Monday, May 4, 2009

A Chuckle, A Snort, and an Awwww....

Chuckle: Our kindergartner is beyond-herself DONE. It's 9:00 PM, way past her bedtime, and she is in the throes of a tantrum largely inspired by her overtiredness. Thus we are stuck in a self-fulfilling Vortex of Hysteria fueled by her increasing exhaustion. There is only one hope for peaceful resolution of this situation; as with belligerent drunks, it's unlikely that she'll suddenly sober up and recognize the illogic of her ways...until she passes out. We plan to enroll her in a 12-Step Program tomorrow, when, puffy-eyed and contrite, she wakes up a semblance of her normal self.

It all began when she launched into her typical bedtime avoidance plan: staring down at her toothbrush, she moaned, "But I am still hungry..." Our customary response to this protest? "Great! You can have a big breakfast in the morning!"

Tonight, she gave us the response we've been waiting for: "But Mommy, tomorrow I won't REMEMBER that I am hungry!"

Bingo!

Snort: This evening before I left work I called the father of a student with whom I met about two discipline issues late last week. I explained to this dad why his son had received two referrals from two different teachers; I described his son's responses to my conversations with him; I shared what actions we were taking; I warned about future consequences if his son continued on the same path of misconduct. And about three quarters of the way through our phone dialogue, I noted that the father sounded an awful lot like his son. Or vice-versa. Or...WAIT. I concluded the call and looked up Dad's cell phone number. NOT the number son gave me when I asked for a parent's digits.

MAN!

DUPED!

What a rookie, FER...seriously! This is your THIRD year as Vice Principal and you spent ten minutes on the phone with a kid who was pretending to be his dad?

STEAMED!

Amused.

STEAMED AGAIN!

oooh, really STEAMED.

Replaying conversation in head and laughing.

But STILL STEAMED. And...Ready for retribution.

I wasted no time calling The Real Dad to tell him about The Two Referrals and...now, One GRAVE Misrepresentation. I felt a little satisfaction on my drive home knowing that our student had hung up the phone with me satisfied that he had successfully closed the school-to-home communication loop, and, that his father was about to burst his son's bubble.

Awwww...: We have an elderly (and wee bit nosy) neighbor who loves our children and sometimes lets us know if we--or our visiting friends--are parking cars in places that annoy her. She has been unwell recently, and today her daughter visiting from the East Coast informed my husband that she was in the hospital with pneumonia and had inquired about our family. My husband mobilized our daughters to draw pictures for our ailing friend, and then he packed the girls in the car and took them to the hospital to visit her, swine flu be damned. He did all this on a busy Monday night between feeding our daughters dinner and overseeing homework, as I dashed straight from work to a meeting.

Just another reason I love my husband so much.

3 comments:

Kris said...

Make sure we get a follow-up on the kid/dad!
K

Sam & Sara said...

I'm curious how you ended the conversation with the father-impersonating-student. How did you get off the phone without him knowing you knew?

fer said...

Feebly: "We'll be in touch." And, I got in touch with that student today.