In Absentia

I am not here. Not here, I tell you! Stop talking to your monitor like I can hear you. I am at Parent Conference Night. Not for my own children. They are parentless on conference nights. Teachers are not allowed to be parents. We work selflessly for the future of our nation. Just not for our own futures.

Oh, we are allowed a few minutes to dash off to other buildings to make the appearance of conferencing. But we don't actually get to conference. The teachers slap you on the back in the good ol' boy way and joke about how it's a shame that your kid can only get A s and whatnot. Then they give you the bum's rush because HELLO they were in the middle of a game of trivia or listening to music or making fun of someone playing the dulcimer and singing America the Beautiful or eating supper that was delivered at 3:30. So you have to go on back to your own building and do the same.

Parents only show up when the food arrives. It doesn't matter if you sit down at 3:30 in an effort to miss the 5:00 after-work rush. They have a nose for food, and they follow that wafting aroma right up the road and into the building and to your table and say, "Oh. I didn't mean to interrupt your supper." Like they hadn't planned that all along.

Then there will be a long dry spell just like the long dry spell between the parents who show up before school is even over and the supper sniffers. The last-minute rush will begin around 6:45, because parents know that we can leave at 7:00 IF all the parents are out of the building. It's a passive-aggressive-fest.

But I DO enjoy my job. I have a built-in audience for my stand-up routine. The favorite gag so far this year has been grand theft calculator. Closely followed by, "You may be rule breakers, but you're not ruler breakers."

The school year is almost over, you know. 25% down, 75% to go. And it's getting closer to snow day season, by cracky!