New student orientation
My daughter begins kindergarten in about three months. The other week, the three of us attended something called “Kindercamp,” an open house of sorts where children get to visit the kindergarten classrooms and parents begin to freak the eff out.
Basically, parents are lectured about what to expect and what we need to work with our children.
Most of this is basic and The Kid has it down. Count to 10? Got it! (“She can count to 20 in Spanish!” my wife said.) Shapes and colors? That was season one, episode one of Dora The Explorer. The kindergarten teachers were bringing Kool-Aid to the gin party.
This is when it got tricky.
I turn and ask my wife genuinely puzzled, “Does she know how to use a zipper?”
Twenty in Spanish and knowing what a rhombus is (swear to the Sweet Jesus, Savior of Us All, I learned what a rhombus was in 10th grade), check.
Using a zipper, knowing our phone numbers and home address? Oops.
I know what you’re all thinking: “Oh Mad Dad, we know you’re going to ball your lil’ eyes out on the first day of school!”
I won’t deny this possibility. As one the teachers said, “It’s much, much harder for you than it is them.”
Case in point: Once Kindercamp started, they almost immediately took the kids on a tour of the school. Was there a tear shed? Was there apprehension and fear of the unknown and the future?
Nope. The kids sprinted to the door. Somewhere in the general vicinity of that cavernous cafeteria was a pretty kick-ass library. The little monsters could smell it.
The Kid is pretty pumped about school and I’m excited for her. I loved school. Mostly because I didn’t live anywhere near my actual friends and school was the only place that I got to see them. It sounds lonely and pathetic because it is. But I feel it’s the same reason she’ll like school outside of her actual desire to read and write.
The Wife is pretty pumped that she gets to go school shopping. My wife’s a real shopaholic. Literally, it seems her endorphins run high when there is crap to buy. It’s a drug.
Our school’s Parent-Teacher Association offers a program where they’ll sell you all your school supplies for like $50. No interest. “I would never do that,” The Wife said. “It takes all the fun out of buying new stuff!”
“And elbowing people in the aisles,” I snottily remarked.
“That too.”
In all, we’re learning a lot. We’re figuring out phone numbers and zippers. We’re taking a bit more time to enjoy these fleeting moments, the veritable summer swan song of my daughter, The Kid, as a true guileless child.
I hope she gets the teacher breeding ladybugs in her room.
-Mad Dad
