Before school even began I’d felt overwhelmed, to be honest, just from looking at the bell schedule alone.
It really feels like parents have dealt with enough lately, doesn’t it?
Distance learning, and Covid, riots, and shots,
and now we are adding a BLOCK SCHEDULE heaped right on top?
I blinked at the screen the first time I saw it, and zoomed in on it some,
as if that would make it make more sense to me.
It didn’t.
It still seemed like whoever wrote it was 5 shots past drunk.
“On Mondays we have all the classes and get out at 3:33.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have odd classes, and get out at 2:48,
unless you have an eighth period elective,
then plan to stay here until the sun sets that day, and the tip of a held-up eagle feather blows at a precise 20 degree angle away from your face.
On Wednesdays and Fridays, we have even classes,
and to know what time you will get out those days, you must spin a giant wheel in the student services center, which is just a short 4 mile hike away.”
I mean, we’ve already dealt with Murder Hornets.
A BLOCK SCHEDULE?!
Why did they have to do us this way?!
However, as parents do, I just tucked my own feelings on this all away, and plastered on a smile trying to not assist in steering their hearts, by suggestion, my own way.
We would all face the year with positive attitudes, OK?
Back to school after a year and a half of distance learning!
Friends, and football games, and school dances!
“Trust me, you guys.
This is going to be great!”
All seemed to go fine day one, and they were cheerful when I picked them up after school that day.
(Well, besides the incident with me setting off the car alarm, as told in my last saga,
but that’s a whole other thing)
They reported no major mishaps, except for Tessa revealing that at first she’d been unable to find her final class, which was drama, and so she had asked a random teacher who had kindly helped show her the way.
You can imagine my confusion, therefore, when that evening I received a text message from her school attendance office saying that she had missed that very class she had been directed to that day.
She was adamant she had ended up there on time, and told me details of everything,
but did say that for some reason that teacher had not had every student’s name on the roll sheet, and so she had to go to his desk afterwards and tell him her name,
which he then wrote down in pencil,
and promised would be added to the roll the next day.
It was a mistake.
Simple enough.
I’m sure it would be OK.
It was not OK, however,
and for the first 7 days of school, every single day I would end my evening by receiving yet another message from the attendance office that “Your child missed their 7th period class” that day.
Every day, in return, that notice from the school was met with increasingly curt messages right back from me with real typey fingers,
once AGAIN explaining the situation,
and letting them know that my daughter WAS in her seventh period class, and had told me literally everything, that they “really needed to fix this!” and “This continuing problem with their records should make them feel deep shame.”
By day 6, after once again getting the same text,
I sent back a response telling them that I wanted this problem fixed immediately, and that it was a “terrible thing to be sending notices to a child who had just come out of 18 months of distance learning, only to be made to feel like they were messing up things!”
I paused typing only to envision giving my imaginary Karen Hair a fresh coat of spray.
Friends, this is not the kind of thing a stressed out mom fresh-off an apocalypse needs.
This kid had STRUGGLED and clawed her way to try to succeed, and I had been there for every sobbing, depressed, difficult thing.
I had already been popping in my gold grill about this ordeal by day three.
(2021 has me ready to fight for some things)
I was ready to ride at dawn, and to take down several peoples’ names.
On the morning of day 7, when still nothing had changed, regardless of my multiple emails,
I pulled into that school parking lot with fire in my eyes and my real gangster breakfast sliding all over the seat- a gluten free banana oat muffin on a floral paper plate.
My mother rode beside me wide-eyed and silent.
She knows better than to say too much when I’m in that particular state.
Poor thing had driven four hours to visit to be here on purpose for this specific week.
She had come with a purpose: To help me “ease into things.”
But, I was not eased, and after parking the car I dug so ferociously in my purse for my phone before I walked in to single-handedly take down the high school attendance system that I popped off one of my fake nails and it flew right at my mom’s face.
“Yeah. Let that be a lesson to anyone watching.
I am NOT here to play.
See? I’ll even take out my own MOTHER.
I hope you’re looking this way…”
Not willing to go inside looking somehow weakened by a half-manicure,
I stood there in the parking lot after retrieving that nail from the floorboard, and I glued it back on, trying to look extra bold.
Don’t think I didn’t look side to side as I held it on to dry, trying to still look real tough.
NO SCHOOL was going to tell me MY kid wasn’t in her classes!
I had had about enough of this!
“Do you see this?! Yeah! That’s right! I carry SUPER GLUE in my purse!”
My mom could apparently tell I wasn’t in the best head-space that day,
because she cautiously asked me if I’d like her to drive to get me a coffee while I went in, instead of her just sitting there to wait.
I told her yes, and I handed her my keys, and that poor woman drove off, I’m sure, hoping caffeinating me would somehow help with things.
I think I heard the tires screech as she peeled away from me.
Just one mom pumping herself up to be a gangster,
and one now burning rubber down the main street.
I marched into that school office to speak to the attendant with my head held high.
I knew what I knew. Mmmhmmm. That’s right.
The attendant calmly blinked at me as I explained things to her,
and then she silently printed me up and handed me a copy of Tessa’s schedule, only to reveal that she WAS signed up for drama! Ha! I was righ…
only it was supposed to be period 8 for her.
*Insert quietest “oh.”*
I squinted at that paper.
It started to blur.
Period 7 was an ART CLASS she had never once spoken of.
The realization set in that she had never attended it even once.
She had been busy brainstorming costume design two buildings away while her actual teacher had called out for her, only to be met with no response, day after day.
She’d been sitting in the totally wrong class for over a week.
I’d been adamant she’d been in drama, but drama and seventh period weren’t even the same thing.
No wonder that drama teacher didn’t have a record of her name.
I immediately thought of my multiple response emails after each text message I’d received;
Each one increasing in adamance and frustration.
A boldly typed “Not MY child” every day for a week.
I bet the school office pinned up warning photos of me.
Me, thinking I was the mom version of Braveheart, screaming and ready to ride into my own imaginary battle with my blue painted cheeks,
meanwhile my labeled-as-gifted child had attended a class she wasn’t even in for an entire WEEK.
My mom was still gone getting coffee when I walked back out in front of the school,
so I sat on a bench there waiting for her, and I stared out into the distance in the same way I’ve been staring out a whole lot lately:
Like I’m barely fighting off never again going out into the world,
and just becoming one of those people that orders everything off of QVC.
Me, waiting on a bench for my mommy to come get me.
Nothing much ever really changes.
We moms just keep trying to do the rescuing.
When she pulled back up my previous roar was more of a whimper.
I took my coffee quietly, and I directed her to drive me down the street to speak with the school counselor, as I’d been told to do by the attendance office lady, to get it straightened out.
I was still determined to get to the bottom of things even if I had to do it with my tail between my legs.
When I climbed out of the car there, however, once we pulled into that second lot,
yet another fingernail flew at my mother’s face.
I just left that one off.
With wild hair and eyes half-mast, attitude newly reformed, I went to stand in the marked spot.
Week ONE.
Block schedules, and wrong classes, and now single-file behind the orange cone to fix this?
It felt like a lot.
While I waited I looked down at my hands with my middle fingernail broken off.
School was already literally chipping away at me.
We moms go through a lot, but we’re human, you see?
I waited in that line only to be told that Tessa would have to come back tomorrow and do it all on her own.
Of course she would.
We Braveheart teenager mothers are fighting mostly to still feel like we’re needed,
but I guess sometimes we’re supposed to stay unpainted at home.
I went to back out our car that day to drive my mom and I back to the house,
having fixed absolutely nothing still from the time that we had come.
My coffee sloshed on me as we went over a bump.
We didn’t notice the way we tried to drive out was a dead-end that resulted in us just parked facing a giant green dumpster completely blocking the way.
I stared at it like we were in a show-down, then actually took a picture of it because it seemed really symbolic just sitting there on that day.
Later that night,
when we’d gotten to the bottom of the whole mess that ended up being the school’s fault after all,
when we’d been home for awhile,
and the stress of trying to fix a year and a half worth of HARD had finally started to fade,
there was a loud ding on my cell phone.
A message:
“This is to inform you that your child missed 7th period today.”
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
