SweetWitch
Green Goddess
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2005
- Posts
- 20,370
Open house at school can be interesting. One can learn all manner of stuff about one’s kid. Tonight was no exception.
Oh, the things I learned…
First, we gathered in a stifling room called the gymnasium. Imagine 300 adults crammed into a space that smells of sweaty gym socks and stale corn chips, all seated on hard metal chairs and benches made for persons of less than four feet in stature. Now imagine half those people who had not had the chance to eat yet, with cell phones buzzing and beeping, with hay fever season and the first-week-of-school colds making the rounds.
Add to this mix, the affluent stay-at-home moms whose husbands couldn’t pull themselves away from business, or golf, or the Tuesday night card game for their children, and who didn’t bother to heed instructions to leave their crying, tired, hungry babies at home. Now we’re having fun.
The PA system was blaring as loud as they could make it to be heard over the hacking, the sneezing, the nose-blowing and the screeching kids. “Ssh, honey. Don’t cry. Mommy loves you.” “Want another tissue, Herman?” Jesus. Shut the fuck up!
I’m not sure, but I think the woman barking at us through the distorted sound system was the new principal, but I could be mistaken. There were several people behind her and every time she said something, one of them stepped forward and waved.
Must be introductions and those other people must be teachers or something. Whatever.
One thing I was able to make out was that it was time to go to the classrooms. In full panic, with my germ phobia and desperate need for peace and quiet at their highest, I sprinted for the door. It was rather enjoyable being the first to exit the den of plague and make a bee line for my daughter’s classroom.
Ah, the classroom…
This was the place where my child learns, where her tender young mind is filled with ideas and knowledge. This wondrous place, this place where she studies and creates and where her world is opened to…
Wrong!
We were instructed to sit at our children’s desks. Yeah, right. I’m not a tall person, but damn! In this tiny chair, my knees were banging against the bottom of the short desk, my back protesting the crunching confinement. But I sat.
We had a few minutes while we waited for the mommies with their screaming babies to make their way to the rooms. I was able to explore my child’s desk. So many tools of learning: text books, pencils, notebooks, art supplies, scraps of paper, an old and tattered valentine card, erasers, pebbles—
Pebbles? And bits of shredded plastic wrap, and more erasers, and pictures and doodles of stick people and something a team of scientists would never be able to identify. Yuck. What the hell is this kid up to?
More speech-making. This time from the teacher. She seems like a nice lady, a bit young, and a neighbor of mind from down the street. Interesting.
But, pebbles? In my daughter’s desk?
So, after she was done, I cleaned out the desk, took a pile of crap—including the pebbles—from the desk and approached the teacher. “Pebbles?” I asked.
That’s when I discovered that my sweet, intelligent, creative child who, during her second week of school, has brought home perfect and near-perfect test papers in all her subjects, has not been doing any of her school work. Not one bit of it. She just sits and fiddles and gets disciplinary action from her teacher. And pouts about it. And fiddles with her rocks—and her erasers and scraps and anything else of interest to her.
So, once I got home, we had a talk. After she got done screaming and realized that Mommy is very serious, she resigned herself to no TV (even though she only got an hour or less a day, it’s a huge set-back for her little mind). I, on the other hand, am imagining the peace in this house with the boob-tube in permanent shut-down. Heh heh.
But I could tell she still wasn’t getting it. After I told her that I’d cleaned out her desk—and the subsequent screaming died down again—she was informed that the lovely Bichon puppy from down the block, the one that she’s already named and whose personality is already chosen, will never be brought to this house unless she decides to toe the line.
There is no known horror that can compare to the sound of a princess in full wrath. If they could somehow capture that noise and broadcast it over the Middle East, there would finally be peace in the region—but only because they would all be deaf, all buildings, structures and mountains would be leveled and all brains would be turned to mush.
God, my head hurts. My ears are still ringing.
Anyway, I think she got the message.
Oh, the things I learned…
First, we gathered in a stifling room called the gymnasium. Imagine 300 adults crammed into a space that smells of sweaty gym socks and stale corn chips, all seated on hard metal chairs and benches made for persons of less than four feet in stature. Now imagine half those people who had not had the chance to eat yet, with cell phones buzzing and beeping, with hay fever season and the first-week-of-school colds making the rounds.
Add to this mix, the affluent stay-at-home moms whose husbands couldn’t pull themselves away from business, or golf, or the Tuesday night card game for their children, and who didn’t bother to heed instructions to leave their crying, tired, hungry babies at home. Now we’re having fun.
The PA system was blaring as loud as they could make it to be heard over the hacking, the sneezing, the nose-blowing and the screeching kids. “Ssh, honey. Don’t cry. Mommy loves you.” “Want another tissue, Herman?” Jesus. Shut the fuck up!
I’m not sure, but I think the woman barking at us through the distorted sound system was the new principal, but I could be mistaken. There were several people behind her and every time she said something, one of them stepped forward and waved.
Must be introductions and those other people must be teachers or something. Whatever.
One thing I was able to make out was that it was time to go to the classrooms. In full panic, with my germ phobia and desperate need for peace and quiet at their highest, I sprinted for the door. It was rather enjoyable being the first to exit the den of plague and make a bee line for my daughter’s classroom.
Ah, the classroom…
This was the place where my child learns, where her tender young mind is filled with ideas and knowledge. This wondrous place, this place where she studies and creates and where her world is opened to…
Wrong!
We were instructed to sit at our children’s desks. Yeah, right. I’m not a tall person, but damn! In this tiny chair, my knees were banging against the bottom of the short desk, my back protesting the crunching confinement. But I sat.
We had a few minutes while we waited for the mommies with their screaming babies to make their way to the rooms. I was able to explore my child’s desk. So many tools of learning: text books, pencils, notebooks, art supplies, scraps of paper, an old and tattered valentine card, erasers, pebbles—
Pebbles? And bits of shredded plastic wrap, and more erasers, and pictures and doodles of stick people and something a team of scientists would never be able to identify. Yuck. What the hell is this kid up to?
More speech-making. This time from the teacher. She seems like a nice lady, a bit young, and a neighbor of mind from down the street. Interesting.
But, pebbles? In my daughter’s desk?
So, after she was done, I cleaned out the desk, took a pile of crap—including the pebbles—from the desk and approached the teacher. “Pebbles?” I asked.
That’s when I discovered that my sweet, intelligent, creative child who, during her second week of school, has brought home perfect and near-perfect test papers in all her subjects, has not been doing any of her school work. Not one bit of it. She just sits and fiddles and gets disciplinary action from her teacher. And pouts about it. And fiddles with her rocks—and her erasers and scraps and anything else of interest to her.
So, once I got home, we had a talk. After she got done screaming and realized that Mommy is very serious, she resigned herself to no TV (even though she only got an hour or less a day, it’s a huge set-back for her little mind). I, on the other hand, am imagining the peace in this house with the boob-tube in permanent shut-down. Heh heh.
But I could tell she still wasn’t getting it. After I told her that I’d cleaned out her desk—and the subsequent screaming died down again—she was informed that the lovely Bichon puppy from down the block, the one that she’s already named and whose personality is already chosen, will never be brought to this house unless she decides to toe the line.
There is no known horror that can compare to the sound of a princess in full wrath. If they could somehow capture that noise and broadcast it over the Middle East, there would finally be peace in the region—but only because they would all be deaf, all buildings, structures and mountains would be leveled and all brains would be turned to mush.
God, my head hurts. My ears are still ringing.
Anyway, I think she got the message.
