While everyone else is frolicking in pools and lakes, sending kids off to sleepaway camp, embarking on fabulous summer vacations, we are… still going to school.
Thanks to the wealth of snow days plus a few Hurricane Sandy days thrown in, Pie and Doodles are in school till Friday, which is miserable given the lack of school A.C. and the 90+ degree days we are expecting this week.
So we’re still in the throes of it all. I still have a school newsletter to put out this week. Yesterday was the last Girl Scout event of the school year. The literary journal, which I advised on, came out last week. Leis and flowers had to be dug out this morning for the 2nd grade Hawaiian day. Lunches to be made. It is still the school year.
I will now digress a moment: When I was a child, I was not, let’s say, the “obedient” child. I had a knack for getting myself into trouble. I was generally grounded from something as often as I wasn’t. My sister, however, was the angel child. Perfect grades. Did her chores. Never broke a curfew. And yet, my parents worried about her in a way they didn’t worry about me. Because they had confidence if I got myself into a situation, I would be able to get myself out. But the Tweedle Twirp? I remember one parent saying, “I worry that she’ll be home alone, become hungry, and just not think to go into the kitchen and open up a can of soup.”
A couple of weeks ago, the boy had his viola recital. Pie and I had to be at a Girl Scout meeting, so I wasn’t home to get him ready, as he had to be there an hour and a half before the show started. I put a snack out for him. I laid out his outfit (a tuxedo shirt, bow time, cumberbund, pants, socks, shoes). I left a detailed note of what time he was to be outside waiting for his ride. I had it all covered.
When Pie and I arrived at the recital with plenty of time to spare. I peeked into the back room, and saw the boy was there, he was dressed, his tie was on, he looked good. “Everything go okay?” I asked.
“Fine!” he said.
And then he got up to walk into the next room. And I saw about a foot of underwear on his rear side.
“Uh, Doodles?” I said. “Why are your pants falling down?”
He rolled his eyes at me. “You forgot to leave out a belt for me!”
This boy is finishing 4th grade. He is going to sleepaway camp for four weeks this year. He’s trying to convince me he’s old enough to stay home at night by himself. But apparently he needs to be told that if his pants are too big, he should find a belt.
I don’t need a genetic test to know that Doodles and the Tweedle Twirp are clearly related. Of course the Tweedle Twirp turned out okay. And she apparently feeds herself. Although I don’t know what her belt situation is. I can only cross my fingers and hope that Doodles figures this stuff out for himself.
Because in four days, that boy is a 5th grader. Yikes. And yikes again.
The irony is that I not only had to make my own breakfasts, but I also had to pack my own lunches by the time I was in fourth grade. (And we all know that in 9th grade, I had to make your breakfast, too, if I wanted to get to school.) I’m not sure why dinner would have posed a problem.