This Where the Nonsense Turns to Makesense

..A large family working to perfect our sweet skills: Loving others, making an impact, parenting on purpose, living simply, and embracing sarcasm.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Things That Don't Come Naturally to Me

  • waiting.. for anything
  • keeping quiet for lengths of time
  • exercise. Today I wrangled 13 kindergarteners and a bus full of elementary kids for some time at the "zoo". Shouldn't this count? I think I just made my own point.
  • Love for cleaning. Oh, sure, I want it to look clean. But in the same way a meal cooked by someone else always seems to feel better going in, I feel better going into my house when it has been cleaned by another.
  • skirts. Although I see their attraction (ease, cute factor, etc.) there are problems in their general make up (wind, wedgies, unshaven legs, etc.)
  • girls. I don't always get them.
  • doting. I am so unfamiliar with this term, I don't even know if I spelled it correctly. I am going with it. I watch some parents at school who are so obliging and willing with their kids. This is usually the point when I lean down to my own child and say, "Go get your own lunch box out of the car. I didn't leave it there. I have my lunch right here." And to further prove the validity of my words, I hold my lunchbox in the air in an obvious fashion until my child asks me politely for the keys. Mean? I know what you are thinking. What a bully. Well, I am anti bullying, to be sure, but I will ask you to revisit our group when that doted upon child is looking for a Kleenex and realizes our school bathroom doesn't stock them. 
DUS (doted upon student): I need a tissue.
Teacher: Ok, you can go to the bathroom and get one.
DUS (leaves and comes back, clearly still in need of a tissue): I couldn't find one.
Teacher: Did you go into the bathroom?
DUS: yes. But there aren't any.
Teacher (speaking slower by the second):  Hmmm. Was there something ELSE you could have used as a tissue?
DUS: uuuum...I...hmmm. I don't know.
Teacher: Please think. Think about what you see and what you use the WHOLE time you go in the bathroom. What could work?
DUS: I.... (chirp. chirp)
Teacher: SIIIGHING
My kid: OH MY GOSH. TOILET PAPER!!
DUS: oh. ok. Can I get some toilet paper?
Teacher: doh!
True story.
I am the way I am. It's for the children.

I am not the teacher in this representation. And no children were harmed in the making of this story. The DUS remained remarkably clueless, and I inwardly apologized to my own child that one day she would be running the country next to this clown.

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