Finals season has entered my home. There is lots of “studying” going on in between the Heat advancing to the finals and the Boston Bruins winning in double overtime (which for those of you who don’t know what exactly that means, it means that the individuals watching the entire game and both overtimes are going to sleep waaay past what is reasonable and will be really, exceptionally cranky when dear old mom has to wake them up in the morning for school). But, they have assured me that studying is getting done and when they come home from the exam I get a monotone, “It was fine, what’s for lunch.” Which I guess is better than the monotone, “It was terrible and so was lunch.” I take positive adolescent male feedback from my kids anyway I can.

I have been in a good mood because the Mets swept the Yankees (but then went on, yet another, losing streak) but I digress. When I was a student, wait that sounded too studious, when I was a kid and I went to school, I would come home, go up to my room, close the door and do homework at my desk. My desk was reasonably organized with pens and pencils, calculators, rulers, paper, and a typewriter (which is the estranged, illegitimate mother to the computer.) I had access to World Book Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia Judaica. Hmm, those all sound very obsolete now don’t they? Man, I can date myself through my reference materials. Now that is just downright depressing. Bottom line, however, I had a desk. With a swivel chair that got a great deal of swiveling use over the years when I was “studying” or listening to Culture Club and using the chair to dance around my room. (Google Culture Club, kids, great dance music from the dear old 80’s. Whatever happened to Boy George?)

Since I had a desk in my room, I though it necessary for the boys to have desks in their rooms. And they do. Each one of them has a desk. With pens, pencils, rulers, calculators, 8,000 baseball cards shoved into the draws, half-used notebooks from school years gone by and I’m assuming old candy and pictures from class trips. Bar Mitzvah presents that were probably never acknowledged, maybe some dead goldfish and lord knows what else. But they each have a desk.

And they each do study. But, for some reason, it is on the couch or at the kitchen table. Every night, son #2 is studying on that couch with the TV on. Sometimes, he can even play X-box and study at the same time while beating up brother #3 for entering the room with the couch. Some nights, he even sleeps on the couch.

I am really proud of the study habits my boys have because they do seem to get the job done and no one has been thrown out of school just yet…but every so often, I gently remind them that they all have a space in their rooms where they can get out of each other’s way and get their work done. They look at me, like I am crazy, and continue on their merry way. Good luck to all of those taking finals, those that use a desk and those that don’t…

Banji Latkin-Ganchrow