child.  “That’s not even funny!” I yell in mock horror. Maybe it wasn’t so mock.

Defending herself she retorts, “Why? What’s wrong with that? Is that not the line?”

“It’s wherefore art thou,” I correct.

“Right,” she says, “It means where are you.”

I immediately begin hitting the child again.  “Where did I go wrong? When did I fail you? Of all the things I’ve taught you, how did you miss this?  This is like the line in the sand between people who understand Shakespeare and who don’t.  It’s the go-to inside joke among Shakespeare geeks.  If you google “Shakespeare knock knock jokes“, you get this joke. I literally have a t-shirt with this joke written on it.  Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Wherefore.”

“Wherefore who?”

“NO, WHEREFORE WHY! WE’VE BEEN OVER THIS!”

“I don’t get it.”

I didn’t actually push her out of the car, or disown her.  I may have thought about one or the other. She goes on to tell me how she honestly thought (up to this point I’d hoped she was kidding) that Juliet was looking for Romeo in the bushes.  *sigh*  I had to explain how, from her point of view, she’s never going to see the guy again, it was just two ships passing in the night. It’s not like they said “Come out on your balcony, I’ll meet you outside.”

I just honestly don’t understand how that went past her.  If you’d asked me I would have thought it was one of my most overdone jokes.  Surely they’d heard it a hundred times.  Shows what I know.  What else do I assume they know that they have no clue about?

 

 

For Then We Should Be Cockroaches

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Mind blowing moment at breakfast with the geeklets this morning, one of whom decided to treat a plastic kitchen ladle like a doll and name him Sampson, and the other who is reading Romeo and Juliet and says, “Gregory” every time her sister says “Sampson.”

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

If you never read it in high school, that is the famous opening line (albeit translated) from Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, where the lead character wakes up to discover he has been transformed into a cockroach.

The lead character’s name is Gregor Samsa.

Gregory.  Sampson.

There’s absolutely no connection, of course, but being geeks we research these things.  I consulted the BORED  (that’s Bardfilm’s Oxford Remote English Dictionary), just to rule it out (because how cool would it be!). Bardfilm, of course, can pull out a book called Kafka’s Names at the drop of a hat.  There we learned that Samsa, while no doubt intending to mirror Kafka’s own name, is also likely a reference to the Buddhist samsara, the repeating cycle of reincarnation before achieving Nirvana.  There’s other possibilities, but I like that one. There’s also no reference to any Romeo and Juliet connections, but did you really expect one?

This is how we spent breakfast in my house.

 

Geeklet’s Golden Ear

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Portia, in Merchant of VeniceBeen awhile since I had a good geeklet story to tell.  I come home from work today and my middle daughter says, “Daddy, my math teacher was dropping these Shakespeare quotes all over the place today.”

“Cool.  I like him.”

“I know, but I was, like, the only one that recognized them as Shakespeare.”

“Which quotes?”

“A bunch of stuff from Merchant of Venice, I think.”

“You recognized Merchant of Venice quotes?”

“I dunno, they kind of sounded like they came from Merchant of Venice.”

As far as I know my daughter’s never actually read Merchant of Venice. But now I’m curious if her teacher threw out a “quality of mercy is not strained,” I think that one’s got higher odds than “if you prick us do we not bleed.”

I did not ask, but last week my daughter was on a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts and told me that one of her teachers drove her crazy all day by doing things like coming up behind her and whispering, “I see dead people!” or waiting until they were in a room with a statue of a naked guy and saying, “The guide book says there’s supposed to be a picture of a full moon in here, can anybody find it?”  I hope it’s the same guy.

What Makes or Breaks a Romeo and Juliet?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I can’t believe it’s taken this long, but this week my oldest is finally seeing an actual live Shakespeare production as part of her studies (i.e. not because I made it happen).  The production in this case is Romeo and Juliet (why is it always Romeo and Juliet?) and I’ve already told her that my assumption is she already knows moRomeo and Julietre about the play going in than anybody else in her class.

Since she’s already seen and read the play on her own, plot and character and all that stuff are out of the way (as has always been the plan).  So what I’d like to do is give her some suggestions to watch out for that will make this particular interpretation different.  In other words, it’s a great opportunity to discuss how everybody gets the same script, but every production is different.

What do you suggest?  For instance, I’m a big fan of watching the minor characters. I think they can really fill out the play when you give them a chance.  How’s Friar Laurence?  Is he just an incompetent adult, or should we see him as more of a villain who brings about all the tragedy because he is overly zealous in his desire to be the one who ends the feud?

Similarly consider Lord Capulet.  Which face is the right one? The one that says Juliet must decide for herself to marry Paris? Or the one that says do what I tell you or get out of my house?  I’ve always thought of him as a bad guy. But I’ve had people defend him, saying he’s merely a man with a temper who doesn’t mean what he says.

Another question I like to ask is how violent is the conflict between the two families in this version?  I don’t like the overly violent interpretation where both sides are always this close to killing each other. I prefer to believe that the grudge is dying out. Both sides now are all talk and bluster but neither is really serious about doing injury to the other. That way, Mercutio’s death is an accident. Even Tybalt is surprised – which makes Romeo’s revenge darker because while Tybalt accidentally killed Mercutio, Romeo deliberately killed Tybalt.

See what I’m talking about? When you see Romeo and Juliet for the umpteenth time, what are you paying close attention to?