Dear Lord, Is it Time For my Kid to Go Back to School Yet??

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

 

 

All around the USA, kids are either back in school or almost ready to head back to class.  My girls have long since been out of school, but I remember those days like they were yesterday. I actually liked having my kids home for the summer, but sometimes, depending on the year, I looked forward to them returning.  I didn’t always like the homework, the schedules, and the regimented routine, but for years, it was just a way of life.

 

When your children are very young, the outside world and peer pressure has not yet found a way into their lives, and they still think you are the greatest.  I always volunteered at school, on field trips, and for various school functions and early on, my kids were thrilled to see me.  As years went on, if I had to go to school for some reason, I swear they would jump out of the van while it was still moving to avoid being seen with me on the walk into school.  They ran like little criminals with the police hot on their trail, zigzagging back and forth, their book bags bouncing frantically against their backs, trying to gain speed as they looked over their shoulder to see if I was following.

 

I remember clearly one incident when I knew the tide was turning.  It happened when our oldest, Megan, was very young and I volunteered to go on a field trip to the Baltimore Zoo.  I swear it was the hottest day of the year and the teacher, on the bus ride over, told the volunteer parents that we were not allowed to buy the kids anything at the zoo. Later on in the day, my group was having trouble finding a water fountain, so when I spotted a kiosk selling drinks I headed up to the line to buy us all a drink and my oldest, aka Honest Abe, said she would have to tell her teacher on me if I bought anything.  I should have known this kid was going to be trouble when she brought home a drawing she did of our family when she was in Kindergarten and everyone was average size, except me.  I was twice the size of my husband and she was nice enough to label me biggest in case someone could not grasp that from my humongous stick figure. This was the beginning of the end in my mind as I look back now.

 

In Maryland, where my kids attended school, they have what is called American Education Week and parents are invited to attend school with their children during this week. As they got a little older and less receptive to the idea of their parents showing up at school, this became my favorite week of the school year.  With our kids, we always felt reason did not work well for them, but threats did, and I used this to my full advantage. If I needed them to do something, I would just say, “Do it now, or I will be at your classroom tomorrow morning so fast it will make your head spin,"  and sure enough, they would promise just about anything to see that such a thing did not happen. I don’t know what they thought we were going to do, but I imagined they thought the two of us would show up and say things like, “don’t our young’un look real smart and purty, Ma?…..well, dum burnit, I forget my teeth again….Pa, I brung your spittoon from home, stop spittin’ yer tobacco on the floor!”  Sadly, it all came to an end one year, when my oldest bested me by telling me she would love to have me come, but make sure it was for her fourth period class.  I should have known something was up when I got there and she was smiling, and the smile continued when the teacher informed us that the parents would be asked to participate out loud on a quiz about Longitude and Latitude.  When I looked over at her, she had a smirk on her face and she made sure to make a big show of covering her answers.  When I mouthed to her, “you are dead when we get home,” she knew she had won.

 

Summers between school years always started out great. I loved not having a schedule and homework, but usually by the end of June, I was wondering if I should have tried to get them in summer school.  Nothing drove this point home better than when my youngest, Hayley, asked my oldest, Megan, if President Lincoln was still alive.   The oldest in her haughtiest voice, proving that once again History was not her best subject, informed her that President Lincoln had been shot and killed by a guy named Hitler, while at the movies.  Megan also had a flair for the dramatics and liked to write plays where her dialogue consisted of approximately 40 pages or a 30 verse song and her sister got to say one line like,  “my how pretty you look,” or if Hayley was feeling brave she sometimes improvised with lines like, “I don’t want to do this anymore!” Megan had a lot of friends, but I noticed one girl never returned after being cast in one of Megan’s plays as the next-door neighbor.  Megan, of course, was again the beautiful princess and had the most lines.

 

Usually, by mid July, I was starting to mark my calendar when school started. When you live with two daughters, one an instigator and the other extremely gullible, you do not lack for entertainment, but sometimes I got tired of hearing them bicker.  Hayley believed almost everything her older sister said and one day Megan came home and told her she had just joined the neatest club and did Hayley want to join. It was shortly after she told her she had to write the secret name of the club on her hand that I got a bad feeling, but Hayley insisted she had to be a member.  Sure enough, she wrote the name of the club out and it took a minute for my youngest to tell that Pen15 looks a lot like Penis when written on your wrist in indelible magic marker and then she screamed.  Another summer, Megan told Hayley she was adopted from a family of aliens and Hayley responded each and every time by running to me and asking me if it was true. I knew she was not an alien, but I was starting to think I had brought home Rosemary’s Baby from the hospital instead of my baby Megan.

 

As school starts for another year, many of us have lived through all this and still look back on this time with fondness. We have been through peer pressure, sports, snow days, lost schedules, last minute homework deadlines, book reports, school concerts, fundraisers, picture day, proms, fights with friends, and more.  I used to wish sometimes for them to grow up, so our lives would be less hectic.  The funny thing is sometimes I miss all the chaos and last minute preparations, but mind you, only sometimes.

 

P.S. Stay tuned for my next blog called Dear Lord, Is it Time to Take my Kid Back to College Yet?

[Camilla and Darwin]

LOL. This reminds me of a lot of the shenanigans my siblings and I used to pull. :-)

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Thanks, Joyce, Ann, Vicki and Jane!!! It is hard to forget those school years.

[Joyce & Wilson]

Great blog again Laurie!!  You trigger many great memories for me! Even though my daughter was an only child..my house was always full of her friends and their antics!!  Thanks for making me laugh out loud!

[Ann Kendig]

What a great read!  This reminds me of things that went on around our house.  Thanks for the laugh one again!

[Vicki and Harli]

I really enjoyed reading this! It was laugh out loud funny- and as the mom of three kids I could relate.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Laurie, this brings back so many memories (some of them fond, and others not so much).  Thanks for the memories!