In a moment of incongruous initiative with regard to a possible "tardy" on Toby's kindergarten record Tweety and I brazenly rallied Toby into the Minivan. I was feeling OK about my parenting as we hurtled down Lincoln Drive until we hit traffic. If one is late to Green Woods Charter School, one has to get out of the car and walk one's child to the front desk to sign a f-ing "tardy" slip. If I had to walk Toby the 200 yards to school barefoot in nothing but Tweety and my driving glasses, I would have had to withdraw all 3 of my kids from one of the best free schools in Philadelphia. I was sweating; my heart rate went up. Being the white trash mom of the bigot and the bitches was more than I could bear. I got Toby in on time, so I stayed in my little Honda Odyssey cocoon, but I'll NEVER do that again.
Is Steel a bitch? I'm sure her irritation is palpable when people are misbehaving in 2nd grade. She and I heard about Jack Peter's first conduct referral of this year on Schloka's speaker phone. (Schlocka is the Honda Odyssey) Jack Peter hadn't said a thing when I'd left him at the house, but his teacher called while Steel and I drove to dance. After listening to Mr. Sylvan's message on our booming surround sound, I said to Steel, with some exasperation, "What do you think will make Jack Peter stop screwing around in school???" Steel said, "I think you need to beat him."
She definitely speaks her mind. Deena discovered a note to her boys penned by Steel listing all of their infractions at JP's most recent birthday party. These two are notorious in our house. Steel and Owen fell in love at first sight when she was 5 and he was 7, but it's gone downhill ever since. Toby and Coleman have hated each other on sight, and I'll probably be repeating this in a toast at their wedding. However, Steel was walking on air tonight after the Benner boys left. Steel had emphatically told Owen to "STOP!" He'd looked her in the eyes, said, "OK" and handed over the spray-on hair color he was about to unleash upon her. She was so tickled by her power and by his submission. Steel is the one who pushes the hardest on my buttons. You're all saying "BECAUSE SHE IS YOU." in your heads, but I didn't have her balls when I was 7; I certainly wouldn't have confronted a cute, raspy-voiced 9-year-old boy.
Toby, too, is having a hard time with suffering fools. Maybe it's sexist to call either of them bitches; I'll call them both bitches in training. Toby came home from aftercare IRATE on her 2nd day of kindergarten. She'd held onto her ire for 3 hours. Apparently, her teacher, Ms. Lowell, was drawing lines on the projector to discuss shorter versus longer. She was doing it by hand which was fine until she got to the "equal" lines. Toby fumed, Ms. Lowell and the entire class agreed that the lines were the same length when one was DEFINITELY longer than the other!!!!" I know it's not right to contradict an adult, but she and everyone else were WRONG! I jokingly e-mailed Ms. Lowell that night that there's an architect's daughter in the house, and she needs to start using a ruler.
Toby was also incensed at her first soccer practice that a boy on the other team had PUSHED HER. She might be too polite for team sports. She was also unimpressed by Steel's description of their free range aftercare program. Steel said, "I hope we get to run around in the woods today!" Toby said, "You run around the woods? Are there any ADULTS?" Steel responded that no, there were just kids. Toby, "Well than I'M NOT DOING IT!"
JP is the bigot. Why? Somehow on a playdate with Owen and Cole, they had come across a Utube video with the line, "Now there are 7 NIGGERS in my store!" I still have no idea what they were watching. JP waited until the first week of school to chant that line aloud IN FRONT OF THE HEADMASTER'S SON. I was lead to believe that the headmaster was kind of a jerk. Sadly I've had quite a few experiences with him, and he's been anything but. The first was a phone call. He was relaying an allegation about Jack Peter involving saliva and a female student in the bus line. Mr. Masterson gave me an unbiased, "heads up" rendition of the situation and that was that.
My second Masterson phone call involved "google docs." In 3rd grade they shared their writing via google docs. JP figured out that he had an e-mail because he had a "google docs" account. He started sending e-mails to his friends. He started sending them to his enemies, as well. He wrote one saying, "PLEASE DIE" to the girl who told his current girlfriend, Juliana, about his crush. Mr. Masterson called and said that not only was he impressed that Jack Peter had discovered the e-mail capability but also that JP had changed his password. Very few faculty members had managed to figure out changing their passwords. Mr. Masterson admitted that it was Green Woods' responsibility to disable the e-mailing capabilities for 8 year olds. When the "Please Die" part of the illicit e-mail situation came up, Mr. Masterson said to me, "Well, as his lawyer, 'Please Die' is passive. Had he written, I'm going to kill you. he'd be suspended."
A couple weeks later I had the pleasure of a another midday call from Mr. Masterson. They had just discovered a google doc written by my son entitled BAD WORDS. Jack Peter had listed the top 10 in Helvetica. He'd then switched to a more Halloween-esque font to finish with the line, and don't forget CRAP! One of those top 10 was NIGGER. This was last spring. When asked, he claimed he didn't know what the word meant, but he knew it was bad. We'd punished him by making him write the definitions of all of the words while the girls got a movie night.
In light of that, this year's nigger incident (chanting the line, "now there are 7 niggers in my store") was unforgivable because he no longer had the "I didn't know what it meant." excuse. We made him write a report on Jackie Robinson, and I got to say repeatedly, "This is why we don't let you on the internet. YOU CAN'T HANDLE IT!"
We thought that writing the report while the girls and the neighbors watched a movie would be enough of a punishment to squelch his enthusiasm for bad behavior, but a week later we got our first conduct referral phone call of 4th grade. Jack Peter's teachers always start out serious, but it devolves, and then they're gushing about his wit, generosity, intelligence and creativity by the end of the call. This conduct referral was for general horsing around in class. Under "time of incident" his teacher had written, "ALL DAY"
This was JP's response to "dress down day"
In all interaction with school I am as obsequious and funny as I can possibly be. I come from a long line of teachers, and I know I'm too self-involved to be one, so it breaks my heart and pisses me off when people are wretched to anyone working at a school. Our school has a particularly efficient, smart, funny and hard-working administrator. I could e-mail her at 10 pm and have a response by 11. She's the one up at 5 in the morning dealing with snow days and transportation issues. She also takes the time to send cute e-mails telling me she caught my son stopping to smell the Christmas wreaths. She is directing traffic in the rain, getting copies of transcripts, and giving her lunch to a kid who's hungry.
Every year, she has to liaison between the parents and the incompetent City of Philadelphia bus system. This year she was verbally abused so many times that the principal had to send out a mass e-mail reminding parents that the administrator has NOTHING TO DO with the transportation issues and that all complaints should be going to the the district transportation coordinators.
I sent the administrator a "top ten list" of responses she should make to rude parents:
10. "Call the district. If you're on hold for over 7 hours, you're eligible for a drawing. The winner will get to have dinner at a Steven Starr restaurant of his or her choice with THE POPE!"
9. "After a recent study in childhood development, we've deduced that Green Woods kids are over-scheduled. These long bus rides were created to give your children time to day dream."
8. "We are hoping Green Woods parents meet these transportation challenges with a family perusal of world news. We want Green Woods students to understand that a 2 hour bus ride is mild when compared to a beheading"
7. "Oh come on! You loved it. You got to scroll through Facebook for two hours without having to answer any questions or do laundry."
6. "Green Woods is striving for an all-around education. This includes survival-in-the-wild techniques. The next time little Elvis feels he needs to pee while he's on the bus, encourage him to urinate in his water bottle and retain the contents for future use. On back-to-school night, the PTA will be handing out little funnels to help the little girls with this endeavor."
5. "We are sure that your catchment school will still accept little Elvis if the transportation issues are too much for your family. His slot at Green Woods is a highly coveted item in Philadelphia"
4. "This was an introduction to our "transportation software hacking boot camp!" Your child has the opportunity to compete against the best and brightest city-employed engineers to devise a better system. The winner will receive 5 TRAILBLAZERS!"
3. "These transportation hurdles were devised as testing opportunities. Masterman and Harvard are no longer looking a standardized test scores. They are using a "reality TV approach" to evaluating children in times of stress. Let me assure you, Mrs. Cranky, Little Elvis is doing VERY WELL on these new tests."
2. "Just be glad your kid wasn't on bus number 98. They sat on the bus for 4 hours and 37 minutes, and each and every one of them emerged from the bus with a head full of LICE!"
AND THE NUMBER ONE ANSWER to irate parents with transportation issues is:
1. "I hear they have FABULOUS schools right across the river in Lower Marion. Have you considered MOVING?????"
I save my bitchiness for my poor husband. Recently this worked out really well. I'd been in charge of everything at home for a few days. Tim returned and was trying to get together a pitch to a developer. He wanted me to sit and listen to the presentation when I wanted to go to bed. I listened. It sucked. I told him. He stayed up until 5 revising it, and the meeting went really well. Tim thanked me the next day and told me that I was the reason things had gone well. That made me feel good...sort of.
Instead of making Tim Creme Brûlée for his 51st birthday, I bought a flan from the guys who sell them on the street for $5 in the Puerto Rican neighborhood. It got a little dented in my bike panier, but it was flantastic in theory.
My bitchiness was unfurled again last Friday. Tim had been gone for two weeks. He'd threatened extending the two weeks to help his uncle prepare for his aunt's funeral. Despite the tragedy of his aunt's death, I felt completely justified when I texted, "YOU NEED TO COME HOME AS SOON AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN," Someone else could help with the funeral; whereas no one was going to help here with the bigot and the bitches. In a shocking turn of events ANOTHER aunt on his mom's side died 5 days later. After 5 days home, he was going back to Canada for her funeral. Incidentally, Steel probably isn't a bitch, but she might be a witch. On the night that Patty, Aunt #1, died, Steel said at bed time, out of nowhere, "If Aunt Patty were our mom, she would spoil us all the time!" She'd met Aunt Patty once in June. Indeed Patty and Uncle Norman spoiled my kids rotten. I'd see them sneaking away with a posse of kids and Duty Free Toblerone bars the size of the kids' legs. One can't help but think that Steel felt something from Patty on the night she died.
Friday is piano night. We alternate between our house and Kathy's. It was her night, and she suggested Tim and I go out to dinner instead of hang out with her and the kids. (Kathy is divorced. Perhaps that gave her insight on how necessary it was that we have 3 hours together before he flew away again.) We went to happy hour and ordered a fancy gin drink. It came, and he got a phone call. He told me he HAD to take it. It was from a colleage of 12 years ago whose son was in jail. Could Tim go and bail out the 35-year-old son? The charge was aggravated assault. I'd never heard of this woman. As far as I was concerned, her son could fester in jail while we enjoyed our gin Fizz. It's funny how the thing that most attracts you most about someone when you marry them can infuriate you. His generosity, energy and ability to handle a crisis are so attractive until it's everyone else's crisis he's attending to. I told him he couldn't go. We still don't know what would have happened because he was fighting me on that point when the woman called to say she'd gotten someone else to do it. This white-trash, barefoot, tweety-bird-nightshirt-wearing bitch might've been arrested for aggravated assault if he'd left me at that bar...
or maybe my response would have been similar to Toby's if someone had taken away her first milkshake...
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