Thursday, December 22, 2011

And the parents fail again ...

So I was 30 feet high on a ladder, trying to saw through the tree that split in half in the backyard last night, when my cell phone rang. I somehow fished it out of my pocket, held the saw and didn't fall. It was my wife calling from work, telling me the school had called, our kindergartner had an "accident" and needed to be picked up.

So I rousted the 2-year-old after just a 45-minute nap (which will absolutely ruin tonight), loaded him in the car and headed off to pick up the middle son. I admit to being a little annoyed. I didn't get the tree down, Colin lost his nap, and my day was rudely interrupted, all because Matthew waits until the absolute last minute to run like hellfire to the bathroom. I know what you're thinking. I'm an insensitive jerk. Well, I didn't think these things for too long, just a minute or five.

It all changed when I got to the school and the nurse brought Matthew to the office to meet me (see picture above). This is what we had stored in his backpack in the event of an emergency: too-small shorts. Don't they look great with his brown dress shoes and Christmas sweater?

Then he told me how he hid under his jacket in the nurse's office, because the kindergarten class was walking by and looking in the window. I asked why he was hiding, and he didn't answer ...

My heart sank. I'm a terrible father. We're terrible parents. We sent him off to school without even a safety blanket of decent backup clothes, and he had to hide from his peers under a cloak of shame. Damn, this parenting stuff is difficult.

I made him pose for this photo though, so we can laugh about it later. He's a good sport. He'll survive. I just hope I do, too.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, 'Barney' Haute Couture *is shorts, with sweaters. Yep, the kids sing and dance clothed in the above. I love the diversity of that- and it is meant to teach a lesson.

    Let your heart sink no more, Scott!!

    You join a league of millions of parents who throw themselves under the bus all too often over incidents like the above.

    Rearrange Your Perspective: The long and the short of it is that our quality of living *does depend on parents being on ladders to maintain our homes and babies taking naps to make it through the day.

    It is okay to feel inconvenienced when we must defer those things to another time, whose commodity may never present itself, regardless of the situation. The mere feeling of 'Inconvenience' does not dilute the love and affection we have for our children, but you may be letting it over the G word.

    Somewhere, our perception of what makes 'terrible parenting' has changed, and it certainly is not the above. Parents have the omni present emotion of GUILT lurking at every twist and turn.

    Here is the real deal...Matthew hid simply because grade K has yet to be exposed to the diversity clothing brings to individuals.

    I saw a multitude of folks in the same outfit throughout this week, but okay, they weren't being judged in the Court of Kindergarten.

    Worry not, in 10 years, you will be blogging about Matthews insistence on wearing shorts and sweaters to school, with his class behind him. lol

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