I’m watching The Wonder Years with Eva on Netflix. Thirty-plus years ago, I watched every episode unfold from my basement bedroom on a 14-inch TV. At first I wondered if it would lose its magic, now that I’m as old as the parents instead of the kids, and now that I know the narrator is actually the bumbling burglar who experiences humiliating defeat at the hands of Macaulay Culkin. But watching my eight-year-old fall in love with Kevin, Winnie, Paul, Karen and even Wayne, when he has his moments, I discovered it’s even more magical the second time around.At one point, while Kevin tried to woo Winnie with a $9 rust-proof quasi-amethyst going steady ring, Eva whispered, “Kevin’s funny.”
I recognized that starry look in her eyes. And I conducted a full debate in my head before I finally broke the news.
“In real life, his name is Fred,” I revealed. “And today, he’s as old as I am.”
I heard a record player scratch in my head. And for the next two minutes, she watched in stunned silence.
I waited for her interest in Kevin, the series, and that little fragment of my teenage existence to fizzle and evaporate before my eyes. Instead, she had a request.
“Can you show me what he looks like now?”
They say in every new relationship, there are bumps in the road. My girl tightens her struts and faces them head on.
Over the past six months, our three have become valiant and zealous practitioners of the martial arts. As you can see, it has already instilled them with responsibility, a hard work ethic, and self-discipline.
Jon Mangiarcina and Doug have indisputably had some good times back in the day, from the Torrington High School parking lot to Woodstock to People’s Forest, all by means of Jon’s trusty Plymouth Satellite. Today, the good times roll on as we listen to the conversations of our children from the back of the minivan.
It’s a different conversation than one would expect from the offspring of Doug Lariviere and Jon Mangiaracina.
Sean, a six-year-old with an extensive vocabulary and enough eloquence in his back pocket to carry him through the next presidential debate, was engaged in a battle of wits with my Eva, two years his senior.
“Go ahead,” he challenged. “Ask me anything.”
Eva thought for a moment, then quizzed, “What’s a million plus a million plus a million?”
“Can’t do it,” Sean declared. “A million’s a word, not a number.”
“Yes, you can do it,” Eva corrected. “It’s 3 million.”
“No, it’s not.” I could practically hear Sean digging his heels into the car mat.
“You can even ask my mom,” Eva persisted. “She’s a math teacher.” She leaned forward, as though I hadn’t been hanging onto every word of their conversation. “Mom, isn’t a million plus a million plus a million three million?”
“Indeed it is,” was my verdict.
“Nope. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
“It will someday,” Eva reassured. “When you’re in the third grade, you’ll understand these things.”
Before Sean could deliver his counter argument, Doug interjected.
“Speaking of a million, about a million years ago, me and your dad went to high school together,” he began.
“Woooow! High school?” Sean asked.
“That’s right. And there was this one particular day that we were sitting in health class taking a very important test.”
Thus ensued the familiar tale of how Jon broke the silence of that classroom in a manner that nearly lifted him from his chair, and how he immediately pointed at Doug and named him the culprit, and how Liz Bruno and Lynn DePretis scrunched up their noses in disgust and wailed, “DOOOUUUG!” and how no one could hear Doug’s protests of denial over the class’s clamor of blame, and how Doug and Mark Tedeschi were laughing so hard that Mrs. Pryor eyed them suspiciously and offered them a trip to the nurse’s office.
Eva listened to the tale in its entirety, then said, “You know, Sean, ‘a million’ means the same thing as ‘one million.’ Does it make more sense to you when I say ‘1 million plus 1 million plus 1 million equals 3 million’?”
Sean nodded. “So what that means,” he postulated, “is that words can be numbers. And numbers can be words.”
“That’s right!” shouted Eva, satisfied that she inspired this epiphany.
They say every generation is a little dumber than the one before it.
This summer we went to Lake George. I told the kids they could each take one suitcase and fill it up as they saw fit. I advised them that it was a short trip, and they should bring the barest of necessities.
