Childhood Dreams & Hooters

By Roberta Durra

He was just 10 years old, but seemed older. He was average height and thin like a blade of grass. On the rare occasion when he wore tight blue jeans, his legs looked like pencils or the long hard candies covered halfway in chocolate, that my mother kept in her candy dish.

Ian started wearing glasses when he was 3. His preschool teacher said that his personality changed dramatically when he started wearing them. Looking through his lenses, I thought that he changed because suddenly he was able to define a roomful of people who must have looked like large clumps, pre-lenses. He chose Harry Potter frames and with his long brown hair he often had people calling him “Harry”. He never told them that he wore the round frames long before there was a Harry Potter. He liked the attention.

He played violin well and was an avid reader. He had eclectic taste and was happy reading history as well as Calvin and Hobbs. He was well liked by the children at school and by the teachers. He was smart and quirky, an old soul.

One day as I was driving Ian to school I commented how interesting it was that in the fifteen minute drive we had seen: spring flowers in bloom, a man being arrested and a movie crew setting up. Quite normal sightings in Southern California.

        

         He agreed and said,  “And Hooters!”

 

         “HOOTERS?” I said, horrified.

It was true. We had passed a Hooters Restaurant on the way to school.

         “What do you know about Hooters?” I asked, not really wanting an answer.

         “Only that I want to be the manager of Hooters when I grow up”, he replied offhandedly.

I had silently observed as one by one, my son’s ten-year-old buddies had picked out their adult professions. August wanted to be a professional soccer player, Keenan a basketball player, John an artist, Daniel wanted to be whatever August wanted to be, Luka a percussionist, Nick a teacher, and now my son, Ian, had voiced his own childhood dream…Manager of Hooters.

I’m prone to migraines and I felt the familiar thump-thump of my head beginning to throb. We said our morning goodbyes as I dropped Ian off in front of his private school – the school that insisted we cut out our children’s exposure to television and media and replace it with nature, wooden toys and pure imagination. The school that devoted entire periods of learning to handwork (finger knitting, crocheting, cross-stitching). 

 The school that taught Eurhythmy, a physical movement class where the children walked around wearing soft shoes, rhythmically singing and tossing batons in complicated patterns. Their learning was integrated in their bodies as well as their minds. 

They memorized their multiplication tables by tossing bean bags to one another and chanting the numbers aloud. They brought their lunches wrapped in cloth napkins and wicker baskets. They didn’t have gym class. They had games class where they played old-fashioned games of running and tagging and the baseball they played at recess was done with the end of a wooden rake. They were practically AMISH!

I was told that all this sheltering was a gift, an extension of childhood. My son was immersed in a world filled with knowledge and imagination. Alumni came back and spoke about the unusual schooling we were giving our children. They praised the school’s methods. They reassured parents and said that learning without classic textbooks was fine. The graduates were now doctors, lawyers, famous actors, and scientists. Not a Hooter’s manager in the bunch.

The children at this private school were nurtured and taught to listen to themselves and to each other. So when my son told me he wanted to manage Hooters, it was said with strength and conviction, coming from deep within his body. A strength that made me look in to the old soul of my child and say …That’s it. You’re going to public school!