Chapter 3 – Nothing to Worry About
'Meet us at the school at 18:30. Nothing to worry about.' was all that her husband's cryptic, scrappy note had said, on a scrappy piece of paper obviously torn from the kids' scribbling pad. Crafted in his uniquely scrappy style. She realised that she just had time to change out of her work clothes before setting straight off again but she would be going hungry until they all got back.
'That's...... scrappy.' thought Sam, tearing off the tape strip attaching the note to the inside of their front door, bringing yet another strip of paint with it. She no longer considered it necessary to worry that some crisis had befallen the two focal points of both their lives, currently aged five and seven. She had learned within eighteen months of marriage that Jack's definition of *nothing to worry about* included anything and everything that didn't mean calling for the doctor or at worst a hospital visit, like the time when Jonathan Daniel had disturbed a wasps nest.
Although it was at times like having three kids in their home, she was immensely glad to have a sixty-year old house-husband whose main goal seemed to be to make up for a near-lifetime of suffering and loss, drawing in everyone around to jump on his personal bandwagon of exploration, fulfilment and sheer enjoyment. Kids' parties at their house, attracting as they did both neighbours' children and school pals, had become the stuff of mini-legend in their community, and both their house and garden had that 'lived-in' look of comfort and wear that would forever keep them off the pages of Good Housekeeping magazine. Clean and comfortable – yes, but *tidy* and *stylishly-decorated* were not the words that sprang to mind.
Jack's new-found lifestyle, in particular his refusal to allow others to dote on the real or imagined downsides of their lives, had made for an atmosphere that Sam loved to come home to, so much so that she rarely pulled late evenings in the SGC labs any more. Well, only when an emergency dictated it. She had even given up on the pretence of bringing work home, only to somehow not find the time to do it – a sure sign of workplace stress, someone had told her.
Sam pulled up alongside their family SUV in the school car park and after flipping down the parking stand bracket with the toe of her boot, took off her crash helmet, re-buckling the chin strap so that it could hang from the handlebars of her Honda Fireblade motorcycle. Unzipping her red and black leather jacket and shaking out her hair, she followed the well-known path to the Principal's office, cursing Jack for making her forget the woman's real name for the moment – it certainly wasn't Skinner. Carpenter? Smith? Voronenko? No, that wasn't it. A colour! Yes, that was it. But which one? Never mind, it would come to her in time.
The row of faces that greeted her in the room gave her the usual sense of déjà vu, and she sighed inwardly. Jonathan and Gracie O'Neill both wore genuine smiles of welcome at seeing her, the little girl rushing across to be lifted up in a hug. Her son called out a greeting but was entering the phase where boys weren't seen to be doing hugs in public – that would be later back at home. Their teacher Mrs. Abramovich merely stared in the disapproving way that class teachers sometimes do when confronted with a Hell's Angel in their own domain, while Prinicpal..... Grey? Black? White? Think, Sam! Colours of the rainbow? Richard-Of-York-Gained-Battles-In-Vain. Red? No. Orange? Yellow? Unlikely. Green? Promising! Mrs. Green! Yes, that was it..... No it wasn't, she remembered that much. Blue, Indigo, Violet? Don't be silly, Sam.
Her eyes flicked across momentarily to Mr. 'Butter-wouldn't melt' at the back while she stayed facing and smiling at the still-anonymous school head and observed Jack's finger pointing to his shoe, as he sat with his left ankle resting on his right knee.
"Principal Brown!" she eventually managed to say, just before the warmth of her smile was replaced by the look of a frightened rabbit.
"Tann. That's *Tann*, Mrs. O'Neill." replied the woman with a resigned tone to her voice. Sam blushed slightly, noticing Jack's innocent smile being replaced by the faintest trace of a smirk. Forget that now, Sam, he'll be paying for it later.
"Not *Skinner*, as your delinquent teenager of a husband has managed to convince so many in this establishment." continued Mrs. Tann. However Sam couldn't help but notice that her frosty glare in his direction just failed to conceal the warmth in the woman's eyes, and she would be looking out for her at the next parent – teacher social evening. His faint smirk was replaced by an innocent smile. Unfortunately Sam's threats of withdrawn bedroom privileges were rarely matched by her actions, so she let it go. Again. 'Nothing to worry about'.
"Sorry." said Sam. "So, I got Jack's note to be here, but other than that I have no idea. Is there a problem?"
"I'm not sure." replied the Principal. "Mrs. Abramovich has spoken of her concerns about the way in which your children's knowledge seems to be developing, and we felt it best to discuss it with you."
Sam gently took hold of Gracie's hand to stop her daughter picking at the metal studs that decorated her biker jacket, and carried her over to sit beside her husband, who had in the meantime fielded their son and sat him on his knee.
"What seems to be the trouble?" asked Sam, looking at Mrs. Abramovich. "Are they struggling to keep up with the curriculum?"
"Oh no." replied the teacher. "In many respects they are at the same level as many pupils. It's just that, well, how can I put this?" She paused and looked Jack squarely in the eye. "I believe that I am correct in stating that you are retired, Mr. O'Neill, and that you run the household while your wife is at work?"
"Yes, that's right." Jack replied. "Best time of my life."
"Quite." said Mrs. Abramovich, her tone dismissing the notion of 'fun' as irrelevant in domestic matters. "Mr. O'Neill, are your children under your personal supervision when they are not at school and your wife is at work?"
"Most of the time, yes." said Jack, for whom this interrogation held no threat whatsoever, considering his past. "Except when they're playing at a neighbour's house and I know that someone is looking out for them."
"And how do you pass most of your time with them?" continued the teacher, her eyebrows arched in expectation of an answer she could disapprove of.
"Tell her, Jonathan." replied Jack, grinning at his son.
"We play games!" cried their son, grinning widely. "Or go exploring with Daddy." He laboured over the word 'exploring', causing Sam to break into a smile of her own.
"Sploring!" repeated Gracie. "Daddy knows nice 'sploring places."
"Oh?" said Mrs. Abramovich in surprise. "But what about giving them lessons yourself?"
"What do you mean?" asked Sam.
"Well," Mrs. A continued, "in certain areas, they both seem to have knowledge of words and concepts that are far in advance of children their age. Not necessarily a deep understanding, but an awareness that is surprising, to say the least. I am concerned that you may be in danger of cramming their heads with irrelevant facts."
"How do you mean?" asked Sam, intrigued rather than worried by this statement.
The teacher turned to Jonathan. "Jonathan, how many different kinds of atoms are there?"
O'Neill Junior smiled, happy that he knew the answer. "One hundred and twenty six!"
Sam threw back her head and laughed, knowing how many times she and Jack had sung the song in front of their children, the song that had brought them finally together. They had continued to make up verses for each new element that had been discovered since it was written, and their offspring had quite naturally picked up and imitated some of the interesting-sounding names of elements – without understanding them, of course. But it was a point of pride in their household to keep track of these scientific discoveries, and to keep the tally on the children's 'writing wall' in their room.
"The fact that he recognises the word 'atom' is remarkable enough." said the teacher. "But look here." She produced a sheet of paper covered mostly in dark blue paint, with a recognisable splash of white across the centre. "This is from Grace's art class yesterday. Gracie, what is this picture?"
"Milky Way!" their daughter laughed, bouncing up and down in Sam's arms.
Sam looked more closely and saw the distinct spiral shape, caught beautifully by her daughter's use of white. But the item that drew her attention was the arrow that Grace had drawn on it, pointing to a spot about two-thirds of the way from the centre to the edge of the white shape. Above it she had written 'grace' in blocky paintbrush writing.
"Where's that, Gracie?" asked Mrs. Abramovich.
"Our house!" responded the delighted child.
"You see?" said the teacher. "Mr. O'Neill, why are you filling their heads with stuff like this at such an early age? It could be detrimental......"
"Is that why you brought us out here?" Sam interrupted. "Because frankly, I can't see the problem."
"As their mother....." was as far as Mrs. Abramovich got.
"Jack, have you been teaching them a new song?" Sam continued. "Which one is it this time?"
"Well, it was going to be a surprise for you, wasn't it, kids?" said Jack. They nodded their affirmation.
In the background, they suddenly heard Mrs. Tann's snort of amusement as she threw her head back and laughed. "I know the one!" she cried. "Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life' is one of my favourites too, Mr. O'Neill." To their surprise, she rose and beckoned them to follow her.
She walked straight into the music room and over to an upright piano, seating herself in front of the keys. "Mr. O'Neill – Jack, may I call you?" He nodded. "Now don't disappoint, children. You can sing this with Daddy now, can't you?" Without waiting, she started the introduction as Jack crouched down, holding hands with his two children.
Sam stood back with Mrs. Abramovich as her husband led the way, with Jonathan joining in for most of it, and Gracie shouting out the just the words that she liked the sounds of best. The Von Trapp's they weren't, but a place in the end-of-year school concert would be hard to evade.
"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour...
That's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral-arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
xx
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point,
We go round every two hundred million years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions,
In this amazing and expanding universe.
xx
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz.
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light you know;
Twelve million miles a minute, the fastest speed there is.
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger-all down back here on Earth!"
xx
The children were delighted by the applause that the adults broke into as they finished, and Gracie danced a little jig while Jonathan swung from his father's arm. Only Mrs. Abramovich looked stern, in contrast to Sam's glee.
"Mr. O'Neill! We are doing our best to teach them metric units of measurement these days!"
"Nothing to worry about." he replied as his wife hugged him.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
'Meet us at the school at 18:30. Nothing to worry about.' was all that her husband's cryptic, scrappy note had said, on a scrappy piece of paper obviously torn from the kids' scribbling pad. Crafted in his uniquely scrappy style. She realised that she just had time to change out of her work clothes before setting straight off again but she would be going hungry until they all got back.
'That's...... scrappy.' thought Sam, tearing off the tape strip attaching the note to the inside of their front door, bringing yet another strip of paint with it. She no longer considered it necessary to worry that some crisis had befallen the two focal points of both their lives, currently aged five and seven. She had learned within eighteen months of marriage that Jack's definition of *nothing to worry about* included anything and everything that didn't mean calling for the doctor or at worst a hospital visit, like the time when Jonathan Daniel had disturbed a wasps nest.
Although it was at times like having three kids in their home, she was immensely glad to have a sixty-year old house-husband whose main goal seemed to be to make up for a near-lifetime of suffering and loss, drawing in everyone around to jump on his personal bandwagon of exploration, fulfilment and sheer enjoyment. Kids' parties at their house, attracting as they did both neighbours' children and school pals, had become the stuff of mini-legend in their community, and both their house and garden had that 'lived-in' look of comfort and wear that would forever keep them off the pages of Good Housekeeping magazine. Clean and comfortable – yes, but *tidy* and *stylishly-decorated* were not the words that sprang to mind.
Jack's new-found lifestyle, in particular his refusal to allow others to dote on the real or imagined downsides of their lives, had made for an atmosphere that Sam loved to come home to, so much so that she rarely pulled late evenings in the SGC labs any more. Well, only when an emergency dictated it. She had even given up on the pretence of bringing work home, only to somehow not find the time to do it – a sure sign of workplace stress, someone had told her.
Sam pulled up alongside their family SUV in the school car park and after flipping down the parking stand bracket with the toe of her boot, took off her crash helmet, re-buckling the chin strap so that it could hang from the handlebars of her Honda Fireblade motorcycle. Unzipping her red and black leather jacket and shaking out her hair, she followed the well-known path to the Principal's office, cursing Jack for making her forget the woman's real name for the moment – it certainly wasn't Skinner. Carpenter? Smith? Voronenko? No, that wasn't it. A colour! Yes, that was it. But which one? Never mind, it would come to her in time.
The row of faces that greeted her in the room gave her the usual sense of déjà vu, and she sighed inwardly. Jonathan and Gracie O'Neill both wore genuine smiles of welcome at seeing her, the little girl rushing across to be lifted up in a hug. Her son called out a greeting but was entering the phase where boys weren't seen to be doing hugs in public – that would be later back at home. Their teacher Mrs. Abramovich merely stared in the disapproving way that class teachers sometimes do when confronted with a Hell's Angel in their own domain, while Prinicpal..... Grey? Black? White? Think, Sam! Colours of the rainbow? Richard-Of-York-Gained-Battles-In-Vain. Red? No. Orange? Yellow? Unlikely. Green? Promising! Mrs. Green! Yes, that was it..... No it wasn't, she remembered that much. Blue, Indigo, Violet? Don't be silly, Sam.
Her eyes flicked across momentarily to Mr. 'Butter-wouldn't melt' at the back while she stayed facing and smiling at the still-anonymous school head and observed Jack's finger pointing to his shoe, as he sat with his left ankle resting on his right knee.
"Principal Brown!" she eventually managed to say, just before the warmth of her smile was replaced by the look of a frightened rabbit.
"Tann. That's *Tann*, Mrs. O'Neill." replied the woman with a resigned tone to her voice. Sam blushed slightly, noticing Jack's innocent smile being replaced by the faintest trace of a smirk. Forget that now, Sam, he'll be paying for it later.
"Not *Skinner*, as your delinquent teenager of a husband has managed to convince so many in this establishment." continued Mrs. Tann. However Sam couldn't help but notice that her frosty glare in his direction just failed to conceal the warmth in the woman's eyes, and she would be looking out for her at the next parent – teacher social evening. His faint smirk was replaced by an innocent smile. Unfortunately Sam's threats of withdrawn bedroom privileges were rarely matched by her actions, so she let it go. Again. 'Nothing to worry about'.
"Sorry." said Sam. "So, I got Jack's note to be here, but other than that I have no idea. Is there a problem?"
"I'm not sure." replied the Principal. "Mrs. Abramovich has spoken of her concerns about the way in which your children's knowledge seems to be developing, and we felt it best to discuss it with you."
Sam gently took hold of Gracie's hand to stop her daughter picking at the metal studs that decorated her biker jacket, and carried her over to sit beside her husband, who had in the meantime fielded their son and sat him on his knee.
"What seems to be the trouble?" asked Sam, looking at Mrs. Abramovich. "Are they struggling to keep up with the curriculum?"
"Oh no." replied the teacher. "In many respects they are at the same level as many pupils. It's just that, well, how can I put this?" She paused and looked Jack squarely in the eye. "I believe that I am correct in stating that you are retired, Mr. O'Neill, and that you run the household while your wife is at work?"
"Yes, that's right." Jack replied. "Best time of my life."
"Quite." said Mrs. Abramovich, her tone dismissing the notion of 'fun' as irrelevant in domestic matters. "Mr. O'Neill, are your children under your personal supervision when they are not at school and your wife is at work?"
"Most of the time, yes." said Jack, for whom this interrogation held no threat whatsoever, considering his past. "Except when they're playing at a neighbour's house and I know that someone is looking out for them."
"And how do you pass most of your time with them?" continued the teacher, her eyebrows arched in expectation of an answer she could disapprove of.
"Tell her, Jonathan." replied Jack, grinning at his son.
"We play games!" cried their son, grinning widely. "Or go exploring with Daddy." He laboured over the word 'exploring', causing Sam to break into a smile of her own.
"Sploring!" repeated Gracie. "Daddy knows nice 'sploring places."
"Oh?" said Mrs. Abramovich in surprise. "But what about giving them lessons yourself?"
"What do you mean?" asked Sam.
"Well," Mrs. A continued, "in certain areas, they both seem to have knowledge of words and concepts that are far in advance of children their age. Not necessarily a deep understanding, but an awareness that is surprising, to say the least. I am concerned that you may be in danger of cramming their heads with irrelevant facts."
"How do you mean?" asked Sam, intrigued rather than worried by this statement.
The teacher turned to Jonathan. "Jonathan, how many different kinds of atoms are there?"
O'Neill Junior smiled, happy that he knew the answer. "One hundred and twenty six!"
Sam threw back her head and laughed, knowing how many times she and Jack had sung the song in front of their children, the song that had brought them finally together. They had continued to make up verses for each new element that had been discovered since it was written, and their offspring had quite naturally picked up and imitated some of the interesting-sounding names of elements – without understanding them, of course. But it was a point of pride in their household to keep track of these scientific discoveries, and to keep the tally on the children's 'writing wall' in their room.
"The fact that he recognises the word 'atom' is remarkable enough." said the teacher. "But look here." She produced a sheet of paper covered mostly in dark blue paint, with a recognisable splash of white across the centre. "This is from Grace's art class yesterday. Gracie, what is this picture?"
"Milky Way!" their daughter laughed, bouncing up and down in Sam's arms.
Sam looked more closely and saw the distinct spiral shape, caught beautifully by her daughter's use of white. But the item that drew her attention was the arrow that Grace had drawn on it, pointing to a spot about two-thirds of the way from the centre to the edge of the white shape. Above it she had written 'grace' in blocky paintbrush writing.
"Where's that, Gracie?" asked Mrs. Abramovich.
"Our house!" responded the delighted child.
"You see?" said the teacher. "Mr. O'Neill, why are you filling their heads with stuff like this at such an early age? It could be detrimental......"
"Is that why you brought us out here?" Sam interrupted. "Because frankly, I can't see the problem."
"As their mother....." was as far as Mrs. Abramovich got.
"Jack, have you been teaching them a new song?" Sam continued. "Which one is it this time?"
"Well, it was going to be a surprise for you, wasn't it, kids?" said Jack. They nodded their affirmation.
In the background, they suddenly heard Mrs. Tann's snort of amusement as she threw her head back and laughed. "I know the one!" she cried. "Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life' is one of my favourites too, Mr. O'Neill." To their surprise, she rose and beckoned them to follow her.
She walked straight into the music room and over to an upright piano, seating herself in front of the keys. "Mr. O'Neill – Jack, may I call you?" He nodded. "Now don't disappoint, children. You can sing this with Daddy now, can't you?" Without waiting, she started the introduction as Jack crouched down, holding hands with his two children.
Sam stood back with Mrs. Abramovich as her husband led the way, with Jonathan joining in for most of it, and Gracie shouting out the just the words that she liked the sounds of best. The Von Trapp's they weren't, but a place in the end-of-year school concert would be hard to evade.
"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour...
That's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral-arm at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
xx
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point,
We go round every two hundred million years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions,
In this amazing and expanding universe.
xx
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz.
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light you know;
Twelve million miles a minute, the fastest speed there is.
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger-all down back here on Earth!"
xx
The children were delighted by the applause that the adults broke into as they finished, and Gracie danced a little jig while Jonathan swung from his father's arm. Only Mrs. Abramovich looked stern, in contrast to Sam's glee.
"Mr. O'Neill! We are doing our best to teach them metric units of measurement these days!"
"Nothing to worry about." he replied as his wife hugged him.
XXXXXXXXXXXX