Why our boy gets dessert before dinner and goes to bed whenever the hell he wants
An easy problem gets an easy solution.
Today at the doctor’s office Eva and I were playing “Stupid Princess Gets Herself Stuck in the Tower.” This is played by positioning a maiden in the tower of a castle, then waiting for a hero of a prince to bail her ass out. I placed the prince at the castle’s entrance and put on my best problem-solving face.
“Let’s see. How is the handsome prince going to rescue the beautiful princess?” I …strategized, gathering some blocks as Eva looked on. “Should we build steps leading to the tower?”
She looked at me. She looked at the blocks. If she could tell time, she would’ve looked at her watch.
“… Or maybe he should go around back, through the castle and up the stairs,” I continued. “It won’t reach the tower, but it’ll put him closer to the princess…”
Eva rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’ll get her out,” she said. And with that, she plucked the princess from the tower and tossed her to the ground, where she lay facedown in a sea of rhino/corona/adeno/parainfluenze viruses on the waiting room carpet.
The new generation of women’s lib has spoken.
Forever Fun Pack
Today’s $44 mistake: neglecting to explain to the children that a roll of postage stamps is not the same thing as a roll of stickers.
We all could use someone like Florence.
Dropping Tyler off at school today, a woman accosted me with an air of importance as we piled out of the van. “Please, you need to slow down in the parking lot,” she said. “There could be kids around.”
I was dumbstruck. In my mind, I drive so slowly in parking lots that it feels like the parked cars are passing me out. I stared at her in disbelief.
“Really, now?” I scoffed. “Kids, potentially in a school parking lot? Much like the three strapped in car seats in my minivan? Thanks for the tip. Next time I’ll slow it down to 80!” (In reality, what I probably said was more along the lines of “Nuh ugh!” Same concept.)
I rolled my eyes at the crossing guard, who’d heard the whole thing. “Who was that?” I asked. “A teacher? An administrator? The superintendent of schools?”
“Oh, that’s Florence,” she said. “She’s the copy gal. She makes copies, collates their papers, and runs errands. Sort of like a girl Friday for all the teachers. Nice lady.”
The copy gal?
Here’s the question that begs to be asked. What did the Simsbury teachers do to get one of those? How many weekends did I spend at the copy machine at Staples because every single machine was either broken or out of paper at my school of employment in Hartford?
That’s it. I’m applying for a teaching job in Simsbury. And I’m using Florence as a reference.