Stagnant vs stable: Learning to tell the difference

Screenshot from Ray Dalio’s video on economics

I tutor Art History Girl for six hours a day. It’s a lot of alone time to give up, but empty-nesting in my apartment took a turn for the worst when I agreed that for the last year of school Y could move back to my apartment with the boyfriend.

This year we’re doing AP World History.

During the unit about capitalism we watched cartoon videos that billionaire hedge-funder Ray Dalio made for members of Congress to learn how the economy works. In the videos everyone charges everyone money (“That’s the whole economy! It’s that simple!”) and it nagged at me that the boyfriend is not paying rent.

Another day I tell Art History Girl we’re reading Mark Twain. I say, “His best book is Huckleberry Finn. But the n-word is all over that, so I guess that’s cancelled for reading out loud.”

It turns out that if you want to get a kid to read Mark Twain, tell them they can’t. We read a little bit of Huck Finn and she tells me she doesn’t think it should be cancelled. “We can’t just get rid of everything or we won’t know what happened.”

I agree with her in an effusive, kvelling way that means: Please god make her this insightful on the AP test. I decide that if there’s any book she might read on her own, it’s Huck Finn. So we begin Tom Sawyer. I’m excited for the opening: Aunt Polly punishes Tom by making him paint a fence. Tom convinces some boys that painting is a privilege and the other boys pay Tom for the chance to work.

Nearing chapter three, Art History Girl suspects I’ve jumped the shark: “Is this going to be on the test?”

I always feel like this question is actually a test for me. I say, “Yes. Unit 5 Industrialization. Mark Twain is commenting about how industrialization convinced people that monotonous factory work was special and worth giving up what they treasure.”

“Okay,” she says, like a teacher begrudgingly giving me a C.

I say, “Do you know what prodigious means?

“No.”

“Remember the suffix -ous changes a familiar word to an adjective.”

“Oh. Prodigy. So it means being really great.”

“Yeah. So you can make this inference even if you’ve never heard the word. Like, what would Penelopous mean?”

“Overexplaining.”

The boyfriend has also pointed out my annoyingness. He said, “I’ve noticed that what you say is almost always right, so I need to disregard when your specific examples are off.” This came up when I was helping him with his applications to grad school. What also came up is he needs tutoring experience to signal that he actually wants to teach.

Suddenly. I became Tom Sawyer: “Hey, you could teach math to Art History Girl. That would be great experience.”

And then things fell into place.

I could Tom-Sawyer all the tutoring — hire tutors, manage tutors, scale the Tom Sawyer Tutoring Company to all fifty states.

But I don’t feel excited by that. Mostly I feel tired. After years of building things that could fall apart at any moment, I’m relieved to do something predictable and boring.

Maybe this next stage of my life isn’t about building something new. Maybe it’s about learning how to stay where things are safe, and seeing if I can still recognize myself there.