What Do 2nd and 3rd Grade Boys Talk About?

It starts as soon as we get in the car. I’ve only driven the boys (M-ito and his friend Austino) to school (or picked them up from school) a handful of times but it happens each time. They get in the car and start talking about poop, pee, and destruction. Here’s an example.

“Poop, poop, poop, poop,” Austino says as soon as they close the car door and buckle themselves in.

“Poop and pee, poop and pee, poop and pee,” M-ito adds in. They are both hysterical with laughter. I smile back at them through the rear view mirror.

“All right you two,” I say, “that’s enough with the poop and pee.” I know once they are in school none of this will be allowed. I figure it’s better to get it all out now so when they don’t stop right away I let it go on for  a few minutes before I veer them towards another subject.

On Friday they both were singing the Barney song but it went a little like this: “I hate you, you hate me, we’re an unhappy family, I’m gonna take a saw and cut off your head, then Barney will soon be dead.” Writing it down it doesn’t sound too good. I know, I know. But in the car, riding home after a full day of school, being good, following the rules, not using any toilet language, being gentlemen, a little letting loose can’t be bad. Can it? Variations of Barney being taken out went on for a good ten minutes with the two boys laughing and giggling at each other’s humor. Eventually I told them that enough was enough and asked them to change the subject – but they only sang louder. I should have figured that wouldn’t stop them but I’m slow at these things. Regardless, I liked to hear them laugh and didn’t want to crush their creative work directly, just channel it somewhere else. So I started word games with them. How many words can you name that rhyme with red? Then I spy with my little eye. It worked for a while, but poor Barney the purple dinosaur eventually got knocked off a few more times before we got home.

This trend towards violence and not understanding what it means disturbs me. It’s not real to the kids. But, do I want it to be real for them? Do I want them to have seen people get killed for real? Dead bodies, for real?  I’ve seen enough violence and the results of violence in my life and I’d rather not have them see any of it even when they’re older. On the other hand, they don’t take it seriously. It’s like a movie or a video game to them. And so it’s funny.

I remember a number of my friends in High School used to enjoy seeing the George Romero films like Dawn of the Dead. They laughed at the gore and violence because it was so over-the-top to them. I couldn’t watch the films. They terrified me and it all looked way too real. I couldn’t laugh at the horror of what I saw on the screen. I was not made to see horror films.

My son does not see violent films – he barely gets to see PG rated animated films and we hand-pick his films very carefully. He still hasn’t watched the third Star Wars film Revenge of the Sith because I think it’s just too violent. M-ito couldn’t sit through Beverly Hills Chihuahua last year because it was “too scary.” He get’s scared easily and we don’t want him to have nightmares. Yet when he plays Wi Lego Star Wars what is the purpose of most of the action? Well… it’s to kill all the other characters. You get points for taking their hearts. “Take out your light saber and kill them,” is commonly heard during play. It makes me cringe. What do parents do about this desensitization?

M-ito told me a story on Friday about his school. Three 8th graders had to do some public speaking at assembly last week – it’s an assignment each of them has to complete during the school year – and one of them tried to be funny in his speech. M-ito explained it to me like this.

“One boy told us he was describing his trip to Japan and said, ‘I was looking out the window of the airplane and saw three torpedoes fly out at a building and blow it up. Then I saw people jumping off the building, wait, no I was only kidding!’ That’s what he said, ‘I was only kidding!” M-ito laughed – I sensed feeling sophisticated because he got the humor. He thought it was funny – as funny as talking about poop, farts, or pee.

The first time I heard him tell this story, we were in the car on the way home from school and Austino was in the car too. They both thought it funny. I smiled but felt a little sick to my stomach – a little disturbed. I was on the 16th floor of Tower II the day the Trade Center’s came down and the story just rang differently for me. I didn’t say anything to him about it. I smiled and listened to them laugh. The second time he told the story it was to Mom-ita a few days later and I was listening while sitting next to him at dinner. I looked at Mom-ita after he’d finished and neither one of us talked for a moment. M-ito was giggling again.

We both finally looked at him and said, “You know it could be that people will think about the World Trade Center when someone tells that kind of story. They might not think it funny. People really got killed there – a lot of people.” But M-ito was working on only 8 hours of sleep and as soon as I got serious he tuned me out. Of course I said two or three sentences more and had to have Mom-ita tell me to stop, “He’s not listening to you anymore,” before I finally did find silence.

I liked it when M-ito thought Oswald was the best TV show. There was no violence. There was Big Banana day. There was a picnic in the park. There was lunch at the local diner meeting friends. Now my son is growing up and the volume is being turned up too.

When it comes down to it, if I have a choice between laughing at violence or poop and pee, I’ll take the poop and pee any day.

In-school Bardo

Bardo – Buddhist term – an intermediate state. The term usually refers to the term between death and rebirth. The Wisdon of No Escape, Pema Chodron.

My son is in bardo – the place between comfort in his old school and his end destination of fitting in at his new one. I’ve heard a little through M-ito but mostly late at night or via phone calls while I was away in New Orleans and then Lansing Michigan – working. But the picture is pretty clear to me. My son is in bardo. It’s a hard place to be, but it’s a place of growth. My son doesn’t want to hear that, though. He just wants to be out of bardo and on the shore of fitting in.

M-ito made his first friend during his first week at school. He called them aquaintences up until then. He named his first friend, Jacito, a boy from the other 2nd grade class. They played tag together with some other boys. Tag is one of M-ito’s favorite games. He laughs when he plays and his laughter is a sound that makes you and anyone around you smile. I thought, from my hotel room, listening to Mom-ita tell me of his adventures, that things seemed to be moving along. The process of forming with a new group had begun. I had expected it to be rocky but so far so good.

After he made his first friend, he told Mom-ita that he waited for the other class to come out for recess the next day. He waited by the door. I have this picture of him waiting for the other class to come out. “Will they come out today?” he told me later  he wondered. “Are they out sick?” Two days a week the two classes did not have recess together. He learned this while waiting for them to come out. Then on Friday, M-ito’s friend changed the game of tag to bullfight tag. A different game – out of my son’s comfort zone. He was still in bardo. He didn’t want to play. I know some things about my son and one thing is he likes to have mastery over games he plays. He doesn’t like games that he thinks he’s not good at – especially games that he’ll look bad playing. Embarrasment is a big factor even for 7-year olds. I understand this.

He sat on the fence watching the kids for two days. Mom-ita didn’t know what to do but she waited it out. She bounced her ideas off of me but she knew in her heart what was right for her son. I listened and agreed with her. M-ito’s teacher came to Mom-ita at the end of the second day and said, “I’ve been watching and waiting too. Other kids have asked him to play games bu he’s saying no. I’m not going to let it go on much longer.” The next day she asked M-ito to sit by her so he wasn’t by himself again. Some kids asked him to play bull fight tag then and he said yes. This time he got the rules down and played better. Perhaps the choice of sitting next to the teacher, whom he seems to like, or playing tag pushed him to play. In any case it worked.

He’s played other types of tag since then and played soccer yesterday. He played goalie. He says it’s easy and he likes it – with a shrug. No one else wants to play goalie so he steps up. He found a place from which to participate. I give him a lot of credit. Bardo is not an easy place to be. It’s so much easier to stay in your comfort zone, so much harder to step off into a strange land.

As a father I have found the whole process to have a hint of the unreal about it. I’m experiencing much of it second hand – through Mom-ita. M-ito is close to her because she drives him in and picks him up. She is his lifeline to see at the end of the day. I am the guy he sees most evenings at 6pm – regular time, usually coming home while he’s in the middle of his homework. He doens’t ask me for help, that is Mom-ita’s domain. Even trying to make one day a week driving in with the two of them – it’s still hard to stay part of things. Drop-off happens so quick. Mostly, like so many Dad-ditos these days, I try to catch up on the weekend. You see, I’m in my own bardo too. I’m adjusting to change and allowing this new aspect of our relationship to grow also. It sounds good on paper but it sure is hard to do.

Meeting Your Edge

A Buddhist story related by Pema Chodron goes like this.

A group of travellors gets ready to climb a mountain. After a few hundred feet a few can’t go up any higher so they stop. As the group goes up higher others stop, unable to go further. Finally a few reach the top. Those that stopped along the way, met their edge. They reached a place where the word “no” rang so loudly in their ears that they simply had to stop. The key is that the ones who made it to the top are not the winners. They had no fear of hieghts or had it but it was bearable. The ones who had to stop along the way are not losers either. They simply met their edge and could go no further. Meeting your edge means you have something to learn about yourself, that you need to open your heart to the experience, be kind to yourself and recognize that you have something to learn. Those who made it to the top will meet their edge on some other expedition. Everyone meets their edge, sooner or later in life. Engaging in life means you go up the mountain, you show up for the expedition, not knowing how far you will be able to go.

Sunday I watched my son meet his edge. He’s seven so he meets it often. But I’ve never seen it so viscerally before. A classmate whom he has only just met, had invited him to his birthday party and M-ito went. It was at a rock climbing gym out on Long Island. We’d been there once before on a reconnaissance of the place. The first time we went M-ito climbed half way up. The second time a quarter of the way up, then two thirds of the way up and finally a quarter of the way up, four different lines. I still can’t believe he kept at it even though it was clear that he was not enjoying himself.

At the party I saw all kinds of edge-meeting going on. Some kids did not come so they met their edge in their minds. One boy didn’t put on a harness, though he came for cake and pizza. One boy put on a harness and tried to climb only once, making it up half way then coming down, his arms and legs shaking. Several boys made it up half way and came down. Some made it to the top. One boy left in tears.

M-ito watched and when a few had stopped at the halfway point he gave it at try. He made it a few feet up then stopped. I watched as he tried with all his abilities to make his hand reach up for the next rock. It shook and trembled reached up then down, up then down. It was so painful to watch. Finally he looked down at us and asked to come down. He tried to climb twice, the second time with the same results. He sat down next to me afterwards, angry with himself, his arms crossed across his chest. He wouldn’t let me speak to him.

“You did great,” I said.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“You really did your best. It’s only what you could do today. Tomorrow will be different.”

“Be kind to yourself, you did great.” I’m afraid of heights but I can climb in spite of it. Still I know how hard it can be to keep going up. But it didn’t matter what I said.

He walked away from me with a scowl on his face. Mom-ita got him to speak to her by talking about something else. Then he settled in. He recovered about fifteen minutes later and seemed to move on. I had to watch while he processed and dealt with his damaged ego. It broke my heart to see and not be able to do anything about it. But my son is resilient and he seemed to be able to move past it. I wish I could have helped but I’m also glad Mom-ita was there to be of help.

Sometimes it just works that way.

As Pema Chodron says, meeting your edge means you’re showing up for life, you’re engaged on the journey. Practice loving-kindness to yourself and you open to life’s possibilities. Well, it’s something to shoot for.

Lanyard Tricks

Here’s a great website that teaches eight or nine different stitches – Lanyards.com. The videos are easy to follow, clearly filmed, with good verbal instructions.

M-ito learned the box stitch in about an hour then taught a friend two days later. The box stitch is a good one to start with. I remember lanyard from camp when I was a kid. It’s still the same thing and still pretty cool to do – very focusing, very zen. Over, under, over under. Wash on, wash off. Keep the lanyards in line. That and some finger dexterity is all you need. It sounds simple but does take practice. We bought some lanyard out in Greenport so city folks will have to look at Michaels Craft Store to get theirs. That’s where I’m getting my next batch. It’s been added to my bag of tricks and especially uyseful when waiting for dinner to be served.

Classroom Blues

One of the most difficult tasks I’ve had  as a father has been to choose a school for my son. It should be simple. You have a good public school nearby  and you send your child there for free. That’s what I did where I grew up in Nassau County. I didn’t like school too much – there was a lot of drug traffic and some violence and I was glad, breathed a huge sigh of relief, when I left High School. I remember two friends burning their books in the school yard our last day. I can still see the flames in my mind’s eye. I loved books too much to burn them, but I understood the significance of their act. I was tired of learning and had been for a while.

M-ito’s last day of first grade at his school was yesterday. There was a small party – his class had only twelve kids – and a meloncholy air. A good third of the children, including my son, will not be returning next year.

For pre-K we sent him to public school, one for which we were zoned. We found it not to be a good fit for M-ito. I’ve learned that fit is important. A good school for one child will not be a good school for another. M-ito got lost in the pre-K in our neighborhood. He follows rules, raises his hand, does what his teachers tell him, doesn’t speak out of turn, and listens to what his teachers say. What happened to him in pre-K? His teacher didn’t pay attention to him. She didn’t know M-ito outside of his trouble getting his coat on by himself. (He liked it when she helped him put his coat on because she paid attention to him and talked to him, listened to him tell her stories, while she helped him put that jacket on.) He knew how to put his own coat on and he also had figured out a way, within the rules set out for him, to get a little attention for himself. In his class there were three other kids who had behavioral problems. The only other way for my son get attention was to hit others, yell, take other’s toys, push kids in the hall or on the stairs – but that’s not his way. The kids who did this took up 90% of both the teacher and teacher’s aide’s time. The teacher tried to shame the children into leaving their stuffed animals at home in preparation for kindergarten. I still can’t forgive her for that. The school had no idea how to use parents to help them with the children. They said they wanted parental involvement but they didn’t. We pulled him out of there after one year. Many other parents pulled their kids out too.

M-ito didn’t get into the charter schools in our area. He didn’t win a seat based on either of the two lotteries we entered him in. We didn’t have any contacts or “know anyone” who could influence our chances either. We looked at private schools. I still can’t believe it. Both Mom-ita and I went to public schools and I just assumed M-ito would too. After one year’s experience with public school as a parent I don’t want to do it again.

So I starting saying yes to every consulting gig I could get. I still say yes to them all. Private school is expensive – but we both think it’s worth it.

In kindergarten we sent M-ito to a local private school and it was terrific. The school seemed good and the kindergarten teachers were excellent. But around the kindergarten class, in the classes above, there were problems with bullies, and there were behavioral problems that we encountered and heard about throughout the year. We stayed in our kindergarten bubble and tried to ignore the other problems. A child was asked to leave the school in the grade above. A younger brother in M-ito’s grade left with him. This happened past the half way mark of the school year. The administration took a long time to act – but eventually did.

In first grade M-ito overall had a good experience. His teacher was good and the small band of classmates created a nice bubble again within which learning could occur. But another bully appeared in the grade above – and M-ito’s class had recess and gym with him. There was an outbreak of stomach aches in M-ito’s class in the fall because of the upper grade’s less supervised and rough play. They were switched to have recess with the kindergarten. Gym was still held with the upper grade and the threat of the second grade bully was felt all year. He made M-ito’s classmates cry, making fun of them or calling them names when the teacher wasn’t paying attention (which seemed often), and the bully’s own grade suffered his behavior too. The last day of school my son had a long discussion with us about whether he could wear a favorite shirt – a tie-dye shirt – or not. Was the bully going to call him names? Make a comment to him? M-ito stopped wearing any colorful shirt by winter’s end. Pink left the list of his favorite colors. It wasn’t worth it to him to deal with the bully commenting about what he wore. It was safer to go below the radar. M-ito knew which teachers were good in afterschool class (ie: kept control of the kids and didn’t allow bullying) and which did nothing and let the kids run riot. I’m still amazed he made it through ballet all year, walking from his classroom to the music room one floor above in t-shirt and black tights – his leotard hidden underneath. He must have really wanted to dance.

Bullying in a private school is a challenge just as it is in a public school, but the school had and still has no comprehensvie approach to address it. It’s done on a teacher by teacher basis. But not all teachers are good at classroom management. It seems most are not. Private schools also have the issue of  dealing with troublesome children whose parents make large donations of money to the school. Behavior that should not be permitted sometimes is. That’s another thing I learned.

And there are good teachers in good schools, bad teachers in good schools, good teachers in bad schools and bad teachers in bad schools. It’s tough to get a match. Friends of ours with kids in an upper grade suffered through a year with an abusive teacher. the teacher will not be coming back next year. There was some disturbing violence done to a teenager in an upper grade also. A teacher was fired. A child was expelled. What is the atmosphere of a school in which all these things happen? How is it taken in and absorbed by my son? Should I pretend that it doesn’t affect him? I know that it already has. But how much? Is he safe in his school? Administration dealt with each problem, but always seemed slow to react. I’ve found that administrators of schools are always slow to react. It’s not easy running a school with all these variables.

It’s been hard to pretend my son’s in a bubble when events happen around him. I can pretend but at a certain point I need not to. I worry what will happen next and whether it will happen to a child I know or if it will happen to my son. I wonder if every school is that way. Many people have told me it is so and that I just need to take the good with the bad and leave it at that. Others say, “boys will be boys.” I hate that. Boys are “boys” because parents and schools allow them to be. It is fostered by the school environment. There you have it. That is part of what is eating at me.

When I was in junior high school my best friend was hit by a train walking home from school in a downpour. I witnessed a kid I played football with – who later overdosed in high school – beat up a bully he’d been paid to take down. I witnessed it and walked away. Many of my friend’s lunches had been stolen by the bully. Many of us had been pushed around in the halls by him and his gang, had our books knocked out of our hands by him. I played football so was exempt from much of it. My smarter friends who didn’t play sports were not. 

For this upcoming year, the tuition went up a significant amount. We were notified only a few months ago. We’d already been looking at other options for a school but that was just about the last straw. We decided M-ito would be going to another private school in the fall. 

M-ito will be leaving behind friends as will we. Many families are leaving for similar reasons. Many are just tired of fighting and advocating again and again for slow and only partially satisfactory responses. Is this the way all schools work? Does change move so slowly? We’ve tried to find a school that matches the needs of our son. Will it be the right school for him? We hope so. We’ve investigated this new one in depth but the truth is you never know. There are so many variables. There is the school itself. What the school says it does and how it says it functions and how it in reality acts and functions sometimes are two different things. How teachers will be with your child may or may not work. What will be the mix of children? Will there be bullies? Will the staff be capable of handling him or her? How will my son fit? These are the thoughts that wake me in the early morning hours and stare at the ceiling with my heart racing.

We went to M-ito’s last day of first grade with heavy hearts. Other parents who are staying are not happy with us for leaving. Lines have been drawn, pickets thrown up and demilitarized zones created. It’s been lonely for Mom-ita. These are women she has called friends. Now some won’t talk to her. That’s another tricky part of your child’s school. You meet parents and develop new friendships. Your child’s friendships bring on new relationships for you as a parent also, whether you want them to or not.

I’m sure the parents who are keeping their children in the school are questioning themselves just are we are questioning ourselves. Should we stay? Should we leave? They care about their children and we care about our child. M-ito feels it too. He played Uno with his teacher and friends most of the party, smiling and laughing. But he has told us he’s scared about going to a new school and having to make new friends. We’re scared too. It’s a daunting prospect. Change is a scary thing. But sometimes status quo is even scarier.

And change is not only about loss, even if today it’s hard to see around it. It is also about growth. As a parent I have to remember to honor this both for myself and for M-ito. And for us, we hope, it will bring about a better education for our son.

Rush Hour Returns!

Just when I thought the game should go back into M-ito’s room and never be seen again, today I packed it in my bag of tricks and what do you know? M-ito asked to play it at the coffee shop where we had lunch. We played half a dozen times and had a blast, both of us playing the expert level and solving the puzzles together.

Ahhhhh…

Wii Wars

Mom-ita plays a mean Wii. M-ito plays a mean Wii. I can hear them battling through five levels of animated storm troopers, alien cantinas and pod-racers. This is what it sounds like.

“Go over here, Mom-ita – follow me.”

“You have to wait for me.”

“Follow me, Mom-ita, I know what to do here.”

“M-ito, you have to wait for me.”

“Follow me.”

Or…

“Mom-ita, you have to wait for me.”

“I know what to do here so you follow me.”

“Mom-ita!”

“M-ito, sometimes you have to follow. That’s what playing together is all about.”

I step over to see them from the kitchen. I’ve just about finished the dishes. They are both sitting there, nonchucks in one hand and control wand in the other. Their eyes are glued to the TV screen which is filled with flying projectiles, coins and red hearts.

“Get the heart! Get the heart!” M-ito says.

“I’m trying to but you keep moving away from it and I can’t get to it.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got it.”

I play sometimes with M-ito but I’m not a big fan of electronic games. I was when I was a kid and adolescent. I spent a lot of quarters on Pong and Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, and Defender. But I also got lost in them and disappeared while I played for hours on end. I get worried my son will do the same. He has had a different life than me so he doesn’t have the same need to disappear that I had at that age, but I get worried never-the-less.

Back on Tatooine, Mom-ita has put her controls down and has crossed her arms, sitting back on the couch, chin tucked, brow furrowed.

“Mom-ita, what are you doing?” M-ito says as he continues to blast away at furniture and creatures, gaining coins and hearts and points.

“No,” Mom-ita says.

“I’m sorry,” says M-ito. “I said I’m sorry.”

Mom-ita picks up the controls and leans forward.

“I can do this part,” she says and M-ito nods, his mouth hanging a little open.

I return to the dishes, shaking my head. Mom-ita says she wants to practice with me at night after M-ito is asleep. She says this in front of M-ito as a joke, but also to let him know how good he is. But… I don’t think she’s kidding.

Satya – Truthfullness

“Dad-dito, can we play Pokemon now?”

“No, honey. It’s time to go to bed.” 

M-ito’s face fell and he started to cry. Dishes from dinner were still sitting on the table behind us. Our bellies were full and it was almost 7:30pm, bed-time. “I’m sorry but it’s time to go to bed.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

“You lied to me. You always lie to me,” M-ito said, shrugging my hand away and dropping himself onto the sofa.

“What do you mean? I didn’t lie to you.”

“You did to. You always tell me we can play a game together and then there’s never time to play. You always do that. You always lie to me.”

The words always, never, and lie flared up in my brain in neon.  Before I replied I took a breath and thought about what my son had told me. I knew he was upset because we had only had time for homework and dinner, no playing, and my son lives for play – as any child his age should. So his outburst wasn’t unexpected. Still, I paused because I’d been teaching in my yoga classes the concept of Satya, or truthfullness, and my son saying I had lied, was just too coincidental. I thought about what I’d told him before dinner when he’d finished his homework and I’d said to get ready for dinner. “We can play after dinner,” I’d said. Well, it was after dinner and we weren’t playing. As usual dinner and dessert had taken too long – or longer than I’d thought it would , and there was no time left. But I had said we’d play.

Had I done this before? Yes, actually I had. I did it alot. I told my son, “Yes, there’ll be time later,” when I was pretty sure, if I was being honest with myself, that I knew there wouldn’t be. I wanted there to be time. I wanted us to play. I felt guilty about all the time I spent working and teaching and not being able to pay attention to him, so I said, yes, we’d have time. I ignored the little voice in my head that said, no way. I didn’t want to see his face fall. Instead I saw it fall after dinner anyway, when I had to say what I should have said in the first place.

So I looked at M-ito and apoligized. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that. I wanted us to have time so I said we would. I shouldn’t do that. It’s not telling you the truth. If I’m not sure we’ll have time to play, from now on I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you the truth. But it means I’ll be telling you there won’t be time to play even when you want there to be time to play. You understand?”

M-ito nodded. He wiped the tears from his eyes.

“You ready for bed?”

He nodded again, the argument washed out of him. I gave him a hug and he didn’t resist.

I took a deep breath and exhaled, letting it wash out of me too.

Pokeman Dad-dito Style

My contribution. I printed out the information sheets on each of the Pokeman that M-ito bought, used the three hole punch, and placed them – in alphabetical (that was Mom-ita’s idea) order – into a bright blue binder. We put the cut out cards from the back of the action figure boxes in a side folder and M-ito brought the binder into school with him on Friday. The kids said he was now “officially” the smartest kid in Pokeman – because he had the binder which told them everything about his Pokeman. Count one for Dad-dito… finally.

Human Being

We’re walking to our favorite Columbian restaurant on a Sunday morning, a big breakfast ahead of us, M-ito walking between us. I don’t remember what we’re talking about, it’s already been a week but I remember the punch line. I ask M-ito, “What’s a human being?”

“That’s easy,” he says. “It means you’re human and you’re bee-ing. Right?”

Mom-ita shakes her head waiting for me to give my lesson. I can’t help myself. “That’s right,” I say. “You have to bee, not do. We’re not human doings we’re human beings. We have to just be sometimes and not always do.” 

Mom-ita can’t help herself and starts to laugh. She knows just being is one of things I have difficulty with in my life. I’m working on it, though.

“What?” I say. “I think what he said is important – it’s wonderful.”

“Uh huh,” M-ito says and grabs my hand, yanking my arm forward to try and pull me off balance. “Yeeeaahhh!” he says, waiting for me to pull him back like a rubber band stretched to its limit.

Yeeeaahhh!