A rose by any other name would smell

I have another confession to make: I sometimes do my son's English Lit homework. Well, not exactly do it for him...more like help him with it. He knows how much I love reading and good literature. He knows, if he has a list of authors and his homework is to look up what they wrote, he can ask me, "What did Pearl S. Buck write?" and I'm going to say, "The Good Earth." It's kind of like a game for me to see how many of them I can answer without going to Google.

Now he's reading - or supposed to be reading - Romeo and Juliet. Which I admit to hating when I was a Freshman. (OMG, Daisey- remember that horrid test of definitions that hateful old Mrs. Cannon gave us? And our moms went up to the school to complain?) But I have since come to appreciate the classics and, after reading a couple of Jane Austen novels, can even understand most of the writing.

I find it quite odd that they're not reading the play in class, though. I thought that's how all Freshmen everywhere read Romeo and Juliet. Instead, My Kid is supposed to read a couple pages at home every night and answer questions about it. And I can't really blame him for not doing it; I totally would not have read my first Shakespeare alone, at the age of 14.

They will eventually show them the movie though - both of them, from what I understand, the Franco Zeffirelli AND the Baz Luhrman versions. (Which, BTW, did you know Jamie Kennedy is in the Baz Luhrman one? He, of Malibu's Most Wanted. Also? That cross-dressing Mercutio? Michael, from Lost.)

So The Kid totally has my number. And every night he comes down and sits next to me on the sofa where I'm reading blogs or trying to do some writing, and he'll say, "What does Romeo say when he sees Juliet on the balcony?" and I say, "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks..."

(I told my co-worker this, b/c she went to the same high school and frankly it wasn't all that long ago that she graduated. And she said, "How do you KNOW that?" and I'm all, "How do you NOT?")

I've actually been lacking for something to read lately so I've taken up the big blue Elements of Literature (Third Course) book with some god splashing out of the ocean and a quote from Ithaca on the cover. The hardest part of reading Shakespeare from a high school text book (besides lying in bed, trying to balance a 14-pound book on your stomach) is not being able to take a highlighter and mark up the parts I like.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a DVD to go buy.