Late for school again, I watched Tyler dash to the front entrance with his “Future Fire Chief” raincoat swinging to his steps, forging through puddles in his firefighter boots and pulling his matching yellow hat over his ears. His teachers had already led the class inside, which meant I had to walk him to his classroom. Tyler made it there before I did and pressed the buzzer on the door, perhaps one or two (or maybe thirty) seconds longer than necessary.

Rather than hearing the clicking of doors unlocking, I heard a garbled voice over the microphone. As the rain poured down on our heads, unsure of what to say or do next, I pressed the buzzer again.

This time, the voice was loud and clearly annoyed. “May I help you?”

I looked through the window and saw the secretary, who looked about thirty years overdue for retirement, peering down her nose at me over the top of her computer.

I imagine these are the three possible scenarios that played in her head as we sat there looking at each other through the window, the rain now beginning to form a puddle in the brim of Tyler’s hat and drip down his face: (a) It’s that pesky Midget Firefighter’s Association again begging for another donation; (b) My God, it’s a guerilla revolutionist with her suicide-bombing accomplice; or (c), This could be a parent and her child trying to get to class. After weighing all three options, she decided each was an equal likelihood. Thus, the interview in the rain.

Have we really come to a point in our society where a woman with a five-year-old boy sporting firefighter raingear and a dinosaur backpack draw suspicion as they rap on an elementary school door?

It’s hard enough to be a scrambling, disorganized mom whose only mission is to get her kid to class in time for goldfish crackers and juice boxes. I can only imagine what it must feel like to be an actual terrorist. I wouldn’t want that guy’s job for a second.