Make no mistake about it. Sending your child out into the world
creates all sorts of surprising parental responsibilities. And I
don’t mean things like making sure they’re wearing shoes or
teaching them to look both ways before crossing the street. Oh no.
That’s a given. I mean things that you’ve never even thought about
before. Like keeping up with all of the paperwork.
Make no mistake about it. Sending your child out into the world creates all sorts of surprising parental responsibilities. And I don’t mean things like making sure they’re wearing shoes or teaching them to look both ways before crossing the street. Oh no. That’s a given. I mean things that you’ve never even thought about before. Like keeping up with all of the paperwork.
You see, as a parent of a school-aged child, you’re in charge of all of the notices they will bring home. One of the main problems with notices is that they tend to disappear just when you need them most. And don’t waste your time looking. You’ll never find them. This is because they have, in fact, disappeared into thin air, not to be seen again until the day after whatever-it-was-you-needed to- be-reminded-about happened.
You would think that this problem would be resolved by finding a practical place to keep notices. But the other tricky thing about notices is that they don’t stay in one place. Oh, they’ll start out innocently enough on the kitchen table or the desk next to the phone, but they’ll somehow end up in mysterious, unthinkable places like behind the sofa cushions or underneath the cat’s water dish. No one knows for certain why this happens. My children claim that the wind blows them there, while others say it’s the result of running a shoddy and haphazard kind of a household. But my theory is that almost instantly after you receive them, notices become a special kind of Glorified Scratch Paper.
Which is exactly what happened to the very, very important notice about the mandatory rehearsals for my daughter’s annual violin recital.
“It didn’t stand a chance, you see,” I explained to her music teacher. “The very nanosecond the notice came out of the backpack it was put on the Special-Designated-Spot-on-the-Refrigerator-Door. Then it was used for several rounds of tic-tac-toe and as a canvas for a crayon sketch of our house being swallowed by a big, purple sun. After that it disappeared completely, only to mysteriously reappear days later underneath the sofa. But by then a wad of gum was sticking to it and all I could make out was the word “vznxl” and something with the number two.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t have this kind of trouble at his house.
That said, obviously there are parents out there who can keep track of their notices and fliers. Now you might think that with a little bit of effort and organization I, too, could shake off my bad reputation and mend my ways. Fat chance.
One time I resorted to trying to lure a notice out of hiding by going through each room in the house and saying loudly, “It’s too bad the Cub Scout picnic happened YESTERDAY, AND WE MISSED IT!”
Now I bet you’re thinking that this doesn’t sound like anything a sane and rational person would do. And you’re right. But we all know there’s nothing sane or rational about keeping track of notices. Or, for that matter, being a parent.
Now if I could just get that in writing.
