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?”
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