Things I learned at kindergarten today…

Today was a very long day for me. And for Avi. This morning was business as usual. But tonight was his school’s “Back to School Night.”

Our routine, as many of you may have read, involves us leaving the house slightly before 7:00.  I drop him off at school for the before-care program at around 7:30 and then proceed to work in somewhat the same direction of travel.  After I’m done with work, I go back to school to get him from the after-school program at about 5:40 or so. And then we get home at about 6:15.  All in a day’s work.  (On Mondays and Fridays socKs picks him up instead — a bit earlier than I would on any other day.)

Today was going to be different. I mean, what’s the point of me picking him up just to drop him off at home and immediately head back out to school? Fortunately there was babysitting at the school which we were able to use.  So I picked him up and we met socKs at a nearby restaurant for dinner. Then we just went back to school for the next two hours. The kid was a champ throughout. If anything, he was far less cranky than many of the parents we had met. Then again — he wasn’t inundated with information.  We were.

Have you ever attended a “Back to School Night” before? We hadn’t. It was weird actually being the parents in this situation. Here’s what I was able to learn from the experience.

* Choose your reading material wisely – or be prepared to suffer the consequences. We received a packet which included the schedule for the evening’s activities (including a welcome and some introductions, a “specialties fair” where we could informally meet the art, music, P.E. teachers, etc., and the individual room meetings) as well as a whole lot of other stuff. You know what I’m getting at: administrative forms. PTA volunteer sheets. Sign up for Jazzercise at the school! Stuff like that. Since we had one packet between us, I decided to pull out one stapled series of sheets and passed the rest of the packet to socKs.  This booklet was thick enough; I could certainly interest myself in this peripheral portion of our son’s academic career as we waited for the formal program to begin.

I picked the packet about head lice.

And I read a good deal of it! Well — enough of it before it simply gave me the shivers. But I learned that, so far, Avi’s school has not yet had a case of head lice this academic year! (We’re on school day #12.)  And that nobody likes to get that phone call from the school nurse saying that your child is *shudder* infected. I saw pictures of lice and nits — and how to distinguish the difference between the two.

By the end of the six page packet I was ready to seal my kid in a body-sized Ziploc bag for the next twelve years.  The lesson learned here is to simply not read these things so carefully. I’ll know for next time…

* Parenthood is the ultimate age equalizer. I was stopped by someone who recognized me but whom I didn’t recognize. Turns out that it was Eliot — a guy who graduated high school with my older brother,   I had always thought of him as way older than me. But it turns out that he and his wife have a kid only a year older than ours!  Small world…

There are parents of other kindergartners who look much older than we are; there are those who look younger. (There are those who are perpetually pregnant as well.)  But it doesn’t seem to matter — because our kids are the same age, we all seem to be the same age, too. We’re all playing nicely together.

(But I have to admit — I have the rockinest hair out of all the dads there…)

* Having an uncommon last name which happens to be similar to that of the Head of School is simply trouble waiting to happen. I recall going to a small elementary school where, because of my uncommon last name, it was pretty obvious that I was someone’s little brother. And we thought that, with an only child, we would escape this. Right?

Not quite. I introduced myself to the art teacher — who does not know our son after twelve days at the school. (For shame!) But she did mention that our son’s name, Avi Shiny, sounded a lot like the Head of School’s kid, Davey Spiney! And there’s some of Davey’s artwork on the wall!  Which was nice, but I honestly couldn’t care less. Well, actually, I probably could care less. But I decided not to.  Not my kid. It sounds cruel, I know. I’ll be more compassionate once my kid has something on display made out of paper fucking mache, okay?

* The kindergarten class will be learning Microsoft Excel this year. I found this a bit surprising. But the computer teacher brought up a good point: it has rows of numbers and columns of letters.  And there are rectangles! Hey — good enough for me. I just hope they teach him how to do Cascading Style Sheets.  I need a new design for this blog and I’m paying good money for tuition…

* It’s a good idea to know your kid’s dress code before showing up to Back to School Night. We went through a pretty detailed presentation by both the general studies and Hebrew/Judaic studies teachers. (Yup. Jewish school.) There was a lot to cover academically for us as new parents — mostly because there were fascinating things happening with our kids! They were reading! Doing math! Looking for patterns! Learning Hebrew! (That part still amazes me — the Hebrew immersion that they do with the kids works wonders.) But at the end there were several announcements that had to be made — such as making sure that the kids have their water bottles at school for outdoor recess. And their changes of clothes. And their boots. (The kindergarten class has a year-long ecological segment on the wetlands which surround the campus. Very cool stuff.)

And one of the announcements was that the dress code for the school applies to kindergartners as well: No tank tops, sleeveless shirts or dresses, spaghetti straps and the like. Not even on hot days.

At which point everyone looked around at the mom wearing the sleeveless dress. She just rolled her eyes.

There was also discussion about clogs not really being conducive to running around outside. And that it had been suggested that the girls who chose to wear skirts or dresses wear a pair of shorts under them.  And to stay away from fancy belts which are tough to get back on after you go to the bathroom. And it’s probably best for any fancy jewelry to be kept at home — because the kids are at the age that necklaces and bracelets rarely stay on.

All I could think was: Thank God we have a boy. (Or at least a boy who isn’t into jewelry, fancy belts, or clogs.)

* The kindergarten chairs are tricky. I hadn’t sat it one of them for a long time! But I decided to do it in the spirit of Back to School Night. Keep in mind that these aren’t, like, third grade chairs. No. These are smaller than those tiny little chairs. And since I was a kid? They’ve added metal side bars to the whole thing!

No matter. I was going to sit down for the presentation and be a good sport.

Four minutes later my entire ass was asleep. Not easy to concentrate when your ass is asleep.

But all in all, I learned something important: these kindergarten teachers have been through all of this before. They’re watching what kids are eating for lunch and for snack. They’re watching the kids at work and at play, And if they see a problem, they’ll likely tell us. They’ve got our email addresses and phone numbers.

I just hope the first call isn’t about head lice.