Woo hoo!
Today is the day!
The last day of school, that is.
Oh yeah!
And in the spirit of going out with a bang…
Presenting the final motivational lunch note of 2015-2016 school year!
In like a lion and out like a lamb? Ha! My boys go in like in like bulldozers and out like hyenas on crack.
~Hope you all have a happy Friday, a terrific summer break, and a fabulous weekend!~
Adiós! Au revoir! Arrivederci!
It’s the best time of the year for parents and their children.
And most especially their poor, beat down and worn out teachers.
School is (almost) out for the summer!
What a relief that is, let me tell ya.
No more homework.
No more last-minute projects.
And most importantly…
No more dreaded phone calls from teachers/principals/concerned administrative staff about borderline acceptable human conduct from the little darlings.
What’s not to love about the end of the school year?
But if you’re like me, you probably feel a sense of obligation to thank all these people for putting up with your sweet angels for a whopping 180 days without resorting to diving head-first off a cliff.
So I decided to create little gifts for all of the teachers and staff members who have had the, uh, pleasure of working with my boys throughout the year.
Through brainstorming, I came up with some decent possibilities:
I also browsed the web for other ideas, and in my quest for finding the perfect gift idea, I came across some real gems.
Like the I teach, therefore I drink wine goblet.
And a Chill Pills colorful candy jar.
And a pencil thong pouch.
(You read that right. Seriously, a thong-shaped pouch for… pencils. For your child’s teacher. Because that’s not weird or anything.)
But among the truly absurd, I found a real winner.
“Our child might be the reason you drink, so enjoy this bottle on us!”
The world’s most perfect sentiment ever, in the form of a customized wine label.
Bulls-eye!
Seriously, is this not the best concept ever for a teacher gift?
Now if only gifts of alcohol weren’t so highly frowned upon.
Yeah, back to the drawing board…
I probably ought to be handing these out like candy.
My boys both brought home their much-anticipated school pictures last week. Somehow, these are by far their worst ones yet.
I’ve seen characters in horror movies with more pleasant facial expressions.
Hell, even Chucky the Killer Doll looks more sociable than these two.
What gives?
It’s like the photographers don’t bother waiting for a kid to be fully in position before snapping the picture.
And what are these photographers using for prompts?
“Suck on this lemon for 30 seconds, then smile!”
“Just heard your teacher say something about a pop quiz today…?”
“Whoa, did you just see that bat zoom by?”
Not only do school pictures get more expensive every year, there are also noticeably fewer pictures in the packages. Which, quite frankly, when they look that dismal, may not be such a bad thing.
But still, it’s the principal of the matter. There used to be enough pictures to wallpaper an entire bathroom . Now, what you get barely covers one of the small floor tiles.
And of course, you must commit to buying these things sight unseen. What kind of nonsense is that? It’s insane!
Speaking of insanity…
The photo packages range from $19 for the I Don’t Really Love My Child That Much package, which gets you a single 5×7 and four wallet sized photos, to the self-proclaimed Best Value! package, with a total of 19 photos, a cd with exactly one image on it, and three key tags, all for just $69!
If you really love throwing money away, there are all kinds of frivolous add-ons. Did you know you can add a sheet of 20 stickers for only $9!
Right…
Ultimately, I went with a more middle of the road package that clearly demonstrates I love my child a reasonable enough amount.
If you really think about it, the poor kids are totally set up for disaster on Picture Day.
Against all logic, it takes place at the very end of the day at least 99.9% of the time. After P.E., lunch, recess, and that 20 minute fire drill on the windiest day of the entire year.
This ingenious set up guarantees bloody toothed grins after face planting on the playground, black eyes from taking a hit to the face during dodgeball, hair sticking up in seventeen directions, pants split down the crotch after a morning bus stop dare gone wrong…
And, of course, there’s always the trademark red Kool-Aid stained mouth that makes it looks like the little vampire guzzled a vat of blood for lunch.
Oh well. Not all is lost.
The timing is actually fairly good, seeing as how my kids sort of resemble spooky ghouls and goblins in those photos. Maybe I can use them for Halloween decorations…
Say Boo!
A school picture is worth thousands of words.
Got school-aged kids? Then you know all too well the one word that strikes fear into the hearts of kids and parents alike.
Here’s a hint: It’s scarier than a candy-hoarding corpse on Halloween.
Homework.
There. I said it.
And now I’m breaking into a cold sweat, even though there’s not a single unfinished assignment anywhere in sight.
I didn’t particularly like homework as a child. But I find it even less tolerable now.
Science? And so the suffering begins.
Math? Oh, the misery.
Writing? Woe is me.
A five page research paper on cows? Just kill me now.
You need to do research for a project on “Susan B. Something”? For the love of God, it’s women’s suffrage, not women’s coverage!
Oh yeah. Been there, done that. Way more times than I’d care to count. I already did my time.
But apparently, not everyone feels the same way.
I stumbled upon an interesting topic of discussion on the radio last Friday as I was driving my boys to school.
I was intrigued. But it made me wonder…
Anyone here guilty of doing their child’s homework for them?
I’m not talking about merely helping.
I’m talking practically yanking the assignments out of their hands and hunkering down with a generous shot of your liquor of choice while plowing through seven pages of multiplication and two-step word problems involving Gertrude and her friend Jasper’s adventures stealing corn from Psycho Samuel’s cornfield.
Jasper? What century is this assignment from?
But back to the homework. And the radio show.
A woman had called the radio station with an immense concern. Her son’s teacher wanted to meet with her.
Not too unusual. It’s a boy, after all. Boys are notoriously rowdy and full of mischief.
Well, it turns out she’d been doing her son’s homework for him. Not helping. Doing it.
Doing all of it.
And the problem with this would be…?
The kid was failing 4th grade. He had no clue how to do any of the work, thanks to her.
What a shocker!
While not uncommon for parents to help their kids out with homework, help is the imperative word here. Applying new concepts by doing the work themselves is the key to success, after all.
Although…
There are definitely times when it would be wonderful if you could just cook dinner uninterrupted, without having yet another paper shoved under your nose with more questions that you have no clue how to answer.
Oh, but what’s the fun of cooking without the threat of burning down the house because you’re too distracted trying to figure out what the hell happened to Pluto?
What about the nine planets we all learned about in school? Now there are only eight?!?
Size clearly matters, even in space. Who knew?
But this all seems so trivial when you consider the house wouldn’t be on fire right now if only you had done the damn assignment yourself in the first place.
What I want to know is how anyone ever managed to get by before Google. There are numerous assignments that require knowledge I personally no longer possess.
(I’m struggling to remember what I had been doing 15 minutes ago.)
Remember that show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?
I was evidently not smarter than a 5th grader when that show premiered in 2007. I can almost guarantee I’m even less likely to be now.
Besides, my kids spend seven hours a day at school, for crying out loud! Shouldn’t they be the experts on all things academic? Shouldn’t they be teaching me?
At any rate, this is where Google comes in. Google has answers that I clearly do not have.
So I often (shamelessly) tell my boys, “Let me think about that one and get back to you.” Then I make my escape and get down to business.
I’m sorry, hang on a second…
You need to build The Liberty Bell?
Out of what? By tomorrow?
We don’t have an ounce of modeling clay to work with…but we do have five packages of spaghetti.
A situation of this caliber is best handled by an expert.
Where exactly can I find that homework-monopolizing mom?
Never mind. She’s booked until June, just trying to keep up with her own kid’s homework.
Oh well.
As the saying goes: When life hands you homework, make paper airplanes.
Even Garfield hates homework.
(A Not-So-Helpful Guide to School Readiness)
Don’t panic… but when’s the last time you actually looked at your calendar? It’s still on June! Do you realize that school starts in less than a week? You need all kinds of… stuff… and… things… for school.
And now the fun really begins.
1) School Supplies
The list gets longer and more demanding each year. A two dollar generic binder? Yeah, right. Like that’s really gonna fly. This year, you’ll need a $20 Five Star zipper binder that your kid will yank the zipper right off with his teeth by the second day of school.
Oh, and they insist on red and blue folders only. You bought yellow? Really? And neon orange polka dot composition notebooks? The list specifically says black marble composition notebooks! And they say that reading is a lost art.
2) Clothing
Your kids have outgrown all of their clothing over the summer. The boys’ shorts could easily pass for Daisy Dukes, their jeans fit like capri pants, and every last shirt has mysteriously morphed into a cropped top. Their socks are either orphaned, mismatched pairs or holier than a slice of Swiss cheese.
As for the girls and the two things in their closets that actually do fit? Sooooo last year. Their skirts are all bordering on indecent after sudden growth spurts. (Expect a phone call from concerned school administrators on that one, with a polite “inquiry” about your questionable ability to serve as a role model for your children. What exactly is it that you do for a living, again?)
3) Tax-Free Weekend
Sounds promising, right? Who doesn’t like saving money, after all? And it truly is a fabulous concept, in theory… if your idea of a good time is reenacting Black Friday, school supply style.
So instead of fighting over the newest PlayStation that’s on sale, you now find yourself in a big box store, shoving your way through endless aisles of school supplies while vying for that last pack of Crayola crayons. Until common sense kicks in and you realize that knocking someone out with a left hook in front of a selection of Care Bear and Sesame Street backpacks is probably not worth going to jail for.
4) Drained Bank Account Syndrome
You know how people are always saying having kids isn’t cheap? Well, guess what? They’re right.
5) Locker Practice
As kids get into the higher grades, they are assigned a black hole with a lock to shove their 80 pounds of books/unwanted homework assignments in. Of course, they end up with the dreaded bottom locker. By the way, when’s the last time you had to actually open a combination lock?
So now you’re on all fours and panting like a crazed dog in heat, in an unsuccessful attempt to “demonstrate” how to open your child’s sadistic locker. You finally get it after 28 frustrating minutes and 37 infuriating attempts. And you are then rewarded for your effort with the equally enjoyable task of trying to cram a shelf evenly into that locker, because a lopsided shelf is supposedly as useful as no shelf at all.
6) Schedule Pickup/Teacher Assignment
Ah! The joy of walking with your child through their daily schedule, from class to class, a few days before school officially starts.
One class is undoubtedly outside in the portables, and somehow you take a wrong turn and end up lost in the parking lot, which is greater than or equal to 6 football fields in dimension.
7) Wakie, Wakie!
Having to get up early/go to bed early has been a challenge lately. Some mornings, you’re all still in bed at 9:00. And school starts at 7:45? Ha! This ought to be good. Time to invest in a rooster, perhaps?
8) Misery
After grumbling all summer about the incessant insanity and begging for school to start again soon, you’re actually secretly sad that school has started. The carefree days of eating ice cream for breakfast and hanging out by the pool have come to an end.
Silence is so overrated. It’s tempting to climb to the top of the staircase and dropkick a lamp on to the tiled floor below or go outside to pick a fight with the neighbor in an attempt to replicate the very chaos you’ve just spent the entire 12 weeks of summer trying to avoid.
Go ahead. Give it a try. I dare you.
Smell the rainbow!
Okay, that just sounds wrong. But it works for Skittles, with their Taste the rainbow slogan.
Oh well. At least there’s still the joy of sniffing. Repeatedly.
Good old Mr. Sketch markers.
I came across them a couple weeks ago at Target, and a wave of nostalgia hit me hard. Man, I used to love those things!
Watermelon and licorice were among my childhood favorites, but cherry and grape were great, too.
In retrospect, I’m surprised I never tried to swipe a pack from school; the obsession was that strong.
The best part of elementary school was art class, because that’s where the treasure was kept. That’s right. The stash of Mr. Sketch markers lived in the art room.
I still wonder to this day what kind of delusional teacher thought it was a good idea for each table of six kids to share a single pack of those delectable markers.
Discreet pig-tail pulling ensued over who got which color. The occasional fist fight would break out, too.
Was one of those marker colors by chance called Blood Eraser? You know, one that smelled like antibiotic ointment from the first aid kit?
Elementary school ended far too soon.
But one incredibly awesome day in 9th grade Honors English, a girl named Jen brought a pack of Magic Scent Crayola crayons to class.
One of the crayons was appropriately named Dirt, but I personally preferred Bubble Gum and Banana. It wasn’t quite the same, yet the wonderful memories quickly came flooding back.
It was the best 55 minute class in my entire four years of high school.
Sadly, the Magic Scent line was discontinued a year later. Turns out kids were eating the crayons. Evidently, it just wasn’t fun enough to take a whiff and then draw something creatively cool.
No, those renegades had to go and eat the whole pack of crayons (and probably the box itself, too) and ruin it for all kids, big and small.
And really, parents. Shame on you. That’s like handing your toddler a Lotso Bear plush from Toy Story 3 and expecting it to not have the strawberry-scented stuffing eaten out of it like cotton candy.
But hey, at least the crayons were non-toxic! Unlike that Chinese-imported stuffed bear.
Anyway…
Yes, I bought the markers. They weren’t even all that cheap. Eight dollars for a pack of 12 markers. Which fool spends that much on a set of markers? Oh, right. That would be me.
The chance to relive my childhood clearly justified the ridiculous price tag, though, because buying those markers turned out to be the highlight of my day.
When the kids came home from school, I hid the markers in my closet.
I’ll eventually share.
Maybe.
Truth be told, I’m enjoying them. Perhaps even a tad bit too much.
Which leaves me to wonder- how is it that I once got carded for buying canned air, but this is somehow okay?
I’m blissfully buzzed…from the sheer delight of re-experiencing one of childhood’s greatest pleasures!
Mr. Sketch Markers. Mmm Mmm Good!
comically quirky 