I’m a teacher so naturally I want my kids to enjoy school. I’m happy to say that except for a few minor incidents, both my children have not needed bubble gum bribes or threats of stints in the hole to get them to class on time. Poppy is in her last year of elementary and has learned to navigate the maze of tardy bells, gym teacher whistles, and a cafetorium that smells way too much like soup, or so she tells me. London is in first grade, the beginning of his primary school path, and I have witnessed his indoctrination into the educational cult and it’s making me a bit uneasy.
One morning I was driving the kids to school and up ahead a fat yellow bus was pulled over flashing its hazards. The driver was casually sipping gas station coffee so I figured he was just waiting to start his route. I passed him on his left and offered a kindly wave since we toil in the same field.
“Dad, that’s cutting,” London said, indignant.
Poppy stifled a laugh.
“What?” I gasped.
“You just cut that bus.”
My eyes must have rolled into the back of my skull trying to connect London’s statement with the degree of sincerity imposed upon it. Cutting? Something was amiss with me boy, and I knew the culprit too well.
That same afternoon, after my children and I—though in separate locales—came in contact with chalk dust, slamming lockers, and odiferous student bathrooms, we all took a walk in our neck of the arroyo. Like many neighborhoods in our town, our area is riddled with dogs. Most of them bark as we pass by and I have yet to purchase the new computer that can translate these yelps and growls, but most of them sound to this layman as “If I escape my confines, I will feast on your genitalia.” Call me paranoid but I see my fellow walkers now armed with golf clubs, cell phones, citronella spray, and a fierce snarl of their own.
The three of us passed a house where a dog was squatting in the middle of a bed of lava rock. Its face looked like the inside of a garbage-eating goat’s stomach. I know I should employ restraint around my offspring but I couldn’t help it. “Man, that is one ugly dog.”
“Dad,” London objected. “That is such bad sportsmanship.”
Bad sportsmanship? I appreciated Ted, London’s beloved PE teacher, instructing my son on how to be a gentleman during a heated game of dodge ball but did this genteel philosophy cover an animal whose face could induce vomiting? I felt like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers when he discovers that people are being replaced by simulations. Instead of the son I had the day before quoting Pokemon episodes, this new kid would be asking me to buy him a pocket protector soon.
That night, Poppy and London were getting ready for bed and an argument erupted about who had the rights to the little plastic cap on the ACT bottle. After my kids brush, floss, and rinse, we have them bathe their choppers in this greenish fluoride liquid so they won’t grow up and have teeth like the British. Poppy and London both felt they had been granted permission to use the super special (and rather sticky) plastic cap, not the lesser paper cup. My wife Lala had brokered the deal and sadly she was not home so I called her at her sister’s and handed the phone to London, the more vocal proponent of his cause.
“Mom, remember when you told me I could use the plastic cap on the bottle?”
I could tell by the pause on her end that Lala had not written up a binding contract.
“Mom!” London shouted. “You told me I could. Remember? When we were in conference?”
Conference? “London,” I barked. “Hang up. Tomorrow, we’re all calling in sick.”