Parent Teacher Conferences

Elijah’s parent teacher conferences represented the combination of my best anxieties: meeting new people, authority figures, talking, the potential for conflict, school urinals.

Diana smartly let me handle this one solo.

My meetings were scheduled for 6pm, so naturally I left work at 3pm. I stopped by Diana’s store to say hi and she suggested I have a glass of wine. I anxiously wondered aloud if it was a good idea to go to parent teacher conferences with wine on your breath and Diana said maybe I should have two.

I arrived at school a nice, Hamannly 30 minutes early and stood anxiously in front of Eli’s math classroom. I ran through all the possible worst case scenarios in my head. What if she yelled at me? What if she said Eli was a moron? What if she pants me? Were swirlies still a thing? Maybe she’d make me take a math test as some kind of DNA test.

Eli’s teacher appeared at the doorway and looked exactly like my teacher brother Steve: tired of everyone’s b.s.

We sat down and she said, “Eli is a wonderful kid. He’s kind, conscientious, engaged and smart. Any questions?”

Nope.

Next, I visited Eli’s English teacher. This lady was notoriously mean. According to parental rumor, this lady doesn’t hold punches and likes to accuse people of letting their kids watch too many screens. According to my spying, he was doing worst in English, a B+. I sat down and prepared for the worst.

She said, “Eli is a wonderful kid. He’s kind, conscientious, engaged and smart. Any questions?”

Nope.

I finished with Eli’s music teacher. Eli texted me that she was his absolute favorite. I believe his exact words were, “My music teacher is lit.”

Hi lit teacher sat me down and said, “Eli is a wonderful kid. He’s kind, conscientious, engaged and smart. Any questions?”

The whole thing lasted 20 minutes. I came home and told Eli how proud I was. He was clearly trying in school and, more importantly, he was being kind. And in our house, being kind is better than straight A’s.

He said, “How much money is that worth?”

Whisper Scream

Luca and our Alexa machine are in the middle of a passionate love affair. He seems to be the only one who talks to her, asking her forty times a day who won what game that day. He’s very nice about it, unlike my snapping at her to stop playing whatever Grateful Dead son Diana played before leaving the room. Alexa will surely spare Luca when the machines rise up.

Luca’s fandom came to a head when the Cubs had a one game playoff to get into the post season. By the time I got home that night, he was in a fever pitch. His voice was unable to lower under scream level.

Unfortunately, Diana had her eyeball shots earlier that day, which really knocked her out. She didn’t see on the calendar it was National Clumsy Technician Day, so her eyes were pretty beat up. The best plan of action was to sleep.

Our bedroom happens to be directly over our little TV area, so any and all sports screaming travels up our walls and air conditioning ducts and into our bed.

I made Luca a deal: If he could resist screaming, he could watch the entire game, even if went past his bedtime. Elijah asked if he could have the same deal, but without watching the game. Nope. So he suddenly became a Cubs fan.

Within the first 10 minutes of the game, Luca screamed his head off. Strike One. He got to Strike Two after seeing one of our clients were advertising in the game.

I suggested he try a technique I like to call “Whisper Screaming.” This worked surprisingly well. But for some reason the boys had to also move in slow motion. They would slowly leap from their chairs, slow motion strut across the room and whisper, “Whooooohooooo!”

This seemed to disturb Grover the Dog more than if the boys were legit screaming.

The game ended up tied at the end of the 9^th and I was tired. I canceled our stay up past bedtime deal. But I agreed to buy them some Fortnite crap so they still got to Whisper Scream in delight.

Lost Bike

My mother used to have a “Saturday Box.” If she found a toy or article of clothing or sandwich on the ground, she would pop it into a little cardboard box, which we could not access until Saturday morning.

It was meant to teach us how to clean up after ourselves. All it really taught us was how to wait until Mom had her nightly bottle of wine and go raid the Saturday Box after she went night night.

We do not have a Saturday coffer at our house. And as such, our floors are littered with child detritus. Shoes and socks being the greatest offenders. Kid gets home. Kid removes shoes and socks. Shoes and socks get chucked. Child asks parent later where his shoes went. Parent yells at child.

Yelling at them about it has ceased all meaning. I’ve taken to just pointing at items until they get removed. I like this method because it’s so passive aggressive.

As you can read from the title of this blog, Elijah lost his bike a couple weeks ago. We rode by our little park after a nice long bike adventure and Eli spotted some of his friends. Excited by the prospect of him doing something in the actual sunlight, I bid him a farewell and went home to practice Fortnite. Eli came home after dark, which made me very happy.

The next morning, we were climbing in the car to attend Luca’s soccer game when Eli became ashen faced. “I left my bike at the park,” he breathed, eyes wide with fear.

Fear of getting yelled at by me. And boy did he get yelled at. Responsibility. Carelessness. Kids who aren’t as lucky as you. Petty larceny. Spoiled children. These were just some of the topics of my lecture.

Diana, who is a much better parent than I am, suggested we drive to the park on the way to the game, in the hopes no one wanted a nice bike that was left under a gazebo all night.

The bike was not there. See? See? People suck!

There was, however, a note taped to the gazebo. The note read, “Found bike. Call if it’s yours.” Oh wait. People may not suck after all.

After a few panicked attempts, a nice man answered. He asked us to describe the bike just to make sure. We immediately forgot what Eli’s bike looked like. It’s blue? Maybe? Has at least one wheel. It’s either a Mongoose or literally any other bike brand.

Luckily, the man believed us and said he’d meet us at the park. I forced Eli to come with me and bring a bottle of wine as a reward. I continued my lecture explaining how much I hated meeting new people and he was making my social anxiety flair up big time.

The very nice man approached and we shouted, “Hooray!” Eli slid forward and offered the wine and a rehearsed mumbled thank you. The very nice man tried to refuse the wine but we convinced him to take it. Neither party knowing it was a super expensive bottle Diana was saving for a special occasion.

We happily walked home and I let up on the lecture. And as soon as Eli got in the door he chucked his shoes across the room.

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