317. Homework (2)

 I google all the swear words I don't know and find out that a) they do exist and b) they are real swear words.

I have to take in the fact that my little darling Baby has been exposed to such horrendous vocabulary! That teacher must be without children. I am glad my husband is not here as he would go to the school, demand to see the teacher and have a stern word with her. 

'What are you doing mum?'

'Just having some thoughts about the text.'

'You can't have any thoughts about that! Just a string of insults.'

'No. Wait.'

I google the name of the author. Again I am surprised: there she is, a real author who has published proper books and has even had some kind of recognition. Dearie me. She has a Wikipedia page! I recover form the shock and start helping Baby with her homework thinking to myself how amazingly easy it is with Google.

'Listen to this. She went to prison ... did drugs ... went into a psychiatric hospital for a bit ... back  into prison ... then became a prostitute ... detox from drugs ...'

Even Baby is a little shocked. My, what kind of a role model is this! What about Zola and Hugo and Molière and Verlaine and Rimbaud ... 

I Google some more and see if I can find something written by someone about this new type of literature. I am doing exactly what I tell my pupils not to do! Well I reckon this is an emergency situation. A cas de force majeure. I get carried away and soon I have a string of points to make on the matter. 

'MUM! Stop. I don't need that much. I need three parts.'

And here I go again about the many points we could make about the choice of words, and the rhythm of the syntax and the random punctuation and ...

'STOP! Please, mum, stop. Let me do this.'

I retire into the lounge and leave Baby to do her homework and carry on reading about the drug addict turned writer ... Now and then Baby shoves a piece of paper towards me and I have to do the teacher's bit. I am brought back to the day during the Christmas holidays when Baby, Muddy Boots and I were sitting at the dining room table. Muddy Boots was doing some intricate drawings in her bullet journal, Baby doing literature homework and I was doing nothing. Baby left the room. I took her homework and started to read and then, me being me, started to write. And kept writing. Muddy Boots was shocked.

'I cannot believe you are doing her homework! Honestly Mum what's happened? You would never ever have done this for us!'

She went on like this for a while until Baby came back and read what I had written and revealed that it was just very silly stuff to which we all three of us laughed. Here I added bit and bobs here and there, I couldn't help it. Then Baby read and said to me.

'Yes mum, that bit is very good!'

'Oh! Really? Thanks!'

Then I got all worried. What grade would we get and would I get a comment in red next to the points I had made? Would there be huge red letters saying plagiarism?