Latin, Logic and How to Raise your Kids

It used to be slap bracelets. Remember slap bracelets? Those things were fucking lethal and we all loved them. Then it was Nirvana. Then Titanic and Leo. Then College applications. Now, the latest fad seems to be getting married. That means that the next “big thing” will be children. Naturally, I find myself looking forward and asking questions about what kind of father I will be. Not the annoying questions like, “Will I be a good dad?” but more specific, unsettling questions like, “How many words can I use to explain why something is against the rules before Sacajawea (my future daughter) tunes out?”

Kids don’t listen – when they’re five, it’s because they can’t and when they’re fifteen, it’s because they don’t want to. What are you supposed to say?

It all comes back to Latin. In high school, we were told that “back in the day,” (Ceasar’s day?) the order of the words in a given sentence did not matter so long as all of the grammatical parts were present. Our textbook arranged the words so that we would have an easy time understanding the sentences based on our predisposition to English. Mathematically, I am fine with this. Two plus three equals five and guess what? Three plus two also equals five. Magic. But the rub comes in when Ms. X, my junior-year Latin teacher, told us that in addition to jumbled order, there were no spaces between words in ancient Latin texts. This was too much for me. The fact that we’re reading Latin words arranged for our ease was one thing but to find out that the spacing was added by Ecce Romani made me feel like an idiot. Latin! Our Latin!! Dumbed down so that I could understand it. Aeneas’ mother wasn’t this depressed when the Greeks fucked up her boudoir and murdered her husband.

After years of therapy, dad-issues, and anti-depressants, all stemming from that awful false-discovery, I read yesterday that spaces were most likely added to Latin text by accident hundreds of years ago. The idea is that when the words stood shoulder to shoulder, Latin was difficult to read prohibiting the majority of people from even bothering try. Ask yourself: would you read all seven Harry Potter books if the brilliant sentence, “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure,” looked like this: AFTERALLTOTHEWELLORGANIZEDMINDDEATHISBUTTHENEXTGREATADVENTURE. And just for kicks, let’s mix up the order within the clauses: THEMINDTO WELLORGANIZEDDEATHGREATADVENTURENEXTISBUTALLAFTER. At this point, it’s important to note that for ancient Latin, majuscule was Twitter and punctuation was Myspace, you know what I’m saying?

In a school setting, where the core premise is “teachers talk, students learn,” you’d think someone would separate the textbook author’s changes and the 13th century’s changes but perhaps Ms. X was too busy managing a room of twenty teenage boys. Although it would appear I am angry at my teacher, I’m really much more frustrated at myself and everyone around me at the time. It’s not her fault that none of us were listening. In fact, it’s probably a miracle that we took in any Latin at all, mixed, broken-up, or otherwise.

So when it comes down to Oswego (Sacajawea’s unborn brother), how much can I expect him to take in as I pontificate on the finer points of peeing inside, as opposed to on, the toilet?

It’s simple, really. How many kids would read all of my writing above? How many would read all of it and walk away with my ideas accurately floating in their reality-TV, internet porn, cesspool brains? Even if they did read all of it, how many more pages would they have to read afterwards before their seventeen-hour SATs at 5:00am?

And as the mighty greeks slip out of the horses belly, a twist…

It doesn’t matter what I tell them. They'll either take it in or they won't. I can guarantee, however, that they will take in every teeny speck of my energy, failings, compassion, anxiety, and love, regardless of how I express it.

This piece came together after reading “Against Camel Case” by Caleb Crain, in the November 23rd issue of the New York Times Magazine. You can find a copy of the article here.